TamsPalm – the Palm OS / web OS Blog

PowerPoint is a very popular overhead replacement. Over time, many applications were designed that allowed speakers to control slide-changes remotely. Wagware’s LibertyControl makes your bluetooth capable handheld your PowerPoint remote control!

The first step is installing the desktop application on the computer that you wish to control. This is not a particularily difficult thing to do.

After that, a 1200k application is instalced to your handheld. This is a pretty big chunk, but the program works from an SD card or memory stick. The next step in the LibertyControl livecycle involves connecting to the desktop with the mobile client.

Once the connection is established, you can already begin controlling your presentation. This 3gp video shows how the process works.

The program can also remote control internet explorer and Windows media player. This can also come in handy…

Overall, LibertyControl is a great thing to have if you present a lot! Dedicated remote control usually costs much more and does less-as said, check it out. A free trial is available, so there is no risk involved.

Recently, an analyst reported that Palm was planning to create a Linux OS-one that was not compatible/similar to the Access Linux Platform. Immediately, analysts went all bonkers claiming that ALP was dead, will never ship on Palm’s handhelds, blah.

At the first glance, this looks true. Developing an operating system is a huge amount of effort, it takes a lot of time, is expensive, etc. But is developing a Linux OS the same thing as developing a new OS?

Nope, it is not. A few (skilled) developers got Linux running on PalmOS boxen within a few weeks without having access to data about the hardware or anything. Now think of a full-fledged gang of software engineers(I am speaking of, say 50 ppl) wit acess to the best hardware and documentation. For them, creating a Linux derivate is a no-brainer.

So, if we now recall the sucker editorials published about half a year ago, this OS idea gets relativized. OK; Palm may be developing an OS. But there is no need that this OS will definitely be Palms future. The operating system could be developed as a “smoke test” or a backup plan in case ALP bails. Or, the operating system could serve as a bridge between the dieing Garnet and the upcoming ALP, allowing Palm to deliver smartphones with EDGE, etc soon!

So, keep your hair on and your eyes open!

Yesterday Metaviewsoft released PalmPDF 1.2. A big a change is that it now supports skins, you can download a skin creator at the homepage.

http://www.metaviewsoft.de/en/Software/PalmOS/Freeware/PalmPDF/

Many people asked us about the variable names used in most of our sample codes-foo, bar and baz. What do they mean, what do they express?

These variables are so-called metasyntactical variables; this means as much as variables replacing true variables for demonstration purposes. So, when you need a variable and dont know how to call it, you use foo first, then bar, baz, qux, quux, corge, grault, garply, waldo, fred, plugh, xyzzy and finally thud acording to the RFC.

You can find the “official” reasoning in the RFC 3092:
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3092.html

Any more questions?

I searched at Google and other sites for a free RSS reader. RSS feeds are files in a special format (XML) that usually contain news. For example, a news site can load such a RSS file on its server which is updated every three hours and you can download on your device. You can open HTML news sites with your Palm, but this can take much time and traffic (=money). RSS feeds are platform-independent, small and contain plain-text. You can download a feed within seconds.

There are some RSS programs for Palm, but none of them is free. There is an app called “tRSS” at Freewarepalm.com, but it’s in early alpha / beta stage, J2ME and needs an old JavaVM (Sun). So I looked for another J2ME alternative. J2ME is usually used in mobile phones for games or apps, but with IBM WebSphere Environment you can run these apps on PalmOS, too.

I found an app called “RSS Reader”. It supports multiple feeds, offline viewing, multiple fonts and much more. It doesn’t support so much features like commercial PalmOS RSS apps but not everybody needs a perfect app, perhaps you will like it:

You can download this version – converted for PalmOS + JavaVM and with the Firefox RSS icon – exclusively here at TamsPalm:

• http://www.tamoggemon.com/blog/contents/2006/March/rssreader/RSSReader.prc
• http://www.tamoggemon.com/blog/contents/2006/March/rssreader/RSSReader-de.prc

To get this running, you need the IBM Java VM, which you can download here.

Remember, this is J2ME and the handling may be a little bit different from what you know as standard PalmOS apps. But all features should work.

What do you think? If you have questions, problems, etc. feel free to post them here.

Take a look at this page, you might find it intersting.

Graffiti Alphabet

Dear readers,
I am very, very, very sorry for the outages over the last few hours. However, we were slashdotted recently. The slashdotting led to a DOS attack, as somebody was not satisfied with what we wrote.

Our web host HostLoco was fighting for about 2 hours, allowing about 10000 visitors to reach the page(which was a tiny fraction of the requesters). However, about 1800 austrian time, HostLoco had to give up, fowarding the domain to fbi.gov without asking for my permission priorly.

So, to cut a long story short: We are not offline or busted, we just were overloaded.

Please feel free to leave comments!

The Bluetooth SIG recently announced a bit of news about the new Bluetooth UWB standard.

Bluetooth UWB will use the WiMedia alliance’s modulation standard to add a high-speed option to its popular bluetooth standard. Rumors say that the reached speed in the 6GhZ frequency band is 480mbps, while staying compatible with the existing (2.4GhZ) bluetooth devices curently on the market. The SIG confirmed that it expects prototypes to be available Q2 2007.

Get the official press release here:
https://www.bluetooth.org/admin/bluetooth2/news/story.php?storyid=624

Don’t we all love exclusive sneak peaks at new software? Isn’t it a great feeling to be the only one on the block who has the latest apps? Anyways, lets get serious once again. Peter Thorstenson, the developer of tejpWriter, a very fast opensource text editor(I use it for reviewing), has just sent us the following alpha preview of the latest release of the program.

You can download TejpWriter 3 beta5 here.

Please leave bug reports,.. behind as comments, if you leave your email address, the author of the program will contact you. Alternatively, send your feedback to Tamog AT gmx DOT at.

Google Page Creator is a free online service. You can use it to create own web sites without being a webmaster with knowledge of HTML. There are several layouts and designs you can choose for your site and a WYSIWYG editor for the pages. Additionaly, Google gives you 100 MB for your web site.

First you need a Google Mail account. Using this account, you can create your own Google Pages account at http://pages.google.com . At the moment the service is stopped because of too much interest and because it’s beta yet. We sent a mail to Google Labs to get a review account.

After your account is created, you can start writing immediately. There are buttons for choosing a layout and a design. There are some layouts with headlines and with sidebars. The designs are different in their colours. You can choose between 41 designs.

With the main window you can write text. There are some formatting controls such as bold, italic and underlining, lists, fonts and colors. Using the image button you can upload images or choose an image from the web.

Linking to other pages is easy: Tap on the link button ans then you can choose one of your other pages, so you don’t need to know file names, etc. Links to other pages are of course possible, too.

With the HTML editor you can edit the source code of the site and use things which the WYSIWYG editor doesn’t support. But the HTML editor doesn’t support editing the whole site, so you can’t create own layouts or designs.

The page manager shows all your pages, all images and all other uploads. The uploader supported every file type I tried. Useful: if you want to upload more than on file, you just have to choose all files. It uplods one file after another while the other files wait in queue.

After editing your site is immediately availible on the web. You have 100 MB space. That’s enough for a small, private homepage.

What is the difference to other web hosters? Google Pages lets you create your site online, but it has neither MySQL, PHP, … nor FTP support. You see it’s NO replacement for a common web hosting service, but it is almost PERFECT for users who want to publish their last holiday photos or theirselves. They need no knowledge about web hosting and HTML developing.

Of course FTP is important for professional webmasters, but private users don’t need FTP or MySQL. They need an good but easy web hosting solution.

And Google Pages is their best choice!

Very sorry, but this news is too awesome to let slip. IPifini, a startup in Massachusetts recently announced that its drink technlology already has been licenced to a few manufacturers.

In case you wonder what this is all about, IPfini has announced a technology that will let you customize the taste of your drink on the go. It is based on taste bubbles in the wall of the bottle that can then be pressed into the base drink.

The full story is here:
http://www.yenra.com/beverages/programmable.html

Recently, Garmin announced that the i3000 was going to be delayed. A few PalmInfoCenter commentators announced that they beleive that Garmin now shuts off their PalmOS development department.

Many people discuss if Garnet will still cut it in 3g handsets. Personally, I dare to say that I am not sure if Garnet will cut it. It may cut it with a bit of tweaking(remember, it was a RTOS core);but no promises. But Garnet will for sure cut it in a different arena-in the arena of lowcost/mediaplayer/game/data-only handhelds and organizers.

But why? If you look at the devices named above, you will see immediately that the users of those machines are OS agnostic. They don’t care about what runs their games or videos, they just want performance. Did you ever see a ‘regular’ person asking for the Ipod’s or the Nintendo DS’s operating system?

PalmOS 5 would do a perfect job in such an arena. Gang it up with NetFront, an image viewer, a PIM/email suite and a multimedia player with a unified UI. What comes out is a nice, reliable core for a portable box. It may not be excessively cool, but it works reliably; and this is what users want!

The LifeDrive we currently bicker about actually is a great box-if it were a plain media player box without third party apps. The things that made and still make problems are third party applications.

Overall, the future for Garnet will change. It does not have the power to compete in highend markets for a long time(unless someone rewrites it a bit, the RTOS is there(!!!!!!)). However, Garnet still has loads of meat and beef to keep alive in different market sectors. The future for PalmOS developers may not look excessively great; but Garnet will cut it for sure.

How do you feel about the future of the Palm OS?

Sometimes, people have top much time. Then, they build cool stuff.

For example, David built a Bar with computer controlled LED tiles integrated into the top of the bar. The LED’s then lit up in some format as decided by the PC. By the way, when shopping for the LED’s for your own project, better check out a few stores(and web shops specialised on LED’s) as the prices of LED’s are very different from store to store…

The web site contains links to a few other projects focussed on similar things-a must-view for each and every LED freak..
http://thediscobar.blogspot.com/

This is just a quick ping to tell you that BrightHand and BargainPda have ganged up. So, when visiting one if the two sites, don’t wonder if you see the layout of the other one. The pages weren’t hacked or sold, the editorial teams were ganged up and work together from now on.

We wish them all the best! By the way, it s not sure yet if the old BrightHand links keep on working, but as it looks now, they will stop working…

The statement is here:
http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-11304_7-6474897-1.html?tag=txt