HP Sees the Future and the Future is PDA Phones

HP: Pen-based PDA market on death bed

HP sees the future - and the future in convergent PDA Phones.

Japan Comes Up With Intelligent Manhole System

I never thought of a manhole cover in terms of their intelligence?

RFID Times: Japan Comes Up With Intelligent Manhole System

Another cool application for RFIDs and handheld PDAs.

Enterprise Instant Messaging for Windows Mobile 5.0 PDAs

I read this article and can think of many uses for enterprise quality encrypted instant messaging on Pocket PC phones.

Mobility Site: WebMessenger Launches Enterprise Instant Messaging for Windows Mobile 5.0 PDAs

The ability to IM a field worker to inform them to synchronize their mobile application is a very good example - "Charlie - you have a new work order!" Charlie pushes the synchronize button on his PDA and downloads the new work order.

Another example - "Charlie, click here for a map to your next job"

MobileDataforce, Home Healthcare & XV6700

My consulting team received this new XV6700 Pocket PC Phone this week from a customer. Our customer (in home healthcare) selected it to run our PointSync software on. They are using our PointSync software and a customized application we developed to monitor, remotely, the health condition and medicine that their 500 patients are using.

The bottom-line, my team loves this Pocket PC phone. It slides shut into a very comfortable phone, and the keyboard is very usable. The landscape screen gives you very readable emails and other data.

This particular phone is sold by both Sprint and Verizon.

MobileDataforce is being engaged on more and more of these home healthcare related projects.

Automated Business Processes on Handheld PDAs

A long time friend of mine, Bryan Larkin, was fond of saying that electronic data collection forms on handheld PDAs are much more powerful than simply digital versions of paper forms. When an end user creates a PDA data collection form using our Intercue Mobility Suite, they can control the quality of the data and the business process that the form represents. Let me provide some examples:

• Form 1 has a question with 3 possible answers (a,b,c). If you answer the question with "a", the electronic form on the PDA jumps you to another page to answer additional questions related to answer "a". The form is now customized to ask only questions related to your previous answers.
• If a question asked for a unit of measurement in meters, and you answer with a "yes", it can pop-up a message saying - "Invalid answer please use numeric answers"
• If you select a data collection form called "Phase 1 Site Assessment" the form can be configured to walk the user through each data collection process in the order desired. For example - first enter data from a "Nuclear Density Compaction Test", second collect soil samples, package and document them in a zip lock bag with a printed client label, third collect a water sample, place in a bottle with the client's label attached.......

The opportunities to creatively build work flows and business processes into electronic data collection forms on handheld PDAs are powerful and endless. The immediate values are improved quality assurance, process standardization, better data, controlled processes and normalized procedures.