TheBuzz
TheBuzz
Wireless world
at their fingertipsThe e-mail read, "First meeting of the Hawaii Pocket PC Users Group," with a link to http://to-tech.com/mobilehawaii.
Excuse me?
Does this not sound like a gathering of guys that hung out in the audio-visual department in high school?
"Oh my gosh that is so true," laughed Todd Ogasawara, e-government team leader for the state of Hawaii. "Actually I was an audio-visual wannabe."
Ogasawara and some associates are starting the club to keep users abreast of developments for personal digital assistants and to address questions ranging from "geeky corporate stuff" such as accessing office e-mail with the devices to how to carry "cool songs" around in a digital format.
The maiden meeting will be from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Thursday at NetEnterprise in 1132 Bishop St. suite 700. It's a bring-your-own lunch affair.
Ogasawara said he wanted a downtown location to provide the simplest access to the largest likely audience.
Free Pocket PC T-shirts will be given to the first 10 people who arrive at the meeting.
"Hopefully Microsoft and other companies will throw in some swag," to give away at future meetings, Ogasawara said.
Does the technology really simplify our lives? "It's sort of like having a VCR. It simplifies your life to a point, but how many people still have the 12:00 blinking," he said. "It's a little of both but the main point is that there is more simplification than added complexity because then nobody would buy them, right?"
Ogasawara recently gave his daughter a PDA. "She likes drawing on it," he said. "There's no erasing -- she saves to a storage card and can have zillions of her drawings."
Then you read on pocketpccity.com that according to "New Scientist," the U.S. Army will be using Windows-powered hand-helds for its planned "JEDI" system which will combine laser range-finding, GPS satellite positioning, a satellite phone and text messaging. The editor of that Web site and pda.street.com, Ryan Mock, lives in Kailua.
More common to daily life, users are seen engaged in "PDA prayer," which Ogasawara describes as occurring regularly at boring meetings.
The device is held low, just below desk level with the user looking down, presumably at folded hands.
They're "writing and sending e-mails and instant messaging people," Ogasawara said.
Erika Engle is a reporter with the Star-Bulletin.
Call 529-4302, fax 529-4750 or write to Erika Engle,
Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., No. 7-210,
Honolulu, HI 96813. She can also be reached
at: eengle@starbulletin.com