Hello everyone,

I have long been noodling with the idea of (yet another) application for 
a handheld beekeeper record keeping tool.  I now have two teams of 
developers working on this and should have a result by the end of the 
semester.  (I finally, successfully, pitched the idea to my software 
development classes and found two separate teams to take it on.)

I am looking for input as to what, you as a beekeeper, would like to see 
in an application for a PocketPC PDA.  So far the requirements are as 
follows:

* The application must run on a PocketPC and communicate with a desktop 
PC for analysis (in Excel or similar).
* The application would track queen age, hive status, weather, 
inspection dates, notes, honey, pollen, propolis harvests, various 
diseases, etc.
* The application would be able to track multiple hives in multiple yards.
* The user should be able to draw a map of each yard showing the 
locations of hives to each other.

If you have other suggestions, please send them along.  At this point 
everything is possible and I would rather have more input than less.  
When the project is done, we are likely to put this into the public 
domain. So if you are interested, now is the time to be heard.

There is a bit more detailed requirements being developed but that's the 
meat of it right now.  I would love to hear from anyone interested in 
putting in their two cents, as well as potential beta testers that are 
willing to provide meaningful feedback to these two groups.

The groups are comprised of Computer Science juniors and seniors at 
RPI.  The class is called Software Design and Documentation and student 
groups spend the semester developing larger software applications, 
putting their learned skills of Object-oriented development, research, 
and coding into a single semester-long project.  The groups working on 
this project are working entirely separately.  One group has four 
students and the other has five.  If you would like to participate with 
them, please send mail as your intentions to [log in to unmask]

As I do not read the Bee-L religiously, please make sure to copy me 
off-list as well as allow this thread contribute to the general discussion.

Thank you very much.

John Sturman
Blue Moon Farm
Lexington, NY

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