Pocket Profiles

In October, 2003 I changed careers and moved into the real estate field. I had been using a Palm Pilot for the last six years and was looking for an excuse to upgrade to the more robust Pocket PC platform. This career move was just the reason I needed. After much research I settled on the iPAQ h1945. I love its small size and quick speed, and the full color screen still blows me away.

Like many people switching over from the Palm, I didn’t like the Today screen arrangement for launching applications. I hate having to scroll down through a long list of Start menu programs to find the application I want. I immediately began looking for a program that would add a more functional user interface to the h1945. Pocket Launcher from Conduits Technologies (http://www.conduits.com) fit the bill perfectly (Fig. 1). It displays multiple pages of application launch icons. I can customize the icons, the groupings and even the background picture to my liking.

Fig. 1: Pocket Launcher provides an enhanced user-interface for the Pocket PC.

Alternate personal information manager

Like many sales and service jobs, in real estate you live and die by your ability to collect and access client information. I use Microsoft Outlook on my desktop PC to help me with this and was looking forward to using the Pocket PC’s Contacts and Calendar applications. However, after only a few days I realized that I needed something more powerful. Researching alternatives, I discovered Pocket Informant (http://www.pocketinformant.com), a program that won Pocket PC magazine’s “Best Productivity Software” award for 2003. I downloaded and installed the free demo version, tested it, and was hooked. This program replaces Calendar, Contacts, and Tasks with a single integrated application that is more powerful and easier to use, and its integration with ActiveSync is flawless.

The convenient way the wild card “find” filters the contacts list is worth the price of the program by itself. I simple enter the first few letters of the first, last or business name and Pocket Informant quickly narrows down the list. Pocket Informant also lets you “link” to virtually any calendar item, task or other program. For example, if I’m looking at a “Task” that says “Call Mr Jones”, I can set a link to Mr Jones’ contact information. One click and I can immediately see his phone number. This excellent time saver allows you to ‘jump’ between task, calendar and contact information (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2: Grouping tasks by category helps keep me organized.

Along with the enhanced calendar and contacts functions, Pocket Informant allows for some unique grouping and sub-grouping of tasks. This was very important to me, as I have incorporated some productivity ideas from David Allen’s book Getting Things Done (http://www.davidco.com). David’s ideas on improving personal and organizational productivity have changed the way I handle task categories. For example, all the projects I do at the office go under the Category “Projects—Office.” These larger tasks get broken down into “next action items” and placed in their appropriate category (e.g., calls, errands, computer, etc.). Pocket Informant was flexible enough so I could configure it to match the way I handle task categories on my desktop PC (Fig 3).

Fig. 3: Link to any calendar item or task from within Pocket Informant.

Pocket Excel comes in handy