IntelliLink: Berlitz for PIMs and pocket organizers - IntelliLink's communications software converts data between pocket organizers and most personal information management systems - one of several articles on Personal Data Interchange technologies

RELease 1.0, Sept 23, 1993 by Jerry Michalski

The lack of formats and protocols for communicating personal and calendar information has become big business for New Hampshire-based IntelliLink, which offers a translation engine that converts data between pocket electronic organizers and most of the major DOS and Windows PIM offerings.3 synchronizing their address books and calendars. Though the initial application was for one user uploading new data from a pocket organizer to a desktop system. IntelliLink is also useful for migrating data from one PIM to another, and for intra-pc communications. It does not support any Macintosh PIMs, nor does it do person-to-person data squirts. IntelliLink is moving in many complementary directions: toward networkbased systems such as WordPerfect Office. which it already supports, and Schedule , which it will support this October; toward new handhelds end PDAs such as EO, Newton, Microsoft (WinPad) and General Magic, all of which it is working with; and toward wireless communications via RadioMail, which will essentially act as the transport for messages (the role LapLink plays now with cabled or dialup connections). The wireless work is particularly important, since it will allow real-time notification and posting of scheduling events for mobile workers.

Unlike Traveling Software's LapLink, which compares files' last-modified dates to see which should be copied where, IntelliLink does field-level exchange, with a notification option. That is, if you want to avoid entering some records, or if both applications have been updated since the last synchronization, IntelliLink allows you to step through each entry, skip or change any field, then commit it. If both calendars show a lunch appointment for next Thursday, you can choose the one you want, make changes to it, and store it in your PIM or scheduler.

LapLink and IntelliLink are complementary and often used together. LapLink manages connectivity, IntelliLink the file formats, translations and record processing. IntelliLink is co-marketed with most existing pocket organizers and palmtop computers, as well as most of the major PIMs on the market, which enclose promotional flyers for IntelliLink with their software.

A little nest egg

Keith Crozier rounded IntelliLink in 1990 to create software that would allow personal organizers such as the Casio BOSS and Sharp Wizard to interchange information with IBM's Current PIM. Then director of Boston University's Center for Project Management, he began writing the software on evenings and weekends, figuring it would be supplemental retirement income. Six months later, he quit his post to run IntelliLink full time. Now he has 11 employees and funds operations mostly from earnings (he estimates 1993 revenues will be between $1.5 and $2 million). Crozier spent his early career at IBM and Wang, with a roller-coaster stint in between managing oil partnerships.

Of course, IntelliLink should continue to do quite well if nobody agrees on common PDI formats, since everyone will have to license (or write) modules for one-to-one translations such as the ones it already offers. If and when lower-level elements of his product are supplanted or obsoleted by operating-system advances or standards such as PDI, Crozier plans to keep moving to higher sources of value, characterized by the SmartMerge reconciliation function IntelliLink has today. With WinPad, for example, synchronization is a feature of the operating system; IntelliLink's value is in reconciling the data being exchanged.

(3) With the recent release of Version 3, IntelliLink supports Arabesque's Ecco, Lotus Organizer, Polaris' PackRat, Jansen-Jones' Commence, Symantec's ACT, Borland's Sidekick and the basic Windows cardfile and calendar.