Here is a summary of my experiences for the convention. Please anyone else want
to add to it, feel free.
DAY ONE:
It was a roller coaster ride from the go. To think there are three
whole days to go! Here are the highlights of what I thought was cool.
* TRG announced TRGpro. It's a Palm III with a real compact flash slot
in it. Lots of applause from the crowd here. It is a bit of a shot at
Handspring but TRG has stated that their products are mostly enterprise
while Handspring is more consumer oriented. They were giving out
developer SDKs too. More on that later.
* There is no color Palm device announced. What was shown was a beta of
PalmOS v3.5. This has color OS calls. The official word on color Palms
is "expected in the first half of next year". Who??? That is what I
want to know. The color examples were on the latest version of the
POSE. There wasn't any prototype hardware to show worth anything. I
I think they are still trying to decide on a color LCD supplier. Whoever
"they" are.
* You don't have to pay for any food. With the plethora of sponsors,
everything from the soft drinks to the coffee carts to the breakfast,
lunch AND dinner is included with admission to the even. Most of all
FREE BEER!!!!!
* The developer labs are open 'til 1 AM. They have b/w III's running OS
v3.5 to check out and try you applications on.
* Free video games, air hockey and pin ball right next to the developer
labs. Kewl!
* "The developer store is INSANE!", as Crazy Eddie would have said.
They are selling everything in the Palm universe at 40% to 50% off.
What attracted me was CodeWarrior R6 for only $150! They are also
selling clear case Palm VII's at $300. It is tempting.
* The heavy parties will start tomorrow night.
DAY TWO:
Didn't spend as much time as the first day. There was a customer
visit and also talking with a perspective that was met on Day One. Here are
the highlights of the event for me:
* Jeff Hawkins had his big keynote address. It was more of a fireside chat
with 2000 of your best friends. Pretty much he said a few things that made
sense:
-- His job is getting barriers between the third party developer and the
technology removed.
-- He considered a good developer program measured by the fewer phone calls you
get.
-- He gave credit to the Nintendo GameBoy as a source of inspiration for the
Visor.
-- Whenever developing something, keep the user experience first.
-- Why a dedicated writing area? Always there.
-- Graffiti isn't handwriting rec. but more a keyboard replacement
-- The buttons are there to make it simple and intuitive, just an LCD display
looks to alien to the mass market
-- USB isn't as easy to implement as usb.org states.
-- USB in Visor isn't primarily for HotSyncing but getting mostly very large
pieces of data in and out of Springboard modules quickly (cameras, MP3 file,
et. al.)
-- If you don' t like the side beaming on Visor then invent an add on that
reflects the IR and allows forward beaming.
* There is an GM EV1 in the product showcase. The EV2 will be coming out next
month.
* TRG's compact flash development kit has a PC user in mind. The CF RAM format
is regular FAT32 DOS files. Thus your palm app can write to the CF flash and
then the card moved to the PC to be read as a regular disk drive. This
bypasses any hotsync for gobs of acquired data. There is also a speaker there
for voice and you can do DTMF tones (ED NOTE: and other telco tones) in it.
* Food: Mexican today and more free beer.
* The developer lab doesn't have a TRGpro to play with. People are screaming
for one. May happen last night of the lab.
* They are video taping for the round-up and final key-note on Friday
afternoon. Should be fun.
DAY THREE:
Everyone is starting to get into a groove. Here is what happened in my
observation.
* The Springboard developer's program was presented. My sales VP and I
showed the Datastick MyCorder running on Visor. Will be released in Jan. 2000
* Marcosoft demoed their GPS system for Visor at the morning key note.
* Palm Computing threw an Ocktoberfest complete with a brewer tour, sausages,
free beer and busses to and from the event.
* Winner of last year's Palm Hack contest was seen making runs to the local
Radio Shack some of the day today.
* A big Q&A session about how to write an decent install/uninstaller for
Windows. It was a very popular topic.
* Lunch was Chinese today complete with Flan dessert.
* One purposed color scheme for Visor was Body Fluid Colors such as Phlegm,
Blood, Urine, Bile and Saliva. They decided to pass on that scheme and just go
with regular primary schemes.
DAY FOUR:
Too tired from the Ocktoberfest last night so I decided to sleep in and miss
the keynote this morning. There were three sessions I went to:
* PalmGear folks talked about their site. They claim to have shut down 97% of
the warez sites when they find out about them.
* There was a presentation about "20 of the Palm Applications that Doesn't
Exist But Should". Four of the 20 were in existence but not known by the
author. One that didn't exist, a score keeping app, was written DURING the
presentation to make it five that exist. Two of the best suggestions are a
combo stud finder / distance tool for carpenters and a breathalyzer unit for
Springboard.
* The PalmHack awards were very good. Of the ones most interesting: a pop-up
bar for utilities, a bar code to morse code converter and the first time video
was shown on the Palm. MOST SIGNIFICANT --> A Quicktime binary was
stored and played in greyscale on a Palm V.
* Lots of hanging out in the top parking lot of the Santa Clara convention
center afterward.
Overall, a very good convention with lots of connections made.
Steve
"Paul A. Dugas" wrote:
> OK, Friday is over here in Atlanta and I'm headed to the bar but before I
> hit the road I figured I'd get the ball rolling on the request-fest for
> proceedings, SDK updates, new POSE release, and the other truly wonderful
> stuff I'm missing out on from the PalmSource99 conference.
>
> Gimmee, gimmee, gimmee... Please, please, please...
> Hey Mom! Billy got one! Can I have one too? Pleeeeeeeease... :)
>
> -Paul
>
> PS: Did Metrowerks announce the CW6 release at the conference?
> PPS: GO BRAVES!
> --
> Paul Dugas, Computer Engineer mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Dugas Enterprises, LLC At The Ga. DOT http://pauld.dugas.com
> 1711 Indian Ridge Drive tel:404-624-7840 tel:770-516-4955
> Woodstock, GA 30189-6856, USA fax:404-624-7842 fax:770-516-4841
