At the annual meeting Jeff Knakal brought out some work he had been
doing with Excel spreadsheets to help make life easier for race
directors to get their job done. I did not get a chance to get a close
look at it, but it seemed to be pretty good from what he described.

His work spurred me to checking into what sorts of race-related
software might be available for PDA's (Personal Digital Assistants),
such as Palm and PocketPC's. I figured that if such software did not
exist it might be something that I could work on in whatever free time
I had.

Well, as it turns out, there is a pretty comprehensive program
available. It is called "RecordTime", and runs on PocketPC's such as
the Compaq iPAQ and other ARM, SH3 or MIPS-based PDA's. It is
shareware, with a fully functional program available that costs $30.

This software handles
1. The registration process, with user-defined classes, categories,
divisions, race numbers, etc.
2. Stopwatch function, with ability to handle race laps, DNF, etc.
3. Generation of HTML and table-based race results that can be
imported into Excel for further work.

The registration process is rather cool in that if a racer registers
at *any* race, then his name (with class info already included) is
available to be entered in any new race he enters.

The stopwatch user interface is pretty simple. Click on "start" to
start the race, then (for most races) click on the racer's number when
they cross the finish line. The racer's number then disappears from
the "active racer" window.

For the lap races, you do the same thing, except the racer's number
will remain in the active racer window until the final lap is
finished. There is a "catchup" button if things get too hairy.

http://members.rogers.com/cognidyne/recordtime.htm

--Michael Lampi