This page provides information on technology implementation by the Resource Assessment Program. This includes PDA applications, electronic equipment and desktop software for bringing the data all together from the PDA, GPS, and digital cameras.

Everyone who has an interest in the products development is welcome to participate in this process.
See below for instructions on joining the email list. If you want to participate more actively email Alex

Email List:
To further communication between developers we created a listserve dfgpda@yahoogroups.com

It is currently recommended that you subscribe to it via yahoo groups at http://groups.yahoo.com/

1. Login with a yahoo account OR request an invite from Alex Mandel, Steve Goldman or Doug Burch
2. Join the dfgpda group
3. Configure your preferences: you can have emails sent to your dfg account even though you registered with a yahoo account.

Please join the group to discuss pda development issues.
Also invite anyone else who you think might want to be on the list, it is completely open to the public(subscription by approval) and can also be read online

General rules:

1. Don't post any secure information, passwords, connection strings etc.
2. Limit the use of attachments - important documents should be place on the website and linked in the email.
3. Bottom posting is the recommended style for mailing list discussion, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style
4. Context identifiers are also recommended, ie [Minutes] 10/27 Meeting.

Archive
An archive of the list is available at the following urls.

• http://www.nabble.com/DFG-PDA-f1955.html
• http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.handhelds.devel.dfgpda

Newsgroup
Usage of the newsgroup newsgroup has been discontinued, the instruction below are still valid but no longer recommended an will not work with the DFG network.

It was recommended that you subscribe to it via the newsgroup     gmane.comp.handhelds.devel.dfgpda provided by news.gmane.org
This can be done with Groupwise or any other email/newsgroup software.  This method is preferred because you can read it from anywhere including the web and you don't need to fill your inbox.

Either way the archive is available http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.handhelds.devel.dfgpda and searchable http://search.gmane.org/ online at http://news.gmane.org

Keep in mind that this list is public, so people from other agencies and organizations that work with DFG.

To make easier for everyone to get on the dfgpda newsgroup, below are detailed instructions for setup in Groupwise 6.5.

1. Click Accounts
2. Select Account Options
3. Select the News tab
4. Click Add
5. Give it a Name ie PDA News, then next
6. News Server is news.gmane.org, then fill in your email address you want to use and the name you want to show up, then next
7. "Connect through" (LAN), then next
8.  Create a Folder, and Finish
9. Download Newsgroups? yes
10. You may need to highlight your new account and hit "Newsgroups"
11. In the search box type dfg and search
12 You should get gmane.comp.handhelds.devel.dfgpda, select it and hit subscribe
13. Hit close

You are now able to pick the news folder in Groupwise and it will download the headers of posts on the list.
When you send your first email to the list, you will get an automated email from the server confirming your email address.
After that you can post freely.



A Note on Spam:
Luckily yahoo and gmane keep spammers out of the group fairly well. For the spam making it through most of it is detected by gmane and you'll notice it's cross-posted to gmane....spam. This means that it will automatically not show up in the web archive. For those using groupwise you can hit delete to remove these posts and if you use another news reader you can hit "Ignore Thread".
In the few cases where it's not detected by the system I go to the website of the list on gmane and flag it as spam so it gets removed.