Dr. CE: Personalizing your PC Companion

On September 28th, a small startup software company in Seattle released a new Windows CE application that may change the way you use your PC Companion. Interestingly enough, it will do this whether or not you purchase a copy.

Lately, there's been a very strong push to get Windows CE devices to be a part of our personal lives as well as our business lives.

For instance, even from the beginning, Microsoft's Windows CE Entertainment Pack was an entertaining, inexpensive way for us to do something with our CE devices when we weren't using them for their "serious" business purpose. Even now, Microsoft is offering a free "minesweeper" sample game to entice you to buy the whole set. (Incidentally, the Handheld PC Magazine Buyer's Guide 2000 now lists 115 game software titles, up from 14 in 1998.)

And we're starting to see some popular action games make the transition to CE. For example, several people are now working on Windows CE versions of the popular PC game "Doom." I've seen a few of the Palm-size PC "Dooms" and impressive does not begin to describe them.

At the Windows CE Developers' Conference last June, one of the most highly attended and talked about sessions was on game development for Windows CE. Microsoft even released a free game development "sprite engine," and some sample code for an "asteroids" game so that anxious developers could get started with creating their own games.

But perhaps more than any of these examples, Siscosoft's new Golfwits application demonstrates the real potential of turning the PC Companion into a very personal digital assistant.

The ultimate golf software package

Golfwits™ (www.golfwits.com/main. html) turns a Palm-size PC into a "smart-scorekeeper" for professional or amateur golfers. You can use Golfwits to create topographical maps of your favorite courses. Then, as you play your next game, you can pull your Palm-size PC out and enter information about how your game is going. (Golfwits was developed with the Compaq Aero 2100, and its outdoor-optimized display in mind.) Golfwits records your score for each hole, your technique, the type of club you used and so on. You can even make audio "notes" to yourself about each hole, so that you remember the challenges the next time you're on the course. Golfwits tracks the kind of information you need to analyze your last game and plan for the next one.

The next version of Golfwits will be even smarter, more like a good caddie than a scorekeeper. As you're playing and entering information, Golfwits will "learn" about your technique and how you're doing on certain holes. It will use this information to begin recommending clubs for you. While a percentage of PC Companion users are also golfers, the real importance of Golfwits in not golf, but the trend it represents. That is, the development of "smart" programs that not only track and organize information that is personally important to you, but also analyze and give advice about that information.