All that techno coolness meant nothing if it couldn't be put to good use. Here's how the applications were installed and configured. The Open OBEX application setup was virtually identical to the installation of the driver software.

You'll need to download and compile Openobex-apps from its SourceForge site. I used openobex-apps-0.9.8-1.i386.rpm. The RPM was expanded with:

rpm xvf openobex-apps-0.9.8-1.i386.rpm 

Running the rpm file built a directory with the source and most .h files that were needed to build the basic file transfer applications. Just so you aren't disappointed, these applications aren't very sophisticated or comprehensive. They were executed within an X-term and simply move the files back and forth between the CPEN and my computer.

Just as before, I went into the Openobex-apps directory and ran the following commands:

./configure 
       
make 
       
make install 

What I ended up with was a program in the Openobex-apps directory called irxfer. I switched to a normal user account and executed the irxfer command.

The ixfer program is executed in an X-term and simply waits for a file to be beamed from the CPEN.

I picked a name out of the address book on the CPEN and beamed it over. As expected, the irxfer program showed the transfer taking place and when it completed it simply returned to the command prompt.

Note: The file did show up in the /tmp directory. There were a couple of other programs that did various other functions, but irxfer is the main one.

A similar operation worked from the laptop to the CPEN. This time a filename (rob.txt) was added to the irxfer command. Lo and behold, the CPEN beeped and asked if I wanted to save the file on its little LCD screen.

Looking in the main notepad directory on the CPEN showed that the rob.txt file had been successfully moved over. I tried it with a .vcf (vcard file) and the file transferred right over to the address book on the CPEN. I could pull up the new name and address in the address book without problem.

I realize this doesn't sound like much, but think of the possibilities.

• You could write some filters to pull your address book out of Mozilla and format it for the CPEN. Then write a little script that would download any new name/address objects to the CPEN. Suddenly, it's a vcard.
• You could do the same with the calendar, except it's even simpler, since the CPEN understands the vcal format. Your calendar is just one object!
• There is a company doing some CPEN development at www.benlo.com. They have some downloads and an interesting drawing capture program for the CPEN. All Windows, but the applications are interesting. They also do custom CPEN programming.

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