Knock and You Shall Enter
So what's the story behind PalmPod?
The tale began not so long ago when I bought my first Apple iPod. On the third day after having made this purchase, I woke up (standing in front of my dresser) to the sound of a large crash. It seems I was trying to do something with my Palm Vx (yes, apparently while sleeping), at which point I dropped the device on the floor, shattering the screen and waking myself up, all at the same time.
Sort of in the lurch from this episode (I depend on my Palm Pilot for contacts, appointments, and everything else I do), I needed a way to access my "data" whilst being mobile.
I quickly remembered that the iPod has a calendar, todo list, contact repository, etc., and I figured that there must be some Windows software around to sync a Palm Pilot with an iPod. And, in fact, there was.
The only software I could find was a tool called Palm2iPod, written several years ago by a then college student. Palm2iPod works well enough, although it only exports calendars and contacts, and you can't decide which category of item you want exported from your Palm. It basically offers an "all or nothing" approach, which just didn't work for me. I needed more customization, and I needed to be able to see my todos and memos.
Thus, out of these sappenings/realizations, PalmPod arose. First and foremost, it alleviated the pain, confusion and disorientation that had come from not having a functional handheld device to carry around. Now I have all my contacts, calendars, todos, and the rest in a portable fashion again via my iPod. Plus, with PalmPod, I can be selective about what I export to my iPod. With PalmPod, I can decide whether or not to export sensitive or otherwise Private Palm Desktop information (Only recently has the iPod gained any sort of security mechanism in the form of the iPod screen locker. However, most iPods still don't have this feature yet, and even if they did, it's kind of a pain to always remember to enable the screen lock.) In the end, PalmPod has lots of features that other existing products simply don't offer.
Overall, PalmPod was easy to design; quick to implement; and is a great, simple product to get Sappenin off the ground.
And that, my friends, is the brief (condensed) history of PalmPod.