This week, TamsPalm was mentioned in a few blog carnivals:
Carnival of the mobilists
Our post on investition security in 3g networks was mentioned in edition 33 of the carnival.
Carnival of the Capitalists
This week’s Carnival of the Capitalists contained a link to our post on entering overfilled market sectors.
The TamsPalm team thanks all hosts for their support and wishes all the best for the future.
P.s. Wondering why we post this? Yeah, we have to – read more about that here.
A few days ago, I tried to play around a bit with ***** on my Palm Tungsten T3. OK, the product worked after a bit of time; and I wanted to gtive a bit of feedback on the insdtallation process and on how the product worked. In fact, I found a few bugs and even had an answer for one of the open questions on the product’s home page(no names mentioned, don’t want to insult anyone).
An engaged customer would now send the developer an email, this is an usual procedure in the Palm OS market. But those brothers apperently went a different way – there was no comment us link or anything on their homepage. There was no “Contact us” form, no email addess; exactly nothing. Nada!
Some of you will now say that this has become necceccary because of the excessive and insane anmount of spam floating around the internet recently, and indeed, getting 100 spam emails per day isn’t reatlly a great experience. However, spam filters exist, and many email providers even offer very good ones included into their free accouints(like the german gmx does, for example).
So, not offering a clear “contact us” link on your web site may save you a bit of hassle, but can(and usually will) cost you loads of great feedback from users and customers.
Do you offer your email address to customers?
Analysts all over the net(TamsPalm included) were buzzing about the “Linux for Palm OS PDA” ports at www.hackndev.com and other sites. Now, I decided to do the practical test on a Palm Tungsten T3 – let’s see how the free OS looks currently.
First of all. w00t! to the developers! I would have never managed to create something that would have managed to boot up a machine as complex as a Tungsten T3 – what they accomplished without any help from Palm is incredible! However, for the rest of the review, I’ll compare Linux to Palm OS fairly and ask for your understanding that Linux will not get baby treatment…
Just to put that clear – THIS IS NOT ALP! This is a Linux port by indie developers who managed to “hack” themselves into the Palm OS handheld’s hardware in their spare time, without support from Palm Inc!
Getting Linux to run was simpler than before – now, there is no more need for a web server and other thingies. All you need to do is sync Garux(the Linux bootloader for Palm OS) to your PDA and install two files(about 15 Megabytes) to your SD card. The files needed are available from SourceForge and hackndev; I used the following files:
Put into /Palm/Launcher:
Garux.prc
Put into /linux2ram:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/hackndev/rootfs-t3-gpe-farcaller-042806.squashfs?download
modules.squashfs
A card access tool like Softick Card Export can be very helpful if you don’t have a dedicated card reader. After that, you can start Garux from your memory card. The program will show you a list of options, I fared pretty well with the defaults altough our local Linux Nut Alexander Panek changed the init parameter to /linux2ram once or twice. Clicking Start Linux will wipe the Palm OS from your RAM, the only way to get it back is a hard reset.
After a few seconds, Garux will ask you to choose your boot source. Press the To Do button and afterwards the Calendar button to boot from SD card:
In most cases(95% of the time on my T3 with a 1GB HP SD card), the bootloader will show error messages like the ones below and will die – in that case, hardreset, change the initrd parameter and try again. It will eventually work(a full battery increases your odds):
If the bootup process works(congratz, you are lucky), GPE will ask you for a few configuration settings like default user name. Interestingly, the calibration uses 4 points instead of the two the Palm OS uses:
After completing all the steps, GPE will be ready to “run”. OK, Bluetooth, Sound, the slider, charging LED, battery status indicator and the power off button aren’t supported yet; but the touchscreen and memory subsystems are no problem. This 3gp video shows GPE in ‘action’.
The GPE system is rather similar to the Palm OS-this 3GP video shows the launcher and “task bar” in action. The status bar at the bottom of the screen is miore feature-rich than the Palm OS one, you can add loads of so-called Panels to show different aspects of the system.
However, GPE is mind-boggingly slow when launching applications. My old vintage Palm IIIc beats the Tungsten T3 by far, and launching a few apps at the same time(like 10 or so) totally kills the operating system. This 3gp video shows a little “speed benchmark”.
Overall, kudos to the Hackndev folks for creating a port of Linux that runs on the T3. Indeed, applications start and the touchscreen works – but that is about it. The operating system gets mind bogglingly slow when you launch more than one application at the same time and is generally rather slow. The lack of many features and the difficulties at powerup just add to the picture: a great product with loads of future potential, but it can’t compete with the Palm OS yet!
P.s. If soneone has an email address of the developer, please give it to me(post it here). I really really want to talk to him to explain the review more and give him my “bug list”.
People who read TamsPalm for a long time probably already know that I am very fond of Dallas Maxim and their marketing/marcomm methodologies. The methods used are extremely cheap, but terribly effective.
Dallas Maxim sent me the latest issue of their A/D Converter design guide today. A design guide is a document that intorduces you to cool Dallas Maxim devices – and this one really contains parts that I dreamed off when still doing electronics two years ago:
http://www.maxim-ic.com/design_guides/en/AD_CONVERTERS_27.pdf
By the way, Dallas Maxim offers free samples!
From the first moment that I received my Tungsten T, I always wondered which of the hundreds of bluetooth profiles it uses for transferring files.
Thanks to IVT’s BlueSoleil bluetooth stack, I can now tell you that my Palm Tungsten T3 uses Object Push profile for data exchange, Yes, thats right. Object Push profile.
And now…do with that info whatever you like =).
Some passages of this article are unfriendly; inhuman or otherwise impolite. Please accept my apologies, but I have a point to make
When walking around vienna, I saw the following scene:
Basically, this is a store that just closed in the very second I passed by. Four customers were standing right in front of it carrying their wallets wanting to buy stuff. The clerk was still inside, but refused to move her hide and take the $$$.
This situation is typical for a pragmatic, micro-managed environment or an XXXX government agency full of lazy/desillusionated/annoyed/underpaid, pragmatized people. So, we can derive the following ‘rules of management’:
Allow for individual acting
The store clerk in the store mentioned above probably did just what the store owner told it to do. Close the store at 19.00 and go home. And he did just that…on to point two.
Don’t micro-manage
The store manager micromanaged his store clerk by telling him to close the shop at 19.00 shart. The clerk had an exact order in his mind, and was executing this(there probably was a load of other orders after closing down; else the clerk would have been running home and would have locked the store from the outside.
Avoid ‘gofor’ delegation
The essence of the two points above was: avoid gofor delegation. When you have to give your employee a detailled task list with a fixed sequence, you have already lost. An employee needs to act on his own, and you need to permit him to do so. This permit must also include the permission to make mistakes; if you dont permit your employees to make mistaes, they will eventually fall back to gofor mode.
Tell your employee something like: Jim, you are responsible for the banner, and it must be done by foo:bar and must look well on www.urpburp.com. Then, leave him alone. Give him your mobile number in case of emergency, but don’t bother him with micro instructions!
Align your staff’s aim with your own
Basically, your staff’s aim must be aligned with yours. So, if your company does better, your employee must go better too. Everyone does it with managers and salespeople, but nobody does it with other kinds of employees. If the store clerk from above would have received a tiny little percentage of the company’s profits, he probably would have sold stuff to each of the four – probably even trying to sell them more than what they originally wanted!
Offering a cut of the profits is a very simple and risk-less thing. Lets say that you have 10 employees-giving each of them like 2%(or more, dependant on how high the base salary is) still leaves you with 80% of the cash – and with a bunch of employees working like madmen to generate buck!
Overall, this advice obviously isn’t applicable everywhere(anyone thinking of the infamous subject teacher? Nope, I didn’t say that…its you thinking about it). Screaming at a librarian to boost it isnt the ideal way for a library, but doesn’t hurt the company. However, a unhappy designer/developer or an unmotivated customer service person can easily cost a lot of money-the image at the top says all..
Whew, what a long article! What do you think?
This is _no_ rant. I am just thinking aloud about what happened in the last few days
BinaryClock 2.0, the Tamoggemon binary clock for Palm OS was released to the public a few weeks ago. Version 2.1 of Binary clock for Palm OS is currently beeing distributed for reviewing. As always, a press release was sent out to all Palm OS sites that I knew-and answers trickled in promptly.
To my astonishment, most of them contained a simple request-please send me a full version via email. This wasn’t difficult back when BinaryClock 1.0 was hip, as the application consisted of just a single file. But Binary Clock 2.1 contains FontBucket and a load of extra fonts-its like 7 files in total. Sending them out to each analyst with VersaMail is a bit, um, painful.
Shipping BinaryClock as a PalmSource Installer Package was planned originally, but was dropped, as we wanted users to select their favourite fonts themselves.
However, as it looks now, there will definitely be a PalmSource Installer Package available for version 3.0. It will be huge, eat up loads of RAM and won’t even be available on palmbinaryclock.com itself-it will only be lurking on my SD card, waiting for an analyst demanding a ‘full version’.
To be honest-if I would be a reviewer of Binary Clock 2.1, I wouldn’t have any issues with the package…in fact, I would even be happy as the burden of ‘configuring’ was taken off my shoulders.
What do you think?
The Pragmatic Programmer’s published a lot of pretty good books recently-their books always cover the core of the subject without much fluff! Ship It covered a plethora of hardware tools that make developer’s life easier-Practices of an agile developer cares for your brain!
The book is subdivided into nine chapters that cover all kinds of things like coding style, team management, cooperation and debugging. Each of the chapters is subdivided into three or four “practices”, each of the practices can “stand alone” without problems. You can read what sounds interesting for you and skip the rest without having to think about what happened before.
Although the book is targeted at teams and managers, a one-man shop can still benefit from the practices. Each and every developer eventually accumulates bad habits-and this book is probably the best way to show you what you are doing wrong and how you can improve your development process.
The authors managed to create a very readable book, the text is well formulated and easy to understand. One can see Practices of an Agile Developer as a practical companion to O’Reilly’s Extreme Programming pocket handbook which we reviewed a few days ago.
Overall, Practices of an agile developer makes a good read for every software developer who is in the sector for more than a few months(a bloody beginner won’t have the experience to see how the bad practices burn you). The practices presented cover most common ‘baddies’, and reading it probably gives you an immediate productivity boost! The book currently costs less than 20$ at Amazon’s – thats about four burger king meals, which is not really much for all the advice given!
Many network operators consider CDMA dead – for example, I don’t know a single CDMA system in Austria. In fact, there even is a tiny little Mobitex system; but no CDMA bubble. Woo-hoo!
Now, Nokia announced that it plans to stop producing new CDMA phones. However, Nokia phones will still be marketed in the states by contract manufacturers.
Don’t ask me what that really means. However, it is very possible that we may not see any more Nokia phones on CDMA networks in the future, altough for now, the contract manufacturers would IMHO still produce a few new models.
The press release is here:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060622/tc_nm/nokia_cdma_dc
What do you think? Will there still be Nokia CDMA systems in a year from now?
Easy Calc is a great freeware calculator with lots of features. There is the newest version of EasyCalc (v.1.23) at FreewarePalm.com. It’s the first update after three years.
http://freewarepalm.com/calculator/easycalc.shtml
So let’s hope that we don’t have to wait for the next update again three years 
Now there is PalmPDF 1.3. Changes are:
1.3 (06/24/06 “Summer update”)
Homepage: http://www.metaviewsoft.de
First of all, thanks go to reader j from Amsterdam for the wise comment on how LedManager’s fate should look(unedited):
Realease as Open Source!! So that other people can learn.
I am sure that quite a few of you will now laugh their hides off – but this is no joke, I really was thinking about releasing LedManager as open source. It could in fact even have been helpful to some, but here are the reasons why this is not an option for me(as of now, maybe once I quit the Palm OS arena for good):
“DRM Code” embedded into LedManager
OK; LedManager was the first Tamoggemon product to be released(a bit of trivia: Binary Clock for Palm OS was developed first, but I forgot it in the back of the RAM of my Palm Tungsten T3). Thus, the first DRM experiments were made on beta builds of LedManager, and this lead to the pretty decent DRM system implemented into LedManager 1.0.
Obviously, Tamoggemon permanentely looks at improving its technology, and so the DRM system used in current apps is different from what we had originally. But nevertheless, the clues given in LedManager could be very helpful when it comes to create a keygen(and illicitly selling the app)!
LedManager’s code is embarrassing
This comes from the deepest end of my heart: from a coder’s point of view, LedManager is an embarrassing thingy. All the code is stuck into a huge, xy KB huge c file with a single header and a library file. Releasing LedManager in its current state is not gonna help anyone IMHO, unless he wants a bad example for how not to create a program(ridiculously, Binary Clock was segmented right from start…probably the OnBoradC influence)!
LedManager’s code is undocumented
All documentation that ever existed for LedManager’s code are two A5 sheets of paper on the DRM system. And in fact, even those were burnt a few months ago..so everyone who wants to do something with LedManager would need to rethink all the thoughts I had!
Releasing LedManager to open source would require loads of work. The DRM system would need to be cut out, the code would need to be refactored and documented. The problem with all this is that it IMHO doesnt pay out. Maybe, one day, LedManager will be opensource-but definitely not now!
What do you think?
There’s a discussion at the German forum “Nexave” about NetFront. You can download it at PalmPowerups.com.
You don’t need to copy it to RAM from your card. It’s packed in an installer which can be hotsynced. Maxx and the small fonts are also included.
About one and a half years ago, LedManager(the first Tamoggemon product) saw the light of day. Sales were hmm, but the experiences gained were invaluable(and paid for a nice little WristPDA)!
But this article’s gist isn’t history – its future. And LedManager’s future looks dark for a variety of reasons:
Now, we face a problem: to EOL or not to EOL. While I can’t yet say how we act(still gotta ask the guy who pays Tamoggemon bills), this post serves as a ‘brain dump’:
For EOL’ling
Honesty to customers
Tamoggemon’s founding ideal was to satisfy each customer(if needed, by refunding them). Many customers buy applications to encourage further development – but no amount of sales(ok, a few k sales…) can make us recommence development of a product that we all hate.
If customers beleive that LedManager is still beeing maintained, they can’t assess its value correctly. This leads to dissatisfied customers-something we want to avoid.
Reduction of portfolio
Every product that Tamoggemon has creates effort for us. Analysts want to review it; customers inquire about hardware support; the web site needs maintenance etc. The less roducts you have, the less data you need to keep floating around your head.
Improving portfolio quality
Customers visiting Tamoggemon’s web site get to see all products that we currently offer. However, most of the time, they only download one. If they go for LedManager, there is a high probability that the program won’t work on their box; they would then end up thinking that all Tamoggemon Products suck..,
Against EOL’ing
Corporate greed
That point shows that we are no ‘opensource’ house – Tamoggemon needs to earn $$$ in order to be successful. ‘Selling’ a licence of LedManager essentially is a no-brainer by now, so discontinuing LedManager is kissing good-bye a few easily-earned bucks!
Overall… I can’t say anything overall=). Why don’t you post your ‘overall’ passage?
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