The first Afronaut in space, Mark Shuttleworth, is relying on South African technology to keep him on schedule.
Local Palm operating system development company, Rafale, customised the Palm`s Date Book application to allow Shuttleworth`s events to be programmed on a minute-by-minute schedule.
Rafale`s application allows Moscow Mission Control (Tsup) to update the activity schedule via e-mail, which he receives on his laptop and then synchronises with his Palm m125 handheld.
With the Palm, an alarm will remind Shuttleworth to begin a new activity; activity descriptions can have an additional note attached to them, and he can make notes on the Palm without affecting the application.
The Palm South Africa and the First African in Space Web sites will feature downloads of Shuttleworth`s daily activity schedule. Palm users will be able to download daily schedules to their Palm handhelds from the Web sites for the duration of Shuttleworth`s trip.
According to Wayne Forget, owner of Rafale, a small Palm application specialist operation that has been open since April 2001, Shuttleworth called him at 12.30am today - hours before the launch - to thank him for the application.
Related stories:
Counting down to blast off
External links:
Palm user group South Africa
Download the Events Application for the Palm (RafEvents.prc) (20Kb)
Download Shuttleworth`s Activity Schedule for the Palm (rEVT-Events.PDB) (4Kb)
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