Well here is a midnight summary of GISized PDA happenings. Thanks to the
several who scratched their heads and added thoughts on the pending
Map'nHand PDA offering from MapInfo and wireless PDA GIS in general.
Mainly its a very HOT topic, has more potential processors than the PC
revolution, and portends something really neat...
The essential GISized PDA news is that Palm still dominates (stock today was
around $38 and is estimated to be $55 by EOY). ESRI via ArcPAD offers only
a syncronizable tool that seems at least to one respondent "almost idiot
proof". For the pending wireless GISized GPSed PDA, MapInfo is the only real
play at the moment despite rumors otherwise. AutoCAD might have something
going as well but its relationship to Oracle 8i - 96 percent of the WEB
servers - is unknown.
There remains a certain amount of flame for MapInfo's reliance on JAVA
technology as it is seen as "way slow" for the pending wireless needs which
interestingly also now includes video. The only maybe is Microsoft's C#
which is a veiled attempt to leverage Java and in this summary, Palm out of
the market (does this mean free C# compliers?). Personally I doubt you'll
see a Microsoft complier within a PalmOS?
In this case, when the software seems a tad slow, the "just get a faster
computer" may be the easy way out. Just recently a Palm rep created quite a
stir in that he suggested that the PalmOS would soon find a home on Intel's
newest Xscale chip. This is quite a monster as apparently it can run at one
gigahertz and only need a single AA battery. Now that is fast in more ways
than one! When? Sooner than we may expect - bets are you'll see it at Fall
Comdex.
Sniffing current and near-past PR, Palm also hints about several other
PalmOS users (Sony comes to mind as does Nokia) coming forward this Fall
with a major technologies based on PalmOS. I thought it would have been
SONY's addition of their Memory Stick to the PalmOS - Palmization of
Walkmans, digital cameras, and camcorders - wow too cool!
And well Nokia is fairly dominate in the cell phone battle. And a neat
thing that the Pilot folks have gained in their OS licensing is any outfit
licensing the PalmOS must share innovations - sort of like Linux but without
the confusion. All suggests to me that there is something very big happening
in the Palm Pilot arena. Wince and C# looks to me to be very uncertain due
to the anti-trust thing.
Lastly the "Wince" camp constantly harps on CE's "more memory" and "faster"
processors versus the Pilots who suggest Bill can't fit his fat WinFoot into
a Cinderella glass slipper with any amount of grease. The ARM-based Xscale
chip is Intel's leap into PDA and cell phone technologies. They expect the
Xscale chip demand to be larger than their Wintel chips business today.
Palm still is outselling CE 7 or 8:1.
And to close, I still remain concerned that MapInfo's Map'nHand may be only
scaled for those with a million or two $ to drop. Wireless GPS and GISized
Pilots are really conceptually neat but when ever something sounds so simple
and obvious I cringe.
But then again there seems to be some potential to "cooperate" smaller
outfits with MapInfo/Oracle Map'nHand technologies. Sort of a Map'nHand
server solution willing to host and service all the little-guys wireless
needs...
FWIW
MidNight Mapper
aka neil
************** CLIPS *************
>From my experience I think that ArcPAD is in fact very light on resource.
Get the program ($500?), dump it on the CE ($400 Aero colour) and you could
have MI or ArcView or whatever back at base checking it all.
With the advent of GPRS and 3G just what does the future hold in store for
GIS in terms of the field force? Complete raster/vector coverage retrieved
on-line in realtime? Full multimedia integration? VR functionality? Realtime
transactions - hooked back to the server? Could be interesting.
Just my two cents.....
Doug
**********
As an end user that has a limited budget, and staff/volunteers with limited
technical skills, any mobile application that is resource light gets my
vote. It has to be simple cheap and effective. An excellent example of
appropriate design for end users is CyberTracker. I've not yet seen any
other PDA GPS data acquisition package that was designed for illiterate
users!
Dale Appleton
***********
I think what you have pointed out is an opportunity for someone to create an
outsourced Map/nHand support organization which amortizes those investments
across multiple clients---while leveraging the fact they all need "similar"
infrastructure....
Perhaps that is where MapInfo is making its next investment? Making that
possible? This way a "small customer" need only subscribe to a "usage
fee"---which might be high, but will be lots lower the the
capital/technical investment in doing it themselves...given the wireless
nature and networks you could support multiple users across a
region from single center....
Craig Johnson
************
SAN JOSE, Calif.--Intel today announced the successor to its StrongArm chip
architecture. Dubbed XScale, the design will power future generations of
handheld computers, mobile phones and the backbone of the wireless network.
Although Intel demonstrated a prototype XScale-based chip running at 1 GHz,
the company did not unveil specific chips, saying those announcements will
come later in the year. At 1 GHz, an XScale chip would consume 1.5 watts of
power. The processor also could be run in the tens of milliwatts, albeit
with a hit in performance.
Ron Smith, the Intel vice president who heads the chip giant's wireless
efforts, said the new design will enable entirely new types of wireless
devices that can be powered by a single AA battery.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200-2592842.html?tag=st.ne.ni.rnbot.rn.ni
*************
Sources say Palm plans to use the low-power Intel architecture in a
forthcoming version of its handheld. Palm chief executive Carl Yankowski
said in April that Palm planned to use chips based on designs from England's
Arm, though he did not explicitly mention Intel's offering.
Analysts agree that Intel's flavor of the Arm design is the only chip
powerful enough to offer Palm a meaningful improvement on the Motorola
Dragonball chips it uses today.
Intel representatives would not confirm the design win, and Palm
representatives would not elaborate on Yankowski's earlier comments.
The result is a handheld capable of running video but still able to run on
off-the-shelf batteries, analysts said.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200-2597540.html?tag=st.ne.1002.bgif.ni
********
I just know Oracle must be better than Microsoft's Access?
But every time I have tried to leverage MapInfo and Oracle for our users,
buy the time you dig out the minimum that is needed for the Oracle/MapInfo
environment the configuration seems hopelessly expensive, resource
demanding, and complex for any small business application user to invest in.
There seems to be this macro-trend in MapInfo that unless that user is a
Fortune 1000 scaled outfit, forget it?
The recent Map/nHand is a case in point; it seems really neat up to the
point that a developer discovers you'll need 8i, all sorts of Oracle JAVA
modules, MapXtream JAVA, a wireless network, and some unknown number of
roving hooked-in PDAs. What about all those little companies that have
fewer than ten field staff? Or what about those situations where the
real-time radio connections are as yet unavailable?
MidNight Mapper
aka Neil
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