Brighthand Acquired by BargainPDA.com

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.brighthand.com/default.asp?newsID=12129' target='_blank'>http://www.brighthand.com/default.asp?newsID=12129</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Brighthand.com and BargainPDA.com have combined to create one of the largest handheld computing focused sites on the web, bringing the latest industry news, reviews and support to consumers around the world. Going forward the Brighthand.com brand will prevail and the key personnel from both sites will continue with the combined site, including site management by Ed Hardy. First off, we're ecstatic about merging Brighthand and BargainPDA. I'd like to give credit to Steve Bush and Ed Hardy for building a tremendous site, a true authority when it comes to all handheld computing devices. As noted, Ed will continue to run the site and will cover the industry with his professional and on-point style. Steve, the founder of Brighthand, has decided to pursue other ventures; we wish him all the best, he has been instrumental in making sure the Brighthand transition has gone as flawlessly as possible."</i><br /><br />They say that all markets eventually converge, so this doesn't surprise me at all. It's an end of an era though - Brighthand was around right from the beginning with Pocket PCs.

[freitasm]

Wow... This is really interesting and unexpected news. Surprising to see the Bargainpda.com brand overtaking the Brighthand branding all over the site, even though Ed Hardy is "leading the charge" with site management. I would have expected to be the other way around!

[Phillip Dyson]

I don't know any numbers or anything. And I'm not that familiar with BargainPDA.

That being said, as a once frequent participant over at Brighthand, it seemed to me that the communities were diminishing. While Brighthand had name recognition, it possible that they needed an infusion of new blood. Meaning both contributers and forum community members.

Or perhaps Steve Bush simply wanted to do something else.

I find the front page too busy for my taste though, but I wish them luck.

[Silver5]

I remember back to when Steve first announced he was moving on to other things. I noticed that after that the site just went downhill. The front page stories weren't particularly interesting anymore, the reviews (the few that there have been) seemed late and uninvolved, and the forums pretty much died. Maybe this newest change with get something going again over there. I think I became a member there before buying my first PPC, a Jornada something-or-another with that flip downcover...I would not have gotten to this site if it weren't for Brighthand, but I don't even have Brighthand as a bookmark anymore.

[Phillip Dyson]

I don't recall Steve's announcement but I did recognize the change.

Basically an editorial every now and then. And a slow trickle of news.

I guess its not fair to compare to the ThoughtsMedia family since they were meant to be fundamentally different.

I can however credit the Brighthand for helping me find this sight.

[felixdd]

I don't know any numbers or anything. And I'm not that familiar with BargainPDA.

That being said, as a once frequent participant over at Brighthand, it seemed to me that the communities were diminishing. While Brighthand had name recognition, it possible that they needed an infusion of new blood. Meaning both contributers and forum community members.

Or perhaps Steve Bush simply wanted to do something else.

I find the front page too busy for my taste though, but I wish them luck.

Ditto. After Bush left the community didn't seem that vibrant or enthusiastic any more. The forums became more poorly moderated. News were slow in coming, and slowly it became more of "Hardy's blog" than a PDA news site. As for the reviews, they were horrible and smacked of laziness; most of them used press-release pictures rather than taking pictures of their own. There was also no evaluation criteria (heck they even took down the pro/con thing), and some times their review opinions were just plain off-based.

I'm sorry if that seemed more of a rant than anything, but I've felt that way about BH ever since Bush left. It's a pity, since BH was my favorite site until then. And it was painful to see it spiral down like that. Hopefully joining with BargainPDA will bring back some life.

[huangzhinong]

The last year of brighthand.com is almost like pdabuzz.com, a dead fish. I am happy to see that brighthand.com was acquared, not abandoned to death.

[signothefish]

When their search indices were lost and they didn't rebuild them for the two years that were indexed, that's when I quit monitoring the forums there and came over here. Since then, the e800 forum has still been fairly active, but it's definitely not the same as it used to be. Seems the forums kind of survive on their own, with very few mod posts. It's kind of a depressing site to be at anymore.

[Damion Chaplin]

I can however credit the Brighthand for helping me find this sight.

Ditto!

What's that say under my avatar? Member since when?

Since Brighthand stopped being an interesting site and I found the lively forum over here...

[pedroboe]

Brighthand brings back memories.... :)
Sorry if this seems a little emotional, but there was a time when I could not live without it! I was one of the first members, back in 2000/01 (I think) when the first pocket pc's came out: The iPaq and the Jornada as well as others. I went from Jornada, to iPaq, to Casio, Zaurus, Dell, iPaq 4700 and today I use an i730. Can't remember details or all model numbers right now, but Steve was totally devoted to the new revolution that Pocket Pc's were promising to be at the time. I can remember, however, the day that things went a bit sour for some of us PPC hardcores: Steve had just come back from some tech convention and declared he had an "epiphany". He described how the president of Palm at the time, arrived to the show in a VW Beetle from the 70's. Palm's CEO idea was to draw a parallel between the simplicity of the BUG and Palm's OS. Unfortunately some of us thought that it was a bad move and that like the metaphore of the VW BUG, Palm's OS time has come and gone. In hindsight, now history tells the truth. How many times is Palm going to change their OS?
What some people really suspected at the time was that Palm was trying to work a deal with Steve, since Brighthand had virtually no competition at the time except for Dale Coffing's "pocketpc passion" , Jason's "pocket pc thoughts". and a few others and it was generating a lot of traffic. Steve tried to create a place for Palm users and encourage their input. At the time, there were many sites dedicated to this, but Brighthand was probably the best haven for pocket pc users. I complained and thought that Brighthand was growing too much, too fast. But this was Steve's baby, his creation.
Things got a bit unpleasant at one time, mainly because Steve's tolerance for disagreement was low sometimes and he tended to challenge people and try to call them on the phone, etc.... (I was banned temporarily, somebody broke into my email account, I then realised that the internet is not the best place for disagreements, since there ARE A lot of FREAKS OUT THERE).
After sometime, Steve emailed me and others who had migrated mostly here (although I just became a lurker and stayed away from shenanigans) and invited us back, that he appreciated the contributions, etc. I moved on to other things and regretably never really made a comeback to Brighthand.

But overall, I am very thankful to Steve for creating Brighthand, a place where I would hang into the wee hours of the night back when I had no life and I was lucky to meet some great people. We were like a band of brothers and sisters (there were female members too). One beloved member, Disco Tiki, passed away and it caused a lot of pain and sadness to all.

If you asked me, it was that fateful day sometime in 2001, I think, when Steve had his Palm "epiphany" that made Brighthand lose focus; slowly, but surely. People really appreciate when something that is really good and satisfying stays that way. How many times have you found a really good "hole in the wall" little restaurant and then come back sometime later to see they have expanded their menu, etc, but the original quality is not there anymore? sometimes you can't cater to everyone. In a way, one of the reasons why I always come back to look at the news here at pocket pc thoughts, is because this page has not changed much since it's inception....anyway, this might just be fiction after all, just an opinion. But if it is true that he was courted by the folks at Palm, I hope he made a lot of money on that deal!

[Duncan]

I remember back to the days when there was hardly anything in the way of forums for Pocket PC (or rather Palm-size PC) owners. People like Steve Bush and Dale Coffing would frequent the Window CE City message boards. Then each mentioned the sites they were about to set up - Pocket PC Passion and Brighthand.

Seems odd that one of those thriving and very poplular sites has now vanished, and the other has lost its founder and become a shadow of its former self (in terms of community participation that is - I think Ed Hardy does a pretty good job with the news section). Never though I'd see it happen (but then I remember Pocket PC Thoughts as being an entertaining but minor blog that probably wouldn't last - so what do I know...!).

[Jason Dunn]

...but then I remember Pocket PC Thoughts as being an entertaining but minor blog that probably wouldn't last - so what do I know...!

Funny how things work out eh? ;-)

[MG]

Oddly enough, I did not think anybody was on Bargainpda! Numerous threads have been mods talking to mods with little or no user contribution. Well change is good, but I did notice a huge influx of "Palm" users....yuk! :D

I'll wait to see if things pick up overthere before I pass judgment. :wink:

Mark

[felixdd]

Windows CE City! I remember that place! Squandered many hours posting about my "brand new" Philips Nino 200, then my MobilePro 770.

Good times...good times :)
I remember back to the days when there was hardly anything in the way of forums for Pocket PC (or rather Palm-size PC) owners. People like Steve Bush and Dale Coffing would frequent the Window CE City message boards. Then each mentioned the sites they were about to set up - Pocket PC Passion and Brighthand.

Seems odd that one of those thriving and very poplular sites has now vanished, and the other has lost its founder and become a shadow of its former self (in terms of community participation that is - I think Ed Hardy does a pretty good job with the news section). Never though I'd see it happen (but then I remember Pocket PC Thoughts as being an entertaining but minor blog that probably wouldn't last - so what do I know...!).

[Ed Hansberry]

Oddly enough, I did not think anybody was on Bargainpda! Numerous threads have been mods talking to mods with little or no user contribution. Well change is good, but I did notice a huge influx of "Palm" users....yuk! :D
They seem to be like nomads, roaming from PDA Buzz to Brighthand to treocentral, etc.

[davea]

History is increcably interesting. I joined Brighthand on 07-18-2001 with a
Jornada 540, then a Compaq 1100 monocrome PPC, Dell X5, Dell X50.
I found this site thru Brigththand and PPC Magazine, although my memory is a bit fuzzy regarding who came first. I saw Jason in 2003 in Atlanta at
one of MS road shows. PPC Thoughts keep up the good work. You are by far my favorite site and the one I check first every day. Bravo !!!

[TomB]

Pedroboe, I think the major change for Brighthand was the "Kiddie Wars" of 2001(?). Basically, Casio had introduced a cheaper, hackable PDA to follow up their E-200, that attracted teens and they seemed to flood the board, not with intelligent conversations and solutions but with AoL sTyLe pOstS and nAMe cAllInG. Steve Bush stepped in to mod this and all hell broke loose among those users including attacks against the site and personal abuse for Steve. I think that took a lot of wind from his sails and that is about when he pulled back.

It was a sad time for the pros and engineers from Microsoft, Casio and HP who posted at Brighthand along with indie visionaries like Tristan Savatier and Inaki Castillo because there wasn't much room for them anymore. It was a sad day for PDAs in general too, because up to that point, that is where the PDA problems that Microsoft and the manufacturers couldn't/wouldn't solve were hacked/solved in real time. That was an amazing time and it was sad to see it fizzle. Of course a large part of that was that the platform matured and finally grew old with major innovations stopping years ago.

What is most interesting is that the entire movement of backyard techheads fell apart during the same period. Manufacturers stopped showcasing their newest mobile tech at June's amazing PC Expo and even that started to slide. By 2004, it had gone from an annual haven for tech innovators and meeting-place for Brighthanders at ChiChi's to a distant memory. BTW - it was a major kick to go to ChiChi's and see a hundred people with PDAs. To get in the door, you needed to show the bouncer your PDA!

Looking back, video was always something that drove the site, and something that Microsoft always ignored because it wasn't a "business" application. When Casio's groundbreaking E-100 came out with WinCE 2.0 and 208x160x10fps 15 bit color video (32K colors) capability in October(?) of 1999, video wasn't even mentioned on the box and the Palm Pilot continuted to florish with two bit greyscale graphics! Of course what we see today is Steve Jobs marketing video iPods and selling hardware and content like hotcakes. Microsoft came out with their brick-like solution earlier and it bombed big time. For all their billions, Microsoft still doesn't understand the huge potential of what they gave birth too.

Back in 1999 it seemed like PDABuzz started things off, then Brighthand was more attractive and became THE site, then Dale Coffing's PocketPC Passion took over with some major threads on the law behind mobile entertainment from a real entertainment lawyer (the site later was lost in a server crash) and of course our own Jason Dunn, who seemed to span all this with his Thoughts sites. There were other sites and players, but for me, these were the major voices. It is reassuring to see Jason's work survived all of this. This area still is of interest for me, but to be frank, the thrill is gone. Mobile tech is converging and getting better, but the ground-breaking work was done years ago and now the improvements are incremental refinements. The last truly interesting innovations in this area were:

*2001 Matrix Semi-Conductor. ROM SD cards that were supposed to be the CDROMs of memory - the company is still around, but their product is still not shipping and probably never will because of the price of standard SD memory cards.

*2002 HandHeld Entertainment. PDA sized media players under $100 for the masses. They did ship in 2004 but they are still "tweaking" a very dated design and these are for techs, not general users.

*2003 ?????????? - A business card sized video display for $20 that was supposed to be a leave-behind for high-end advertising.

*2005 Verizon Wireless. If anything, the most interesting work in mobility is being done on non-Microsoft cellphones with providers like Verizon Wireless and their high-speed, Evolution Data Optimized network. Pretty funny - all the pain and suffering early adaptors went through for mobile media, and the end result is embodied in a phone with a one inch (but 320x240) screen!

Biggest media problem yet to be solved? Content ownership. Users need content they can use on all their media players without restrictions - Producers need to get paid for the entertainment they provide. Since both sides are polarized, this may come down to the courts finally telling us what we can and can't do with our content and then having law enforcement nail the people who break the law not Wild West industry groups like the RIAA and MPAA.

Note To Jason! Thinking this all over, one of the things that has prevented me from being more active here has been the Thoughts structure. This is a news site, so the forums seem to be secondary to the news unlike Brighthand where the forums were the news. The result is here the thread dies when the news moves from the front page. At Brighthand, the thread would die when the topic ran its course. For instance, I came to this thread through the news story and then on my next visit had to use the search function to find the thread again (thirtieth forum from the top!) If I happen to post on a story that is a day old, I usually find I am the last guy posting, because the thread is "out of sight - out of mind." Maybe I am reading the site the wrong way? ;)

[Nurhisham Hussein]

If I happen to post on a story that is a day old, I usually find I am the last guy posting, because the thread is "out of sight - out of mind." Maybe I am reading the site the wrong way? ;)

I always use the "View New Posts" function (it pops up when your mouse rolls over the Forum button on the main menu bar) - since I visit every day, that only leaves me about 3-4 pages of new posts to wade through.

Edit: Now that I think about it, you're right - if it's a thread I've posted in, and there's no new posts in it, it does indeed disappear. Sorry for the OT.

[stevebush]

Hi, everyone!

Thanks for your kind comments. Yes, I sold Brighthand. As many of you have noticed I've been out of the loop for the past 2+ years and there are several reasons for that.

Firstly, my enthusiasm for handhelds had subsided considerably. Maybe, as TomB mentioned in his post, there wasn't anything truly new going on and I found it harder and harder to get inspired. Or maybe it was those 4+ years of 16 hour days, 7 days a week that simply wore me out. ;) Whatever it was, I was thankful to have Ed Hardy to hand it over to for a while. Ed has been running the content side of Brighthand for the past 2+ years and I mainly stayed behind the scenes doing work for our clients and partners. So slipping away isn't going to be that hard to do. Thanks, Ed, for carrying the torch while I "disappeared." Secondly, three years ago I relocated from Atlanta, Georgia to Tampa, Florida and since then I've spent a lot of time getting into shape and eating right, and that's become a new focus for me, rather than technology. In fact, you may have seen my "before" and "after" pictures in a Beachbody P90X ad in several magazines, including Esquire and Mens Journal. Finally, I met a wonderful woman and two weeks ago we got married. (You can see some pictures here -- http://web.mac.com/steven_bush). Our plans are to live in Europe next year and then return to Tampa and start a family. My 17-year-old daughter is looking forward to finally having a sister or brother (or both).

So, that's the story! Bottom line, I've never been happier (and fitter) and can't wait to begin the second half of my life (I turned 49 back in January).

Again, thanks for everything, folks! And if you have any questions for me please post them here and I will respond, or you can reach me at [email protected] for the next month.

Thanks!

Steve Bush
Founder, Brighthand

[Kacey Green]

Windows CE City! I remember that place! Squandered many hours posting about my "brand new" Philips Nino 200 ...
That was a fine device, I wish mine didn't burn up in the cradle. I'm glad to see the Brighthand brand survived, it was way better than the bargin pda brand.

[Jason Dunn]

Going a bit off-topic here...

Note To Jason! Thinking this all over, one of the things that has prevented me from being more active here has been the Thoughts structure. This is a news site, so the forums seem to be secondary to the news unlike Brighthand where the forums were the news. The result is here the thread dies when the news moves from the front page. At Brighthand, the thread would die when the topic ran its course.

Hrm. The old Brighthand is gone, but if memory serves weren't they pretty much like our site? They had headlines on the opening page, and links to the forums. You'd click through from the headlines to read the news stories, whereas ours are usually presented in their entirety on the home page. But I can't think of how their design highlighted the forums more. I'd certainly love to see our forums get used even more (though I think they're pretty active now), so I'm definitely open to suggestions.

I think the differences between our forums are from the fact that they had forums first, and gained momentum first, and that they have device-specific forums while ours are more generic - i.e., they had a Dell X51v forum while we only have a "Dell Axim" forum. That's going to change here soon enough.

[shindullin]

Brighthand's forums when for longer because they had few posts and fewer posters. I think that PPC forum post get "lost" faster because there are a lot more new posts that come after which "push" the older posts back several pages at a rapid rate. The only real solution to that would be to have more specialized forums and maybe a button that remembered what all your recent past post were.

I still enjoyed looking at Brighthand for the news. It was sparce but the news that Ed did post was usually worth a read. What more could you ask for in a news post? I stopped posting on the forums years ago. They have really lost their dynamism. The forums consisted of just people trying to survive on their own.

[Ed Hansberry]

Finally, I met a wonderful woman and two weeks ago we got married. (You can see some pictures here -- http://web.mac.com/steven_bush). Our plans are to live in Europe next year and then return to Tampa and start a family.
That is awesome Steve. Totally what it is all about. I wish you nothing but the very best for the new Bush family. :way to go:

[TomB]

Steve, I second Ed's wishes. That is too cool. Also you and your bride look great. Wow, you really have gotten in shape, makes me think I have been sitting in front of a computer far too long.

Jason, don't take my comments the wrong way or get on the defensive, I have been reading your amazing site/s since the beginnings (registered two years later) and now-a-days, yours are the only mobile sites I read. I can't put my finger on what the difference is/was because I haven't been a part of Brighthand for years, but it just seemed that it was too hard to participate in or follow threads here. But that really never mattered much because it always seemed that the most important things were happening on your home page. The forums were just a place to comment.

At Brighthand the reverse was true. I can give you an example. When the PocketPC was first introduced, it ran slower then the 206MHz iPaqs, but no one knew why or how. The tech community at Brighthand discovered that Microsoft was not supporting the new hardware and the devices were underclocked to deal with that! A MS executive actually verified that in a post at Brighthand and said they would not support the new hardware for two(?) years because they worked with their product cycle not the manufacturers!!!!!!!!!! Well two things happened. First techs from across the world developed overclockers by working together over a 24 hour period on a Brighthand forum. Second, there was such an uproar in the Brighthand community, Microsoft eventually "tweaked" their OS to work with the hardware well ahead of their "cycle." I can remember this also happening with HP forcing them to fix the "dust" problem, and in unsupported areas like MPEG thanks to Tristan Savatier. It took Microsoft three years to support video while Tristan's PocketTV did it from the beginning and always did it better then everyone else).

I am foggy on the dates and details but the difference was that the community is what was the core to Brighthand before the kids broke up the party. I could be wrong, but I never saw that happen in the same way here, because Jason's news was the attraction. Of course I may have totally missed the boat by not following the forums more closely. Also the excitement that I had originally has now burned to a casual interest. Hell, to this day I still use my original $150 iPaq* on a day to day basis ($200 in discounts and coupons at Staples thanks to Brighthand posts). I find the lcds were never as good and as I said innovation stopped dead years ago with only incremental advances. Some of these amazing users found a home for a short while at "Passion," but basically when the kids took over, the pros went their separate ways. Too sad...because it was a place I really looked forward to visiting for the people (was Scott from Casio going to tell us there was an E-300? What was Gerard going to say next? Would the Martian invaders delaying the iPaq release ever be stopped? That kind of stuff).

WinCE City! Wow! I had forgotten all about that site. Sorry for the history, but this seemed like a good place to celebrate both Steve's and Jason's achievements!

*HELP! the small plastic soft reset tab inside the battery cover on my HP1910 broke off a year ago so I can no longer do soft resets! Anyone have a suggestion on forcing a soft reset without that tab? This question / answer thing is an example of what Brighthand was really good at back when the techs lived there...

[Gerard]

Alike TomB's feeling, I have always had a hard time following the forum threads here. Not because there is anything intrinsically wrong with Thoughts' forums - the software runs well, cookies behave themselves for many months at a time, and most of the folk here are downright friendly. But the threads really are hard to track down, somehow, and it is too easy to lose track of a discussion. Why else would even the most interesting, popular discussions almost always faide out entirely within a week or so? It's a rare thing for me to receive an update to a month-old Thoughts thread. On Brighthand, I'll get emailed updates on threads I've subscribedto YEARS earlier. It may be some newbie discovering old news and heating it up for fun, but more often it's because the topic is still viable, and perhaps further clarification is needed, or there's been some innovative software work done in the area. The nPOP thread just won't die, for instance (or wouldn't; hard to say if it'll revive now, with this buy-out, even though there has been a serious update with the nPOPw UK fix version just today). Daimiaou's (or however one spells that) threatd on Japanese on a non-Japanese PPC are like novels of discovery, chock full of useful PPC knowledge. Will that continue, or even survive as an archive?

When Steve did the first major upgrade of the forum, going to PHP, thousands of threads did not make the leap. Information of fantastic value, countless hours of member's contributions, most were lost. The new format allowed for easier administration, supposedly, and probably better security, but the cost was horrendous and discouraging for long time contributors such as myself. Same for Passion. When Dale's site died the first time, it was like someone had burned the collective journals of hundreds of users. We tried to recover, rebuild something, and sort of did... only to have his server fail again and lose all that permanently. Sympathies were expressed, but really, how hard is it to shut down for a couple of hours once per week and do a full backup to something secure? I am a member of several non-PPC forums where exactly that has kept them going for many years.

But back to topic. I like the Thoughts format. I wish it were a little more like Brighthand, and who knows, now that Brighthand is nothing at all like Brighthand, Jason might have an opening to do something interesting... The Palm/Garmin/whatever 'focus' at the new Brighthand is proving not at all attractive to me. One must wade through countless boring titles to find the rare WM-related bits, and even those seem mostly OT. The inherited stuff from BargainPDA seems like Aximsite on a bad day; all fluff, drivel about relationships, avatars, life stories. Dull.

In a way I am relieved. As Tom and others have said, BH hasn't seen glory days in a long while. I have more time available for work and life generally, when not wasting it on so many technical problems.

The forums at PocketPCFAQ (formerly WindowsCE.NET) are problematic in other ways. Seems very few viewers bother to jump from front page news there into discussing it in the forums. Rather, they search out archived threads, or start new ones, based on need. That's largely how Brighthand worked, but FAQ is smaller, seems a bit stuck that way. Brighthand struck some sort of magic balance, for a while, and it was loads of fun participating. Lately it seemed to become more like work, though the odd interesting bit cropped up.

I'm happy for Steve's optimism, that he was able to do what was better for him.

What's better for me is probably to do less PPC forum stuff. My own career has become harder to keep up with all the time, and as PPCs seem to have stalled, technically, with the e800 I now use seemingly the pinnacle of the family (in my seldom humble opinion), there isn't so much left to discuss. Optimising WM5.0 clunkers is fine for those adopting the things, which I certainly will not.

Maybe there will be future generations of PPC, but according to Ed Hardy and a few other sources of late, that's seemingly less likely than ever. Smartphones are to have the lion's share of Microsoft's focus on the ultra-mobile front, with the UMPC/Origami getting the rest. (Oh, and getting Vista out, eventually, I suppose that'll take the real bulk of their resources, the kind of time and money they never planned to spend on the PPC.) For now, phone talk is all the rage, even here. Though data plans in Canada are sold for criminally high prices, it seems there just aren't enough Wi-Fi spots open to satisfy most people. (I have little trouble finding them, almost anywhere in town, whenever I need to check for or send some mail.) Guess we're all headed that way eventually, in one device format or another. I'll hold out and see how the first few iterations of UMPC turn out, skip the smartphone. Can't abide thumbing text, nor the tiny screens. Just too silly.

And of course I'll probably keep checking the Thoughts front page, if not daily then every couple or few. BH? Not so much.

[Gerard]

Oh, almost forgot TomB's question; Try psShutXP:
http://ppcsoft.narod.ru/english/
Great little freeware for soft resetting, logging off, powering off, or even a hard reset via a hidden control (with dual-confirmation, so no worries about accidents there). Though it's supposedly skinnable, I've never figured out how. No matter. Great little freeware for when a hardware soft reset is inconvenient. Of course it won't get you out of a total lockup, as it must be launched somehow, but for routine boots it is just the ticket.

[TinMan]

So, that's the story! Bottom line, I've never been happier (and fitter) and can't wait to begin the second half of my life (I turned 49 back in January).
The end of an era Part III :).

Seriously, good luck to ya', Steve. We had some great times that I shall not forget.

Regards,
Mike

[TomB]

Hee, hee, hee, &lt;whispers> now that this topic is off the front page, I will test my theory that this thread will not be read by anyone else in all eternity - and that the thread is now deader than a doornail. Let's see if anyone stops by and posts something! I have the same test going at Jason's other site Digital Media (http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=10119). That thread is about DRM and normally would go for pages of comments over months and months.

BTW! Great seeing those posts from Gerard and the TinMan! Two of the heavy duty contributors from Brighthand's glory days. Gerard, thanks for the tip, psShutXP really works well and does the trick! Hope things are going well for you, your family and your violins! Mike, hope you had a good recovery from your last wipe-out and are still having fun with biking it.

[Jason Dunn]

Well, there are a few issues here:

1) BUGS: phpBB's notification of thread update is screwy at best. For instance, even though I had this thread set to "watch", I never received an email update about it. Yet another reason why I hate phpBB and we're switching to something else. It also lacks the "hot thread" functionality where hot/active threads would bubble to the top of a forum. Heck, the "sticky post" function doesn't even work properly! :-(

2) PERCEPTION: I think that since pretty much everyone who was formerly super-active over at Brighthand has stated that they're no longer as active with Pocket PCs in general, one can draw the conclusion that it wouldn't matter WHICH Pocket PC forum they were involved in now, they simply wouldn't be as highly involved as they were before. A look at our membership list shows many people with 1000's of posts, so it's not like there aren't people who are highly active in our forums. I base my Contributing Editor picks on people who are active in our forums, so if there was no one highly active I'd have no editors. So people are active, it's not just you guys. :-) Things change, people change. The Windows Mobile market has also evolved so it has new problems, perhaps not the same types of high-energy problems you faced in the BrightHand days when Pocket PCs were the scrappy underdogs.

3) DESIGN: It may be that our forum structure, or home page exposition of threads, could be improved. I'm open to suggestions, although again since we've moving to new forum software some of this will change by default.

4) COMMUNITY: I think that since we're more news-based than pure community-based (our opening page is news, not the root forum level), we attract a different type of community member. One that may not go into the forums, read and respond to every single new post.

Thanks for the feedback, it's always a goal of mine to improve our communities.

[Gerard]

phpBB's notification of thread update is screwy at best. For instance, even though I had this thread set to "watch", I never received an email update about it.

No problems here. Unlike on pocketnow where email updates haven't worked for years - so I've given up following threads, it just takes too much effort - the threads here always send me an email when updated.

Yet another reason why I hate phpBB and we're switching to something else.

No disagreement there. I complained almost bitterly when Brighthand went to PHP. For a PPC browser, it just stinks. Won't save properly, or if MultiIE can save a page it's compressed as a GZ file... Takes longer to display than HTML, often showing simple things like button GIF images much, much later than the text - I've waited 3 minutes or more for a 'Submit' button to appear. Too many other complaints to bother. I'm happy to hear you're changing away from it. Best of luck with a new solution.

...one can draw the conclusion that it wouldn't matter WHICH Pocket PC forum they were involved in now, they simply wouldn't be as highly involved as they were before.

True enough. Still, it was rare for me to post less than 10 or 15 times per week on Brighthand, helping out with technical problems, newbie issues, or commenting on interesting developments. Sure, the pace changed. It was exciting with about 3 devices on the market. With more than 50 now, we're plainly on the flatter plateau of the learning curve. (Although yesterday's post here revealing the NeverDorkMemory tweak would have shaken things up even in the heyday.)

For me, the abundance of trivial threads on the newly merged BH and BargainPDA forums is a problemi This morning I looked at the new posts list: 331 since my last visit. The first page of results had no fewer than 7 idiotic titles, things like 'Silly Thread' or 'What else do you do' or whatever other pap they're about. Aximsite went that way. I left. Same for BH. I closed the page without tapping one link. Life's too short.

[Don't Panic!]

Ahhh, The 'New' brighthand...

I guess PALMtopia was taken. :lol:

PALM survives! ;)

[Ed Hansberry]

I know one thing, the new BH format using the BargainPDA template makes the site worthless on a Pocket PC. The old BrightHand wasn't particularly optimized for a handheld, but it was very workable to read articles. Forums weren't much.

The new format makes the entire site about as much fun to read as it is to work on a 90 column, 400 row, 10 tab spreadsheet in Pocket Excel.