It was fun while it lasted and I hope you enjoyed it.

If you vist any of the posts in the forums, you'll see that there's an issue with each post. Instead of extending the entire width of the available screen, it's only the width of the user information. Needless to say, it looks funny and not the way I intended the site to look. So I've been digging into the code trying to find out what's causing this issue, but for the life of me I can't find it.

There's so much that I could be working on, but this little "bug" is really getting the better of me and I have yet to be able to find a solution. VERY frustrating. I guess I'll go sleep on it and see if a fresh pair of eyes can spot the error. :|

We have all the sections we had in the old design, PLUS new sections as well. I still have a good deal of tweaking to get everything 100% complete, but I have to say that I'm very happy with where we are right now.

As if that wasn't enough, the Leadership Council has been going pedal to the metal as well. There are new members to the Council and a lot of new projects in the works and we haven't even had our Annual Brainstorming Summit yet. :O

I'm just hoping this new energy keeps up, because it can only mean bigger and better things for NPUG in the future. I think this old dog still has some hunt left in her. :P

Thinking about why it's taken me so long to get to this point, I've come to two conclusions. 1. My head is in the right place and 2. I'm more experienced at XHTML and CSS than when I started. My chops are much more honed than when I started and it's allowed me to fix things faster and strip out non-essential code pretty quickly.

What I'm most excited about with the work I was able to do today is the home page. I think it looks 100 times better and I've been dying to get the new design applied. I just couldn't have done it any sooner, because it relies on some big changes with the format of the meetings, news, calendar and forum include. Just a pile of things that I had to get through before I could change the front page.

Speaking of things I had to get through, I had a hell of a time with the navigation. As you may recall my good buddy Dan Westman created an application for me to build the navigation. It's a combination of XML and PHP and it does an amazing job at handling all the various states of the navigational elements. Unfortunately, it's a 0.1 release, so it has some issues.

For example, it doesn't remember past work and it doesn't allow you to fiddle with the order of things once they're entered. Since it's been so long since I worked with the navigation, I had to completely re-enter the information and that was t e d i o u s as hell. Mind you, I'm not complaining. Dan was an absolute angel and I wouldn't have been able to do the navigation with out him. My point is simply that it ate up a good chunk of time. At least 2 hours straight, non-stop.

I'm exhausted and now that it's after 1am, I'm definitely ready for bed, but I know that I'll go to sleep with a smile on my face because I was able to get so much work done. Man does that feel good!

Well, I'm sorry I didn't do a better job during the conference and I'm sorry I've stayed away from this blog far too long. Alas, there's no sense crying over split milk. I've got enough woulda, shoulda, coulda's too last a lifetime and there's too much to do to dwell on the past.

So What's Been Going On?
Well, the group celebrated it's 6th anniversary back in October. November was our last meeting at FirstData Systems. My Treo 600 bricked on me. My Zodiac almost died on me after leaving it out in the cold overnight, but it survived. We're working on finding a new home, but in the meantime I think we finally lined up a place to meet this Saturday (I'll know more tomorrow) and there's a new Leadership Council on board for 2006. *Whew*

I want to hold a Leadership Council Summit Meeting in January, so I'm finally getting around to getting my list of tasks done. The list is as long as my arm and some items are close to two years old, but I'm finally getting them done. For example, I just finished revising the CSS file for the site and I've cleaned up all the past web work that was converted to the "new" design. I'm at the same place I was 6 months ago, but now everything is tidy and 100% complete, so that gives me motivation to get the rest done. If you'd like to see my list thus far, you can view it at this link. Please bear it mind that this is a "living document", so it will change as items are added, completed, etc. As of this post, I'm not done making my list just yet, but you can get a small taste anyway. :)

My focus tomorrow will be on the meeting section and the main page. They go hand-in-hand and it'd be nice to finally get those sections converted. Once those two sections are done, the only thing left will be the forums. Who would have thought it would take me THIS LONG to get it all done? Well, at least I'm making some progress and I plan on forging ahead!

There's been so much that I have wanted to write about and simply haven't had time to either finish the entry, or collect my thoughts for that manner, so I apologize if the last few posts have felt a bit "shotgunned", but you're getting this stuff as soon as I finish the spell check. :) So over the next few posts, I'll try and put them more into sequence to how they happened so that it's a little easier to understand how all the events come together.

Thanks for you patience!

Monday's show was sort of the prequel to the whole DevCon and really the kick off to the whole week of broadcasts. Our first guest was Larry Berkin with PalmSource, whose in charge of the entire DevCon. I forget his official title at the moment, but he's the guy who isn't getting any sleep until late Thursday when the conference is over. :)

Larry gave us an overview of what to expect throughout the week and touched on some of the high points to look forward to, such as the Palm OS User Group Meeting, as well as the keynotes and fun stuff like the Virtual Sheep Shearing contest. Larry was the perfect guest for the kickoff and he really set the tone - aka super excitement - for the rest of the conference.

Also on the show was Kenny West. He's the creator and founder of PalmGear, which is the Amazon.com of the Palm OS Community. He reminded me on-the-air, but Kenny and I go W A Y back to I think 1997 when I first got into Palm OS. In the interview we talk about how he got started and how he went from managing a CompuServe mailing list to running the largest mobile software portal in the world. Hard to believe how far not only Palm, but the community as a whole has come over the last 9 years.

If you'd like to listen to the show, simply browse to this link and download it from there. I didn't know that PalmSource was doing this, but they've even created a special PodCast RSS feed and you can learn all the details about it at the link above. This is really cool, because with this feed, you'll be able to automatically get all the PodCasts from all of our broadcasts. Brilliant move PalmSource, thank you!

Today was also the day that we did the mid-day broadcasts. I didn't know exactly how they worked, but quickly picked up the concept as we went along. During the day from 1:00pm till 4:00pm, we did interviews that were streamed directly to the web. The shows were not part of the usual AM nationwide broadcast. This was cool because it meant that we didn't have commercial breaks and our times were a little bit more flexible so if we needed to push something back 5 minutes, it was no problem to do so.

Here's a run down of who we interviewed and I'll try and make them links to the actual audio content once those become available.
   » John Tanner and Ben Earle of ClearSync (remember WeSync?) [link]
   » Ed Colligan, President & CEO pa1m0ne [link]
   » Stewart Dewar, Pimlico Software (aka DateBk5) [link]
   » David Canfield of TraxItAll [link]
   » Foy Sperring of Audible.com [link]
   » Ewan Spence, Managing Editor for All About Palm [link]
   » Jennifer Shelamer of SnapperMail [link]

As if that wasn't enough, we still had the regular live broadcast at 5PM PST! Talk about a jam packed day. We split the show into two 30-minute segments, which allowed us to interview two more guests. This show was the regular format, so it was live and broadcast nationwide via AM and a couple of FM networks. I forget the exact number of affiliates, but I think I hear John say the number was something like 89. Kind a daunting when you think about it.

We'd been plugging along all-day, so you'd think the live show would be a piece of cake, but 15 minutes before the start of the show the phone line that we use to connect up with the studio in Las Vegas went out. That sent everyone running to find a solution to the problem. I was thankful that I don't know anything about the technical side of how the show is broadcast, so I was able to just sit back and watch the fireworks. :)

About 2 minutes before the start of the show, the land line came back to life and we were live. Whew. Without missing a beat, John introduced the show and everything went like clockwork after that.

Our first guest was Mark Bercow, Sr. Vice-President of Business Development for pa1m0ne and Jim Christensen who is the Director of Public Relations for pa1m0ne. Mark had been with Palm, Inc. from 1997 to 2000 and as of two months ago was back, so he was with Palm from the beginning and as he put it, "knows where all the bodies are buried." ;) He was instrumental in the deal to bring the Palm name back under what is now known as pa1m0ne and it was great to get the skinny directly from the horse's mouth. Jim has been on the show before and you can tell that he's good at what he does. He made sure that we stayed on point and didn't just hype, hype, hype, which is a nice change. Sure marketing is all rah rah, but to have the knowledge to back it up is rare.

In the second half, we had my good friend, Chris Dunphy of PalmSource. He is the key guy behind the new PalmSource Installer program and walked us through the paces of exactly what this new installer will do. I have to say that I'm THRILLED to see this come to the market and I can think of no one better to do it than PalmSource.

So that was day one of the Computer Outlook radio broadcasts. A full day for sure. Tomorrow we have another full day planned, but due to meetings scheduled with the Palm OS User Council, I'm afraid I'm going to have to miss many of the early afternoon shows. :( I'll still trying to get all the interviews booked and I'll try and keep you updated as to what shows were done, etc.

08:00AM - 09:00AM - Breakfast & Networking
09:00AM - 11:00AM - Keynote: Simply Wireless, David Nagel
11:00AM - 11:30AM - Networking & Scheduling
11:30AM - 12:30PM - Palm OS User Council
12:30PM - 01:00PM - pa1m0ne & Tapwave Store. :P
01:00PM - 01:30PM - Computer Outlook - John Tanner, ClearSync.
01:30PM - 02:00PM - Computer Outlook - Stewart Dewar, Pimlico Software
02:00PM - 02:30PM - Palm OS User Council
03:00PM - 03:30PM - Computer Outlook - Ewan Spense, All About Palm
03:30PM - 04:00PM - Computer Outlook - Jennifer Shelamer, SnapperMail
04:00PM - 05:00PM - Fueling The Mobile Content Ecosystem - Ryan Wuerch, Motricity
05:00PM - 05:30PM - Computer Outlook - Mark Bercow, pa1m0ne
05:30PM - 06:00PM - Computer Outlook - Chris Dunphy, PalmSource
06:00PM - 08:00PM - Welcome Reception - Exhibit Hall Regency

The good news is that it's not the software that's the problem. mo:Blog seems to be working fairly stable, so I'm happy about that. The one hurdle seems to be the Fairmont high-speed access point. Sometimes I can get out and sometimes I can't. When I can, using the Dana is a dream. When I can't it makes me wish I had a small laptop that I could jump on.

Such is the dillemma when trying to stick 100% with mobile devices and not being 100% committed to one device. I suppose I could work exclusively with the Treo 600, if I had an external keyboard, but I don't have one at this point in time. I'm streteched between 3 devices with the Treo, Tungsten C, and Dana. The C is my primary and the Treo my phone and the Dana as my weblog tool.

The one thing that I've been toying with as of recent is consolidating down a few devices. The Tapwave store is going to open in 20 minutes and I plan on buying one. If I do, I think I'm going to push that device with all the accessories I can muster to make it my uber device. I guess I'll have to get my hands on one and then I'll decide. :)

So far this year's DevCon is exceeding my expectations and it just keeps getting better. I'm in David Nagel's keynote right now and I'm attempting to use my Dana Wireless to post this post.

One cool thing to share with you. SplashData has released a new version of SplashBlog, which now supports Group Blogging. To help illustrate this new feature, they've created a group blog for the DevCon. You can find it at http://www.splashblog.com/devcon2005.

I haven't installed the app yet since I can't do it wirelessly, but I'll go to a beaming station and get all setup so that I can post photos to the group blog.

I've been maintaining a list of MovableType desktop clients on the MT Forums, so I went there first, to see what my options were. after reviewing the list, I opted to travel with mo:Blog, hBlogger, and Vagablog.

I'll put these apps through their paces from a variety devices and let you know which apps seem to work better. This post was made with mo:Blog and a Treo 600 from my layover in Las Vegas.

I was debating about whether or not to weblog about my travels this year. Normally I do most of my weblogging from my main weblog at mashby.com, which is where I've tried travelogues in the past and have been kind of hit-or-miss. So the idea of trying another one left me a little gun shy. This weblog was created to share thoughts about running a PUG and for specific writings that relate to NPUG. However, after seeing that PalmSource was promoting those who ARE weblogging the conference on their Conference Weblog, I finally worked up the nerve to give it a shot.

I don't know how personal I want to get with it, or specifically what I will write about, but for the next week or so, I'm going to try and weblog as much as possible about my travels for the 2005 DevCon. Hopefully it will be fun and enjoyable and you'll get a kick out of it too. ;)

What's mDesk?
mDesk is an application that runs on your Palm OS device and your Windows desktop, which allows you to display the screen of your Palm onto your desktop. Why would you want to do that? Well, if you ever wanted to demo something on your Palm OS device, THIS is the way to do it. As you might imagine, software demos are a large part of what we do at a monthly NPUG meeting, so anything that makes demoing software easier ranks high in my book.

Bling Bling Baby
It was a cinch to install and in seconds, I was displaying the screen from my Treo 600 on my desktop. Absolutely amazing! All you need is your USB HotSync cable and you're off to the races. Not only can you demo off of your device, but you can control your device from the Windows screen! Think about it, DateBk5 on your desktop. 8)

This isn't a review. I just HAD to share my new favorite application! If you want to see a screen shot of my desktop, you can find it at this link.