Diary of a Wireless PDA newbie- July 2003

For more on Going Mobile visit the webpage I've set up. There are all kinds of goodies there. 

Wot I got: an HP 5450 pocket PC with bluetooth and wireless (wifi also known less memorably as 802.11b). A Belkin 54g wireless access point (supposed to be 5 times faster than basic wifi).

Now friends of mine thought I would have been using a PDA for years. I haven't because I still think a filofax is the best organiser given to humanity. And freelancers like me don't have 8 meetings a day with a requirement to constantly reschedule with my workgroup. My interest is primarily to keep in touch via email and being able to word process while out and about. The PDA does 3 basic things. It synchs with Outlook on the PC at home to update any changes to either so the PDA carries the latest version of my diary - though I still carry the filofax! plus my complete list of contacts. Secondly wireless means I can get files off the main computer and surf the internet from anywhere in the house or in any public place offering open access. Thirdly bluetooth means I can link to my mobile and surf the net, collect mail etc using the mobile phone but it does end up on the monthly mobile phone bill! It also can read fingerprints as a security feature - what?@$!

Month 4: July

Well 4 months in has having a PDA changed my life? Well not really. I confess to keeping the filofax close to hand. And my genuine highlight of the month was jacking my laptop into a wallsocket in my Detroit hotel room - getting broadband access first time and going to this very site to download a powerpoint presentation to get a key slide I had forgotten to take over the Atlantic with me. Now that's what I call mobility. But at the 11th hour I discovered a killer application. Called GPS. I bought the thing in June for the US trip on the flimsy excuse that I couldn't find my own way around US and Canadian roads. Which in retrospect was dumb. These countries road signs to warn you of a bend in the road so geting lost is difficult and you don't really need 5 satellites to keep you company. But in the event it didn't work. Both lots of software including Microsoft's Pocket Streets wouldn't work. The software people said it was down to the device. The device people said it was down to the software. I even called HP Compaq who had sold me the PDA for £500. Surely there was a way to adjust the ports so the software would talk to the hardware gps device. Absolutely not said Hewlett Packard - which was particulary galling because that morning I had been forced to sit opposite a cross track posted for Hewlett Packard declaring anything is possible anything except for getting software to work on their own machines..... But I digress. I ordered a UK map from the GPS people and suddenly my luck changed. IF you've ever sat in a car with a decent satellite navigation system - it is all very impressive and reassuringly expensive. A calm voice directs you to your destination. Now I've got this inside the PDA I can take myself wherever in the car and be directed, detoured past traffic jams and all the rest. But it works just as well when I'm on foot. It will even navigate me to any of the addresses in Outlook. Its early days - in the UK there is no marketing activity based on where you are - apart from the odd adshell. But in Japan it has already started. Soon you will be able to get marketing specific messages based on your location from the stores closest to hand. This is already happening with SMS. Within this Navigator there are slots for restaurants and retailers to get listed on the understanding that at some point I may choose to try them out becaue I can get directions straight to them. I think GPS is going to be huge and I'm completely sold on it. Even if I usually know exactly where I am.

Month 3: June

I have to be frank I'm running out of steam now. At least your filofax doesn't need to be recharged every other day to stop it losing the data. And this month I have been working a lot from home - but remember I have a wireless network so can waft around the house checking files and surfing the net - and I'm not doing it. And when I feel like using it - the damm thing needs charging. I persuaded the wife to do the Tesco shop on the PDA instead of the PC and she lasted 3 minutes before declaring it was too fiddly and she wanted the PC back. So expect a last burst of activity. I've bought a bluetooth GPS unit. What? A widget that knows where it is because it picks up satellites - bad news if you're an Iraqi but potentially useful if you're a roving planner. We shall see. In July I'm off to the US to run a workshop in Detroit. Let's see if technology can keep me and a hire car out of the ghetto. And away from Eminem .....

Month 2: May

May 1st: I'm in the field doing groups - as usual recording on minidisk and copying to mp3 via the Archos recorder and very much hoping I could substitute the IPAQ for the Archos. In plain English it means recording groups on the PDA. But I still can't find a linein or a microphone which fits the Ipaq. Nothing daunted I load all 4 groups on to the Ipaq with visions of doing the analysis with the headphones on sitting in the park..... but that wasn't to be either. I couldn't get the mediaplayer on the IPAQ to move around a 90 megabyte file in a way that made it usable so its back to the drawing board - a big disappointment. Did the debrief and handed over the complete project including the groups on mp3 files with references so the client could fine the actual quotes. All on a single CDROM. Nice. But PDA not so nice.

May 14th My other half is planning to take 19 other women up Mount Snowdon to celebrate her 40th. I have a trip to Amsterdam next month. Nearly talk myself into buying a GPS unit that would allow you to put maps on the IPAQ and use the GPS to track where you are on the map. Only I find a map on the internet for Amsterdam and likewise for Snowdon. No excuse for gps really she knows where she's going and so do I!

May 16th real excitement - I get a beta copy of Elite the space trading game originally developed for the BBC B computer back in 1984 that runs on the IPAQ. What has this got to do with mobility? Nothing. Do you mean to tell me that this expensive piece of kit is being used to play ancient computer games? No comment...

May 19th acting on impulse I buy a bluetooth headset for the phone. Which basically means losing that stupid wire from the earpiece to the microphone and wired into the phone itself. And it's voice activated so I can place certain phone calls just by talking. Feel like Blade Runner...

May 25th The wife is on the way up Snowdon. I'm running a support group of husbands armed with Star Wars DVDs crates of beer and loads of pizzas. Oh and hundreds of children we're supervising in a relaxed paternal sort of way. And the Ipaq is pressed into service to check webcams in the vicinity of Snowdon - linking across the mobile phone. In the end the real plus is being able to bait the climbing party all the way up with text messages.

So where is this getting us? Well the wunderpda isn't taking much of the load off the PC and while I'm still spending money on the odd gadget like the headset I'm not sure that my mobile life has taken that much of a turn for the better. Browsing the web on the PDA is a real mixed bag. In principle it should be possible to have webpages dedicated to PDAs. Only I don't ever find these so scrolling through webpages designed for PCs is a real pain. And consequently there's not a lot of opportunity for people with PDAs to find websites with PocketPC shaped screens - so we don't surf.

Month 1: April

April 3rd : PDA arrives - great excitement particular from daughters who like the dinky add on keyboard and want to show it to their friends. Get it set up and synched with the PC.

April 9th Mate of mine who is a developer returns from Microsoft PocketPC conference in Paris to tell me that its obsolete.....the next OS has been announced - will be coming out in June! He mails me some mp3 recorder software - so I can record my next lot of groups straight to PDA.

April 11th friend sets up wireless connection for me at home. Very groovy to be able to surf the net whenever I think of something and bizarre to be able to check files on the computer from the living room - but haven't actually done anything useful with it. Take PDA into London hoping to find all kinds of wireless hotspots - sadly disappointed.

April 15th After 2 attempts and 90 minutes with O2 tech support on the phone manage to link the PDA to the mobile. They didn't have the most up to date PDA software. How is mobile comms going to become a mass market phenomenon if it takes 90 minutes to set up every new user?

April 16th First moment of truth - need quotes very fast from quant agencies - send out brief at 9am requesting email quotes by 1pm for client meeting at 2 - in the mean time I'm out and about in London. Choose to use hotmail account as the inbound one. Can read the emails but can't read the attachments so have to get the quotes by phone. Go to the bottom of the class.

April 22nd - I'm on holiday first acid test - try my own website this time - still can't read attachments so can't check the paperwork emailed by my fieldwork recruiter. One win: the account manager needed the details of the fieldwork manager so using the mobile I texted her the relevant business card (while walking on the pier).

April 23rd - my sister wants a picture of the holiday flat (for reasons far too complicated to explain). Take a couple of photos with the bluetooth DV camcorder and use the bluetooth connection to email them to her using the mobile. Is this really necessary? No. Does it feel cool and wired? Sadly yes!

April 28th - just off to Spitalfields to meet with Chas and Jim a creative team I'm working with. Never visited their office before - so had to resort to using the PDA (for their address) and the filofax which has got a 2 pager of the A-Z in central London. Felt like a complete dork..... but I did manage to find them!

April 30th - just in the nick of time - possibly the most impressive demo of mobile comms yet. We had a couple round Wednesday night. He wanted to watch a TV programme. She wanted to go home to do the shopping online - so we parked her with the laptop and she shopped Waitrose happily at 11pm. Didn't involved a mobile or a pda or wireless (though it could have). But consider a technology that lets you shop 24 hours a day (yawn) and lets you order groceries to your house (bigger yawn) but doesn't care whether you're at home or not when you do it. Now that's what mobile comms is about.

So here we are at the end of April. Well its early days. It has taken me a month to get everything working. And I couldn't have done it without help. There's so much to remember and I only have 2 hours before the batteries run down. There have been virtually no attempts to market to me - and those are via the mobile. And I've found very few sites optimised for a PDA so there's a lot of scrolling around to be done.