We at monkey-boy industries usually live life in a complete state of chaos. We wear name tags so we can look at our collective chests and know instantly who we are. Perhaps not why we are where we are, or what we are supposed to do there, but, knowing "who" is often a good start. PDAs? Personal Digital Assistants? Couldn't live with out them, or the very least, they help to tame life into a manageable package. We've tried a bazillion methods over the years, but one device has stuck out enough that we have actually owned two of them. The Apple Newton. Apple's handheld computer, that reads handwriting (reasonably well), sends and recieves faxes and email, sychronizes to our MS Schedule + database, browses the world wide weeb, cheats at Backgammon, and functions as a really nifty notepad for those endless meetings that we must endure. Compared to the MP100 that we used to own, the current MP130 is slight years ahead in terms of useability. Instead of us having to explain the damn thing every time we pull it out of a jacket somewhere, read through the links below to familiarize you, the non-newton-blessed humanoid, with some of it's magical capabilities.

The perfect place to start, provided Apple manages to continue being the producer of Newton technology. While you are there, read about the "next" Newton, the MP2000 or, MP2K as it has become known as. Quicker, bigger and cooler. Also check out the eMate, the Newton-based school computer.



Always NewtonCentral. All the current, latebreaking news that is fit to print (or at least publish on the WWW) in one great site. Given Apple's current "indecisive" attitude about the Newton in general, it's worth a visit every single day. Excellent links to visit as well.


Evangelist : Newton
Guy Kawasaki, former Apple employee, former Mac World Columnist and current Apple fellow has run a Mac Evangelist mailling list and web site for quite some time, and this would be the Newton component of this. Another excellent Newton site!


The Newton Reference
We are beginning to run out of nice things to say about great sites, but, dang, here's another one. Extremely useful when we got our first MP130 as it has weel defined lists of specific software and techniques.


Newton Vs. Windows CE (wince)

Dare to compare! A branch of the also excellent Newton Today site, this particular page addresses the differences between Apple's Newton technologies and the current crop of Windows CE devices that various vendors are slinging around. Personally, we had high hopes wor WinCE, but, a bit of time spent playing with Casio's palmtop convinced the chimps to scurry out and buy a Newton once more.

Being highly portable is one thing. Being highly portable and net connected is yet another...some of these links represent some truly useful additions to a Newton in terms of getting it connected to anything. We won't attempt to list EVERYTHING available, but here's a quick look at some standouts.


Once again, the best place to start is Apple's web site. Here you can pick up the Newton Internet Enabler, or, NIE for short. This piece of code allows your Newton (and, well, ours too) to speak TCP/IP, the lingua franca of the Internet. It's quite capable, using either SLIP or PPP to get an internet connection. A slight warning, the soon to be updated connection scripting abilities are about to be updated in NIE 1.1, making the somewhat tricky process of connecting this to some ISPs a bit easier. PAP for PPP is supported now, CHAP will be in the future.



So, the day after I write the above, and days after Apple has made noises about DROPPING the Newton, they release NIE 1.1, now including CHAP logins and better scripting...sigh


Netstrategy's EnRoute Mail
This is the mail software that we currently use on the MP130. Quick and clean SMTP/POP mail, with the much coveted "Leave Mail On Server" function. While our usual favorite, Eudora, has a Newton version, the wonderful salesguy at The Newton Store, here in Vancouver, convinced us that EnRoute was/is superior. Works for us, no complaints.


Scrawl Software's PT100
Being that we have to spend more time with UNIX systems that we'd care to admit, a telnet application comes in handy, for reading mail and other "text" based activities. There's quite a disturbing lack of good telnet clients for Newtons, but this new arrival certainly shows great promise in it's beta version. Via direct connect, NIE or modem dial in, -this- will come in handy...


AllPen's NetHopper
Just imagine, a web browser on a Newton. Now, before getting TOO excited, realize that NetHopper is a text mode browser, no graphics. If a site is written with this in mind, (and we do strive for this at monkey-boy) it'll look great on this. Also, being that graphics don't need to be transferred, it's a bit quicker than Netscape might be on similiar sites. Amusing if nothing else.


NewtsPaper
While mail and web browsing are two pretty important needs within a complete net suite of utilities, USENET news is pretty necessary as well. NewtsPaper is a great USENET client for the Newton.


nHTTPd

And the nominee for "Huh?" is nHTTPd. nHTTPd is a web *SERVER* for the Apple Newton. An interesting idea, to be sure, but, to store the entire monkey-boy site would take about 30 Newtons. We have yet to try this app, but we sure are intrigued by the idea...who'd have thunk it?

If somebody can find me a working URL for the "original" Project Guttenberg, I'd be grateful...Project Newtonberg on the other hand, is much the same idea, except that those books get mashed into little Newton packages that one can then read at their leisure.
UPDATE
 Someone, Jakob from the Danish Newton Users Group, finally got me the Project Gutenberg Address : Project Gutenberg


PDA Panache
Nothing looks better with your spiffy newton than having an equally stylish stylus to go with it...