Don Tolson
09-10-2003, 05:00 PM
Ever tried to organize all that stuff you picked up at the last big convention? Tried to remember which salesperson belonged to which vendor and what they promised? Well, next time you can take along your Pocket PC loaded with Convention Star and be well ahead of the game!<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/don-aug03-conventionstar-0.gif" /><br /><!><br /><i>OK, let me state right up front that it's been </i>years<i> since I've been anywhere near a convention - either as an attendee or as a participant. I used to work the shows pretty regularly when I was a sales techie guru on operating systems, but that was during a much younger time, long ago... Then David Zhou from KST International contacted me regarding a review of a new application they had built called Convention Star, and all the memories started flooding back -- bags full of various pamphlets, doo-dads, handouts, and presentations; each with handwritten (scrawled) notes on the corners with numbers I no longer recognized. What I wouldn't have given for some way to organize all the notes and stuff I had!</i><br /><br />Had it (or Pocket PCs!) been available back then, Convention Star looks like it would have been the answer for me. Convention Star is one of a new breed of applications starting to emerge which are specifically written for the Pocket PC .NET Compact Framework. It's basically a mini-database, providing a simple and effective way to keep track of products and offers as you wander the convention room floor.[/I] <br /><br /><span><b>Installation</b></span><br />A trial version of Convention Star 1.0.2 can be downloaded from <A HREF = "http://www.handango.com/brainstore/PlatformProductDetail.jsp?siteId=311&productId=82667" target = "blank">Handango</A> (affiliate). According to KST’s Web site, the demo is fully functional and has no time limit. The trial version, however, will only store 20 records.<br /><br />Convention Star requires the .NET Compact Framework, so if you have a Pocket PC 2000 or 2002 device, you will need to download and install the .NET Compact Framework first. KST International provides a link from their <a href="http://www.kstinternational.com/download.html"> Web site.</a> Note: the .NET Compact Framework is fairly large (almost 3.2M) and will take up a sizeable chunk of RAM when running. I already had .NET Compact Framework installed to support <a href="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/articles.php?action=expand,10738"> Pocket Day</a>, so I didn’t need to re-install. For those of you lucky enough to be running Windows Mobile 2003, the .NET Compact Framework is already included in ROM.<br /><br />The Convention Star download is an executable which uses the typical ActiveSync program loader to install it on the Pocket PC. The application can be loaded to a CF card and takes about 313K of memory. It shows up under the Start/Programs menu as ConvenStar.<br /><br />Starting up the program seems to take a bit of time for some reason. On my Pocket PC 2002 OS, it takes about 10 to 15 seconds after I tap the icon to get to the main screen of Convention Star. Operation of the program is fairly crisp once it's loaded, so it might have something to do with initialization of the .NET Compact Framework. Maybe things are a bit faster if the .NET Compact Framework is in ROM.<br /><br /><span><b>Interface</b></span><br />Convention Star comes pre-loaded with a demo database of about 10 records, using a book fair as a model. It’s a good framework, as it displays most of the capabilities of the product. Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be any way to start off with a clean slate except by deleting the records one by one.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/don-aug03-conventionstar-1.gif" /><br /><i>Figure 1: Convention Star main screen</i><br /><br />The main screen displayed after the application opens shows a scrollable list of the current records in the database. As you can see from Figure 1 above, KST International has taken the same route as other developers such as IBiz, in using a significant amount of colour and shading in their user interface. Personally, I find this rather distracting and unnecessary. I think developers should hire a professional graphics designer to take a look at their interfaces – especially with regard to layout and colour choices. Here, I think a few less colours and judicious use of shading would make for a more ‘professional’ appearance.<br /><br />Generally, the interface is pretty intuitive, with most of the controls doing what you’d expect them to. According to David, Convention Star was built from the ground up using .Net (after an initial attempt in eVB), so it’s nice to see that all the usual standards are there. The scroll bars on the right and bottom operate as expected, with both incremental and screen-load jumps, and the width of the displayed fields can be adjusted by dragging the vertical line separators in the header row. The only ‘nit’ I have is that when you double tap on a record, I would have expected to go to the full-record display/update screen. Instead, you have to highlight the record, then press the Update button.<br /><br />One interesting addition KST International has made is the ability to add icons to each entry, in order to assist visual cuing of the type of information contained within the record. Provided in the application are a pretty good selection of icons.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/don-aug03-conventionstar-2.gif" /><br /><i>Figure 2: Convention Star icon selection screen</i><br /><br />Unfortunately though, there doesn’t appear to be any way to turn off this feature, if you want to reclaim the screen landscape. Nor is there a way to add your own artistic endeavours to the list.<br /><br />The green up and down arrows at the bottom of the scroll area change the selected record, while the green funnel icon provides a pretty powerful set of filters to let you show only those records you want.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/don-aug03-conventionstar-3.gif" /><br /><i>Figure 3: Filter setting screen</i><br /><br />The green question mark icon takes you to Convention Star’s help function, which is a bit different from what we normally see in a Pocket PC Help file. Instead of using the common HTML-based format, they have built their own, customized Help function which provides simple, straightforward descriptions of how to use the major functions of Convention Star. Although unconventional, it does get to the point, which I really appreciate.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/don-aug03-conventionstar-4.gif" /><br /><i>Figure 4: Convention Star’s Help screen</i><br /><br /><span><b>Pre-Convention Prep</b></span><br />Before you head out to the convention floor, I’d strongly suggest you <i>configure</i> Convention Star, since doing it there would waste valuable cruisin’ time. :D Fortunately, Convention Star provides pretty good flexibility in this department.<br /><br />The database provided consists of eight general fields called:<li>Vendor<br /><li>Product Name<br /><li>Product ID<br /><li>Action<br /><li>Category<br /><li>Price<br /><li>List Price<br /><li>DiscountThe first five (Vendor, Product Name, Product ID, Action and Category) accept alphanumeric input. The last three (Price, List Price, and Discount) are numeric input only. There are also six custom fields available, which are all alphanumeric input. You can change the labels used for any of these fields to anything you want and there doesn’t appear to be any limit to the size of the new label. Practically though, you probably want to keep the label to 15 characters or less.<br /><PAGEBREAK><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/don-aug03-conventionstar-5.gif" /><br /><i>Figure 5: Convention Star custom field names screen</i><br /><br />The Vendor and Product ID fields form a ‘compound key’ for the database, as evidenced by their labels being shown in bold on the Data Input screen. This means that the <i>combination</i> of the two values must be unique for each record in the database.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/don-aug03-conventionstar-6.gif" /><br /><i>Figure 6: Convention Star data input screen</i><br /><br />To give yourself a clean start, you'll need to export the existing records in your database (so you have a copy!), then clear out the old records using the delete button before heading for the convention centre. (Unfortunately, there is no facility to globally delete all existing records, or to create a new, clear instance of the database.)<br /><br /><span><b>Workin’ the floor</b></span><br />Using Convention Star while wandering around the convention floor is fairly straightforward. Pressing the Add button will present a blank Data Input screen like the one above. The magnifying glasses to the right of each field create a drop-down list of all the values previously supplied for the field. I found this really neat since it’s dynamically generated as you put records into the database.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/don-aug03-conventionstar-7.gif" /><br /><i>Figure 7: Data Input screen showing Vendor drop-down</i><br /><br />KST International has also thoughtfully provided a calculator (the little icon next to the Discount % field) which will insert the third value when the other two are provided.<br /><br />When comparison shopping between different vendors, the Copy function is your best friend. After selecting a record, select Copy from the Edit menu, and Convention Star will present the Data Input screen with information from the record already pre-filled. Then, you make the necessary changes (such as Vendor and Price), press ‘Save’ and voila – you have it! Remember, you must change one of the compound key fields (Vendor or ID#) to a new value in order to successfully save the new record.<br /><br />If you’re trying to find a particular record (or set of records), Convention Star provides two ways to make this a bit easier. As mentioned before, you can use the Filter function (the green funnel icon at the bottom of the screen) to select out the records you want. You can also tap on the column headers to sort the results shown (whether filtered or not), based on the content of that column. The sorting alternates between ascending and descending order as you tap on the column header again.<br /><br />As far as volume-handling goes, Convention Star seems to be pretty consistent. I created a database of about 100 records and didn’t see any discernable difference in response time for adding and updating records. Sorting and the filters seemed to take a bit longer though, but this is to be expected. It would have been neat to try this with 1000 records, but I just didn’t have the patience to create these by hand. (An import function would have been really handy here!)<br /><br />Be careful what other applications you run with Convention Star, as data entry can be affected. I’m not sure whose fault it is, but when I was running Pocket Music while testing Convention Star, data entry via my HP thumb keyboard was corrupted – producing the wrong letters and apparently ‘holding onto’ some keystrokes until a buffer was overloaded. I haven’t noticed this with other applications, but it may be something within the .NET Compact Framework.<br /><br /><span><b>Back at the Home Office</b></span><br />After the hubbub of the exhibition, Convention Star provides a number of methods to protect the data you’ve gathered. The first is a Backup/Restore pair of features provided under the File menu. The functions work well, but the Backup function just goes away and does it without telling you where the backup is located or giving you the option to move it to a storage card! The Restore function tells you where it’s collecting the data from (\Program Files\ConvenStar\backup.dat), but there is no way to change this.<br /><br />The File menu also provides an Export Data function, which will write out either the entire file, or the records selected by your current filter to a delimited text file.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/don-aug03-conventionstar-8.gif" /><br /><i>Figure 8: Data Export screen</i><br /><br />You can select the delimiter you wish to use, and the desired fields from the database. The scrolling window at the bottom of the screen gives you a preview of what the output will look like.<br /><br />Also provided from the File menu is a ‘Convert Config’ option, which appears to save database format information, but there is no corresponding function to import this configuration, or any explanation of it in the Help file. It would be great to be able to create various configurations of the database for different types of conventions attended, then be able to load them whenever desired.<br /><br /><span><b>Gotchas</b></span><br />While Convention Star is a very worthy effort, here are some things that you need to be aware of when using it:<li>No ability to save or load different databases, if say, you go to more than one convention;<br /><li>Need to double-tap selections from the drop-down lists to get the value inserted into the appropriate field;<br /><li>Adding a record returns the display to Vendor-sorted order, regardless of how it was sorted before;<br /><li>No ability to specify where to backup or restore the database;<br /><li>To clear out the database, you need to delete each record individually;<br /><li>Be careful of running other applications with Convention Star. Data input can be affected;<br /><li>There is a function to save a configuration (called ‘Convert Config’ on the File menu), but no corresponding ‘load configuration’;<br /><li>No ability to import records.<span><b>Where to Buy</b></span><br />ConventionStar is available from <A HREF = "http://www.handango.com/brainstore/PlatformProductDetail.jsp?siteId=311&productId=82667" target = "blank">Handango</A> for US$14.99 (affiliate link).<br /><br /><span><b>Specifications</b></span><br />According to KST International's Web site (and confirmed by my own experience), Convention Star will work on Pocket PC 2000, 2002, and Windows Mobile 2003. For Pocket PC 2000 and 2002, you will need to install the free .NET Compact Framework. It takes approximately 313K of RAM to run and is compatible with Cassiopeia E-2000 (Japan), Cassiopeia E-700, Dell Axim X5, iPAQ Pocket PC H5450, Cassiopeia E-750, iPAQ h3100/h3600/h3700 series, iPAQ h3900 series, iPAQ h5500/h5100, Jornada 560 series, Toshiba e740,Toshiba Genio-e, iPAQ h3800 series, Jornada 520/540 series, ViewSonic Pocket PC V35.<br /><br /><span><b>Conclusions</b></span><br />Convention Star 1.0.2 looks like it would be a great tool for organizing information gathered on a busy convention floor. With a few more features for exporting and importing data and configurations, I can think of a lot of other inventory-type applications it could be used for.