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Sunday, November 23, 2003 |
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Happy Thanksgiving!
How to tickle your PalmPalm organizers and their variants are increasingly popular and the organizer function is being included in many new telephones. While the included Palm applications are helpful, you'll probably need some add-ons to make your life easier. Or more fun. Having just switched my cell phone to Handspring's new Treo 600 for Sprint, I've started reviewing the state of add-on applications anew. The Treo has enough processing power to make some of the more demanding applications run well. Because I need to carry around a lot of tabular information, one of the most important add-ons for me is Handmark's Mobile DB. I carry around a list of airport codes for the entire US, all telephone area codes, top-level domain names, dial-up phone numbers that I need when I travel, several lists of client information, and such. Carrying that information on paper would be unweildy at least and probably unreasonable. With Mobile DB, it's a snap. That's why I was delighted to run into Handmark's Douglas Edwards recently because I was able to tell him how important Mobile DB is to me ... My mind hasn't been taken over the Warfare Inc, but I'm amazed by what Handmark has done with animation and game playing on what is technically a serious business device, not a toy. The sound, color, and animation are all impressive. But beyond those two applications, Handmark offers a variety of specialized applications for Pocket PC and Palm devices in categories from Finance and Productivity to Education and Travel. And now games. Now that more devices have a Secure Digital (SD/MMC) slot built in, Handmark is moving to provide references and other applications that can be plugged in. For example, you can plug in the full text of the Bible or the Oxford American Dictionary. Or choose a series of Tetris games or Monopoly and Scrabble. Even the Rand McNally Road Atlas. For more details about Handmark, see their website. Microsoft Office 2003: Just another pretty face?Consider this "Office 2003 at a Glance" - there will be more later. A new version of Microsoft's Office suite arrived a few days ago and for some reason I started thinking about the days when a new version of WordPerfect was something to be excited about. In the early days, WordPerfect was the leader and every new version included new features. I'm not sure why that came to mind because those days are long gone. WordPerfect has a tiny market share. WordStar, MultiMate, Electric Pencil, and dozens of other word processors are long gone. Word is king and has been for a long time, even on the Mac. What's left to add to a word processor? Word already does far more than most people will ever need. It's no longer a question of finding new features to add. The race now is to find ways to make the word processor easier to use. How? Well, in the last paragraph, I accidentally typed "wrod" and Word efficiently and silently corrected my typo. Quick. Neat. Easy. Elegant. But what if I want to spell it "wrod" to make a point? Then I have to press Ctrl-Z to undo the automatic repair. In other words, Word is still unable to read my mind (probably a good thing) but it seems capable of just about everything else. I haven't worked with Word or the other applications long enough to provide a reliable "review", but I can say this: If you judge a word processor, a spreadsheet, a database management program, or any other application based on what it looks like, these applications are the best yet created. You may consider "looks" to be a silly way to judge an application and there are many other criteria that must be fulfilled (functionality, capability, use of resources, versatility, and more) but "looks" are important, too. If you spend a lot of time looking at your word processor, would you prefer it to be pretty or ugly? In coming weeks, I'll look a little deeper and let you know what there is to like (or loathe) in the new version of Office. Just for the record, the other pieces include:
Various versions of the Office suite include different components from this list. Other applications (such as Visio) can be added to the mix as needed. Also worth noting is the fact that Microsoft has continued its "activation" procedure. The end-user licensing agreement (EULA) provides for installation of the Office products on up to two machines per license, one at the office and one at home or on a notebook computer, with the understanding that only one copy can be running at any particular time. The activation process is easy and as painless as a process like this can be. I still have to think, though, that activation won't have much of an effect on pirates who will simply reverse-engineer ("reenigne") the application and remove the activation function before creating their copies. But Microsoft's technique works well. Nerdly NewsThe Apple super computerApple makes a big deal about its new 64-bit processor and it is a big deal. It is not the first 64-bit processor on the desktop, although it is the first 64-bit processor that will be widely used on the desktop. A bunch (thousands) of new Apple G5 computers have been patched together to create a "super computer" that's among the 10 fastest in the "known" world. (That eliminates computers that are operated secretly by "national security" types.) Despite the speed, it looks like even the fastest Macs are generally beaten convincingly be even some modest PCs. The December edition of Macworld compares the G5 dual processor Mac with other Macs and with PCs. Surprisingly (and this did surprise me) the new G5 Macs often come up more than a little short when it comes to speed. The exceptions came in a test that used the new G5-optimized version of Adobe Photoshop (the Mac beat a powerful PC by about 26%) and in encoding MPEG-2 video (where the Mac is the clear winner). That's impressive. Other tests didn't work out as well. Examples:
Mac users will definitely be impressed by the G5 machines and the latest version of OS X. As I've said before: If you're interested in doing anything with video these days, your best bet is a Mac. And, if you have the budget to buy 1000 or more dual-processor Macs (at $3000 each) and you want to have your own super computer, enjoy! Adobe trims jobsAccording to the San Jose Mercury News, Adobe has trimmed its workforce by about 3%. That's about 100 jobs and the reduction is part of an ongoing "realignment". This week's cuts mainly involved employees in San Jose, Seattle, and Ottawa. Adobe has about 3,500 workers worldwide. The company said cuts were made across a number of different product groups and not related to the planned acquisition of Yellow Dragon Software, a small company that makes a programming tool and could bolster Adobe's electronic document products. In October, Adobe said that its outlook for the fourth quarter is for revenues of $330 million to $350 million. Let us know what you think about this program! Write to: |
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