WebIS Working on Pocket Informant for Smartphone

[Mike Temporale]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.pocketinformant.com/Forums/index.php?showtopic=8269' target='_blank'>http://www.pocketinformant.com/Forums/index.php?showtopic=8269</a><br /><br /></div>Pocket Informant is on a lot of peoples must have list when it comes to third party software on for your Pocket PC. Unfortunately, that's not the case on the Smartphone. Not because people don't want it - I see requests in the forums all the time, but because it just didn't exist. Well, that looks like things are going to change. Alex Kac has posted a couple screen shots on the company's forums that show off Pocket Informant Tasks. Doesn't this just make your holiday season? :mrgreen:<br /><br /><img src="http://www.smartphonethoughts.com/images/Temporale-20051222-PocketInformant.jpg" alt="User submitted image" title="User submitted image"/>

[mbranscum]

Excellent program! I use it on my PPC. I just hope they don't get the smartphone version as bloated as the PPC version. IMO they have features on the PPC version many people never use.

[Transfxb]

Great news! I will appreciate to have it on my smartphone too!
But, what about a great homescreen plugin instead?

[robertotores]

Finally some competition for Papyrus!

[Jerry Raia]

Yes!

[surfer]

Wondering if they are planning a lite version and a regular version with all the features.

[egads]

Wondering if they are planning a lite version and a regular version with all the features.

I hope they have a "Light" version. I love my PPC version, but it getting a bit more feature rich (aka bloated) than I'd like. A nice small/fast SmartPhone version would be great!!!

[alex_kac]

There is no need for a "Lite" version for SmartPhone. The very nature of SmartPhones means that you can only go so far before you are forced to have highly complex key codes to do anything.

As such the SmartPhone version will be far simplified. Also please understand - feature rich != bloat. Never has. Bloat is where new features get in the way speed wise or UI wise. And neither is the case in PI. In fact PI keeps getting a tiny bit faster on each rev for most people.

An example - a city keeps adding roads and neighborhoods. Just because you don't go down that road doesn't mean its useless. It also doesn't affect your commute in most cases. Yet if to add a new neighborhood they were ripping out your roads or the traffic started to pile up so much that it made a 15 minute commute to an hour - then that would be bloat too.

But I always try to design PI's new features in a way that it doesn't affect people if they don't want to use them and that they never slow down the app.

[rperalta]

There is no need for a "Lite" version for SmartPhone. The very nature of SmartPhones means that you can only go so far before you are forced to have highly complex key codes to do anything.

As such the SmartPhone version will be far simplified. Also please understand - feature rich != bloat. Never has. Bloat is where new features get in the way speed wise or UI wise. And neither is the case in PI. In fact PI keeps getting a tiny bit faster on each rev for most people.

An example - a city keeps adding roads and neighborhoods. Just because you don't go down that road doesn't mean its useless. It also doesn't affect your commute in most cases. Yet if to add a new neighborhood they were ripping out your roads or the traffic started to pile up so much that it made a 15 minute commute to an hour - then that would be bloat too.

But I always try to design PI's new features in a way that it doesn't affect people if they don't want to use them and that they never slow down the app.

Hi Alex,

I went to your forum but it does not allow me reply or post with my regular username and password. Is this restricted for certain people?

I also sent an email to [email protected] asking them to forward it to your attention because I'm interested in participating to beta test the WebIS smartphone version. I did not get an email yet as of now.

Can I participate in beta testing the new smartphone version? Please let me know if this is possible.

Here are my smartphone device:
Device #1: Cingular 2125
OS: Windows Mobile 5

Device #2: Audiovox SMT5600
OS: Windows Mobile 5

Thanks,
Robert

[alex_kac]

Anybody should be able to reply to any post on the forum. I just looked at yours and what I saw was that it was waiting to be validated or something.
Also [email protected] is an unmanned email address for the forum - kind of a void for the forum email notifications to be sent from only.

I'll manually validate it.

Anyhow, the software is not yet in beta. Those screenshots were first run that we got things mostly working on the SmartPhone. While we have Wm5 code in there and it SHOULD work with WM5, it hasn't yet even been tested there. Same with QVGA - it should work, but we haven't tested that yet. Not much point in testing when you JUST got it to the working point.

We expect to get a beta around mid/late January. We may or may not have WM5/QVGA support then. We expect to have WM5/QVGA support at release, though. I hope to have WM5/QVGA support in beta.

We will be getting a small beta group at that time. I'll probably ask the editors of SmartPhone Thoughts, PocketNow and 4WinMobile for recommendations on users who would provide honest and critical yet reasonable feedback. We'll want a small beta group at first and then increase it as we get to more usable builds.

[Mike Temporale]

We will be getting a small beta group at that time. I'll probably ask the editors of SmartPhone Thoughts, PocketNow and 4WinMobile for recommendations on users who would provide honest and critical yet reasonable feedback. We'll want a small beta group at first and then increase it as we get to more usable builds.

Sure thing. When ever you're ready, just drop me an email (you can use the contact page) and I'll see what I can do for you.

BTW, I like what I see so far. 8)

[alex_kac]

Here's the thing we'll need the most help with.

I have an idea that the SmartPhone version of PI needs to be fast and simple. We don't need 30 different ways to complete a task. We don't need menus that have 5 pages of scrolling to go through. But we will need help in determining what we may have cut out that we should have left in, or what we should cut out that we left in.

But yeah - I'm really happy with where its at. In my 2 months of using a SmartPhone the one major thing I was really lost without was a decent task list.

[surfer]

Will you have the ability to sent tasks through bluetooth?

[alex_kac]

Since that an OS function (even if the built in app doesn't do it) - we should.

[rperalta]

I'll manually validate it.

Anyhow, the software is not yet in beta. Those screenshots were first run that we got things mostly working on the SmartPhone. While we have Wm5 code in there and it SHOULD work with WM5, it hasn't yet even been tested there. Same with QVGA - it should work, but we haven't tested that yet. Not much point in testing when you JUST got it to the working point.

We expect to get a beta around mid/late January. We may or may not have WM5/QVGA support then. We expect to have WM5/QVGA support at release, though. I hope to have WM5/QVGA support in beta.


Thanks Alex, my account is now validated. I actually posted my first one in your forum. :wink:

Robert

[paultriant]

Well Don Alex. This is by far the best smartphone news I've heard all year :)
I was a heavy user of PI for PPC before moving over to smartphone; PI was the only reason I have missed the PPC.
And remember, the more features, the better.