TamsPalm – the Palm OS / web OS Blog

Unfortunately, I have not been able to cover the release of the first Android handset in as much detail as I wanted to – I was away on a short vacation. Nevertheless, here’s a wrap-up of interesting articles from other news services for your enjoyment:

Launch Round-up
The folks at Engadget’s have been at the launch party in New York, and have brought along a load of pictures and interviews. Hit the link above for the full scoop!

T-Mobile G1 – teardown
DigiTimes tore down a T-Mobile G1 and analyzed where the core components came from. Surprisingly, it looks like the G1 has an inductive touchscreen rather than the resistive one found on Palm OS and PocketPC devices!

Visa plans to support Android
My personal experiences with Visa can be summed up by stating that the cards look lovely, but simply don’t work. Apparently, this is what Android is all about – Engadget reports that:

…
they’ve hooked up with Chase to offer an Android app that delivers notifications, merchant “offers,” and a location-based search of nearby retailers that accept Visa cards (which is pretty much all of them in our experience).
…

It looks like my prediction stating that Android is not targeted at enterprises seems to have become true. It looks like Google intends Android-powered devices to be little more than portable advertising pillars that display AdSense ads to (unsuspecting) customers…

Apparently, the draconian terms used by Handango (more on these here) starts to undermine the once-excellent position of the company. The company now tries to reach new shores and starts to cater to Android developers.

The email below has been forwarded to me from an informer:

Dear Handango Content Partner,

As a new member of the Handango team, I would like to personally thank you for being a valued partner and look forward to our continued partnership and success.

With the anticipated release of the new Google Android phone, we wanted to give you a heads up–we are preparing to distribute Android content shortly, so please have your content ready for upload as soon as possible. Look for more details about this exciting launch coming soon.

In the meantime, I would like to invite you to participate in a short online survey. We are improving our partner newsletter and would like to know what is important to you. Your feedback will help us customize our newsletter to better meet your needs.

I want to assure you that no one will contact you for marketing purposes as a result of your participation. And, your responses will remain anonymous. Please take a few minutes to take the survey:

http://oh.no.com/did/you/think/that/i/tell/you/abt/my/source

Please complete the survey by Friday, October 3, 2008. If you have any questions, please direct them to us at partners@handango.com. If you feel that another person in your company is better suited to provide a response to this survey, feel free to forward this e-mail to them.

Again, I look forward to working with you and helping you achieve continued success.

Best regards,
Guy Waitley

I am not sure if this campaign will be of permanent value for developers: Google has repeatedly announced intentions to launch a software store of its own. The question here is when, not how: I would urge developers to stay away from this offering and wait for the real thing until the company changes its terms…

What do you think?

Some of you have recently criticized my increasingly negative stance on the future of Palm OS Garnet and its successor OS, Nova. As the TamsPalm team believes in reader feedback, here is my personal opinion why I feel that Nova will fail to become more than a short blimp on the mobile computing timeline.

The mobile computing market has changed significantly due to the iPhone. An even broader range of customers now understands the value of third party apps (last but not least due to heavy advertising on apple’s part) – and will be hesitant to purchase a non-expandable phone.

Stunning applications, however, are created by talented developers. As mobile-capable coders are extremely rare, their man hours are precious. System houses thus love to have huge ROI – but getting big ROI is difficult on a platform which has very few active devices roaming around the markets.

Unfortunately, getting devices out isn’t easy. Customers want to have a handset that is cool out of the box – which is somewhat difficult to accomplish if you don’t have any third-party apps.

Let’s now assume that a lightning bolt fries the brains of Palm executives and makes them pray to developers and offer free Nova devices and a final SDK tomorrow…I am pretty sure that the response of most of them will be bored yawning. The reason: Palm unfortunately has a long history of not shipping stuff.

Cobalt’s failure is quite an old story – but the hundreds of man hours that went down the drain with it are still very present in developer’s minds. The public disaster around the Foleo then did the rest to drive developers off the edge: a product which essentially was ready to ship was killed.

Even though I am pretty sure that the developers who participated in the pre-release program were compensated to some extent (to keep them from suing or selling their Foleo off to the highest-bidding journalist and declaring it lost), the public perception of the deal was catastrophic (as everybody thinks that the orange boys f##ed them over big-time).

The situation above looks like a classic catch-2 – and it probably is just that. Unless Palm takes radical measures to ensure developers of success (read: guaranteed sales), Nova will be ignored by third-party coders not contracted by Palm. This will lead to a huge lack of third-party programs, which slows device sales. This will then lead….you get the idea.

What do you think?

This announcement from Pimlico Software could be of interest for people owning older Palm OS handhelds, as the folks at Palm have dropped support for these devices from the latest version of Palm Desktop:

Palm’s V-6.2 “Access” Desktop syncs with the newer Palm PIM databases (Calendar, Contacts, Memos, Tasks), but not with the traditional/legacy PIM app databases (Address, Datebook, Memo, ToDo).

It turns out though that a number of changes to the windows registry FIXES this issue and allows a traditional/legacy Palm device to sync nicely with the V-6.2 Access Desktop.

I have written a small freeware application which makes all the requisite changes to the registry and also allows you to reverse the procedure should that be necessary.

You can download this application from:
http://www.PimlicoSoftware.com/palmhotsyncsetup.exe
or as a zip file, from:
http://www.PimlicoSoftware.com/palmhotsyncsetup.zip

Just launch the application and select the appropriate database set and click the Setup button. Then hotsync and you should now see your data in the Palm Desktop application.

I have recently received quite a few inquiries of developers asking me where the latest version of the Conduit Developer Kit can be downloaded, as it seems to have disappeared from Access’s web site.

The CDK is needed by developers wanting to create so-called Conduits. A Conduit is a program that ties into the hotsync process and synchronizes data between the handheld and the PC – a popular example is the desktop part of DataViz’s DocumentsToGo.

A bit of googling has led me to the following URL – it contains version 4.02 of the SDK:
http://downloads.zdnet.com/abstract.aspx?docid=184535

Critics frequently accuse me of being a bigot who hates low-key color themes. While the idea of considering competitors bigots may be appealing to some, I bring you yet another proof why black-on-white rocks:

The two images above show an application by an apprentice developer of mine who didn’t quite learn the lesson yet. They were both made on a Treo 680 with the backlight turned off – while the high-key theme remains viewable, the content on the low-key theme is very hard to see.

Today’s “lesson” is short and sweet: while low-key themes may look lovely indoors, customers using their devices outdoors will have huge issues seeing them. Even though it sounds unlogical (the contrast stays the same): the proof is above…

Any ideas, anyone?

As I am currently on my way to a three-day corporate vacation, I have access to a popular Austrian economy magazine courtesy of the OEBB. Today’s issue of the so-called Wirtschaftsblatt contained a few figures I considered worthwhile of sharing – enjoy:

On online ad spending
Nokia is said to spend 10-25% of its total advertising budget for on-line activities according to unspecified insider sources. Don’t ask me where that money goes – enthusiast web sites definitely don’t see any of it…

On netbook sales
2201 Netbooks were sold in Austria in July 2008 (Austria has about 8 million inhabitants). The amount of sold devices is said to increase steeply, as Microsoft has ganged up with a big Austrian carrier in order to peddle these devices in response to Android (I mean, WTF? Netbooks against Android phones?).

A few weeks ago, massive media exposure made the MyTreo folks understand that paying royalties is a good thing. Back then, Tadd Rosenfeld promised to pay all outstanding debts ASAP and switched his ESD to Mobihand: unfortunately, the promise still hasn’t been fulfilled.

Mobile-Stream has just informed us that they still didn’t get their money:

http://mytreo.net/forum/index.php?topic=64069.new;topicseen#new

Here is a new mytreo.net thread.
It mentions that even mytreo.net Associated Developers (VoiceIt Technologies, for example) are not get paid.

It is very sad that I believed them and deleted my previous complaints on the forums.

We have held back on publishing this while trying to get hold of Tadd – to no avail. As Tadd seems to try the ostrich method here, I can recommend developers to start legal/execution proceedings ASAP. In Austria, this kind of behavior is typical for companies close to going belly-up…in such cases, the one who sues first usually gets his money.

I hereas urge everybody who still has significant debts at MyTreo’s to get in touch with an attorney immediately, and ignore any and all statements(except a wire transfer) coming out of the company. I am very sad to write this about a colleague I respect very much: but the employees of MT probably will try to keep you waiting for as long as possible.

The reason for this is simple: if they loose the suit, they have to pay all your court proceedings. You, on the other hand, have nothing to loose: they gain interest on your money every day they don’t pay you…

TamsPalm will keep a careful eye on MyTreo. Developers, please keep us posted about whatever happens next.

We have interviewed Dmitry Grinberg, a well-known Palm OS software developer. The questions are about Palm’s and Dmitry’s future, enjoy:

What do you think about Palm’s future?
Legendary companies do not just wink out of existence. So even if all the “palm is dieing” rumors are correct it will take time. Personally I am not so sure I am a subscriber to those rumors. Yes they stopped making PDA – the only thing they were REALLY good at. Yes they made treo 600-800 all looking the same. But look – they are still afloat.
Means they’re doing something right. I am most definitely not in the target audience. But power users and developers never are. So their future is cloudy. But it is too early to predict huge success or total failure.

Why do you develop for Palm OS and not for Windows Mobile, etc.?
It’s fun. WM reminds me too much of windows, which is never a good thing. Pretty much I develop for whatever platform I use. I use all of my software. The titles I release are a strict subset of all the applications I’ve written. And all of those were written because I needed them. That being said, I hate Java. I do not consider it a programing language, and do not consider its users to be programmers (unless of the top of their head they can tell me what mark-and-sweep garbage collector is, and whether Java uses it). Also I was never a big smartphone fan, and symbian is a smartphone Os. This leaves me with PalmOS and iTouch. Sadly Apple is not being too nice to developers and the prices have not sunk low enough for me to take interest. But I foresee some hardware mods and attachments to be made by me for iTouch once I get one.

What do you think are the (now) best mobile platforms and why?
I think PalmOS is. Many will disagree, but my definition of bet likely does not match that of the crowd. Best mobile Os is one that makes developers jump through hoops to do things efficiently, instead of pretending to be a desktop and crawl…(WM, I am looking at you). At the same time it should be simple enough to program for, so that developers can jump to it fast. PalmOS is easy to pick up.

Which is you favorite mobile device?
My LifeDrive. A few internal drives, SDHC card, wifi, BT, VOIP. It’s like a perfect smartphone, without all the compromises of smaller screens and worse battery lives.

Palm also sell smartphones with Windows Mobile, what do you think about this? Why?
The reality of today’s market is simple: pay the Microsoft tax and enterprises (which have the big bucks) will love you, or roll your own YAMLP (yet another mobile Linux platform) and watch nobody use it.
(unless you once again pay the MS tax to license active sync)

Your future: Do you still develop software for Palm OS or will you change to an
other mobile platform (Windows Mobile, ‘Nova’, Access Linux Platform etc.)? Why?
As announced a few months back, nuRom for lifeDrive and SDHC driver will be my last projects for PalmOS. I am retiring from it. But this does not quite mean what you think it means. I currently am finishing my own OS -DGOS, guess what it stands for . It is not based on anything, and written entirely by me. It had a pretty efficient scheduler, memory-separated processes, and a really cool driver system. The exciting part? It includes a PalmOS subsystem. This means it had binary compatibility with all existing PalmOS apps. ALL. Not like StyleTap that sorta-kinda-supports-some-datebook-apps, but full.
Even native hacks work. (of course they affect only PalmOs-subsystem apps). I am also finishing a WinMob subsystem, which means WM apps might run. for now I test on a lifedrive, but soon i will begin search for a worthy hardware to really run this on. Since it has no Access, Palm, or anyone else’s code but mine, i am free to release it as I see fit, and i hope I get around to it. This has been in the making behind the scenes for years and now it is almost done.

What should Palm do to sell more devices?
Make a sexy device that does not scream “I’m a boring middle-age corporate guy with a brick-for-cellphone so that my boring job can reach me at any time in my otherwise boring life” years back 1src.com forum users suggested a TH-55 cellphone. YEARS before apple did it.
Had palm listened, we’d all be holding pPhones and pTouches now.

What do you think about the sentence ‘Palm is dead’?
I think I mostly covered this above. No one is dead till they are dead. I do not see a reason to be excited about them yet, but at the same time to reason to give up on them yet. For all you know tomorrow they could release a VGA wifi, BT, GPS PDA with a stable OS and a good design….just kidding

Thank you!

What do you think?

Nowadays one can’t have enough memory: Wikipedia, TomTom, music, videos – everything is eating a lot of memory. A 2GB or 4GB SD card is not enough for these requirements. What you need is more storage.
Now it is possible to have up to 32GB (external) storage which should be enough for most users!
All you need is a SDHC card an the new SDHC driver by Dmitry Grinberg.
Installing the driver is pretty easy: just install it on your device and run it once – thats it.
I tested the driver on a TX, T5 and Zire72 with a 8GB Transcend SDHC card. On every device the driver worked without problems. Just the filesystem of the card caused problems on the T5 and Zire72 as it was formatted with FAT32 which couldn’t be read by those devices natively. The issue can be solved by installing a FAT32 driver which can be downloaded from Dmitry’s site: http://palmpowerups.com/downloads.php?cat_id=2
In addition the default card info application will report wrong values for cards greater than 4GB. You’ll need the application ‘CardSize’ from the link above to get correct values.
The write and reading speed with the SDHC driver is faster than with the Palm drivers (according to the benchmark – however you won’t notice it in practice).
Have a look at these two benchmarks:

The first picture shows the speed result of my normal 4GB SD Card with the original Palm driver. In the second picture you can see the speed of the same card – but now with the the SDHC driver: the speed increased significantly.
Now look at the speed of the SDHC card:

As you can see the speed is even faster than the normal SD card. But when working with the card I didn’t realise a big difference between both.
Now with so much storage you might want to use your SDHC card as a backup card. But be careful! As the SDHC driver is stored in the normal internal memory of your Palm device it will be deleted when you perform a hardreset. Then you won’t be able to read your SDHC card and you can’t restore your backup. So you have to keep a copy on a normal SD card or on an other device. Otherwise your backup is unreachable! As an alternative you can flash the driver into the ROM of your device. But don’t forget to add you license key as the driver won’t run without it!
If you want to try the SDHC driver on your device you can download a 9-days trial key from the author’s website. After the trial period you can still access your SD card – but with a speed of 50 kB/sek and in read-only mode. The full version costs $20.95 and can be purchased through the developer’s homepage.
At the moment the following devices are supported, others might follow:

Download PowerSDHC
Download PowerSDHC trial key

The news coming out of Palm have been nothing short of depressive over the last months – a recent conference call raised a few interesting points:

Per-unit sales
Palm managed to sell 1,029,000 smartphones at an average price of 284USD/box. Furthermore, 166000 handhelds were sold, which represents a drop of 49% on a year-over-year basis.

Centro
Palm employees have stated that the Centro momentum will peak soon. Message: no more easy money for Palm…

Nova delayed even more
The delays faced by Nova have now become so big that Palm starts to play number games – Ed Colligan stated that the OS was well on track for completion in 2008 – but handhelds running it won’t be available until H1 2009…

In the end, it looks like Palm OS II (aka Nova) will truly become a no va: the product’s delays have now reached dimensions where motivating even a single developer to spend man hours on software for it will become a herculean task (Fooleo and Cobalt, anyone). Game over – folks, I guess that it’s truly time to become acquainted with TamsPPC, TamsS60, TamsWMS or TamsIJungle in the next months…

What do you think?

P.S. I will start a developer health survey soon…

One of the biggest thrillers of the mobile computing industry is finally over. A leak at T-Mobile’s American My T-Mobile customer portal has confirmed the existence of the HTC Dream/T-Mobile G1.

According to Engadget, the portal contained a link inviting customers to pre-register for the release of the device so that they would be “one of the first to get it”. Even though the questionable piece of content has already been removed, a screenshot can still be seen at the URL linked above.

With that, we can put the Android topic to rest – see you again in October, Dream/G1.

Palm’s Card Info application has always served new Palm owners well: they used it to check the free space on their memory card until they got their first file manager (or directly switched to Resco Explorer).

Unfortunately, the release of PowerSDHC marks the end of its useful life. The program is heavily flawed and does not work well with cards that are over 4GB in size. Inserting a 8GB card into a Palm OS device running PowerSDHC and running Card Info leads to borked-up display – the program displays a maximum card size of 4GB.

Even though this is completely insignificant (the handheld can use the full space), it could give some of you a start – which is why I post this here…

P.S: An updated Card Info application is available from Dmitry Grinberg!

Usually, the “density” of rumors increases exponentially as a product gets closer to release. If this (usually reliable) indicator works out in the case of Android, we should see a device hitting the road VERY soon. In the meantime, enjoy the rumors below:

T-Mobile’s HTC Dream: 199$ with contract
Rumor number one states that the HTC Dream will cost 199$ with a 2yr T-Mobile contract. Just in case anyone wonders: the iPhone 3G costs 199$, too.

HTC Dream will be called G1; Sprint will follow suit soon
The HTC Dream now has received its T-Mobile name…the carrier will call the box G1. Customers will be able to claw the critter October 17th; shipments will begin on the 12th.

Sprint will have a device of its own by the end of the year. This box will NOT be a CDMA version of the Dream, but will rather be a completely new device (about which nothing is known as of now).