WPDO News – Volume 2, Number 3, May 1993

WPDO News was the printed newsletter of the Worldwide PenPoint Developers Organization, a member group serving software developers working on GO Corporation's PenPoint operating system; this edition is Volume 2, Number 3, dated May 1993.¹ The organization was headquartered at 801 Middlefield Road in Palo Alto, California, and listed AT&T, Conté Systems, Distributed Micro Systems, EO Inc., GO Corporation, and Notable Inc. among its corporate sponsors.¹ It served the developer community around PenPoint at a time when GO Corporation was expanding the licensing, education, and beta programs through which it sought to build a market for mobile computing.²

David Schachter served as the organization's president and video chairman, supported by an advisory board whose members included Dave Gorman as recording secretary, Brad Wist as newsletter and public relations chairman, and Paul Williams as program chairman, while Thom Hogan and Lang Zerner acted as GO Corporation's WPDO coordinators.¹ Brad Wist edited the newsletter as managing editor, with Marco Accardo and John Jerney among its contributing editors.¹ Membership cost $95 a year for individuals, $300 for corporations, and $35 for students, and the newsletter was distributed free to members or by subscription at $24 a year.¹

The issue's lead article, written by Schachter, announced that WPDO members would soon be able to obtain the PenPoint software development kit at no charge through the organization, distributed over the WPDO bulletin board system and on floppy disk.¹ A companion item reported that the WPDO BBS, run by system operator Joe Hayashi, had opened limited access to non-members.¹ By this point the organization had grown beyond its original Silicon Valley base to chapters in Boston, San Diego, the Pacific Northwest, Metropolitan New York, and New England.¹

The newsletter also maintained a catalog of videotaped meetings, available for rental or purchase and overseen by Schachter as video chairman, that reached back to late 1992.¹ Recorded sessions featured GO Corporation figures including co-founder and chairman Jerry Kaplan, James Roseborough speaking on PenPoint 2.0, and architect Joe Vierra presenting the GO Message Center.¹ The Message Center was the messaging and fax facility GO had introduced for PenPoint in 1992.³ The Silicon Valley chapter met on the second Thursday of each month at GO Corporation's training facility in Foster City, California, and its May 13, 1993 meeting featured a panel on the state of the pen computing market with Marty Mankins, PEN magazine publisher John Wagoner, and Bill Lempesis of Lempesis Research.¹

Beyond its organizational news, the issue carried a technical programming column by contributing editor Marco Accardo and an article by John Jerney examining GeoWorks' GEOS operating system as an emerging platform for pen and consumer computing.¹

AI generated using primary sources referenced in the footnotes