Acknowledgments

At the Palm Computing division of 3Com, the spirit of openness and friendliness has made the Palm OS platform a hit. The company embraces and promotes programmers, accessories, events, and participation in the Palm business, continually fanning the fires of PalmPilot passion.

The same infectious excitement, I’m happy to say, extended to the preparation of this book. 3Com went beyond the call of duty over and over again to help. In particular, my master contact Chris Weasler repeatedly interrupted his regularly scheduled duties to answer tweaky questions, provide technical background, and much more. He orchestrated helpful briefing sessions with Palm’s Mike Lundsford and Joe Sipher that paved the way for this book’s Palm V and Palm VII coverage.

3Com’s Maurice Sharp was my other Friend in High Places. Not only was he once again an outstanding technical reviewer for this edition (as he was for the first edition), but nobody is more fun to hang around with at trade shows. Tech reviewer Dan Royea, moderator of the weekly Internet Palm chats and knower of all things Palm, set me straight on hundreds of technical points; Chapter 17, especially benefitted from his wisdom.

In fact, the best part of writing a Palm book was getting to know the amazing people who work at Palm. That they’ve let me into the family, welcomed me to trade shows, advance briefings, and their own headquarters in Santa Clara, California, has been a head rush nonpareil. Thanks especially to Robin Abrams, Douglas Wirnowski, Liz Brookings, Andrea Butter, Amy Nemechek (of A&R Partners), Elizabeth Cardinale, David Christopher, Dawn Hannah, Mark Bercow, Gabriel Acosta-Lopez, and everyone else I’ve been lucky enough to meet.

Two of this book’s appendixes were written by friendly experts in their fields: Appendix D, was written by the project lead for the Palm VII’s Clipper software, Dave Menconi. And Linux expert Brian Pinto was kind enough to write Appendix E.

This book’s completely new CD-ROM was made possible by PalmCentral.com’s curator, Dr. Raymond Lau of MIT, who spent months on the project, creating screenshots and e-books where none existed, coding the auto-install and “Show Me” features, and otherwise achieving the impossible—for no money, I might add. When we reached obstacles, programmer-at-large John Holder came through, writing custom code to make the Mac and Windows installation features work smoothly.

First-edition assistance came from Neil Salkind, Fredlet, Frank Colin, Eric Cloninger, Brian Ball (ISO Productions); John Perr (Puma Technologies); David Schargel (Aportis); David Rogelberg (Studio B); John Allman (PalmPilot tech support); Dave Marks (Metrowerks); and many hardware and software companies who contributed review units and expertise.

Above all, my gratitude goes to the team at O’Reilly & Associates who shepherded this book into existence with enthusiasm and pride—Troy Mott, Katie Gardner, Tara McGoldrick, Bob Herbstman, Nancy Kotary, Maureen Dempsey, Clairemarie Fisher O’Leary, Colleen Gorman, Mike Sierra, Robert Romano, Seth Maislin, Lisa Mann, Sarah Winge, Mark Stone, and Tim O’Reilly; and the lovely Dr. Pogue and kids, who patiently waited for the actual family life that might begin when this book was finished.

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