PMN Publications
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Issue No. 5, March 1996
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The PSION Monthly Noticeboard
E-Mail Version

In this Issue:	Profile Interviews
		Pilot One Touch Update
		Lexicon Update
		Feature
		Letter's Page
		Programmer's Workshop by Matt Thomas
		Editorial

Feature:	As lottery fever continues to hold the country in its sway we take a 			look at three novel programs for Lottery Addicts.  Mike Kilminster's - 		Lottery, Patrick Bell's - Lotto 3a V.2.03 and our very own Matt 			Thomas' - Lottery Lexicon.

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PSION Remote Banking
Profile Interview #1

Mike Dennehy, Marketing Director at Citibank was interviewed by the Editor on 16th February 1996 about Citibank's PSION banking technology.

PMN: Why did you choose PSION for your scheme?

MD: Although there are a number of other organisers that look good on the surface we wanted to write software which kept the same front end as our ATM Telephone Banking.  The PSION enabled this to be done.  PSION were prepared to help us a great deal with this so in the end we chose them.

PMN: What experience with PSIONs did you or your team have before you began this project?

MD: Not a great deal at all.  There were a few people who had them but this was for personal uses.  We have been very impressed with their capabilities since then and, as I mentioned before, had a great deal of help from PSION themselves.  The response has also been very good from people who are not “technocrats”.
We have experimented with people who had never used a PSION before and they found that, within a matter of hours, they knew their way around the machine without even having to refer to the manual.

PMN: Did you ever consider the Apple Newton?

MD: No.  We didn’t.  Not to say that we aren’t looking at technology but it just did not have the right interface.  Although our existing systems are built around touch screens these are very much button and option based, not with the kind of free-ranging input that the Newton has.  
PMN: Briefly outline what kind of advantages you think this service will bring to your customers.

MD: Our customers are already very much like the stereo typical PSION users.  They are very much the busy, travelling types whose only time to look after their accounts is at home or on the move.  We think that this will offer them the kind of ease of access and use that we know they want.  

PMN: Did PSION themselves have direct involvement with the project?

MD: We used a third party to develop the software for the PSION.  PSION, however, did offer a great deal of help.

PMN: How did this concept develop?  Were there any major problems encountered along the way?

MD: There were very few problems.  We have been doing remote banking for 10-12 years now in the USA from PCs.  All of our software uses a central architecture which we have developed.  
We have a great deal of experience in this field and are good at what we do.  Really it was just a case of porting the software to a different system. 

PMN: Do you think that people will be wary of sending banking details down the phone?  Is your service secure from this kind of fraud?

MD: Well, people are comfortable with doing their banking over the telephone so using a PSION should not be a problem.  There have been recent worries about the use of mobile phones (Prince Philip) and we prefer the use of digital as opposed to analogue.  Most of our customers are happy with the security arrangements.  We do also have three levels of security built in.

PMN: Do you have any indications on its success so far?

MD: It has been extremely positive.  The official launch was last week and since then we have had lots of information requests and interest in the product.

PMN: Will you be trying this scheme with any other PDAs?

MD: We have no current plans to move to other PDAs at the moment.  However, we will always be looking to “technologically satisfy” customers.  We will do anything to make it easier for customers to stay in touch, to give them more control over their account.  

PMN: Do you have an estimate on the user base total within a year?

MD: We are looking at a fairly modest figure, maybe in terms of 10 000s.  But with the kind of initial response we have had, who knows?

PMN: What consideration are you giving to the possibility of a “Series 4”?  What happens if this appears and your software cannot be ported to that system?  Will this not leave you “out in the cold?"

MD: I cannot see it posing a problem.  We don’t know how far the software will be compatible with any new machine but as I mentioned before we are very good at porting the same software to different systems.

PMN: Are there any updates or upgrades of your product due for release within a year?

MD: Yes.  We will certainly be looking at enhancing the product the whole time.  If there is a “Series 4” then we will have to change it anyway.  In the meantime there will be lots of changes and upgrades made.

Citibank can be contacted on 0800 005500

Profile Interview #2

John Leather, from Product Management at Lloyds Bank Plc. was interviewed by the Editor on 12th February 1996 about Lloyds' Remote Banking trial.

PMN: Why did you choose PSION for your scheme?

JL: We were looking at expanding our channels for electronic banking off just the PC platform.  This involved looking at other mediums such as the “Smart Phone”.  This was discarded as not many people had access to it and it would have meant buying and supplying these machines.  The PSION was chosen as it was already available in large quantity and had an established user base.

PMN: What experience with PSIONs did you or your team have before you began this project?

JL: We had very little experience with the machines.  It was found out along the way that many people in the bank actually had them - but that was on a personal basis.  It was very much a learning experience.  
Our relationship with PSION is good.  We had looked at other manufacturers such as Hewlett Packard, Sharp and Casio, as we thought that the whole palmtop idea was an attractive one.  In the end we chose the PSION as they had the largest UK user base and in our view are the best machines.

PMN: Did you ever consider the Apple Newton?

JL: We did but at the time [a few months ago] this was receiving a lot of bad press and was not proven technology.  We wanted something that was more solid and could be relied upon.

PMN: Briefly outline what kind of advantages you think this service will bring to your customers.

JL: We want to offer more flexibility and more up to date services to our customers.  We want people to be able to do their banking anywhere, in a way which is convenient to them.  People expect more from banks these days.  The ECB [Electronic Cheque Book] is an example of the choice we aim to provide.

PMN: Did PSION themselves have direct involvement with the project?

JL: After we first thought of the idea we thought that the best people to go to were the makers themselves [PSION].
So we commissioned them to write the software, once we had the design for it.  They gave us advice on this and how to keep it in-line with their original product.

PMN: How did this concept develop?  Were there any major problems encountered along the way?

JL: Once we had the idea the development of the product went well.  The were no major problems along the way.

PMN: Do you think that people will be wary of sending banking details down the phone?  Is your service secure from this kind of fraud?

JL: We obviously hope that they won’t.  We have our own internal auditors at the bank who apply a very strict and thorough procedure to security measures as this is an important aspect of any bank.  The product has met their requirements and we are confident and happy with this part of the service.

PMN: Do you have any indications on its success so far?

JL: It is still only a trial scheme and there are a number of factors which affect its overall success. In terms of customer acceptance, we have had a very good response.  It has been very encouraging.

PMN: Where do you envisage this product going in the future, say a year down the road?

JL: We see this as an indication of the way remote banking will be going in the future.  It is a means to an end.  Customers want to be able to deal with banks on their own terms, and the scheme is really geared to making it easier for customers to conduct their banking.  We want to offer the maximum flexibility and meet the needs and demands of the customers. 

PMN: Will you be trying this scheme with any other PDAs?

JL: If the trial is successful then we will consider expanding the service to any device which generates sufficient demand.

PMN: Do you have an estimate on the user base total within a year?

JL: We do but unfortunately we cannot release that information.

PMN: What consideration are you giving to the possibility of a “Series 4”?  What happens if this appears and your software cannot be ported to that system?  Will this not leave you “out in the cold”?

JL: We have had no news on the Series 4.  I do not think, if it does appear, that it will have an adverse effect on the product as technology is always moving forward and we must be prepared for this.

PMN: Are there any updates or upgrades of your product due for release within a year?

JL: We are going to run this trial until the end of June.  It will then be decided whether or not to continue with the idea.  Obviously we will have had many suggestions by then and will base an improved version of the product around these.  It will have some new functions.  It depends, mainly, on what the customers want.

Our own fact sheet on Lloyds Service is available.  Contact the usual places detailed on the Letter's Page.

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New Pilot Machine

Released in February was the Pilot One Touch Organiser.  This comes as a combined PC and Portable package with a unit for data entry and maintenance on the move as well as PIM (Personal Information Manager) software for IBM and Mac PCs.  Automatic Sychronization is available between the two platform via a piece of hardware called the “cradle” and the Hotsync software on the PDA itself.
The principle behind the set up is to enable easy syncronisation with existing records on both the PC and the PDA.  It is based around the controversial “Grafiti” handwriting recongition tool and uses a pen for everything including icon selection.  The screen of the PDA displays 160x160 pixels and is an LCD.  The unit is tiny measuring just 12cm by 8cm by 1.7cm.  5 application buttons on the bottom of the unit work in a similar way to those on the PSION.  
Craid Payne, publisher of an in depth paper on the machine says, “Pilot is not aimed at exactly the same market as the PSION 3 series but there may be some overlap.  Most obviously people who want a keyboard won’t want a Pilot.  In its earliest incarnations Pilot is an organizer and little more.  There is no spreadsheet, database, datacomm e-mail or even games.”

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Lexicon Series Update

The Lexicon Series is fast becoming one of the premier PSION software suites of utilities.  Created by our own Matt Thomas the series utilises his great knowledge of database manipulation to provide fast, efficient programs for ODB handling.
They have received excellent comments from PSION themselves and currently are availabe in their Shareware versions in many PSION upload areas over the Internet and on CompuServe.  
Matt runs his own Web-Site at: -

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/matt_thomas

News of the programs in the Series which currently include League Lexicon (V1b reviewed Issue 4 and V4 out soon) and Lottery Lexicon can be found on Matt's web page.  Also coming soon are PSION Lexicon, Customer Lexicon and Astro Lexicon.
PMN have fact sheets available on all Lexicon releases which can be obtained by writing or E-Mailing the usual address.  Matt's home address is supplied in the review of Lottery Lexicon.

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Feature: Lottery Programs for the 3a

It’s 8:00 pm on Saturday: dishes are in the dishwasher, the bottle of wine is about three quarters empty and almost everyone in Britain is sitting glued to the television, perching on the edge of their seat, clutching a little bit of fantasy.  I refer of course to the lottery - the apparently incurable disease that has caught the country and held it for over a year now.
Some people just have a dabble now and again but to others the lottery is a game of strategy and skill - a mind consuming passion that drives them to spend money they don’t have on tickets.  Now the cogs behind the previously outlined approach are available to mere mortals or PSION users to be precise.  Currently there are three main lottery applications available for the 3a, all of them incorporating a wealth of features that enable sophisticated analysis of the lottery.
All of the programs have a number of universal applications.  These are as follows:

•	Generation of random numbers
•	Storing of own numbers
•	Computer checking of own numbers against lottery draws
•	Input of lottery draws
•	Text viewing or analysis of previous draws

Some offer more advanced features like graphical analysis which, while a little “gimmicky”, add to the overall appeal of the program.

Mike Kilmister’s - Lottery V.2.20b

For a man who says in the dialogue about himself... 
“I am a 33 year old male who enjoys messing around on the PSION 3a...”
...this truly is a remarkable piece of software.  If this is a product of idle dabbling in OPL then I await a serious package with baited breath.  I have observed it from its development and it has slowly matured into a comprehensive and powerful package for lottery management.
With three methods of random generation including the unique wheeling system the options are endless.  Under the same menu title are a number of other options which generate facts that should help you to make an informed decision on which numbers you wish to use.
The options for viewing statistics based on previous draws are endless.  From working out which colour balls have appeared most to a graphical display (ridiculously gimmicky but excellent nonetheless) of odd ‘v’ even numbers.  The statistics just keep rolling out.
To say the program is option rich is an understatement.  Almost every item has some user definable options attached to it which make it extremely easy to use while giving it the image of powerful analysis.  
The program even contains information about the lottery set-up itself telling you your odds of winning, when the first rollover week was, where to collect your winnings etc...
There are one or two annoying quirks that have slipped in amongst the otherwise excellent program.  The number checking process is a little tedious as you cannot check numbers against previous updates of the numbers file.  The print facility is hell to use and we could not get it to print.  The faults are few and far between, however, and are far outweighed by the good points.  
Registration is just £10 (a 3 number win as the author points out).  Our opinion is at that price it is excellent value and even if the author denies it was hard work the program deserves to be registered out of respect for a first class piece of software.

•	Available: CompuServe Palmtop A Forum (Shareware Version).  Registered copies available direct from the author.  Contact - Mike Kilmister, 45 Long Eights, Northway, Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, GL20 8QZ.  E - Mail 100675.2507@compuserve.com

Matt Thomas’ - Lottery Lexicon V.2.2

It was inevitable.  For someone for whom database manipulation is an artform a lottery package that is the supreme test of number management could not be resisted.  So when Matt, our own Programming Workshop author, told us he was going to make the program it was no surprise.
Whilst perhaps not having the wealth of features common to the other two do it combines the Lexicon trademarks of speed and data management into one slick utility.
When one comes to checking numbers (it does so automatically as you enter the week's numbers into the log) the speed and excellent design of the program become immediately apparent.  Instantly a display of whether or not you have one comes up.  The speed at which this program can analyse and draw conclusions is stunning.  PSION themselves have seen the program and its code and concluded that it was excellently engineered.
It does, sadly, have one or two down points.  The display of draws so far, although comprehensive, is rather crudely presented with just lines of date labelled numbers appearing on the screen and the worst part of the function is that you can’t get out of it.  You have to wait until it has displayed all the numbers.  Not that this takes long as this feature is no exception to the speed of the program.
Although sparse, the features included are very good indeed.  They run efficiently and correctly providing good analysis of the lottery.  You can bring up your own success rate showed as a percentage calculated from money spent and money won (just in case you had forgotten how much money you had lost).  You can see each ball's number of appearances and 'date last appeared' separately and compared against each other in the same way as the full draw log.  Also included is a list of the odds of winning prizes.
In all Lottery Lexicon, although perhaps not as feature rich as others in the excellent series, is a nippy, slick little program that fulfils its market specification very well indeed.  It costs just £7.50 to register.

•	Available: CompuServe Palmtop A (Shareware Version).  Direct from the author - Matt Thomas, 349 Cherry Hinton Road, Cambridge, CD1 4DH.  E - Mail 101450.775@compuserve.com.

Patrick Bell’s - Lotto 3a V2.03

The first screen of this program illustrates it's sophistication.  It is a file box asking you to select which ticket data file you wish to use.  This points to an aspect later in the program which means that you can have any number of tickets all organised into separate files containing as many as you wish.  This does wonders for the speed of the program if you have a large volume of tickets that you wish to input.
The next screen is a good, helpful display of your current tickets with the accompanying numbers and dates.  The menu options are a little limited with the only utilities being the check draw, generation of random numbers, analyser and predictor, graphical analysis and renumber.  The draw check has the tedious feature, akin to Mike Kilmister’s product, of not being able to check against the last set of numbers entered.  Random Numbers is a good addition to the program having powerful options for creating your own random numbers and even performing “spoof” draws.  
The analyser brings up a dialogue with four options,  two for analytical purposes and two for prediction.  The analyser, although slow, produces very accurate results based on draws including or excluding the bonus ball.  There are four pieces of information displayed from this including the balls occurring the most and least as well as some more powerful features like mean numbers of repeats and Standard Deviation.  The other dialogues with this indicate appearance of odd and even balls and number and percentage of number groups defined in the lottery by different colour balls.
The Prediction system which is the other of the two options of the Analyser function has some powerful, if somewhat odd features.  You can offset the prediction system using the fine tuning function to produce “slanted” results.  The results of the predictions are displayed in four categories which can then be turned into tickets should you wish.
Graphical analysis is just that - a graphical chart of how many times various balls have appeared in the lottery, displayed in bar graph form.  This can show either results including the bonus ball or results excluding the bonus ball.  It can even show your own ticket data file plotted in the same way.  All the balls are plotted onto one graph making it easy to produce your own conclusions on which balls to use in your tickets.
The rest of the functions are fairly standard for adding and deleting tickets and draws as well as creating new files for ticket storage.  The program also has an excellent print function which worked superbly for both tickets and draws.
This is a sophisticated, well made program which would suit an amateur lottery buff very well indeed.  Although not quite as feature heavy as Mike Kilmister’s Lottery it does very well and has some useful components which enable good analysis of the lottery.

•	Available - CompuServe Palmtop A (Shareware Version).  Registered by contacting the author at Flat 2, Westhome, Palmero Rd, Torquay, TQ1 3NW, UK.  E - Mail 101456.3254@compuserve.com.

The programs reviewed here were all of excellent quality and our thanks goes to the authors who are doing much to support the shareware way of thinking.  Each of the programs was tested thoroughly by PMN and the ‘TRUMP’ Card evaluation system was used to create an accurate table of comparison.  If you wish for any more information on the products please feel free to contact us at the usual places or the authors at the addresses above.

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Reader's Letters

Dear Sirs,

I have used PSIONs since the Series II Organisers and I like to feel that I keep a good eye on the market and what is happening there.  It is through my regular look at news groups on the Net and on-line services that I have come to the conclusion that there are very few female users of PSIONs.  From my estimations the difference could be as much as 10 males to 1 female.  

To me this is a very puzzling occurrence.  With the rise in working women over the last decade and the lack of any male exclusive professions due to discrimination laws I find it very difficult to believe that there are few female PSION users.  Maybe I was looking in the wrong places?  Perhaps women just had less access to the Internet in general?  No - I looked in other places all over the Net and the same on-line services.  There, women could be found in abundance.

Have PSION, with their 3a Masterpiece, excluded the female IT population from their user base?  There must be a reason for this female boycott of the PSION.  Dare I be so bold as to say it may be in the styling of the unit.  Without being prejudiced I would say that the PSION looks like a man's computer - the grey colour and chunky lines etc.  Perhaps it is the aesthetics of the machine which prevent it appealing to women?  

I will continue with my research on this matter as I find it most astonishing that a PDA could have the success the PSION has won by excluding half of the applicable target users before it even reaches the shops.  I hope I have not provoked too much out rage as I am not a sexist by any means.  I am just puzzled that there is still an area of industry that is not graced by women.

Yours faithfully

Rik Laarstrand

Some interesting views from Mr Laarstrand.  If anyone wishes to reply then please write in with your contribution.

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Programmer's Workshop by Matt Thomas

Hello there all you OPL rookies. Hope all is well wherever you are. Well if you can drag yourselves away from your loved ones and focus on this month's offering for a while I’m sure you’ll find it as stimulating as ever ! Last month we concentrated on design and coding techniques for the OPL beginners among you by introducing a simple coding technique and fragments of related program code and focusing on a simple OPL procedure for rolling dice.  This month we are taking the structure side of an OPL program a little further. Having a simple and user-friendly menu makes it simple straight away to learn how procedures interact with the main routine of a program and how simple it can be (with a little bit of effort) to create very user-friendly front ends. You were thrown in at the deep end last month with the NS Chart coding technique which I always find to this very day to be a good way to “KISS”. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this acronym we are not talking about heavy petting and a quick leg-over on the settee in front of Home and Away or Baywatch with a PSION in your right hand! It stands for “Keep It Simple Stupid!”. This is vitally important in programming design and methodology. Just to reiterate some of the NS Chart methodology from the previous issue we are talking about covering three main coding techniques, these are SEQUENCE, SELECTION and ITERATION as illustrated below:-

SEQUENCE (Carrying out programming commands in sequence)

SELECTION (Choosing your option to decide which commands to perform)

ITERATION (This is performing a set of commands while a condition is true)

Onwards and upwards now to the matter of menu design. It's a good idea first of all to have a main procedure to store all of the menu related commands. We’ll start off by calling this procedure ‘main%:’. What we will do is design a menu structure in order to select the four seasons of the year by selecting any of the menu contents. Something to the tune of the following would be a useful starting point for this.

The code to select all of the options is within main program ‘main%’ and for each option selected the appropriate procedure containing the right print statement for each season will be selected. As a result of this the code for the main block that would be generated would be as follows. To activate the menu then you would just need to press the MENU key. 

The code fragment would be as below.

PROC main%:
	LOCAL k%
		DO
		k%=GET
			IF k%=$122
				mINIT
				mCARD “Season 1”,”Spring”,%a
				mCARD “Season 2”,”Summer”,%b
				mCARD “Season 3”,”Autumn”,%c
				mCARD “Season 4”,”Winter”,%d
				k%=MENU
				IF CHR$(k%)=”a”
					spring:
				ENDIF
				IF CHR$(k%)=”b”
					summer:
				ENDIF
				IF CHR$(k%)=”c”
					autumn:
				ENDIF
				IF CHR$(k%)=”d”
					winter:
				ENDIF
			ENDIF
		UNTIL k%=0
STOP
ENDP

PROC spring:
PRINT “Spring”
PRINT “Press a key”
GET
CLS
ENDP

PROC summer:
PRINT “Summer”
PRINT “Press a key”
GET
CLS
ENDP

PROC autumn:
PRINT “Autumn”
PRINT “Press a key”
GET
CLS
ENDP

PROC winter:
PRINT “Winter”
PRINT “Press a key”
GET
CLS
ENDP
				
Which brings me to the close of this month's offering. Hopefully by now you will be gaining in confidence with your programming. If you're finding the going tough then remember “It pays to persevere”. Until the next time...Keep watching this space!

Matt Thomas

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Editorial by Marek Pawlowski

OPL the Key to PSION's Success?
What does a PSION have over other PDAs?  OPL is yet another factor in the PSIONs favour.

What does the PSION have which many other Palmtops lack?  The answer is a programming compiler on the unit itself.  Is it that OPL could be one of the main factors contributing to PSIONs success?  If one looks at it from a purely statistical point of view this would be true - the PSION is the market leader and it is the only PDA with an own brand development language.  But, as we know, statistics aren’t everything: the object of the statistic itself must be an excellent product in the first place.

Undoubtedly OPL is easy to use.  It applies a simple set of commands to produce a good user interface that comprises advanced looking menus and dialogues.  From just one or two main commands such as mINIT (Menus) and dINIT (dialogues) and by specifying variables one can create something that looks professional and is efficient in its workings.  It is a simple fact that almost anyone, whether proficient in other programming languages or not, can create a program with a little help from the manual using OPL.  The sheer volume of shareware available for the PSION as opposed to other PDAs demonstrates perfectly this point.

As has been mentioned in previous issues and in our “Meeting the People” article last month an established factor for PSION success is the amount of third party software available.  This, self evidently, is an effect of the ease of OPL programming.  Although the PSION is also bi-compatible with C, many of the applications, certainly the shareware ones, are products of OPL coding.

To test this theory I took a person with an average knowledge of general IT and sat him down with a PSION with the OPL program running.  Within an hour the product of his labour was something that used menus, dialogues and stored strings and had the look of a respectable PSION program.  Surely this can only demonstrate OPL’s extreme ease of use as a language?

The ability to be able to sit down on the odd occasion, as you may do with your agenda files on the train, and compile a program adds considerable appeal to the whole concept.  It means that the whole programming world becomes accessible to many that would have let it wash over them.  If you have a PSION you are at some point going to stumble across that file which begins with:

PROC :
—>
ENDP

...and more and more people are beginning to become interested at this stage and follow it through until they have created a proper OPA or PSION Application in layman’s terms.

It is, as many programmers agree, a superbly easy language to write for that, whilst not requiring a degree in Astro-Physics, can produce good graphical displays that can even perform functions as diverse as displaying bitmaps, showing small animations and playing digital sound files from the 3a speaker.

It is apparent to me that PSION were very wise not to fall into the trap of just making programming for their platform accessible to major companies.  In swallowing their pride on this they successfully added yet another weighty percentage to the success of their machine.  With an estimated 20% of PSION users using their OPL language it is obvious that it was a very well received inclusion on the PSION.

Marek Pawlowski
Editor

Any comments?  Please send them to the address at the end.

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Information

The PSION Monthly Noticeboard is published by PMN Publications.  It is available in both hard copy format and is also distributed electronically to CompuServe users.  No unauthorised duplication is permitted of the magazine in any form without the prior and express permission of PMN Publications.

The PSION name and logo is a registered trademark of PSION Plc.

Any correspondence should be sent to:
					PMN Publications (E-Mail 101556.241)
					54 Penwortham Road
					South Croydon
					Surrey
					CR2 0QS
					England

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