In the May 11 daily edition of this newsletter, I wrote about the upcoming annual conference of the U.S. National Genealogical Society. This year's event will be held in Nashville, Tennessee, and is co-sponsored by the Middle Tennessee Genealogical Society. I also mentioned that a complete listing of all the 150+ presentations is available at http://www.eshow2000.com/ngs/conf_program.cfm. In the daily newsletter's discussion board, Don Jaggi asked, "Can I get the conference schedule on my PDA?"
Done!
I copied the entire conference schedule from the NGS web site and pasted it into an Excel spreadsheet. A bit of minor editing followed, and then I uploaded the result to this newsletter's web site. You can download the file from http://www.eogn.com/files/ngs2005.xls. Windows users can right-click on http://www.eogn.com/files/ngs2005.xls and select "Save As…" to first store the file on your desktop PC. Macintosh users should hold done the Apple key and then click on the link to do the same.
Once downloaded and stored on your Windows or Macintosh computer's hard drive, you can read the schedule with any Excel-compatible spreadsheet program. Even better, if you have a PocketPC handheld computer (such as Hewlett-Packard iPAQ, Dell Axim, Toshiba E740), you can read it with PocketExcel on your handheld. Simply drag the newly-downloaded ngs2005.xls file to the Shared Folder on your desktop PC, and it will be copied to the handheld the next time you synchronize. You can easily keep the entire conference schedule in your handheld.
If you have a Palm-compatible handheld computer, the answer is a bit more complex. Older Palm handhelds and some of the current Palm PDAs do not read Excel files when purchased. However, third-party software providers offer add-on programs that will read such documents. The best known is Documents-to-Go, a $29.99 program available at http://www.dataviz.com/products/documentstogo.
Some of the newer Palm handhelds contain built-in capability to read Excel documents without purchasing any extra programs. The Palm LifeDrive, Tungsten C, Tungsten E, Tungsten E2, Tungsten T3, Tungsten T5, and possibly some other models include the necessary software to read and write Excel files. Those models will read the ngs2005.xls file now.
With any of these solutions, you can refer to the entire conference schedule in your handheld computer as you wander the hallways of the conference center. Again, you may download the schedule from http://www.eogn.com/files/ngs2005.xls
