TamsPalm - the Palm OS Blog

Palm’s PDA’s are now more than three years old, and no updates are in sight. As August traditionally is the time of blowout sales, quite a few units may be moved soon. Ryan Kairer’s team traditionally has had excellent links to Best Buy - let’s look at their offers:

First of all, Palm’s PDA’s are discounted a bit. The Z22 can be had for 90$, the TX goes for 255$ without any extra accessoires.

Treo-wise, little is offered. However, Centros can be had for their ‘list prices’ or - under some curcumstances - for just 50$ with a 2yr contract.

As usual, no warranties can be given on stock and effectivity: some stores can always run out of stock or choose to stick to the regular pricing…

Palm’s Jon Zilber writes that his employer has just managed to sell the 2000000st Centro. No information is given on who the lucky victim was and whether we are looking at a sale to a carrier/shop or an OTC sale to an actual customer.

Nevertheless, the nice rate of Centro sales will likely provide Palm with a nice amount of cash that can be used to continue the development of Nova and an accompanying third party ecosystem from scratch…as I am pretty sure that very few developers will code for ALP out of their own interest…

Finally: this is yet another reason for Palm not to want a quality web browser for the Palm OS….the lackadaisical Blazer browser makes for an excellent upgrade argument to get users off their Centros…should the Nova boxen ever ship…

Communities housing ALP developers should prepare for a steep raise in suicide rates as Access developers commit Seppuku due to their platform’s impeding failure.

According to The Inquirer, the PR firm of the carrier Orange has confirmed the discontinuation of the Samsung i800. This device was intended to be the first ALP device and should have hit the road in H2 of this year.

As of now, neither Samsung nor Orange officials have stated anything regarding the device. However, Orange’s PR firm claimed that “the market situation has changed” and that more competitive smartphones can be made with other Linux derivatives(LiMo)…

ALP is now left without a “reference customer” and is well on the way to Cobalt-coloured pastures. Even though Access if a member of the LiMo forum itself, it’s very unlikely that the company will
drop ALP into the LiMo pot…

LJP, the multi-platform emulator for the Palm OS has been reviewed at TamsPalm’s before - the program has now received a small update from Henk Jonas aka MetaView(the PalmPDF porter).

Version 1.2 adds phone-call detection for Treos and fixes a few small issues ans bugs. The update is available on Henk’s personal blog…

The Access Developer Network has just sent out an invitation to Palm OS developers.

This year’s LinuxWorld (in San Francisco) will host a special side-track called Access Developer Day. The program will cover a vairty of ALP-related topics and will also include a testing session where existing garnet applications can be tested on Nxxx web tablets running GHost. Here’s the exact program:

sion 1: 10:15 - 11:15
ACCESS Development Technologies and ALP Overview
This session presents the various ACCESS technologies of interest to developers, including Widgets and Web 2.0 applications, Java, Garnet OS (also known as Palm OS), and an architectural overview of the ACCESS Linux Platform (ALP).

Session 2: 11:30 - 12:30
Development Tools for Native Apps
This hands-on introduction to the ACCESS Development Suite, toolset for building native ALP applications, will guide attendees through the simple steps of building a native application for the ACCESS Linux Platform. Getting up and developing could never be easier with integrated debugging against the built-in simulator.

Lunchtime Lab: 11:30 - 12:30
Testing lab: Garnet OS/Java/ALP apps
For those developers with existing Garnet OS (previously known as Palm OS), Java, and Web applications. This is an opportunity for developers to test their existing applications on ALP enabled environments. It will also give them the opportunity to show-off their applications for consideration for inclusion in our application store and part of the ADN Elite program.

Keynote: 1:30 - 2:00
ACCESS Developer Business and Funding Opportunities
Learn about the business and partnership opportunities with ACCESS and the opportunities for those of you building compelling native applications for ALP as well as the VC and funding landscape in this arena.

Session 3: 3:00 - 4:00
Building an ALP Native App
This hands-on session uses the ACCESS Development Suite for a better understanding of what it takes to build an ALP application.

Session 4: 4:15 - 5:15
Advanced ALP Programming with Hiker
A deeper dive into fully integrated ALP application development in this hands-on session will leverage the features of the open source Hiker components for tighter application integration into the underlying ALP environment.

Attendance is free but limited. If you wish to get in, send an email to accessdevnet@access-company.com to obtain further information!

P.S. A free one-day pass to the LinuxWorld can be obtained by using the discount code ACCESSDD at this web site.

I recently ran into an issue while adding bitmaps to a new Tamoggemon app. I created the bitmap resources in Resource Editor, and then edited the bitmap files with GIMP 2.4.

This resulted in total mayhem: the colors of the bitmaps appeared heavily distorted and were completely unusable. After a few hours of tinkering, I found out that the problem is due to the Palm OS tools needing a very special and pretty obscure bitmap format.

Even though converters are available, most of them aren’t cheap - thus, I set out to find another way. Follow the steps below and you’ll have perfect bitmaps in a jiffy:

Export the xrd file as a (temporary) 24bit BMP file onto your desktop. Do NOT allow GIMP to write into the file hyperlinked from the resource HTML file.

Then, open the resource HTML file in the resource editor. Open the bitmap that you wish to “edit”, and click Import. Pick the temporary file created before and “import” the data. Voila - it works. You can now delete the temporary bitmap…

The reason why I ****** up was that I used GIMP to directly edit the bitmaps as referenced by the resource HTML file. Once again - do NOT edit the bitmaps in the /rsc folders with anything except the PalmSource XRD editor!

I am currently hacking around on a new DRM system for my applications which - surprise, surprise - will include OTA wherever its possible (aka at MobiHand’s). As I need to use variable URL’s for each distributor, I felt like using the preprocessor.

As I stumbled across a few interesting things, I felt like sharing the code below:

#if defined MOBIHAND
WBM_OpenWebPage(0,"https://www.mobihand.com/mobilecart/mc1.asp?posid=162&pid=8703");
#elif defined PALMGEAR
WBM_OpenWebPage(0,"http://www.palmgear.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=sc.buy&prodid=137239&buytoken=62745661");
#else
#error "no ESD Specified"
#endif


The first thing that I considered interesting is the #error macro - it allows you to stop the compilation process if some condition is not met. In the example above, the condition would be that no ESD flag is set. Furthermore, nesting definitions isn’t too easy either - the syntax involves the defined operator (which the PODS does NOT highlight).

The image above speaks a clear language - the Tamoggemon Publishing team finally stands behind its threat and goes to the world of the Malus portabilii.

From now on, expect us to cover all things Apple-related. As we are funded entirely by our sponsors and are hosted in a country with intact press freedom for tech journalists, this means trouble for the Cupertinians… Big trouble!

The worm is now inside the fruit…keep an eye on our progress here:
http://tamsijungle.tamoggemon.com

The folks from PdaParts (formerly known as GetHighTech) once were known for their excellent inventory of spare parts for all kinds of handhelds. Even though their stock seems to have dwindled recently (industry insiders tell us that parts are no longer available for the latest devices).

Nevertheless, they manage to get their claws onto spare parts every now and then - whenever they get a spare part, they immediately make a video showing how to take the device apart.

The Palm Centro is their latest victim - get the video here (YouTube link)!

If you now think that the Tamoggemon editorial team has finally gone bonkers: think twice. Palm User Groups are commonly known as PUGs - but the majority of the world thinks that pugs are something else.

For them, a pug is a small dog that can be dressed up. Michelle and Allen from UltimatePug provided the following images of pug dogs - enjoy:

P.s. Anyone of you has such a dog? A shot of a pug at a PUG meeting would be too cool ;).

So far, people using a Sprint-branded Centro were left in the rain when software updates were concerned. However, this has now changed - version 1.07 is available for their enjoyment.

Palm claims that the following things have been improved:

* Improved Gmail IMAP compatibility and an updated setup wizard with the new Gmail settings
* Updated compatibility for Google Mobile Maps My Location feature to approximate your current location – great for directions, finding nearby restaurants or business, or checking local traffic.
* Improved ongoing delivery of email sent to VersaMail accounts using Microsoft’s Direct Push Technology via Exchange ActiveSync
* Bluetooth usability enhancements and updates
* Sprint TV performance enhancements
* Enhanced AOL Instant Messenger performance
* Improved performance when adding a contact using Mobile Voice Control
* Improved email attachment handling
* Changed default camera shutter sound to “ON.” Audible shutter “click” will be heard when taking photos
* Allows Preferred Roaming List updates over the air

The update can be downloaded here.

Apparently, a few key people at Verizon’s don’t read TamsPalm and don’t have too much industry insight either. Otherwise, they would know that the Centro can NOT replace a Treo because it is way to small for extended periods of use.

Nevertheless, our boneheaded friends have decided to EOL their version of the 755 (pictured above). According to PIC’s Kris Keilhack, the device now costs 99$ with a 2yr contract, but is out of stock almost everywhere.

So far, Developers haven’t been too happy about the Centro in our interviews - it looks like the situation is becoming worse every minute now. Once again: if you haven’t ported yet, it’s high noon!

Dear Readers,
we have just updated the back-end software used to host our news services as it was outdated.

These updates serve to improve performance, security and reliability and thereby directly serve you all. We have performed tests and feel that all works o.k. - should you discover any bugs, please accept our apologies and email us at Tamog AT gmx DOT at so that we can fix the issue!

Best regards
Tam Hanna & the Tamoggemon team

Finally, the TamsPalm team managed to relaunch PalmWiki, our Palm OS information database. A Wiki enables every visitor to edit pages, so the whole Palm community can help creating this database.

About two years ago, when TamsPalm moved to another server, the Wiki database and all backups were lost. Luckily, Google’s Cache and Archive.org had some of the old pages still availible. But as this sites only have HTML code which needs to be converted to MediaWiki code, the import of old data needs some time. But some pages (main page, software, hardware, …) are already present and the Wiki is ready to be used again.

The new URL is:

http://palmwiki.tamoggemon.com/en