Pebbles Chat

by Ben Bostwick and Brad Myers

Purpose

Sometimes in a meeting, it would be useful for attendees to be able to send side messages to each other, without necessarily interrupting the meeting. As an example, an attendee might ask the meeting facilitator to tell the current speaker to finish. The PebblesChat application allows users to communicate with other PDA users connected to the same PC. Messages are composed using the regular text input mechanisms on the PDA, and will appear in a scrolling text area on the PDAs of the sender and recipients as in conventional PC-based "chat" programs. In this case, the PC is just serving as a conduit, and does not display any evidence of the chat messages.

Note that for PebblesChat to be useful, multiple PalmOS devices must be attached to the same PC. This is easy with Wi-Fi (802.11) but tricky with BlueTooth or wired connections. Sorry, we don't have a PocketPC version of PebblesChat. Also, PebblesChat does not work with other instant-message or chat programs, sorry.

See the user guide documentation on the PalmOS version of PebblesChat.

Other Choices

There are lots of other IM (instant message), SMS (short message system) and chat programs for PalmOS and PocketPC devices. A search on Handango found 415 entries for "instant message"! We do not know which of those work best, sorry.