While you can access the MyPalm calendar service wirelessly with your Palm VII, there's little else you can do between the two. In fact, you need two separate accounts to do anything with the MyPalm service, (such as accessing your calendar), leaving me with the distinct impression that MyPalm and the older Palm.net service are still two different services.

Calendar
On the topic of calendars, Figure B shows a representative day view of my calendar.

FIGURE B


Here's the MyPalm portal Calendar Day view. Roll over picture for a larger image.

As a freelance author between projects, I'm blessed with an emptier calendar than most. My To Do list this summer, however, is quite intimidating! Other views, such as the month view, shown in Figure C, are similar.

FIGURE C


Here's the MyPalm portal Calendar Month view. Roll over picture for a larger image.

Views such as these look very much like those on the Palm handheld, only they take advantage of the much greater space a desktop screen affords. In fact, the MyPalm calendar actually supports several different types of calendar items, including all-day appointments (shown with a sun and moon icon), reminders (shown with a bell icon), to do items (shown with a check mark icon), birthdays (shown with a birthday present icon), and anniversaries (shown with a calendar icon).

Clicking on an event-or, for that matter, choosing to add an event-brings up the Edit Event form showing all of an event's details, as you see in Figure D.

FIGURE D


Here's the MyPalm portal Edit Event form. Roll over picture for a larger image.

For a user fresh from the Palm Date Book application, this form is downright overwhelming. However, the portal's help is quite good, and once you use it once or twice, it all makes sense.

The top third-Title, Location, Date, and so forth-is much as you'd expect. I'll discuss the Calendars item in the next section in detail, but suffice it to say here, you can share your event in multiple calendars, such as your own calendar, a group calendar for your family, or a group calendar for your office. The middle third of the form lets you manage other meeting attendees that are members of the MyPalm portal. With this, you can not only track who is attending the appointment, but also look for free time on other people's calendars if you need to schedule a group meeting. From this part of the form, you can also set meeting reminders, including both reminders within the MyPalm portal and external reminders via email. In the final section of the form, you can set event repetition, just as you can on the Palm handheld.

In using the calendar for over a month, I could find only one true bug. Some repeating appointments (those such as "repeat on the third Wednesday of every month") can't be assigned directly on the portal, and when they're synchronized from a Palm OS handheld, they display very oddly on the calendar. Interestingly, as long as you ignore how they're displayed on your calendar, they continue to display fine on the Palm OS device. Of course, it's somewhat disconcerting to see some of your regular meetings show up at seemingly random times across your schedule.