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TabletPCBuzz.com Weekly Newsletter
For the week of August 31st, 2003

Location-Based Buddies
By Bill Mann

Your Tablet PC is highly mobile. It goes with you as you move around the office. It goes with you on business trips. As long as you can get an Internet connection (wired or wireless) your Tablet PC lets you stay connected to your friends and coworkers. The location of your friends and coworkers is irrelevant.

But sometimes location is the important thing. Suppose you're at a conference and want to talk to someone who is an expert on some subject related to that conference. In this case, you want to locate and contact someone at the conference, instead of contacting someone you know.

Or you are in a hotel in a new city and are looking for something to do. It would be cool to be able to find out if someone else from your hometown is staying at the hotel, or hook up with some baseball fans to talk about the big game.

Trepia is a free program designed to help you connect with people in situations like these. The program takes advantage of wired or wireless Internet connections to show you information about people who are physically near you. Each Trepia user creates a profile which can include information like their name, interests, profession, languages they speak, even IM IDs. You can also include a photo.

The Trepia system uses this information to display information about other Trepia users who are online at the time, sorted by proximity: that is, the closer the user is to you geographically, the closer they appear to the top of the list. So people in the same town appear higher on your list than people in the next state, and so on. Double-click a person in the Trepia window to send them an IM on the Trepia system. By basing the position of people on their proximity to you, Trepia makes location-dependent scenarios like the ones described earlier possible.

Trepia has additional features that let you do things like invite friends to use the product, rate contacts (cool, sweet, clever, and so on), send a contact email (if they have listed an email address in their profile), or send them an IM using one of the standard IM programs like AIM or Yahoo! Messenger (if they have listed IDs for those services).

I have just begun using Trepia, so I can't tell you how well all this works in real life. I can tell you that Trepia has received write-ups in publications like USA Today, Wired, and Business Week. Trepia should have a lot of appeal for Tablet PC users. After all, we're the ones who are roaming the planet with these great mobile computers with built-in wireless connections. The ability to find nearby people with similar interests (or at least nearby people with similar interests who are using Trepia) could be very handy.

The question is whether enough people will adopt Trepia to make it truly useful. And the jury is still out on that.

To try Trepia yourself, visit www.trepia.com and download a copy. Let me know what you think of it by emailing me at bill@techforyou.com.

Want to know how to do everything with your Tablet PC? Here's the book that shows you how.

Tablet PC Buzz Poll
Q: If you are considering a Tablet PC, but have not yet purchased one, what is your reason for waiting?
A:
Waiting for price to come down:
59%
Waiting for 2nd generation devices:
26%
Waiting until the next budget year:
1%
My company doesn't allow Tablet PCs:
0%
I've already bought one:
13%
Other:
1%
Total Votes: 477

This week's poll question:
What Tablet PC application do you use for taking notes?
Vote now at http://www.tabletpcbuzz.com!


Top News Story of the Week
Microsoft announces Office 2003 launch date, pricing

From ITWeb - “The Tablet PC is going to revolutionise the mobile communications market and, in the near future, is very likely to replace today’s laptop in the popularity stakes, said Christopher Riley, CEO of Pretoria-based laptop and accessories retailer, The Notebook Company.”

“It is true, that Tablet PCs are currently noticeably more expensive than laptops. But the pricing is bound to come down and, when this pricing equalises somewhat, more people are arguably going to opt for the Tablet PC because of its obvious versatility.” (Link)


Weekly Tablet PC News Headlines
Aug 30 2003 - Open Source Journal
Aug 30 2003 - DigitialJournal: Alias Creating Life in 3D
Aug 29 2003 - Mobilemag: What lies ahead? NECs advanced designs may come soon
Aug 29 2003 - PR: Relizon and Mi-Co fulfill mobile data capture for Palace Entertainment
Aug 29 2003 - ITWeb: Tablet PC will usurp the laptop in future
Aug 28 2003 - Xplore releases first quarter results
Aug 28 2003 - WritingPractice
Aug 28 2003 - Dakota State University gets Tablet PCs
Aug 28 2003 - The Star: OneNote for everyone
Aug 27 2003 - ArtRage News
Aug 27 2003 - One Unwired Day
Aug 27 2003 - Tabula PC: What is still wrong with OneNote and Microsoft’s new campaign
Aug 26 2003 - NewsBits
Aug 26 2003 - BenQ: Tablet PC keyboard (52ME)
Aug 25 2003 - CNET: Microsoft goes to college with OneNote
Aug 25 2003 - CNET: Developers get first taste of Longhorn
Aug 25 2003 - CRN: New-And-Improved Tablet PCs Generate Buzz
Aug 25 2003 - TheStar: The goods on the gadgets
Aug 25 2003 - Fujitsu LifeBook T3010 Tablet PC
Aug 24 2003 - ArtRage

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