Endlessly Curious

Since starting work at my current workplace, which has almost two thousand employees in the same building, I’ve found myself in more meetings that I am used to.  This is due to being in a central technology team in a large studio with many teams we need to communicate with via meetings.  This, combined with a large corporate directory for the studio which means more telephone numbers than I can easily memorize and a desire to be able to create tasks and notes for myself in meetings or on the go, has lead me to recommission my trusty old Palm Z22 Personal Digital Assistant (PDA).  I used to be a die hard PDA user starting with a Palm Vx then a Palm Zire, then a Palm Zire 21 and finally onto my current Z22.  I’ve always loved Palm’s Palm Desktop software but when I moved to using an Apple iMac at home I found the Palm Desktop port to be a poor port, to such an extent that I actually stopped using it for the last few years.

Since my responsibilities have increased at work and I find myself in more meetings with more potential to forget when my next meeting is if I’m not at my desk, I’ve brought my trusty Z22 out of retirement.  Fortunately as the Z22 has no email client getting IT approval to use it was simple.  I don’t think I’d want a mobile email device for my work email like a blackberry, Palm Treo or Apple iPhone as it would be far too distracting for me I think.  I’ve also made the switch to syncing my Z22 to Outlook 2007 instead of Palm Desktop, which is taking a bit of getting used to as Outlook’s Tasks and Notes features are not as powerful as Palm Desktops.

My favorite features of PDAs are:

• Calendar: It is incredibly useful to be able to sync the calender on my workstation at work with my PDA so I can review my schedule at any time and anywhere.
• To-do lists: creating, managing, sorting and completing tasks is very satisfying not to mention useful, especially as task management software has gotten smarter to allow recurring tasks, notes and alarms on tasks.
• Digital Notes: have always been a favorite of mine, even during periods when I’m not using an electronic PDA chances are I have at least one or more Moleskin notebooks on the go, to keep information in.
• Contacts: I previously did not need to use the contacts facility much but since I’ve started working in a larger studio and needing to keep more peoples telephone number, email and office location close to hand I am starting to use the contacts facility more and more.
• Security: Old school Moleskin notebooks are great but unless you memorise equally old school encryption techniques to protect the data in them you become limited in terms of what you can store in them, as without encryption they are effectively public.  Thankfully PDA’s provide various options in password protecting your device, locking the device either on a timer or schedule, preventing anyone from syncing with the device and the option to encrypt the memory of the PDA.