Holding the Future In Your Palm: We're Getting Closer
By Richard A. Shaffer

(FORTUNE Magazine) – I'm not a geek, although I sometimes go around disguised as one. I typically carry three radios: a pager, a cell phone, and a wireless personal digital assistant. I also subscribe to a voice-controlled telephone routing service, and there's a notebook computer in my briefcase. The reason isn't that I have a weakness for the latest in high technology (although I do) but that no one device or service quite meets my needs. I can, however, report progress.

As a follower of emerging companies, I've divided my life into three parts. I spend half my time in Silicon Valley, half in Silicon Alley, and what seems like another half on planes going from one to the other. So I'm a fan of anything that promises to ease the lot of the road warrior. I've been toting one sort of mobile digital device or another for nearly 20 years--from the first practical notebook computer, the Tandy Model 100 of the early 1980s, to today's small, sleek personal digital appliances, or PDAs, sold by Palm Computer and others. At last, I believe, the PDAs are about to become indispensable companions for the ordinary business traveler. As evidence, I offer this one-person market survey.

My cell phone--Motorola's latest multi-network digital StarTAC--can act as a pager, but its act isn't very convincing. Its screen will display short messages, which can be sent from a computer or even dictated by a caller. However, inside such everyday places as elevators, parking garages, or exhibition halls, the radio signals on which the phone relies don't penetrate as well as the radio signals for pagers, so I can't depend on cellular messaging.

In fact, I can't even depend on the cell phone for ordinary service. When I most need the phone, I am usually near other cellular habitues who overload the airwaves. As a result, my fancy telephone routing service, Wildfire, which in principle can put a call through to me anywhere on the planet, often fails and instead pages me with the caller's phone number.

And yet I'm encouraged. Not because communications are faultless, but because the shortcomings are fewer these days and offset by the overall convenience. Imperfect as it is, my cell phone, for example, is so small and light, and its batteries so long-lasting, that I'm unconscious of it unless it rings. Soon the business traveler will regard personal digital assistants in the same way.

I currently own two PDAs--the slim Palm Vx and the wireless Palm VII--and alternate between the two because I'm not wholly satisfied with either. What I really want is the over-the-air communications ability of the Palm VII in a package no larger than the Palm Vx. And yet the Palm VII is about a tenth of the size and weight of my first wireless PDA--a calculator-like 95LX computer from HP outfitted with a brick of a radio modem--which was state of the art a mere eight years ago.

Over the same period, the PDAs themselves have become smaller, of course, and more powerful. For example, my Palm VII, through which I can get up-to-the-minute wireless access to the thousands of domestic and international flights listed in the Official Airlines Guide, is half the size of the printed North American OAG and weighs less.

What impresses me most, however, is the emergence of software that extends the usefulness of the devices well beyond the initial applications. Palm's original product, the Pilot, owed its success to its simplicity. While other pioneering PDAs, such as Apple's Newton Message Pad, did many tasks, the Pilot was designed to do only what the technology of its day could do well: keep lists of appointments, contacts, and other personal information. Now, with more than 29,000 independent developers of programs for the Palm and other devices that use the same operating system, it's become much more than an organizer.

Consider the software in my Palms. To organize the several online accounts to which I need access on the road and to generate passwords, I use Mobile Account Manager (www.mobilegeneration.com) and PassPhrase (www.quartus.net). To log my phone calls, meetings, voice mail, and the like when away from my desk, I rely on PocketJournal (www.chapura.com), which synchronizes with Microsoft's Outlook, the daily agenda and communications program I use in the office. AirMiles (www.handshigh.com) helps track my frequent-flier programs. My alarm clock on the road is Clock III (www.lwsd.com). Planning a trip is easy with Gulliver (www.landware.com), and when it's over, thanks to ExpensePlus (www.walletware. com), I come close to turning in my expense accounts on time.

Before I drive off on a trip, I can download directions from Door-to-Door (www.travroute.com), Yahoo (www.maps. yahoo.com), or any of several other Internet sites. Should I get lost, I can consult a Quo Vadis digital map (www.marcosoft. com) stored in my Palm. Quo Vadis offers free maps not only of the usual tourist and business destinations such as San Francisco and Chicago, but also of hundreds of smaller places like Leawood, Kan., and Bartlesville, Okla. I can find my approximate whereabouts wirelessly with SnakeLocation (www.snakefeet.com) and get further directions from MapQuest (www.mapquest.com).

Zagat's for the Palm will soon be available (www.zagat.com) to guide your eating in major cities, and TealPoint Software (www.tealpoint.com) offers restaurant reviews for smaller cities and towns. For cities from Amsterdam to Vienna, Aramis Communications (www.aramis-inc.com) publishes 55 electronic guidebooks.

And there is much more out there for the traveler with a PDA: currency converters, maps for the world's subways, schedules for Amtrak's Metroliner and the Japanese bullet trains, wireless language translators--with more on the way.

Now, if only the PDA publishers would come up with a sure cure for jet lag.

RICHARD A. SHAFFER is founder of Technologic Partners, an information company focused on emerging technology. Except as noted, Shaffer has no financial interest in the companies mentioned. For an expanded version of Watch This Space, visit www.tpsite.com/tp/fortune. Please send any comments to shaffer@technologicp.com.