TechTalks Transcript
PDA�s: Where Are They and How Do We Support Them?
November 1, 2001
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 Judith Boettcher [JB] |
 Howard Strauss [HS] |
 Bob Kalal [BK] |
 Todd Grappone [TD] |
JB: Welcome to the CREN Tech Talk series for fall of 2001 and to this session on PDA�s: Where Are They and How Do We Support Them You are here because it�s time to discuss the core technologies for your future campus.This is Judith Boettcher, your CREN host for today, and our session is coming to you with the support of the CREN member institutions and Palm,Incorporated. [Recording begins at the following point] --had just a great time and lots of good questions came up, so if in fact any of our experts today start pausing, they may be wondering, �Did I say that today or was that three days ago?� Let me welcome Howard Strauss of Princeton. Howard is a well-known web technology expert and portal expert and he�s our technology anchor for Tech Talk.. Welcome, Howard.
HS: Thank you, Judith. I�m Howard Strauss, the technology anchor
for the Tech Talk series of technology webcasts. In this webcast, I
invite you to join Judith and me in a lively technical dialogue with
our guest experts, Bob Kalal and Todd Grappone, that will answer the
questions you�d like answered about PDA�s and to ask those very important
follow-up questions. You can join in this dialogue by sending your questions
via e-mail to expert@cren.net
JB: Oh, thank you, Howard, and I have to say that I just can�t wait for these personal assistants to get even better. I think they�re wonderful right now and I do think of them as my own person extended brain and I think maybe that�s one role that I�m certainly ready to have them play.
HS: But none of us have bow ties.
JB: Bow ties? Did they really have a bow tie?
HS: This little thing, yeah, John Sculley�s thing really did have a bow tie, wandered around on the screen and talked to you.
JB: If it�s going to be an extended brain, I�m kind of ready almost not for a brain implant, but something close! So we�ll see what our experts have to say. Let me introduce our first expert for today, and that is Bob Kalal. Bob is an Associate Director and IT Policy Officer of the Office of Information Technology at Ohio State University. And this is Bob�s short title! He does much more, including acting as a liaison in areas of campus infrastructure such as libraries, technology intelligence and strategic planning and benchmarking. He�s also very active with the CIC Big Ten IT groups and one of these groups has been focusing on PDA�s. Welcome, Bob, to this CREN Tech Talk.
BK: Thank you, Judith. If I get called an expert one more time, I�m going to crawl under my desk!
JB: But we won�t be able to see you!
BK: At EDUCAUSE, my colleague that actually chaired the Big Ten group, Edgar Ray, was able to be with us in the audience. He wasn�t able to join us today, but he has given us a lot of information here to use during the talk.
JB: Okay. All right, super. I�d like to then welcome our second expert, who is Todd Grappone, who is the head of Computing and Network Systems at the Lane Medical Library at Stanford University. This group, during Todd�s time there, has evolved to be an �electronic information center� incorporating digital library and informatics technologies for education, for clinical care and research activities. One of the key projects launched a couple of years ago was when most all medical students did, in fact, start using and receive a Palm PDA. Welcome, Todd.
TG: Thank you, Judith.
JB: Okay, great, we�re just real pleased to have you both here today and we have, as Howard did his introduction, I think he listed enough topics and issues for us to talk about for probably a whole week. Howard, where are we going to start?
HS: Well, I think that means that we�re just going to extend this, so you folks who were tuned in, we�re just going to go for a week without stopping.
JB: So we�ll order in pizza for everybody, right?
HS: Have food brought in and things like that. The first thing is that there�s a lot of things, I think, around that look like PDA�s and I wonder when we�re talking about them if we�re talking about all of them. For example, I see web phones around. I�ve seen this little thing that�s the size of a business card called a Rex. I�ve seen sub-notebooks. Are we talking about all those things? What makes a PDA a PDA? Bob?
BK: To my mind, the PDA starts to be one step above some of those. A cell phone with a, for example, Qualcomm markets a cell phone with a Palm built into it. That certainly is a PDA. A cell phone that�s just a little web connected, I didn�t think is quite into PDA level. But certainly the Palm devices, the devices based on a Palm platform from Sony, from others, the Pocket PC device from Compaq, the IPAQ from HC Jornada, something that gives you a bit of computing power, lets you do a little bit of word processing, little bit of input, little bit of computing, plus generally lets you have your scheduling, your calendar, phases of the moon graphically, things like that.
HS: Todd, the things that Bob is describing really are these multi-function devices. I know you can do lots and lots of things, but what are people really using them for? What are the main uses of these things?
TG: I think the main use for these things is really personal information management. However, once you get into specific user communities like medical students, graduate students, you get to the point where you start using them for drug references, a little more in-depth scheduling, literature searches, places to read articles, abstracts, things like that. So I think they become much more than just a simple personal information management PC. They really become a reference tool.
HS: You�re in a medical school, Bob, so you�re�I�m sorry, Todd. Wrong person here! Todd�s in a medical school. And you have a lot of medical students around there. Could you tell us the kind of things that your medical students are doing with these things?
TG: Sure. We�ve integrated a lot of our Web CT content into the PDA and so they use it for announcements. Any kind of Web CT content that�s appropriate for the PDA we extend down to the handheld. We�ve built some study tools in the form of a game that we update monthly. Drug reference, like I said, we�ve integrated it into some of our online resources, online literature resources, online databases, so they use it for multiple applications.
HS: Could you just tell us a few more words about this study game. You said it�s a game but it�s a study thing?
TG: Yeah.
HS: How do those things work?
TG: We took an infectious disease, sort of flashcard application that had been in paper form and developed it into a game where a bug will float by and you have to decide sort of its attributes as it goes by.
JB: What would come by? Did you say a bug?
TG: An infectious disease, so helicobacter pylori, for instance��
HS: Oh, yeah, we know about that one!
TG: Would float by you. You have to decide if it�s gram positive, gram negative. These are things that medical students have to know. It�s very fact-based medical education and a lot of memorization, so these tools sort of are built around that sort of way of learning.
HS: When these students actually begin to get out and work in clinics and things like that, are they still carrying them around when they�re seeing patients and things?
TG: Absolutely. One of the most popular applications for the clinical physicians is a drug reference database. There�s a few of them that are available on their handheld. Some of them, like Hippocrates and MicroMedix, those are all available on your handheld. These are very popular with physicians. You can also get clinical reference books like Five Minute Clinical Consult and some of the other clinical reference books on your handheld and a lot of clinical students find that very, very useful.
JB: Is that an application that is totally resident on the Palm or is it something that I network out to, Todd?
TG: It�s primarily resident on your Palm. Something like Hippocrates or a clinical drug reference, you�d want to sync an update regularly to make sure you�ve got the latest and most appropriate information.
HS: You said that students are actually bringing up Web CT screens on this thing?
TG: That�s correct, yes.
HS: So you have some kind of wireless connection to Web CT?
TG: We use a program called Avant Go that allows them to sync from a desktop to our server and then the server will pull in the content from Web CT and deposit it on the Palm.
HS: I should mention that you mentioned that just three days ago and I was amazed that you could do that. We�re using Blackboard here at Princeton so I dashed out to the Blackboard site to see if it was possible to do with Blackboard, and it is. You can do it on an IPAQ with Blackboard as well, which is really, I think, kind of amazing. Bob, you really have different kind of students. You�re dealing with just a large university with a lot of undergrads. What kind of uses are they making of the PDA�s at Ohio State?
BK: Well, Howard, just quickly to tail on Todd there, I did find out upon getting back to campus that all of our medical residents now use Palms to carry exactly the kind of�not medical students, but the residents�to carry exactly the kind of reference material he was talking about. But into our more general population, we�ve got about 50,000 students here on campus. We find that we recently did a�we annually do a survey of campus technology usage done by our social science survey people for us and we find that faculty carry Palm devices about 90% to 10%. Undergraduates, on the other hand, skew toward 50-50, Palm vs. Pocket PC and about 20% of those are wireless, a particular interest of us, the wireless idea. But what we find the undergrads using them for, other than scheduling and all the kind of stuff that Todd talked about in terms of scheduling, keeping their own little list of credit card numbers, things like that, a lot are using it for entertainment. We go out and talk with some of these kids. We found out some of the kids use a lot of MP3s. The put their MP3s right on, say, their IPAQ or they bring down what I really would call arcade quality games, given the screen resolution and all on the IPAQ. They can get games, video games just of the same kind of quality level they would on a TV, or apparent quality level. And they really start to begin to use it as a lifestyle appliance. On the wireless side, you can use it for directions to places on campus. There are even a couple of companies that provide�that will come and set up for your campus a Palm based instructions, tell kids where to get from one building to another or look at their class schedules, these sorts of things.
HS: Okay, we�re going to get into the wireless thing in a minute, but before we do that, one of the questions I think that everybody asks and we really need to address is there�s Palm PC�s out there and Pocket PC�s out there. How do we choose between them? Which one do we buy? You want to start on that, Bob?
BK: Sure. Really, it�s a matter of what you want to do.
HS: So you�re saying that some are better for some applications and the others better for others.
BK: Right. At the moment, and I�m not saying where this is going to go in the future. At the moment, partly because the Pocket PC�s have a faster CPU generally and partly because they�ve got a higher resolution, higher screen, if you�re going to use full web browsing, you�re going to probably do a better job on a Pocket PC. Better equipped for multimedia rich applications. For example, Windows Media Player 8 runs on the Pocket PC 2000, plays audio and MP3�s. It�s the only PDA with a Macromedia Flash Player right now and you�ve got MPEG and other multimedia players available. In terms of enterprise networking, it gives you the possibility of getting thin client and VPN implementations. As for the Palm, it�s in my opinion easier to use. That�s what I myself use in my pocket for��
HS: But you have a bunch of them. You have like six of them.
BK: Yeah, well, it�s true but I think what I carry in my pocket all the time is a Palm.
HS: You have a lot of pockets!
BK: Its general ease of use for the calendaring, for little spreadsheets, for�one of my absolute favorite programs, little thing called Brain Forest for outlining and project planning while you�re riding home on a bus. But again, it depends. The more personal productivity, personal information manager applications you�re going to use, probably the more you want a Palm because it�s going to be a little easier to use in those. The more media you want, you probably want to go to a Pocket PC.
JB: How many of your students and faculty have both, not necessarily two PDA�s but a PDA and laptop, Bob? Do you have any data on that?
BK: We don�t have data on that. You can infer some overlap. Our students, undergrads, for example, 95% have computers. Seventeen percent have laptops and 12% report having PDA�s. What we don�t know is whether those are the same people.
HS: Todd, do you have anything to add to that? How do you choose which one?
TG: Sure, Howard, and I think you really need to know your audience. You need to know who�s going to use it at your school. You�ll find that for a place like a medical school where your curriculum is very fact-based that quick access to that information is very important to the students, so the Palm OS really lends itself well to that type of application. An undergrad student may want things like a coupon to a local pizza shop, MP3�s�so you really should know who you�re going to be developing applications for, who your audience is. I think Microsoft�s developed your Pocket PC as sort of a mini laptop and you�re going to find that the support on a mini laptop is going to be a little more intense than it would be on a Palm device. It�s just so much easier�it�s very simple to uninstall and reinstall applications on a Palm device and battery life is so much longer that you don�t really have to�you�re not as married to an outlet as you are with an IPAQ, so you have to know your constituency, you have to know how far they�re going to want to use this device, what they�re going to want to use it for. I would suggest doing a pilot project if you�re thinking about rolling them out at your school, you know, getting with your students, getting with your faculty and talk to them about what the device can and can�t do and get their ideas about what type of applications they would like to develop.
HS: You�ve raised about six issues here! Could we just try one of them here? Tell us a little bit more about support if the university decides that these things are going to be supported by the university as opposed to they�re just going to wander in on campus. What�s is take? What kinds of things do you have to do? Training classes or��
TG: I�ll tell you exactly what we did, Howard. We handed out 240-some-odd PDA�s.
HS: Gave them away?
TG: As a pilot project, we gave them to all our pre-clinical medical students last year. We required each student to sit in a one-hour training session where we showed them how to use Palm Desktop, how to turn their device on, how to charge it up and then we set them loose. And support really happened in the way of one-hour Palm office hours we set up in our computer lab once a week. And there was a lot of students with a computer in their pocket tended to get support from the student next to them with a computer in their pocket. It was really�support hasn�t been much of an issue. It�s very frequent that we�ll have only one or two people coming up to us in our Palm office hours.
HS: But you did build a web page?
TG: We did build a web page as well.
HS: That sort of helped support
TG: It helped support. That�s how we disseminate our information. We do a lot of support there.
JB: I think we have some other web supports or rather PDA support pages up on our website, don�t we? Bob, didn�t you give us one?
BK: Yeah.
HS: Could you talk about the question of support? Because you�re in a little different environment than Todd is.
BK: Honestly, if we go by our survey, we�re going to see that we�ve got somewhere around 7,000 of these things running around campus in student hands and when there�s something for computing around campus and people are having difficulty with it, we generally hear about it whether we claim to support it or not. Our call center starts to take calls. With 7,000 of these things out there, it surprises me that we don�t get much in the way of calls. We get the occasional question but I tend to agree with Todd, that students using these things, I think, are tending to support each other more perhaps than they would in the desktop or laptop environments.
HS: Okay, Todd brought up another issue. He talked about the fact that the batter life on the Palms was actually better than the battery life on the Pocket PC�s. It seems like there�s other variables, like whether the thing is color or whether you�re using wireless. Could we address the whole battery life issue? Todd, do you want to start on that?
TG: Sure, yeah. The Palm device, I think if you�re talking about a standard Palm M-500, the battery life is supposed to be about three weeks. If you attach, say, a Xyrcom sled to that, I think your battery life is going to be closer to about four hours of continuous use. If you go to your Pocket PC, I think you�re going to find that your battery life on your IPAQ is going to be much shorter than it is on a Palm and if you attach a network card to a sled that goes on top of that IPAQ, you�re going to find that your battery life is even shorter still. And so��
HS: What about color? What does color do to you?
TG: Color on a Palm doesn�t do too much. The battery life, I think, on the M-505 is still around three weeks, so it�s a little bit�it takes a little bit more processing and so you�re battery life isn�t quite as long, but it�s still not so short that you feel like you have to charge it up if you go away for a weekend.
BK: The battery life on the IPAQ color vs. IPAQ mono is also not substantially different. But the biggest way to cut your battery life down is, like Todd says, a network card. Up until recently
HS: So if you�re going to run your batteries right out, turn on the wireless.
BK: Yes, there�s a very recent development that�s begun to change that. Up until recently, if you put a compact Flash Ethernet card�I don�t want to go down manufacturers as such, but you are going to get about four hours maybe out of that IPAQ, much as Todd was talking about on the Palm. And here I will go manufacturers�Symbol recently introduced a compact flash card that seems to go about a good day of continuous use. I know they had worked with Intel to engineer good battery life out of this thing and it appears to have worked. I think a day is reasonable. You plug it in at night. If you �re going to have four hours, nyeah, you might as well�do you really want to be mobile if you�re going to be plugged in all that time? But a day long is okay.
HS: Don�t some of these things just work with little batteries that you can grab off the shelf whereas others have a battery that you can�t get out of the thing, where you�re just obligated to recharge it? Is that true?
TG: You can buy PDA�s that require double A batteries. I think�what�s that?
BK: Triple A for mine!
TG: Triple A too.
BK: The old Palms, the Palm up to the threes.
TG: And the Handera 330 takes batteries as well. But they also have a recharge in the cradle option these days, so I think most of the Palm devices these days come with batteries built in. I think most of the Pocket PC devices come with batteries built in as well.
HS: And such that you can�t
BK: One difficulty on Pocket PC, the IPAQ�the current IPAQ doesn�t have a replaceable battery. The battery is permanently attached to the motherboard and I don�t know, with the lifetime�they�ve only been out for a relatively short time, so we don�t know what the lifetime of these is going to be. But the ability to put a recharged battery in there can sure be handy if you�re in the middle of a conference and it�s time.
HS: So you have to take your soldering iron out.
JB: It�s kind of a built-in upgrade program!
BK: That�s one of the reasons I stick with the older Palm, and with the older Palm 3�s for my own personal information manager is because, if I do have a problem, I can walk in a drugstore and get some Triple A�s.
HS: Okay, could we talk about wireless connections now? Bob, you want to tell us the various options we have for getting wireless connections on these things?
BK: Basically, Howard, you have several options. We focused on two in the Big Ten study, but the first of them is simply to attach your PDA to your cell phone with a cell phone modem. That gives you about a 9600 baud connection.
HS: Which is slow.
BK: Yeah, quite slow. Nowadays, we would say painful. Next step up is to go to the CPDP or CDPD�depending on which website you look at�services. This would be like, for example, OmniSky, Verizon I believe does it, Bell America, a few other folks. These are available in most metropolitan areas. They connect you�generally a device attaches to the PDA with a small antenna and they connect your PDA to the provider. OmniSky, then, would be your ISP provider. Via cell phone frequencies but not via the cell phones themselves. They�d give you about a 19.2. It�s a packet based system, gives you about a 19.2. Again, we found that to be pretty slow in today�s world. Third option or the next option would be to just stick one of these 802.11 Ethernet cards in your PDA, either a full size one, a compact flash. They come with a Handspring slot, they come with Palm slots. And connect to your local LAN on campus at pretty much Ethernet speeds. The advantage of that sort of connection is you�ve got decent high speed response, you�ve got access to all your campus resources. You aren�t paying for the traffic to go out to somebody like OmniSky and come back into your campus. In the Big Ten group, we�re going to investigate that next. We did investigate the CPDP�s. We�re going to investigate the Ethernet next because it seems to us that�s going to provide better access to our students.
HS: This is the 802.11.B.
BK: Yeah, 802.11.B. The downside to that is, once you get off campus�unless you happen to be one of the areas of the country that�s developing wireless Freenets�you don�t have connectivity.
HS: We have a question just about 802.11B from Ken Weiner from IBS and Ken says, �What will be the most popular way for PDA�s to connect to the Internet? Will it be 802.11.B?� Is that going to be the winner here? Or are people going to have a bunch of these things?
TG: I think it�s probably going to be 802.11 simply because that�s going to be the most pervasive wireless option and it�s going to be free for students on campus, as opposed to one of these cellular modems that�s going to be probably a subscription service. So I would say that 802.11 is probably going to win just sheerly by being the biggest and cheapest option, most widely used and cheapest option.
HS: Is that what your medical students are using, Todd?
TG: They have that option, certainly.
HS: But is that what they�re using?
TG: I don�t know of too many that are doing it right now because I think the sled is a little bit expensive. We also have other options for them to use to connect wirelessly to our LAN. We have infrared cradles out there that they can use to do application syncing, run PQA�s, do just about anything/�
HS: Wait, PQA�s?
TG: Palm Query Applications.
HS: Okay.
JB: That�s a new one!
HS: We both thought we�d heard all of the three letter acronyms there are.
JB: That�s right.
HS: That�s because you deal with medical students. They must have new acronyms out there.
TG: I�ll see if I can dig a few up for you. So yeah, there are other options, I think, and the infrared devices are certainly a fine option for syncing and doing some wireless applications.
BK: And in fact, some grad schools even use the infrared options as their means of communications between multiple PDA�s in the classroom in a simulation game, for example.
HS: Okay, we�ve obviously slipped into the topic of synchronization here. How are people syncing? Why would people use IR rather than just connecting the thing with wires to their computer? Why IR?
TG: I think it�s convenience issues.
HS: Why not USB or something?
TG: It�s�well, if people are syncing with IR, it�s because it comes built into their handheld. The 802.11 requires an extra sled. That requires a little bit of extra money. I think, as opposed to a sync cradle, that�s certainly an option. I think the IR ports are easy to deploy outside of a computer lab.
HS: But you need to put the IR port on the desktop machine or whatever it is you�re syncing with.
TG: You can put them on a desktop machine. You can also, some of them are wireless-enabled and they can sit outside someplace and just communicate back to a central server using any type of wireless communication, 802.11 for instance, and then a student can come up and sync to one of these infrared devices that has gotten communication back to a central server without having the expense of the extra cradle. BK My Sony laptop has an infrared port on it so it�s absolutely simple. It just plops the IPAQ or the Palm down and sync with the Sony without any worry about having to have wires or remembering to bring them or anything like that.
HS: You�re syncing to your laptop?
BK: Yeah.
HS: Do you have a desktop machine, too, Bob?
BK: No, I use only laptops. I have a big desktop Sun but that�s another issue. As far as Mac�s and PC�s, I have one each laptop.
HS: Okay, what about the people who don�t have a desktop or a laptop? You said most of your students do, but are there public syncing stations and how do they work?
TG: We have�Bob?
BK: That�s up to you, Todd. We don�t have anything like that!
TG: I�d have to say that we do provide some limited syncing for students who don�t have a computer at home. Doing the regular syncing, you know, the model of one PDA, one computer, one user is something that you can �t really support in higher education because we have 500 users and let�s say one of our computer labs has 25 computers in there. There isn�t a real good model for personal information syncing on a computer in a lab so that�s something that really hasn�t been addressed by the industry yet and I hope it will be soon. But it�s problematic. There�s some servers that claim to be able to provide this type of syncing but I haven�t really seen it work yet.
BK: I think we should mention that the syncing becomes a particular issue on these devices because that�s how you install software. If I go out and buy some software, be it on the web or be it in the local microcomputer store, I bring it home on a CD. I�ve got to take that CD, put it on another machine and sync to it in order to install the software on the PDA.
TG: Actually, installing applications is something you can do without using the Palm Install Tool, for instance.
BK: I agree with you, but when you get a Pocket PC you need a machine with CD near it to be��
HS: Can you just get it from a friend who has another PDA?
BK: Sure. But you need that machine somewhere in order to, say for example, reinstall the operating system.
JB: Todd, were you going somewhere else with that? Was there another way of getting applications on the handhelds?
TG: Well, we use a little install program. You can just double-click and hit your sync button on your cradle and it will automatically install the application you asked it to, which is something that you can do quite easily. We also have the ability to set up some of our IR stations to simply feed out install files and so someone could just walk up and hold their handheld in front of one of our IR stations and it would install the latest and greatest piece of software we�ve created here.
BK: But these are software that you�ve selected for them to use. I�m speaking more of the person that wants to go out and get their own.
TG: Right. You can, with the install tool used on our desktops, you can install anything you want, any Palm database file, any Palm application file. You can use it to install in the cradle without opening up the Palm desktop and doing your whole syncing to your notebook, syncing to your address book, syncing to your calendar. You can just do an install.
HS: Okay, we have a bunch of questions that have been sort of accumulating. We�ve just sort of been waiting for the right time.
JB: I was kind of wondering when we were going to get back to those, Howard.
HS: Okay, but I fully wanted to cover some of the basics here. A lot of these questions are very particular, but we have one from Robert Brinkley who�s at the Capital College of the Pennsylvania State University. And Robert says, �Can you discuss the three-legged stool issue�ease of use, scalability and security in a college campus environment?��
TG: Ease of use. I think most of these devices, again, are pretty easy to use and having the device in your hand makes it easy for you to turn to a peer and say, �I�ve got a question about this application. Can you show me how you did it?� So I think most of the devices are fairly easy to use. The Palm OS, for instance, is very simple to navigate. As far as scalability is concerned, I think it really depends on the applications you want to provide to your students. Most of what we�ve done besides the game has been an extension of existing resources we have for students we really developed around Internet standards that we�ve got on campus already.
JB: And certainly they�re very affordable, so in terms of being able to scale up to large numbers.
TG: Right, well, I think depending if you choose the right form factor, these can be disposable computers. So, let�s see, security?
HS: We�ll go back to disposable computers.
JB: Right.
HS: You go on to security.
TG: Okay, it really depends on the security you�re talking about. If it�s network security, a lot of the devices, if they�re 802.11.B they support to 802.11.B security standards and so however good or bad those standards are, they�re supported on the handheld. The handheld security of the actual device, you can set up passwords to access most of your applications or your handheld device itself but I think those device securities are again probably not super great. You can certainly crack most of the security on there and the volatility of the memory makes it such that you can easily pull data off that has been deleted, say.. Let�s see, as far as physical security, we haven�t really had a problem with devices walking away. I think it just depends on your campus and how careful the students are with the devices.
HS: So you wouldn�t allow patient records to be put on one of those things?
TG: Currently we do not allow patient records.
HS: What would it take? What would have to happen for you to feel comfortable doing that? I mean, is it possible you�d ever feel comfortable doing that kind of thing?
TG: I certainly think we�re going to get there, Howard, and I think we� ll get there pretty quickly. What would make me feel comfortable, I think, would be just perhaps a biometric into the device, perhaps, and some sort of��
HS: So some kind of thumbprint scanner or something like that.
TG: Thumbprint scanner to turn the device on, perhaps the application itself having 128 bit encryption on the data. Maybe it�s only displayed through a web browser on the handheld and not really stored in resident memory, something like that.
HS: And you think those kind of things are coming soon?
TG: I think they are, yes, I certainly do. There is a company out there already who claims to have built a biometric device for the Palm. I haven�t actually seen one yet, but I believe they�re out there.
HS: Bob, what kind of security issues are you seeing on these out at Ohio State?
BK: Since we don�t have a formal program to introduce them at this point, we�re basically trying to examine the issue, see how we�re going to begin to support these folks as folks appear with them. We kind of approach it as an alternate interface device that our customers, our students�in this case, 7,000 of them�are carrying. And the security issues we would be concerned about would be access to administrative systems, for example, if we start to provide access to student information systems, let a student change their address with one of these things, we�re going to want to see at least as good a security as we would from a campus workstation. That�s one reason that in the Big Ten study, we became a little bit concerned about the providers such as the CPDP providers such as OmniSky or Verizon, etc., because once the information would be secure back at their cell tower, but we couldn�t find ways to keep passwords in that encrypted all the way back to our campus and our applications. The biggest security issue, though, so far is loss of device, I would say. Folks simply losing the device when they have sensitive information sitting on it.
HS: Okay, but if it had a thumbprint scanner on it and the data was encrypted.
BK: Sure.
HS: You�d have a device that would be useful to you.
BK: I don�t see the thumbprint scanner as something we�re going to see in the next short period, the next year or two. And the encryption, it depends on what they use and how they do it. Encryption is one of those things that�s like keys, it is real good at keeping people that don�t really take a lot of work to get in out.
HS: Okay, Robert Brinkley has another question here. It�s really part of his first question, but it�s also kind of an interesting thing. He asks what advice you can give us regarding integration of a PDA into a university backbone. Should we plan for integration into the backbone or should we not?
BK: I would! I expect�and again, the Big Ten folks when we looked at these things, wireless, we expect to see these things using 802.11 cards pretty much as a part of the wireless backbone that we all expect to see taking shape on our campuses. Some of us have gone further than others. University of Wisconsin, for example, has a pretty aggressive program. Here at Ohio State, we have current wireless backbone, just backbone access throughout the Law School but with an 802.11 card in one of these devices, it places a full peer on your backbone, on your Internet.
JB: Well, actually, there�s another question and this links very closely to this, Bob. Steve Cohen from Nova Southeastern says that they are considering installing a wireless system for student use on campus and wants to know how the PDA support issues would impact, what kinds of decisions would be different if you�re planning on incorporating PDA or are there any decisions that are special for PDA�s?
BK: I wouldn�t, in the case of simply installing wireless access on your campus, I don�t think in my opinion there�s anything special you have to do to make it PDA-friendly. You might want to take a look at the resources that the folks will be accessing via the web and make sure that the web pages are PDA friendly if you expect the folks to do real interaction on them. We found, for example, that pages�the best web pages for PDA�s are pages that met ADA compliance standards. Though many of the PDA�s, again, particularly the Pocket PC ones are quite capable of doing full browsing, the Pocket PC comes with a full Internet Explorer. If you�re careful in remembering that your folks on Pocket PC�s have relatively narrow screens, you can give them a pretty good experience and a pretty good interaction on the Pocket PC. You look then at coding some of your web pages so it recognizes the browser and comes back with appropriate��
TG: Just to follow up with Bob, I think that�s true. I think on the Pa lm device you can also get a nice browser interface into a lot of your applications. I don�t think you have to plan much more other than to know that the devices are so easy and quick to turn on that you may�you should probably understand what the capacity will be when you start planning for your network and make sure that you plan to have enough capacity on your access point to support these devices as well.
BK: For example, at EDUCAUSE last week�or this week, I mean, you recall that they had wireless
HS: [inaudible] ago.
BK: --access available in the public areas and I routinely used the IPAQ and I remember seeing Ed Geray using IPAQ with wireless access from the exhibit hall. There were literally dozens of access points in the exhibit hall and then out into the public areas, just browsing the web.
JB: It�s still a capacity and not a technology question or answer, basically.
TG: Right.
BK: I think it was somewhat interesting talking to a vendor and saying, when they would say something about their product, then you could pop right into their website. �You mean this?��
JB: That was good!
HS: I think Judith is trying to break in and make an announcement that might be of a lot of interest to people out there.
JB: Well, actually, there was one other question that I wasn�t sure we had answered and I thought, gee, it would be good if we would. We�ve talked a lot about 802.11.B as a standard and there were two questions, actually. One came from Christie Ross who asked, �Which model PDA supports a wireless 802.11.B card?� Did we answer that, Todd? Bob?
HS: I thought we said they all did.
TG: Well, that�s almost true. I think if you�ve got an older device, like an original Palm, you may not be able to find an accessory for it. But I think most of the ones you�ve bought within the last few years
BK: All currently marketed ones.
TG: Yes.
JB: Okay. And then Ed Geray who was our complementary expert at EDUCAUSE did send us a number of e-mails and we�ll try and post those up on the web, but he made a comment regarding the standard of saying that today 802.11.B is the standard. Then he mentioned that there was possibly in the future some use for 802.11.A. Can either of you comment on that?
BK: There clearly is. 802.11.A gives you considerably better speed, considerably better range and probably tighter, better security encryption potential. It doubtless will be the next coming standard. The question is how quickly, given how much investment there is at this point in 802.11.B equipment. I would expect them to coexist and I would certainly expect both to be available on the handhelds. So at this point, the 802.11.A cards would quite probably be a little bit�eat a little bit more power.
JB: Howard, I was going to then ask you, what is the final question you might have or��
HS: Oh, I was going to suggest that you make the announcement that you were going to make, Judith.
JB: Right now!
HS: About this�yeah, right now! I think we�re close enough to the end.
JB: Are we close enough? All right.
HS: Give people some time for this!
JB: All right, well, then, I guess Howard insists that I do this.
HS: You�re sort of forced into it now, aren�t you?
JB: I guess! He�s going to force me into this. I would like to announce, mention that Palm, Inc., is supporting today�s Tech Talk and as part of kind of the continuing excitement of the EDUCAUSE week has given and provided an M-125 handheld, one of the latest and greatest connectible new handhelds with a package of software as a free giveaway for our Tech Talk participants. If you click on the URL on the website, you can go enter, put your name in a drawing for that which we will then announce at our next Tech Talk. We�ll announce the winner. So more detail as you click through to the website, but do go in and put your name in. And Todd and Bob, we said you couldn�t!
HS: You�ll see the link way over on the left side, in the left margin where the menus are. You�ll see the link over there where I never looked. I was [inaudible] either.
JB: Right, Howard almost missed it, actually.
BK: Ironically�this is Bob�I did win a Palm at EDUCAUSE but I was unable to accept it because the vendor with the drawing is involved in an RFP here on campus.
JB: Well, you already have four or five, Bob.
HS: How many of these things do you need?
JB: It�s great.
HS: Which is not my question here.
TG: You want my professional opinion, though?
HS: There was another question from Ed Geray which I think we should answer and that is, Ed says, �How come we�re not talking about the clamshell PDA�s like the HP Jornada and other things?� He says his experience has been there�s a lot of people that don�t like the pen interface, just jotting something down. They want a keyboard.
BK: I agree. If we move from faculty and students particularly into staff here on campus, we probably have a substantial number of staff using the clamshells and in fact have been using them with wireless cards for some time. I myself started in this mobile thing with an HP 95 which essentially is a precursor to those clamshells and they�re awfully handy, I have to admit.
HS: But they don�t fit in your pocket! Why not just use one of those little keyboards that attaches to a PDA?
TG: I think a lot of people do that, Howard. I think that�s a very, very popular option for some of these devices.
HS: I mean, I saw it all over EDUCAUSE.
BK: Yeah, there were tons of people.
HS: Lots and lots of people had those things and when they left the room, they just folded up two little things and folded them into the two little pockets or threw them in their pocketbook or whatever and went away.
TG: And don�t forget, there�s thumb pad keyboards for a lot of these devices as well, just like a Blackberry pager. They are becoming more popular.
HS: Which leads to another question, and that is, can both of you tell us about some neat accessories for these PDA�s that you know about? Todd? What�s neat as an accessory for these things?
TG: Well, some of the newer Handsprings, you can buy phones for these devices and GPS systems. I think there�s no end of new and cool things. Things pop up every day.
BK: Bar code scanners.
TG: Bar code scanners. We use those in the library quite extensively.
JB: What about, we wanted to talk about the future of what might PDA�s be in the next short term, one, two, three years, five years?
HS: Oh, five years is so long!
JB: Five years is too long, okay.
HS: Probably two years is long term.
JB: Two years. Howard, you want to ask this question?
HS: Yeah, what are these things going to look like a couple years from now?
BK: Smaller, faster, better resolution.
TG: Yeah, I think they�ll be thinner, maybe not�the screens may get a little bit bigger. The resolution will get brighter. I think you�ll see more peripherals integrated into the device itself. You may find that instead of having a phone, you may just have a plug in for a headset and you can use your device as a phone. But really, the device will look, I think, probably a lot like it does right now. The screen will maybe a little bit bigger, the device will be thinner.
HS: How about voice recognition as an input option?
TG: That may come down the line.
HS: So people don�t have to use keyboards or these silly little tapping around��
BK: I think the key there is going to be the ever-increasing CPU speed.
TG: That�s important, that�s very important.
BK: If you get into voice recognition. They do a nice job of handwriting recognition with the current speeds, particularly on the Strongarm CPU used in the Pocket PC line. But voice recognition�s going to take a jump in that speed.
HS: You talk about the screens getting a little bit bigger. It seems like that�s where the real problem is. I mean, you can miniaturize everything but if you miniaturize the screen, you can�t see it. So it seems like somehow we need some kind of either a screen that�s scrollable or foldable or something like that because you want it to be��
TG: Or wearable, right?
HS: Wear it on your arm!
TG: Or as an accessory to your glasses, where you just fold the screen down.
HS: There�d be some advantage to wearing glasses the! Those people who don�t wear glasses would [inaudible].
BK: Could you see it as a heads-up display?
JB: Well, you see, we�re back to the brain implants. Maybe if it�s not a brain implant, it can just be kind of a sticky barrette or something in your hair.
TG: Uhh
BK: A holographic display out in front of your eyes.
JB: Right. I do have, one thing we didn�t talk about at all that I thought was awfully interesting was the degree to which some of the medical textbooks are available in this format. Todd, did you mention that there was one in histology, I believe?
TG: We converted one of our histology textbooks and put it on the Palm and it�s been one of our��
HS: One of the real big sellers! People buying them all over, right?
TG: We don�t actually sell it. We kind of give it to our students, but a few students like it. A few students don�t. I think with my philosophy when creating this type of application is not every piece of technology you create�s going to be as popular as e-mail so just put it up there. What we learned from putting the histology textbook online on the Palm, we�ve been able to put other content online and grow our library of resources so everything we do is sort of a foundation for the future as far as getting information onto the handheld.
HS: Okay, my final question here is universities right now�I mean, everybody�s seeing these things pop up. You see a few Palms and Pocket PC�s here and there, but if a university wants to be proactive in this area, wants to get out in front of the crowd, what should a university be doing, Todd?
TG: I guess I can tell you what we did here at Stanford is we put together a group of faculty, students and staff and we sat down and talked about handheld applications and how we thought it would benefit the school and benefit the students. And then we put together a pilot program and built resources and applications on top of that and I think that�s been a pretty successful model here.
HS: And Bob?
BK: Well, from the instructional point of view, I�d say the important thing to do is make sure that your faculty get the support they need as they begin to look at these things. They�re seeing these things beyond simply their own personal information managers. They�re seeing mentions in the literature, they�re seeing their colleagues using them and you�ve got to make sure that they�ll have the support they need when they look to integrate them into course work on their campus. Second, I think to get ahead of it, you have to start looking at how these are going to interface with your administrative systems, how they�re going to interface with your campus life issues, how you�re going to get things such as directions, student schedules onto them and how you�re going to do that in a secure and an easy manner.
HS: Okay, Judith?
JB: All right, well, listen, thank you both so much. I want to thank also all of our participants for being with us here today. Be sure and do go in and enter that drawing for the M-125. It would be just a real shame if I would have to keep it, right?
HS: By the way, I�m looking at that right now and I see a number of people have entered it with the name ANONYMOUS. This is probably not a good way to win that!
JB: All right, yes, you do have to make certain to put your name on that!
HS: We would really like to have your name. If ANONYMOUS wins, I think Judith gets it!
JB: I think I�m changing my name as we speak! Thank you, I put that in there hoping the directions would be there. But yes, do go back and check. You can all check your postings so you can see if it�s you that Howard is talking to.
HS: There�s a few of them!
JB: Okay. Be sure also to block off your Thursday two weeks from today on November 15th when we welcome Malcolm Brown from Dartmouth college as the expert and he is going to talk about and answer questions about The Smart Classroom. Since we put that up as the title, someone has asked me a number of times, they say, �Well, what do we mean by a smart classroom?��
HS: I think I asked you that, too, Judith.
JB: Did you? Was it you as well? Well, there you go! So I don�t know, that�s what we�re going to talk about on November 15th. You will want to download and print the DO NOT DISTURB sign if anybody has disturbed you. We haven�t figured out how to turn off the phone yet. That�s the next thing. And also the MP3 formats are coming. Many thanks to the CREN member institutions and to our sponsor Palm for today. Be sure and�I was going to repeat myself there, but we won�t do that! Many thanks to our Tech Talk experts, Bob Kalal and Todd Grappone, to technology anchor, Howard Strauss; to Terry Calhoun, Tech Talk web guru; to Jason Russell, Bonnie Boyles and the support team at Merit Network; to Susie Berneis, our audio file transcriber and finally, a thanks to all of you for being here. You were here because it�s time. Bye, Bob, Todd. Thanks all, and Howard, thanks for the great week here with our dual PDA sessions.
HS: It�s all been a great deal of fun. Thank you all.
JB: Great, take care, all.
HS: Bye-bye.
TG: Thanks.
JB: Bye.
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