InfoFlo: a novel communication infrastructure for personal digital assistants

Personal digital assistants (PDAs) are becoming commonplace, and feature continually increasing processing and storage capabilities. Distribution of media through wireless means to these devices is becoming less expensive, but is not yet widespread. The authors describe a novel communication infrastructure to provide distribution of information to PDAs utilizing inexpensive methods; our approach is both scalable and flexible. Most PDAs support infrared (IR) communication, and we focus on this; our infrastructure is not restricted to this, however, and is adaptable to the emerging wireless communication technologies