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Using your PalmPilot
ONE OF THE HOTTEST NEW GADGETS these days, is the small, hand-held computer,
affectionately referred to by its owners as the Palm, or the Pilot. Though on the market only a few years, the Palm has gone through several incarnations.
It began with the Pilot, then the PalmPilot, and the latest is the Palm III™,
by 3Com® Corporation.
Among the reasons for its popularity are its size, portability, and the myriad
applications and peripherals available to complement the built-ins. Besides
the usual things: date book, phone book, calculator, notepad, games, and
expense sheets, you will find some that are a bit out of the ordinary, and
some that are actually geared for the Jewish market.
And the beauty of most of
these other applications is that they are available on the ‘Net, many as
freeware (you don’t have to pay a cent), shareware (you have to pay, but it’s
nominal), or regular software that you can download after charging it to your
credit card. No lines in the stores, no waiting for an out-of-stock item to be
replaced.
While surfing the ‘Net shortly after inaugurating my new Palm III, I happened
on a site that surprised me. Browsing through the sites listed at
PalmPilot Gear H.Q.,
I saw a listing for
PilotYid. Hmm, sez I, it’s either
something offensive that snuck in there, or something Jewish for the Palm. I
clicked on the hyperlink.
What I found was an interesting compilation of Jewish software for "the Jewish
Piloteer," as the site welcomes you. Among the applications available are
Jewish calendars to overwrite the datebook in the Palm, the weekly Torah
reading, software that allows you to track the moon phases for Rosh Chodesh,
Sabbath candle lighting times, and even the full Daf Yomi cycle. You can remember
anniversaries of Hebrew dates, and so keep track of yahrzeits, for example,
and have all the Jewish holidays literally at your fingertips. Ok, in your
palm, then.
About two years ago, Ari purchased his own Pilot and watched "as all sorts of
software trickled out." Shortly thereafter, a Jewish calendar program called
Tamar (which translates to Date Palm in Hebrew...clever, huh?) was introduced.
According to Ari, "That’s when I realized that there must be other Jewish
Pilot users out there. Then, very slowly, I saw that other Jewish software was
coming out for the Pilot."
A few months later, he had the idea to somehow get the Birchat Hamazon (Grace after Meals) and
Tefillat HaDerech (which he always forgets to bring with him when he travels)
into his Pilot. After all, his Pilot was always with him. After completing
that task, he put both of the files that he had created for the prayers up on
one of the PalmPilot websites so that other people could download and use
them.
The site officially debuted on the web on Nov. 2, and has had over 4,000 visitors to date. The site includes a mailing list you can join, not only to be alerted when new software is added, but also to put
you in touch with other Jewish Palm users around the world. Many different
texts are available, and Hebrew software is also listed. There are links to
other items of Jewish interest, and links to other things you can use for your
Palm that are not necessarily Jewish, but help you to use the Jewish software,
such as viewers.
Ari can be reached by clicking here. He welcomes comments from users who have visited his site.
to fly heavenward
By Marlene Heller
Ari Engel, a 21-year-old Yeshiva University junior, from Brooklyn, created the site.
While he is majoring in – what else? – computer science, he is also the
webmaster for the BankBoston Foreign Exchange Department. ("And I’m always
looking for more work," he said.)
"I was actually quite surprised to see how may people were downloading them,"
he said. "The number was much higher than I thought it would be, and I was
getting ‘thank you’ e-mails from Jewish people all over the globe." That’s
when he realized that there are many Jewish Pilot users in the world. "So I
thought that, even though there are already many Pilot software archives on
the world wide web, it would be an interesting project and a learning
experience if I could make things easier for these Jewish Piloteers by
collecting any software that could be useful to them, at one convenient
website."
New JWR contributor Marlene Heller is editor of The Jewish Star, published 22 times yearly by the Jewish Federation of Greater Middlesex County. You may contact the publication for subscription information by clicking here.
