industrial strength mobile imaging
Security & Surveillance
Sprint incorporated Firepad software into its remote surveillance and control platform for the educational market. School administrators can monitor classroom video feeds, lock and unlock doors, sound alarms, and refer to campus maps, all from Firepad software on Treo 600 smartphones. The U.S. Secret Service used Firepad to carry custom maps of buildings and venues. The U.S. Navy Seals purchased Firepad software in volume, for an undisclosed application. Kawaju Techno Service Corporation Ltd (Japan) purchased the Firepad platform to deliver factory floor video feeds to quality assurance personnel. |
Field Reference Guides
Medtronic deployed Firepad to over a thousand salespeople for field reference of complex medical products, including zoomable images and video, on inexpensive handheld PDAs. Novartis, the Swiss drug giant, followed suit a few months later. General Motors used Firepad in volume to create exhaustive handheld manuals for exhibitors at the Detroit Motor Show, reduced training costs and providing a reference to beam to fleet buyers' PDAs. Several U.S. and Canadian medical schools have purchased Firepad software in volume to provide ready reference material to students (See Field Force Automation, 9/01). |
CREATE. To create a document for
distribution over the Firepad platform, simply edit one or more Web
pages using your favorite HTML editor, such as Microsoft FrontPage or
Macromedia Dreamweaver. Then, using Firepad Suite or
FirePublisher Server, save this content as a Firepad object file.
It's that simple.
DISTRIBUTE. The Firepad platform can distribute content in every way a PDA can. This means your organization is never stuck with a commitment to a particular delivery mode, such as HotSync, wireless, or email. Want to email your Palm users a single file containing 100 pages of schematics? You can. Beam that document, or a single page, to the guy sitting next to you? No problem. Configure a thousand Palm devices to update automatically from a centralized product database? Sure. Monitor multiple video security cameras, live, from your wireless mobile device? We do that. Distribute searchable encyclopedias of emergency response procedures on memory stick, including escape route maps? Easy. The Firepad platform, and only the Firepad platform, offers this level of flexibility to PDA users. You can change your distribution plans at any time, and still reuse 100% of your mobile application development work. It's safely stored in open-standard HTML, so you are never locked in. Firepad content is distributed via four components: Firepad Converter, FirePublisher, FireProducer, and the Web Development Kit. These are explained in greater detail at the <Platform Components> page.
DEPLOY. Solutions built on the Firepad platform may be viewed using the Firepad Viewer application. It is compatible with over 96% of all Palm devices ever made, covering dozens of models, including all new PalmOS devices. So your organization need not standardize on a particular device. Firepad Viewer even runs well on the very cheapest Palm hardware, such as an $89 Palm Zire, or a four-year-old Palm IIIc. Naturally, Firepad Viewer supports all the features of the more advanced devices, too -- from wireless connectivity to high-speed ARM chip support.
Stanford Medical School
When Stanford Medical School committed to buy Palm Vx handhelds for all their students, they met a problem: how to maintain mobile multimedia quickly and easily, without requiring students or sysadmins to learn new skills. The answer: Firepad. By drafting image-rich course materials in HTML, and pushing updates via FirePublisher, materials were updated on every HotSync. Only Firepad let Stanford incorporate complex draggable, zoomable, hyperlinked images, such as CAT and PET scans. |
Lockheed Martin
Lockheed Martin management tasked their intranet group with sending custom maps and diagrams to field employees in critical roles, including their Emergency Response Team and field repair staff. They chose to evaluate Firepad's client/server system as an easy way to publish custom maps on demand, as well as images that can be seamlessly integrated within complex text descriptions. Password authentication permits secure transmission of data to devices in the field. |
Handheld devices are a new and sometimes wild corner of the computing world. Standards have been slow to arrive, technologies have been orphaned, and, to be blunt, many vendors have gone belly-up in recent years, leaving their customers high and dry.
The Firepad platform stands in sharp contrast. In commercial release since 1997, the Firepad handheld software is one of the longest established and most widely used PDA applications in the world.
Moreover, Firepad uses Web-standard data formats as inputs, so any content you build on the Firepad platform enjoys the absolute stability and reliability of open standards. It's impossible to be orphaned or locked in.
Finally, Firepad's handheld software is compatible with over 96% of Palm devices ever made, covering dozens of models from 9 different manufacturers. Your organization need not take the risk of early standardization on a handheld device vendor -- today, tomorrow, or ever.
If you need a mobile application solution that is bulletproof to supplier risk, consider Firepad. Your organization can push standardization decisions -- handheld hardware, desktop tools, etc. -- far into the future.
Firepad provides stability and security in uncertain times.
Firepad makes your mobile solution design process faster, cheaper and simpler, by providing a profusion of choices in how you can create, deliver and customize your handheld applications.
If you've searched the Web for other handheld application vendors, then you know that no one else comes close to this level of solution-centered flexibility.