Twelve Black Code Monkeys

Well it seems like the floodgates are opening. Another new announcement, this time from Microsoft and PalmOne, has the Treo community astir. Somehow PalmOne has convinced the company that has been competing with it for years (via its PocketPC platform), to provide its “ActivSynch” technology for use on non-PocketPC devices like the upcoming Treo 650. Basically what this will provide is the ability to synch the data contained on an exchange server, including email, appointments, tasks, etc., much like the Blackberry. Research In Motion, the maker of the Blackberry, recently said that their software would be available for the Treo “soon” so you can bet RIM’s alliance with PalmOne had at least some affect on motivating MS to provide a competing product ASAP.

The article I’m linking to (it’s no longer online) speculates that this agreement may presage a future where PalmOne actually moves away from PalmSource, the company that provides the operating system software for PalmOne’s hardware like the Treo. They used to be one and the same company at one time. I don’t see that happening any time soon, although Sony, which was making PalmOS devices (their Clie brand) recently decided to switch to pocketPC, so I suppose anything’s possible in this marketplace!

As I’ve mentioned, I currently already synch my email exchange-hosted email on my Treo 600 via a push/imap client called Chatter. It doesn’t synch Tasks or Appointments, though, and for now, for me, that’s ok. It’s a pretty inexpensive program and is available right now, but I’m sure I will be taking a look at the solutions from MS and RIM unless they are prohibitively priced!

It just amazes me that in one short year since the Treo 600 has come out, it’s been able to attract software support from two large competitors! With the Treo 650 about to come out, I can only see more companies jumping on the bandwagon and trying to provide services and software for what seems to be becoming (if it already hasn’t) the most popular smartphone/convergence device on the market today.

Update: A piece just posted on Gizmodo reveals a couple of new pieces of info about this. First, the Treo 650’s will ship with ActiveSync capabilty out of the box, sweet, and secondly, it doesn’t look like this will be made available to current Treo 600 users, bummer!