Project PDA

Any PDA meets some basic functions of electronic calendar, which become much more evident in the PDA based on Palm OS. These are generally the tasks of scrap, notebook, calendar, calculator and addresses and telephone numbers. Such a basic package of software is traditionally known by the name of PIM (Personal Information Manager).

As an information management tool, a PIM's purpose is to facilitate the recording, tracking, and management of certain types of "personal information".It combines the functions of a calendar, appointment book/scheduler, to-do list, address book/phone directory (and sometimes dialer), notebook, and database for keeping track of contacts.

The Palm's Address program stores contact information, keyed by any of several user-definable categories. Entries are displayed and sorted in last name, first name order (this can be changed only to Company, Last Name order). There are five slots for phone or e-mail, each of which may be designated Work, Home, Fax, Other, E-mail, Main, Pager or Mobile (the slot designations cannot be changed).

Starting with the OS version 5.2.1 on Tungsten T3 and Tungsten E a customized version of this application was released, not developed by PalmSource, but by PalmOne, called Contacts.

All PDAs come with some kind of personal information management (PIM) software that typically handles the following tasks to keep you organized:

• Personal notes/journal
• Address books
• Lists (including task lists)
• Significant calendar dates: Birthdays, Anniversaries, Appointments
• Email, instant message archives
• Fax communications, voicemail
• Project management features
• RSS/Atom feeds
  

PIMs have two main advantages over pen and paper alternatives for recording personal and business information; PIMs allow users to keep different types of data all in one place and PIMs allow users to access such data more easily.

For instance, if you remember only part of a record, such as part of a business's name, it's a lot easier to find the record you're looking for on a PIM, using the search function, than to find it by flipping through a directory. PIMs also offer record integration; if you enter data into Outlook (a popular PIM) as a contact, you can easily access the information when you're composing an email.

Some PIM software products are capable of synchronizing data with another PIM over a computer network (including mobile ad-hoc networks, or MANETs). This feature usually does not allow for continuous, concurrent data updates, but rather enables point-in-time updating between different computers, including desktop computers, laptop computers, and personal digital assistants.

MotionApps' mDayscape is a Personal Information Manager developed natively and exclusively for the Foleo mobile companion. The application is simple and easy to use with Foleo's rich user interface. mDayscape includes contacts, calendar and tasks, three powerful applications tightly integrated with each other, the Palm Foleo and the Treo smartphone.

Popular PIM is Ecco because of its one-pane outliner, its to-do lists ("notepad") that supports child items (while just about all other PIMs only support one-level to-do lists, making it impossible to create a project and divide it into sub-tasks), its support for adding attributes ("folders") to an item (eg. add a Status attribute to an item in a to-do list, and mark this item as Urgent), and its support for synching with a Palm PDA. Lotus Organizer is also nice, but is also deadware and offers no outliner.