Instead of carrying a laptop or pen and paper to a diving holiday, divers could take a Palm handheld and log everything on it. SharkPoint for Palm ran on Palm OS devices and recorded dive information immediately, on the spot — the original handheld member of the SharkPoint family, at active version 1.5.1.49.
What it kept
Keeping track of dives got easier because the handheld held the same linked records the desktop did:
- Dives, across multiple logbooks with multi-level logging for varying detail
- Buddies, with their own records rather than a name typed into a note field
- Dive sites, including co-ordinates where a GPS unit was attached
- Dive schools and the operations dived with
- Personal details — certification, medical and insurance information
- Equipment, with servicing history
Statistics and search on a handheld
Advanced statistic and search tools shipped on the Palm edition rather than being held back for the desktop. Finding every dive below a given depth, or at a particular site, or with a particular buddy, worked on the device — which is exactly when a diver tends to want it, standing on a beach trying to remember whether they have dived a site before.
Dive planning
A Dive Plan Assistant and a Dive Plan Wizard let divers sketch or check a plan against the common recreational table systems. As with every part of the range, this was a planning aid alongside proper training, a current set of tables and a dive computer — not a replacement for any of them, and not a decompression calculator. For dive safety and dive medicine guidance the Divers Alert Network is the standing authority.
GPS site tagging
With a handheld GPS unit connected over Bluetooth, serial or USB, the Palm edition could record dive site co-ordinates to within a few tens of feet, attached to the site's own record so they were still there years later.
DiveSync to the desktop
At home the Palm edition synchronised to the PC for backup and for the work that is easier on a full screen. With SharkPoint for Windows installed, the data could be loaded and edited in detail, statistics reviewed in more depth, and a personal logbook layout designed and printed through the EPF (Easy Print Format) system.
Note that the Palm edition stayed in the 1.5 generation. Because the database format changed at version 2 and DiveSync 1.5 could not read the newer format, the Palm DualPack paired the Palm edition with Windows v1.5 rather than v2. The PocketPC DualPack was the version 2 route.
Documentation
DreamDives published a factsheet for the Palm edition, a factsheet for the Palm and Windows DualPack, and a full manual for the Palm edition. These are no longer distributed.
Availability
SharkPoint for Palm is no longer available, and Palm OS itself has long since been retired. This page records what the software did.