Frequent readers of this column know that I've been spending a lot of time experimenting with cellular telephones. One thing that's made this task particularly difficult is the electronic phone book that each of these phones contains. A built-in address book can be both a timesaver and a moneysaver. Unfortunately, the tiny keyboards and cryptic user interfaces that these phones all share makes programming more than a few names and phone numbers into the phones quite an arduous task.
For years I've been telling Motorola and the other cell phone vendors that they need to create some way for people to edit their address books from a desktop computer, as well as to download a list of names and numbers from the computer into the cellular phone and upload it back. The manufacturers have been slow to respond. After all, the lack of telephone management software hasn't really hurt their sales, has it? Thankfully the wireless communications marketplace is now going through a period of hyper-competition, and some vendors have realized that integration with computers is a competitive advantage.
The first crop of wireless integration tools combine telephones and two-way pagers with the 3Com PalmPilot. This is a curious choice, considering that there are more than 100 million desktop computers in the United States alone and less than 2 million Pilots worldwide.
One of the first integration products to hit the market is a nifty little device called the Snap-On. Manufactured by Option International, a Belgian company, the product lets you control a telephone using the GSM standard (Europe's standard for digital cellular service) from a PalmPilot. In the Boston area it's being sold by OmniPoint, a digital cellular carrier that uses the GSM technology.
One of the problems in building integration software is that every cellular phone has a different arrangement of contacts across its bottom. Option solves this problem with a variety of cables that lets you connect the Snap-On with more than 22 different GSM handsets. You can find more information at http://www.option. com/snapon.htm.
I tried the Snap-On with an Ericsson 788 GSM phone. The Snap-On's Phone Manager software let me view both the GSM telephone's phonebook and the second phonebook that's stored inside the GSM telephone's built-in smart card. I could move address-book entries between the Pilot and the telephone, or edit the numbers in place. Believe me, using the Pilot is a lot easier than trying to deal with the 788's user interface.
But the Snap-On provides a lot more than simple address book synchronization. The system's enclosed Short Message Service software lets you use GSM's built-in paging capability to send short messages to other GSM users (or to Internet e-mail addresses). Normally, sending a page from a cell phone is quite difficult, but when you can compose the message on your Pilot it is quite easy.
Finally, the Snap-On comes with an application that lets you use your GSM telephone as a wireless modem. With the software, originally designed for the Minstrel wireless modem, you can use the Pilot/GSM combination to browse the Web, check your e-mail, or send full-blown e-mail messages. You can even synchronize your Pilot with your desktop computer over the air, provided you have a modem on your desktop machine and have set it up for remote synchronization.
Another company that's developed some exciting PalmPilot software for wireless devices is Texas-based JP Software. Called BeamLink, the program lets you send pages and update the address book in the new AccessLink II two-way pagers manufactured by Glenayre. These pagers work with the SkyTel nationwide two-way paging service.
As its name implies, BeamLink makes use of the infrared port that's built into both the new Palm III and the AccessLink II pagers. The infrared system avoids the need to carry around another cable. Although it's a lot easier to compose a long message on the Palm Pilot than on the pager's tiny six-button keyboard, the real benefit of this software is for businesses: Using BeamLink, a company can download the same address book into 10 or 20 pagers at the same time, guaranteeing that each member of an organization will have the same copy of the address book.
BeamLink is still a little rough around the edges - and the rough spots are instructive for others who are thinking of developing software for the two-way wireless market. For example, while the software can download names, pager numbers, and e-mail addresses to the two-way pager, it doesn't let you upload the information from the pager into your Pilot. As the folks at Palm Computing have known for years, synchronization is the key to making mobile computers with relatively limited user interfaces extremely useful.
A more serious problem with BeamLink has to do with the software's registration procedure. When I first started up the program, BeamLink asked me for my serial number; it then sent a two-way page with my number to JP Software. Although it's understandable that JP Software wants to track the use (and possibly the unauthorized use) of its software, feature like this one that transmits information over a network without the user's permission sets a dangerous precedent. Computer users have the right to use software without revealing information about themselves to the people who wrote the software.
Users have a right to expect that their personal information will be kept secret. It's all too easy for software that integrates computers with two-way wireless communication devices to become automated surveillance tools. The way to stop this Orwellian possibility is to loudly protest the companies that are taking the first steps today.
Technology writer Simson L. Garfinkel can be reached at plugged-in@simson.net.
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