PDA Pro interview with Alex "Pocket Informant" Kac

[Jason Dunn]

<a href="http://www.pdapro.co.uk/insideout.htm">http://www.pdapro.co.uk/insideout.htm</a><br /><br />Just like the subject line says - great interview with Alex. Some interesting insight - 30,000 users of PocketInformant? Wow!<br /><br />"Welcome to Inside Out. This is where PDA Pro gets people heavily involved inside the industry to answer a series of questions, to bring what's happening on the inside to the outside. Here we talk PIMs and we don't mean the iced summer drink! Alex Kac, developer of Pocket Informant talks here about what drives him, his views on the PocketPC platform and a heck of a lot more."

[cnyprecast]

I have used Pocket Informant for a very long time now (heavily). I have tried other PPC PIM's, but could not get along without PI.

I am also a PI Beta Tester. It is an honor to be involved with PI. Alex posesses some really extraordinary programming & development skills. I have seen him in action first hand. His tremendous creativity and vision have a great deal to do with PI's success as well. He is also great to work with. He listens, responds, explains and implements as if there was no one else involved in a particular issue but the person he is dealing with (while at the same time, openly listening to and working with other members of the beta group regarding the same issue). His work ethic is second to none, but his family always comes first (rare these days). Alex always seems able to keep things in perspective. I am also very impressed with how much he honestly cares for his end users. There is a reason Alex and PI have such a wonderful reputation!

This is not meant to be an "AlexFest", I am simply relaying my experiences.

[iPaqDude]

I have been using PI for as long as I can remember and have converted several other PPC users over to it. I am a heavy Outlook user on my desktop and wish that MS could implement many of the PI features in it's product.

I tried several others and kept coming back - nothing seemed to have the power and features of PI - especially 3.0. I am waiting to get my iPaq back from PocketPCTechs to load 3.1, but from what I have seen on their website, I do not believe I will be disappointed.

I completely agree with what cnyprecast says in his post - great product, great development team. Very intuitive UI, solid code.

As far as I am concerned, Pocket Informant Rules!!

[jwf]

Very interesting article, and from my point of view the most interesting part is this -

"My biggest gripe is that Pocket Outlook uses a hidden set of APIs to access the calendar/contacts/tasks that is very fast, while third party apps are relegated to using a bloated slow COM based API set. That's the biggest gripe and its huge."

That explains a lot, and it's appalling IMO. I've always wondered why the built-in apps are so much faster. If they are not going to seriously improve the built-in apps, they should document this stuff and let AF and PI fly.

John

[Corn Bread]

We've also had people who demanded that our software work on their Sony Clie or Handspring device (since according to them it was a Pocket PC) or they'd sue.

It's a good thing Alex has a lot of patience, if I was him, I'd go berserk after hearing from that customer.