Thesaurus and Translate from DDH Software
Thesaurus, with over 50,000 cross-references, is a very helpful tool for finding the right word. While a typical printed thesaurus might have double that amount, it's still quite useful to have DDH's Thesaurus handy on your Palm device.

Translate is an interesting, if simple, translation program that supports up to 18 different languages (including Danish, Dutch, Esperanto, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Mandarin, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, and Tagalog). Tagalog, for those who are curious, is a language spoken in the Philippine Islands. The Indonesian translation database contains only 1155 words, while the largest database (Dutch), has over 19,000 words. We wouldn't want to use Translate to translate a contract, but it's certainly reasonable enough to use as a travel aid.

Uses biggest iron
We've decided to wrap up our Editors' Choice Awards this year with a product that has some unusual hardware requirements.

PROFS-AutoPilot from FTP Systems
PROFS-AutoPilot provides a conduit between IBM's OV/VM OfficeVision calendar program and the Palm device. Changes made by you during the day on the PalmPilot are automatically entered on your enterprise calendar. In addition, changes made on your enterprise calendar during the day (by you and your co-workers) are downloaded to the Palm device at the next HotSync.

When testing Palm add-ons, we're used to requirements like "requires 45K free" or even "requires 250K free". But when we got the following requirements statement, we knew we'd found our Biggest Iron winner: "To test our product you will require an IBM System 390 running VM and OfficeVision v. 2.0 or higher. You will also require a 3270 emulator with EHLLAPI connectivity and IND$File transfer capabilities. Please insure you have 2 to 4 cylinders free prior to installing our product." Ah. Sure.

Not sure what an IBM System 390 looks like? Check out Figure D.

FIGURE D

PROFS-AutoPilot is a conduit between an IBM System 390 mainframe and your Palm device.

While we've put this product in the Fun Gadgets article with the category "Uses biggest iron", you should not perceive that as diminishing the value of the PROFS-AutoPilot product, which is an important enterprise connectivity tool that will be valued by many who need to be on the road and stay connected with their peers.

Product availability and resources The following products are our Fun Gadgets winners. It's time to start clickin' away. There are some truly great products listed below and many of them can be downloaded for free (although, please be sure to pay the shareware fees). Click picture for a larger image. Handy hardware devices (and the software that loves them) BeamLink is available from http://www.jpsystems.com. The Minstrel wireless modem is available from http://www.novatelwireless.com/html/minstrel.htm. The CardScan Executive is available from http://www.corex.com. PocketFlash is available from http://www.powermedia.com. Extreme cases The Titanium Hardcase is available from http://www.rhinoskin.com. The Peel-It is available from http://www.orang-otang.com/. Stylish stylus The Fingertip Stylus is available from http://www.conceptkitchen.com. Fun and Games UBoat is available from http://www.pumpsoft.com. IntelliGolf is available from http://www.intelligolf.com. ShadowThief is available from http://www.dnai.com/~zane/shadowthief. Reference checks Aramis City Guides are available from http://www.aramis-inc.com. TealMeal is available from http://www.tealpoint.com. Thesaurus and Translate are available from http://www.ddhsoftware.com. Uses biggest Iron PROFS-AutoPilot is available from http://www.ftbsystems.com.

Sam Kleinman is a writer; he makes his home in St. Louis Missouri and is interested in speculative fiction, cyber culture, and mobile technology. Sam is part of the content team for a promenade mobile tech Web site and also works on maintaining http://www.collectivearts.net, a Web site bringing together a group of skilled artists. You can reach Sam with any questions or comments by email at sam@collectivearts.net.