Personal Information Managers, or PIMs, as they are often refered to in the acronym filled tech world, have revolutionized the way many of us keep track of critical, and perhaps less than critical, information which helps make each of worlds spin round in an orderly fashion. I know any number of individuals who painstakingly add contacts, calendar events, to do lists and more into their Palm Pilot, Pocket PC, or other handheld device using the supplied stylus. Many of these individuals have mastered the grafitti handwriting system (which actually resembles the kind of stylized printing taught by patient kindergarten teachers in decades past), others peck feverishly using the virtual keyboards which fill the bottom third of most PIMs on command.

As an aside, I have yet to meet anyone who utilizes Microsoft’s Pocket PC Transcriber option on a routine basis. This “too good to be true” manifestation of software engineering is supposed to be able to reliably interpret your cursive writing, scrawled numbers, inspired punctuation, and convert it into accurate machine readable text. Subjecting the Transcriber to my scrawl, which my teenage daughter laughs at when I attempt to write her even a short handwritten note, is an unfair yardstick on which to judge the software’s ability. Still, putting myself and all the doctors and lawyers I know aside for a moment, I don’t know of anyone reliably using this input method. Ditto for Microsoft’s Letter Recognizer. This input method makes less boastful claims and in turn is less useful than either the (relatively) easy to learn Grafitti system which I find fast and intuitive, or even the too small for comfort virtual keyboard alternative.

Inputting data is the key to making these devices useful and therefore one of the first things a proud new owner of a Palm or Pocket PC needs to get comfortable with. Setting aside the poor ergonomic design of many styli we are forced to endure (do the engineers who design these devices actually use these things in the field?), there are two key points recent visits to clients have brought to the forefront once again. Synching with a desktop can save worlds of time and whether you synch and rely on your desktop as your “backup” or not, you better have a backup!!!

For almost everyone, adding information is faster using your desktop tools-- full size keyboard, mouse, comfortable CRT or LCD screen-- then punching away on your PIM’s limited screen using that stylus myself and others rave about. Sure, you can update the occassional email address or ‘phone number for that business or social acquaintance you run into on the fly, but for most, adding a half dozen new contacts directly into a Palm or Pocket PC is a kind of technological water torture. These handheld gadgets were never designed as standalone repositories for your most crucial information! If you have the patience to input meaningful, often business or “life” changing information, into one of these marvels, you will surely be devestated on the day when the data dies. And that day will come. The list of ways to lose your data, any data, but key information which “lives” on your PDA and only your PDA are nearly too numerous and painful to discuss. You can lose the device itself (over the years I admit to leaving a PIM in the front of an airline seat pocket; having another fall out of a jacket pocket while in a cab; yet another was stolen out of my grocery cart when I walked down an aisle for thirty seconds to grab some item from a shelf ten feet away). In two of the three instances, good human nature and the promise of an award for safe return on the units’ splash screens got my precious PDA back to me. In the third instance, the Palm Pilot probably got trashed, but I know the credit card in the unit’s pocket got a BIG WORKOUT before the issuing bank got the all points bulletin to the proper WalMarts and K-Marts in the area.

But there are many, many, more ways for tragedy to strike,

Palm and Pocket PC devices have built in software allowing you to backup your data to memory cards which can be removed and stored for safe keeping. (Other backup options may also be available depending on the specific model and software installed.) This option provides a a decent snapshot of your data at a given point in time. If you rely on this approach, be sure to update your backup periodically (weekly or more often if you are constantly adding important information) and test by restoring your information before it becomes critical!

Recently, I visited a new client who had been struggling mightily with Act! 2005. After several hours of troubleshooting, it became apparent that the root of his problem stemmed from a corrupt, or inappropriate, product update installation. The install had damaged the system’s SQL Database which acts as the software’s data storehouse. Two painstaking manual uninstalls/reinstalls of the software resolved the SQL issue but my client’s data was still inaccessable. After attempting to repair the database using a number of utilities and following FAQ sheets found in the Act! KnowledgeBase, I had to give my client the bad news that his Act! database was unrecoverable.

I asked, already knowing and dreading the response, if a backup existed. He told me he had tried using Act’s built in backup utility but couldn’t access that file (and neither could I). After some discussion, he told me that most of his key contact information was still on his Palm. Since Act! can synch with portable devices, I told him synching into a new Act database should get him back to a productive situation. (I didn’t ask if he had a backup of his Palm data and in retrospect wish that I had.) Act happily created a new database and established a connection with my client’s Palm device. However, the two way synchronization option wasn’t available.  (Available help files implied that this is “normal” for a first time synch with a new database.) The conduit connected and wiped the Palm’s database clean!!! One step forward; two steps back! There are at least two morals to this tale. You can never have enough backups and when attempting to synchronize critical data for the first time be sure to have multiple, verified, good copies of the data! I will say that once synchronization has been sucessfully established, the process is usually very straightforward (particularly with recent versions of Microsoft’s Activesynch which ships with Pocket PC devices.

I will leave discussion of some effective, inexpensive, backup strategies to a future article. Now, for those of you patient enough to have read this far, let me explain today’s headline. This time of year I look forward to the official beginning of NFL Pro Football. I try following two teams closely, my local Tennessee Titans and The Denver Broncos. Wouldn’t it be nice to have the entire season of game schedule on my Outlook calendar and Pocket PC? You bet! The idea of typing in all of these “important dates” had little appeal. Off to the internet. It took some digging but this cool site provides links to holidays and sports schedules of all kinds. Not just NFL! These aren’t just schedules, these are files which import directly into your calendar (and with a quick synch your trusty PDA). Very cool and highly recommended.