And new gizmos are on the wing.
Nuts And Bolts
Palm has just announced the Foleo, a two pound extension of the Treo smartphone. The Foleo uses Bluetooth to access the Web or eMail via the Treo's phone service. It also is the first Palm device based upon Linux rather than Palm's own proprietary operating system.
This is not the first attempt to find a niche midway between PDA and laptop. oQo offers the model O2 which has built-in wireless networking. And various companies have played around with subnotebooks, tablet PCs, and so forth.
Will Foleo make much of a splash? It seems to me that it will be underpowered - only five hours of battery life for example. It needs Bluetooth to connect to a Treo for eMail or the Web although it will have wifi also. I question just who is the target customer for this machine. And I wonder how one will use it: with the Foleo in one hand and a Treo in the other, keyboard or stylus use will be a challenge.
Calling Home
There is still no native wifi for Treo smartphones, although there is a wireless card that can be plugged into the SD slot. The new Treo 755p has support for EVDO (means faster connection to the web or email) but it's still a cellular service-based feature. The whole idea of wifi on your mobile phone cuts to the heart of cellular company revenue models. Now that Palm's better models are all smartphones, it's an open question whether we will ever see robust wifi for Palm OS devices.
Web-based services and applications, and voice-over-internet phone (VOIP) capability would be very useful in a hospital or large office building. This would also help in a crisis when cellular service failed. Emergency teams could bring wireless routers and satellite uplink antennas to the scene and establish (or re-establish) web-based services quickly.
Why bother with VOIP if one has access to cell service? I like the idea of operational flexibility with a familiar interface. When you need to improvise communications, it's better not to have to carry multiple phones and radios, and not to have to learn how to use unfamiliar equipment that is only brought out when you are stressed and in crisis. The ability of a smartphone to use cellular or VOIP, as the need arose, would make life simpler.
With clinical reference info and some hospital or community agency phone numbers inside, a smartphone becomes an important tool in a crisis. Add GPS, the ability to take and upload photos, and a bar code reader to really expand the scope of tasks. Who says there are no new challenges for mobile medical computing hardware?
Software and services to take advantage of these new abilities will emerge. Two examples that give a taste of what is possible. Google Maps will work with GPS to provide location-specific info such as where to find the nearest hospital, and give directions to find it, complete with voice cues. Shout Postcard lets you send multimedia messages to multiple recipients. Include pictures, audio, text to provide a detailed report to dispatchers or base hospital staff.
Heed the Call
Cell phones and computerized call lists make a powerful combo for emergency call back systems. A public health agency or hospital could theoretically activate a disaster plan and notify off-duty staff with just one mouse click. Palm and AT&T recently began to promote AT&T's Send Word Now service. Now that Palm is focusing on its smartphone products, it's not surprising that they have partnered with telephone service providers. Codespear, Voiceshot, Amcomsoft are just a few of the many other players in this field. The recent mass killing at an American college has resulted in much tasteless marketing but these services do have considerable potential to improve emergency alerting and staff recall.
Say It Again
The Palm 755 offers voice control of many functions. You can make phone calls, browse the web, and much more. But what if you want voice control without having to buy a new PDA? Start by taking a look at the list of voice control software at Pocket PC Central. Short list. Google didn't help much either. It seems that there are only a few programs, aimed at the Palm OS device market and only the newest models at that. If Palm continues to include voice command capability in future models there is not likely to be a stampede of third party software vendors into such a small market space.
Error Correction Mode
Reader Guylhem Aznar wrote to correct the impression left by my post on 20 April that push email was not available to users without the Treo 700w PDA, which has Versamail 3.5 installed in the factory.
In fact VersaMail 3.5 is also available as an upgrade and provides users of Treo 650, T|X and LifeDrive with a Blackberry-like email experience. Guylhem must have a flat rate data plan with his cell phone company which allows him to get email on the Treo 650 without being charged airtime for each upload!
The principal downside of the VersaMail upgrade is that it installs to RAM on the PDA (VersaMail 2.5 is already installed into ROM but it can't be upgraded there). Guylhem, a talented fellow, has inserted a ROM upgrade chip into his Treo, but this is not a surgical intervention for the casual hobbyist. Perhaps Guylhem will post instructions onto his website one of these days (hint, hint).
Websites of Interest
Palm has created two sites to support customers. The MyPalm site offers tips and software discounts to Treo users. Specify your model and cellular service provider when you log in. If you don't see your provider listed, pick the "unlocked" model but be careful before installing software upgrades as they may not match. Naturally, there is no specific support for Bell, Rogers or other Canadian phoneco customers. I will probably stick with the more traditional support channels to avoid trashing my handheld.
If you want to read another source of info, the Official Palm Blog is a new site with articles about hardware, software, and news. Not restricted to Treo users and worth checking when you have no new Medical Palm Review issue to read (grin).
Easy Come, Easy Go
Two weeks ago something happened to the Review archives and the search engine broke. The programmer who put the website together has moved on to bigger and better things so it was very gracious of Randy Showalter to take the time to fix things up for us. Apologies to anyone who was frustrated by the glitch.
If this ever happens again, you can still search our archives using Google. Try a search term prefaced by "Medical Palm Review" (hint: include the parentheses). This misses a fair number of articles and references in past issues but will catch some, usually the more recent ones.
The fact is, however, that much of the archival material is no longer topical anyway. Hardware reviews are particularly time-sensitive. It's unlikely that anyone is going to try to buy a Sony PDA, now that they have stopped making new ones, to give just one example.
Whether through lack of creative juice or because of recurring questions from colleagues and friends, certain themes do recur in articles about software and troubleshooting, however. Maybe I can mine the archives for some ideas to revisit, before the server dies or something else turns out the lights on the website forever.
Sic Transit Another Month
The summer issue will come out in July. Until then, enjoy!
31 May, 2007
20 April, 2007
Green As You Wanna Be
No not green as in eco-friendly. That's green as in envious. My daughter wants an iPod like her classmates - one with more memory to play her expanding list of pop tunes. My suggestion that she use the MP3 player in her cellphone or use a PDA was met with scorn. iPods look cool as well as play music (and even videos). Too bad for her that lame-o dad thinks Palm PDAs look cool too.... It may not interest my kid, but I think it would be great to be able to play podcasts and music purchased from iTunes on a PDA. Turns out I can. I have Real Player on my Treo 650, but it can't handle the iTunes proprietary format. There are commercial multimedia players such as mOcean, and Pocket Tunes v4.0 which can handle iTunes music. Alternatively, you can convert iTunes melodies to MP3 files and use any music player at all, including free ones like Kinoma Player or the Real Player I already own. This process is moderately tedious as it involves burning the music to CD then ripping the CD back to the hard drive. The resultant MP3s can then be transferred to a PDA or its memory card.
There is a useful little article on PalmFocus which discusses how to get podcasts onto a PDA. For example, RSS news feed managers like Quick News can also handle podcasts. Listening to podcasts and music does make the subway commute to work more stimulating, but the earphones are probably bad for my hearing. At least I will have an excuse not to pay attention to a certain adolescent's demands for a new iPod.
Green as in Saving the World
I am on a mission to reduce power consumption in my house. I have about a dozen small transformers plugged into the wall in my office. These enable my PC, my PDA rechargers, my internet modem, and a variety of other devices. I was recently tidying up around them and noticed just how much heat they continuously emit. Individually they consume only a few watts but it does add up.
Yet I use them perhaps a few hours per day on average. The solution: a switched power bar. When I need to compute, I turn on the whole shebang. The rest of the day, they are switched off and staying cool. This actually has additional benefits in terms of security. Switched off, my wireless router is not accessible to being hacked. And each time I turn the internet modem back on, it acquires a new "address", helping to defeat certain types of web attackers.
My PDA and a USB memory stick are also useaful against global warming. They let me bring work on the road without my laptop. If I can't get by with the PDA, the memory stick lets me use a local PC. Privacy for the mobile road warrior can be tricky, but I found some great ideas at PortableApps.
There are much more power-hungry machines in my home. But I also vacuumed the fridge heat exchanger coils, installed a programmable thermostat and started hanging clothes to dry in the basement instead of using the dryer (yes that's why I favour the rumpled, professorial look).
Taken to the Cleaners
While I am on the subject of cleaning, let me mention the springtime ritual of cleaning up a PDA. This is a good time to try to recover memory by removing unneeded applications. I also have duplicate documents on my SD memory card that could go. There are medical articles and miscellaneous notes that are out of date. And my appointments or completed ToDo tasks from 2006 can be archived or simpley expunged. Getting back about two megabytes of system RAM
this way feels good and allows me to consider loading up new stuff for testing.
I do all this work manually, but Palm offers a toolkit called the NeatFreak Pack which makes it considerably less tedious. Depending on which sort of clean up you are interested in, there are many other software tools available.
Busy Bees
Palm and other wireless product/service providers have been very active this past month. I have received numerous eMails about products and information events of interest:
Nuts and Bolts
No, not new Palm hardware, but lots of other intriguing solutions for mobile workers:
Mobile Medical References
I have been using PEPID for some years now. This provides me with background on many medical conditions, a prescription drug database, a drug interaction checker, critical care algorithms, medical calculators, and much more. PEPID runs on my Palm PDA but can also be
accessed from the Internet. Recently I have been looking at another medical reference package called UpToDate.This is also available on my PC, the Internet, and my PDA. It has far more extensive information on medical conditions but lacks some of the other tools that PEPID provides. UpToDate requires a relatively new PDA to run, and (on my Treo 650) will only install onto a memory card due to its need for 1.5 gigabytes of room. This could be awkward for users with huge databases on their SD card already, because older Treos can't handle SD cards larger than two gigabytes in total. Newer Treo models can handle cards with up to 4 gigabyte capacity. I am getting an inkling of what my next PDA upgrade will be and why. The database seems comprehensive (I haven't stumped it with any questions yet) but it isn't cheap. If you like
it you should try to find a job at a teaching hospital with a site licence (grin).
I'm still waiting for new Palm PDAs for specialized or niche medical workers. Still waiting... until next month at least.
There is a useful little article on PalmFocus which discusses how to get podcasts onto a PDA. For example, RSS news feed managers like Quick News can also handle podcasts. Listening to podcasts and music does make the subway commute to work more stimulating, but the earphones are probably bad for my hearing. At least I will have an excuse not to pay attention to a certain adolescent's demands for a new iPod.
Green as in Saving the World
I am on a mission to reduce power consumption in my house. I have about a dozen small transformers plugged into the wall in my office. These enable my PC, my PDA rechargers, my internet modem, and a variety of other devices. I was recently tidying up around them and noticed just how much heat they continuously emit. Individually they consume only a few watts but it does add up.
Yet I use them perhaps a few hours per day on average. The solution: a switched power bar. When I need to compute, I turn on the whole shebang. The rest of the day, they are switched off and staying cool. This actually has additional benefits in terms of security. Switched off, my wireless router is not accessible to being hacked. And each time I turn the internet modem back on, it acquires a new "address", helping to defeat certain types of web attackers.
My PDA and a USB memory stick are also useaful against global warming. They let me bring work on the road without my laptop. If I can't get by with the PDA, the memory stick lets me use a local PC. Privacy for the mobile road warrior can be tricky, but I found some great ideas at PortableApps.
There are much more power-hungry machines in my home. But I also vacuumed the fridge heat exchanger coils, installed a programmable thermostat and started hanging clothes to dry in the basement instead of using the dryer (yes that's why I favour the rumpled, professorial look).
Taken to the Cleaners
While I am on the subject of cleaning, let me mention the springtime ritual of cleaning up a PDA. This is a good time to try to recover memory by removing unneeded applications. I also have duplicate documents on my SD memory card that could go. There are medical articles and miscellaneous notes that are out of date. And my appointments or completed ToDo tasks from 2006 can be archived or simpley expunged. Getting back about two megabytes of system RAM
this way feels good and allows me to consider loading up new stuff for testing.
I do all this work manually, but Palm offers a toolkit called the NeatFreak Pack which makes it considerably less tedious. Depending on which sort of clean up you are interested in, there are many other software tools available.
Busy Bees
Palm and other wireless product/service providers have been very active this past month. I have received numerous eMails about products and information events of interest:
- The Palm web store has a raft of sales and special pricing for PDAs and accessories.
- Palm also held an online webinar about mobile security. For Treo smartphone users who need to access data on a central server, there were a few interesting ideas.
- Palm is also promoting a series of webinars dedicated to the push eMail solution offered by their Treo 700w series PDAs (which use Microsoft's PocketPC system), and cellular service provider Verizon. OK, many of us can't use this but I hope someone offers comparable capabilities to the Palm OS smartphone users in Canada.
- Emory University Medical Centre deployed a wireless network to enable all sorts of innovations for their doctors and nurses. HealthCare IT News has the story if you are willing to register and give them your eMail address.
Nuts and Bolts
No, not new Palm hardware, but lots of other intriguing solutions for mobile workers:
- Medical applications for the Blackberry series are starting to pop up. QxMD offers a calculator for nephrology problems. I expect we will see more and more applications for this platform. The QxMD site itself links to LexiComp and the concise Oxford Medical Dictionary.
- The Garmin Mobile 10 enables Bluetooth-equipped smartphones and PDAs to access GPS localization services. The best part is that one GPS receiver can be used with any computer, PDA, phone that has Bluetooth wireless networking. I like that flexibility.
- Sony offers UX micro PCs running Windows Vista. This being Sony, the price is steep, but just think how compatible the UX would be with your desktop PC. I know someone who couldn't find the Sony micro he wanted in Canada. His solution? Buy from Dynamism,
an American company which imports SONY devices from Japan, then strips out the Japanese operating system and replaces it with English Windows OS. Sounds adventurous
to me.... - A portable device with a keyboard makes for a lightweight text input solution. The K-Jam
from i-mate runs Windows PocketPC and has everything you could ask for: wifi card, camera, 3G cellular capability, you name it. - I have never been very enthusiastic about Windows tablet PCs. The trade-offs of weight, screen size, battery life and fragility never seemed worth it. Motion Computing's new C5 Mobile Clinical Assistant has addressed some of my biggest peeves. The thing has a great big handle so it's hard to drop. It has no keyboard so it is easy to wipe do
wn and decontaminate. Its integrated camera, RFID reader and barcode reader make it perfect for rapid patient or object identification. And the screen is big enough to make using Windows less painful than on a PDA. The brochure doesn't state this, but the C5 may be light enough to hang on a belt clip or in an oversize pocket in order to free up both hands for clinical work. Because it runs Windows and has wifi, it can probably run your hospital's electronic patient record software and connect to the main data repository. In short, this concept takes a good shot at providing what is needed by the emergency department staff or field medics. - By contrast, Symbol got it almost right with their latest Windows Pocket PC device, the WT
4000. It can be strapped to wrist or thigh and is intended for use by warehouse staff who need to hold a barcode scanner (or they can strap that to their hand, too). Unfortunately, the WT 4000 has no touch screen and relies on a cellphone-like keyboard which makes it less functional for workers who need more than a scanner to enter data. Nonetheless, this is on the right track for freeing up both hands.
Mobile Medical References
I have been using PEPID for some years now. This provides me with background on many medical conditions, a prescription drug database, a drug interaction checker, critical care algorithms, medical calculators, and much more. PEPID runs on my Palm PDA but can also be
accessed from the Internet. Recently I have been looking at another medical reference package called UpToDate.This is also available on my PC, the Internet, and my PDA. It has far more extensive information on medical conditions but lacks some of the other tools that PEPID provides. UpToDate requires a relatively new PDA to run, and (on my Treo 650) will only install onto a memory card due to its need for 1.5 gigabytes of room. This could be awkward for users with huge databases on their SD card already, because older Treos can't handle SD cards larger than two gigabytes in total. Newer Treo models can handle cards with up to 4 gigabyte capacity. I am getting an inkling of what my next PDA upgrade will be and why. The database seems comprehensive (I haven't stumped it with any questions yet) but it isn't cheap. If you like
it you should try to find a job at a teaching hospital with a site licence (grin).
I'm still waiting for new Palm PDAs for specialized or niche medical workers. Still waiting... until next month at least.
28 February, 2007
Time for a Change
Welcome to the new MPR blog site!
This is the eighth year of publication of the Medical Palm Review. It has gone through several changes in format and delivery. Starting to feel a little stale so I decided to try delivering it as a blog.
Blogs have some advantages over the website format I have been using until now. With a blog I can log on from anywhere to add content when I feel like it, instead of aggregating news and commentary in monthly chunks. It's also easier for readers to offer comments and feedback. I can also break up each issue into multiple short articles, so that comments can be directed to selected topics. Up until now, almost all the mail I have ever received at the contact address listed in every issue has been spam. Now I can retire that address and rely upon readers to click on the comment links at the end of every post instead.
Disadvantages include the possibility of even more spam, which might also clutter up the blog site if I am not careful. And there is the risk that readers might not like the change in style that the new format entails. Many of the features for visually challenged users which I added to the MPR will not work the same on a blog and will need to be relearned.
I am still learning and experimenting. Let me know how you like it. Your comments can influence how we continue. Meanwhile, I am hedging my bets by continuing the MPR site. You can continue to access the archive of back issues there.
Change, for a Time
Daylight Savings Time in North America is fast approaching. In fact, due to recent legislation, DST will arrive several weeks earlier than usual. If you have a Palm, you should get the DST update from the Palm website.
Be aware that the DST patch gets zapped if you perform a hard reset on your PDA. The problem is discussed in more detail in a Brighthand forum.
While you are at it, you should go to the website of your desktop PC operating system to get whatever update you need to maintain correct time there as well. Otherwise the Palm Desktop software may not stay in sync with your handheld.
More Hacking
Another fix or two that may need your attention...
Treo smart phones can still be accessed when password locked. How? By using the built-in Find feature. The Smart pda site covers this problem in some detail. Palm has not done anything to correct this problem yet.
Microsoft also comes in for some stick because the latest version of Office XP. Outlook repeatedly pops up warning messages when Palm Desktop (and some other, older applications) attempt to access the Outlook email address database. This gets old very quickly, so you may want to look at Mapilab's Advanced Security for Outlook software, which reportedly tames the beast.
Medical Computing
Ontario Physicians who want to have an up-to-date listing of Limited Use Codes for prescription medications need look no further than Lawrence's Download Page for the latest version.
You will need a database program for your PDA but the owner of this website thoughtfully offers the database in several popular formats.
Hardware
Palm pulled the plug on the LifeDrive in February. This was in many ways a flagship product. Big screen, hard drive, wireless networking - the LifeDrive had it all. What it didn't have was big sales apparently. Once again we are forcefully reminded that PDAs are being eclipsed by other handheld devices with more emphasis on telecommunications. The Guardian had a perceptive article on the quest by cellular telephone operators to add more features. Palm and other PDA manufacturers are going to have to trot down the same road: GPS, location-based advertisisng, video on demand, uploading photos to websites like Flickr or MySpace.
Although I like my Treo, I was astounded to learn all the tricks an ordinary cell phone can perform with the help of a few online services and downloads. Larry Magid's article is called Plain Cellphones Can Overachieve, With a Little Help in the 25 January 2007 New York Times (proprietary content that you can't link to without a free registration, folks). The article describes how to get RSS news feeds (Flurry), web search (Google, Yahoo), email (Google, Yahoo Go). You can link to Outlook and other applications on your PC with Soonr. That's pretty good for a cell phone.
As a doctor, I can see many useful things in a connected PDA. But I would much p
refer something with a screen larger than that of a typical cell phone. And I don't want a great big tablet PC either. Recently I even contemplated jumping ship to try a Dell Axim with a head-mounted display which projects an image onto one eye. iCuiti makes some great ones (the picture on the right shows their M920 model plugged into an iPaq). Unfortunately their website indicates that they are out of stock on the displays. So I will have to wait a while longer before experimenting with that technology.
That's enough for a first effort. More to come in March and April....
Until then, enjoy!
This is the eighth year of publication of the Medical Palm Review. It has gone through several changes in format and delivery. Starting to feel a little stale so I decided to try delivering it as a blog.
Blogs have some advantages over the website format I have been using until now. With a blog I can log on from anywhere to add content when I feel like it, instead of aggregating news and commentary in monthly chunks. It's also easier for readers to offer comments and feedback. I can also break up each issue into multiple short articles, so that comments can be directed to selected topics. Up until now, almost all the mail I have ever received at the contact address listed in every issue has been spam. Now I can retire that address and rely upon readers to click on the comment links at the end of every post instead.
Disadvantages include the possibility of even more spam, which might also clutter up the blog site if I am not careful. And there is the risk that readers might not like the change in style that the new format entails. Many of the features for visually challenged users which I added to the MPR will not work the same on a blog and will need to be relearned.
I am still learning and experimenting. Let me know how you like it. Your comments can influence how we continue. Meanwhile, I am hedging my bets by continuing the MPR site. You can continue to access the archive of back issues there.
Change, for a Time
Daylight Savings Time in North America is fast approaching. In fact, due to recent legislation, DST will arrive several weeks earlier than usual. If you have a Palm, you should get the DST update from the Palm website.
Be aware that the DST patch gets zapped if you perform a hard reset on your PDA. The problem is discussed in more detail in a Brighthand forum.
While you are at it, you should go to the website of your desktop PC operating system to get whatever update you need to maintain correct time there as well. Otherwise the Palm Desktop software may not stay in sync with your handheld.
More Hacking
Another fix or two that may need your attention...
Treo smart phones can still be accessed when password locked. How? By using the built-in Find feature. The Smart pda site covers this problem in some detail. Palm has not done anything to correct this problem yet.
Microsoft also comes in for some stick because the latest version of Office XP. Outlook repeatedly pops up warning messages when Palm Desktop (and some other, older applications) attempt to access the Outlook email address database. This gets old very quickly, so you may want to look at Mapilab's Advanced Security for Outlook software, which reportedly tames the beast.
Medical Computing
Ontario Physicians who want to have an up-to-date listing of Limited Use Codes for prescription medications need look no further than Lawrence's Download Page for the latest version.
You will need a database program for your PDA but the owner of this website thoughtfully offers the database in several popular formats.
Hardware
Palm pulled the plug on the LifeDrive in February. This was in many ways a flagship product. Big screen, hard drive, wireless networking - the LifeDrive had it all. What it didn't have was big sales apparently. Once again we are forcefully reminded that PDAs are being eclipsed by other handheld devices with more emphasis on telecommunications. The Guardian had a perceptive article on the quest by cellular telephone operators to add more features. Palm and other PDA manufacturers are going to have to trot down the same road: GPS, location-based advertisisng, video on demand, uploading photos to websites like Flickr or MySpace.
Although I like my Treo, I was astounded to learn all the tricks an ordinary cell phone can perform with the help of a few online services and downloads. Larry Magid's article is called Plain Cellphones Can Overachieve, With a Little Help in the 25 January 2007 New York Times (proprietary content that you can't link to without a free registration, folks). The article describes how to get RSS news feeds (Flurry), web search (Google, Yahoo), email (Google, Yahoo Go). You can link to Outlook and other applications on your PC with Soonr. That's pretty good for a cell phone.
As a doctor, I can see many useful things in a connected PDA. But I would much p
refer something with a screen larger than that of a typical cell phone. And I don't want a great big tablet PC either. Recently I even contemplated jumping ship to try a Dell Axim with a head-mounted display which projects an image onto one eye. iCuiti makes some great ones (the picture on the right shows their M920 model plugged into an iPaq). Unfortunately their website indicates that they are out of stock on the displays. So I will have to wait a while longer before experimenting with that technology.That's enough for a first effort. More to come in March and April....
Until then, enjoy!
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