TamsPalm - the Palm OS Blog

Very few people know that the emulator used for debugging OS4 applications (POSE) is an open source project. This allows for easy porting across multiple platforms - and allows the sharing of precompiled binaries.

The boys at Mobile Geographics have created a build for Mac OS (X) and have posted it onto their web site.

Should anyone of you feel like taking a stab, hit the link below:
http://www.mobilegeographics.com/dev/POSE35Mac.zip

From the very beginning of software development, piracy has been a huge issue for independent software developers. While the rampant spread of lawsuits, virii and malware have helped curb casual piracy on the PC, handhelds currently are mostly virus-free.

Nevertheless, a PC game developer called PosiTech performed a little survey to find out what motivates pirates: surprisingly, very few of them are politically motivated (freedom of information/communism/cleptomania/whatever). The biggest topics were high prices, repetitive gameplay, bad tech support, DRM and lack of digital distribution (aka having to go to the store).

Find our more about why pirates pirate stuff and take a stab at the conclusions our developer drew - hit the URL below:
http://www.positech.co.uk/talkingtopirates.html

MyTreo’s Tadd Rosenfeld has become pretty talkative two weeks after we originally published our expose about the non-payment fiasco. He keeps sending me corrections over corrections, but refuses to answer my questions except with references to corrections sent before.

In order to keep the reporting balanced, here’s his correction on the “MobiHand takeover” - do with it as you please:

Mobihand has ** NOT ** taken over mytreo.net. That’s couldn’t be further
from the truth. In fact, we have NO direct contractual relationship with
that firm.

We signed a deal to have SmartphoneExperts — which was last year ranked the
fastest growing private company in America by Inc. Magazine — to provide
our e-commerce platform. We took this step because it will allow us to
focus on supporting the Treo community effectively.

Before doing so, we operated a store that served over 80 thousand customers,
and we gained tremendous experience in the Treo market. But
SmartphoneExperts someday soon serve their millionth customer (or some
amazingly high count). They are a truly great partner for us as we approach
our 500 thousandth member on the site.

SmartphoneExperts has contracted with Mobihand to provide software, which is
why their software e-commerce solution is advertised on our site.

In the end, however, the result for developers remains the same. MobiHand (a company that pays bills in time) now handles the MyTreo store…and this is the only thing that really counts. I am pretty sure that everyone(Tadd and developers included) will be more than happy with the way the store will work from now on…

Our original post on the MyTreo.net issue ended with a statement claiming that the distributor is unlikely to respond. This has turned out to be wrong, as the folks responded two weeks after being informed about the issues.

Find the conversation below:

Hi Tam,

Thanks for contacting me about this.

I learned from my team that we recently transferred to the developer > $3,500. Apparently there’s a small additional amount owed but that largely resolved the obligation to him.

Although I appreciate that you e-mailed me and updated the thread to reflect the payment, I’d like you to please remove the thread entirely.

I find objectionable a comparison of MTDN to a now defunct business
(Palmgear) and the stated expectation you wouldn’t receive a response from us. Nobody will win from your leaving those comments on your site.

If you have any questions, let me know.

Regards.

> —–Original Message—–
> Sent: Sunday, August 03, 2008 12:28 PM
> Subject: Request for comment
>
>
> Dear Tadd,
> could you maybe explain to me what is happening here:
>
> tamspalm.tamoggemon.com/2008/08/02/mytreonet-esd-non-payment-alert/
>
> I would be very happy to post a correction/amendment and fix the
> issues for you!
>
> All the best from Vienna
> Tam Hanna

As the issues with the developers have now been settled AFAIK, the non-payment alert is hereas revoked. The store has recently been taken over my MobiHand anyways…a company with a flawless track record…

MyTreo’s Tadd Rosenfeld has sent in an email stating “his side” of the story below. Cutting a long block of text short, he states that he did not contract MobiHand directly. Should you want more info, click this link for the full scoop!

MyTreo.net’s recently-covered payment issues have been largely resolved, as the software store has been taken over by MobiHand. Most affected developers seem to have received their cash or are scheduled to do so soon.

MobiHand has provided me excellent service with next to no downtime in the past; I consider the company to be the best ESD currently on the market.

Unfortunately, current developer accounts from the MyTreo.net store can not be taken over. Instead, developers must register at MobiHand’s developer back end Mobireach and add their products top the MobiHand catalogue if they haven’t done so before.

P.S. The rumors about Handmark entering the ESD business by taking over the MyTreo.net store are false…

David’s official announcement is below:

Just to clarify, MobiHand has just launched a new software store on
MyTreo.net. MobiHand is not the owner of the MyTreo.net site, and our
arrangement does not involve taking on prior payment obligations.

We look forward to working with all our current developers, and additionally
welcome prior MyTreo.net developers who are not yet working with us to sign
up at http://corporate.mobihand.com/sda_dev.asp, so that we can offer the
best and most complete collection of software on MyTreo.net and across the
MobiHand network of mobile-oriented stores.

Apparently, something very weird is afoot at the guardians of the PalmGear corpse (better known as PocketGear). The merry app TamsPalm reported about a few days ago still can’t be found at PocketGear’s, even though the backend lists it as approved:

As of this writing, nobody from PocketGear has felt like giving a publishable statement about the issue - nevertheless, things are said to change to the better soon as a new ESD system is set to go live in the next weeks.

In the mean time, developers are advised to consider a PocketGear deployment the “critical path” in their release cycle - do NOT upload your app anywhere else before it pops up on PocketGear’s…

People who have followed TamsPalm since the very beginning know that I once switched away from PalmGear due to their algorithm tax and - more important - their tendency to disapprove newly uploaded applications for whatever reason, thereby voiding marketing campaigns.

However, having multiple distributors is a great revenue booster: after a lot of thinking, I decided to give the zombified leftovers of PalmGear (aka PocketGear) another chance.

First of all: Palm OS software can not be managed from the PocketGear frontend. Instead, developers must use a special URL on the otherwise deserted PalmGear web site. The front end slowed FireFox 3 down to a crawl due to loads of JavaScript - but I eventually managed to get the app up (and eventually, approved):

But the games aren’t over yet - as the program simply doesn’t appear on PocketGear’s web site. I tried to search for it to no avail; and the “developer page” doesn’t list the application either.

The problem lays somewhere else, however. As I use multiple distributors, I made the stupid mistake to upload the program to other ESD frontends who now consider it updated. I should thus send out the press release now (and start the ads) - but I can’t, because one of the distributors is still asleep. It doesn’t take more than a few brain cells to figure out how unhealthy this is for my marketing campaign…

In the end, the lesson here is simple: when it comes to uploading apps to PocketGear, wait until they appear on the PocketGear web site. The status information on their web site is worthless…

P.S. I wonder why other distributors (MobiHand, cough) don’t have these stupid delays…

Developers have now received their money, the non-payment alert can be revoked. The store has been taken over by MobiHand.

A MyTreo executive has responded to this article - his response can be found at the URL below:
http://tamspalm.tamoggemon.com/2008/08/17/mytreo-responds-to-tamspalm-post/

Longterm Palm OS developers are experienced to ESD bank busts and the associated consequences - after all, the now-”defunct” PalmGear had a similar problem some years ago.

We have received reports indicating that the ESD MyTreo.net does not pay its royalties for quite some time, and now - finally - have a developer willing to stand up and tell us about his experiences. Let’s look at what Anastassiya from Mobile-Stream has to say(highlighting my /me):

I represent Mobile Stream, we are a Developer Partner of MyTreo.net - an online software reseller.
They have not paid our royalties for more than a year.

I have been e-mailing them for four months and the only thing I got was the royalty report (so they admit they owe money to us, but simply do not pay) and promises like “soon”, “this week”.
But no wire-transfers have been made yet.

The same has happend to at least one another non-USA Windows Mobile/Palm developer - Deluxeware (www.deluxeware.com) .
They have not received their royalty payments from mytreo.net

Many other developers from Palm Entrepreneurs Forum also complained about spotty payments, some of them managed eventually to get their royalties, others - did not.

The only person who handles accounting is Tadd Rosenfeld, all other mytreo.net employees can only forward e-mail requests to him. The last e-mail I got from Tadd Rosenfeld was from June 6th, where he promised to pay “that week”. Almost two months passed, nothing was done, no other e-mails to him (sent personally to him or forwarded through other mytreo.net employees) have been answered.

Even though I am very hesitant when it comes to posting accusations against other analyst colleagues, this IMHO can be interpreted in only one way. The folks at MyTreo’s have determined that forced debt collection is extremely difficult when having to do so over continental borders…and now play this trump card.

They can either pay the money in a belated fashion, or not pay it out at all - I am sure that most developers can/will not be able to have their debt encashed by force.

In the end, the best thing that developers can do is retract their applications from MyTreo and get in touch with an attorney/lawyer…

P.S. A copy of this article has been forwarded to MyTreo - please stay tuned for the unlikely event of us receiving a response!

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).

My friend Tobi at Palm’s has undug the following press photos of the blue Centro for your enjoyment - click on any of them in order to feast your eyes on a bigger version. Finally, developers may also like the one with the white screen - it can IMHO be used to create mockups of your app running on an electric blue Centro:

A big thank-you goes out to Tobias Kuderna for providing these images!

Palm’s Treo 800w can be considered one of the worst-kept secrets ever (sorry, Georgie..but that’s how it looks). Anyways, the box has now hit Sprint - the “terms of engagement are as follows.

The device has 128MB of program memory and 256MB of user data storage. External memory can be added via a MicroSD slot. The camera has a native resolution of 2MP, the screen indeed is 320×320. Finally, WiFi and GPS radios have been integrated for prosperity…

P.S. Should anyone of you want to access Sprint’s web site directly: use the ZIP code 60001 to bypass the ZIP entry box…

An unnamed TealPoint employee recently posted the following explanation about the US trademark law to the palm-entrepreneurs mailing list. As it is excellently written, I felt like reposting it here - enjoy:

1) Functionality
A term cannot usually be trademarked if it is purely descriptive of its functionality. For instance, you cannot trademark “mileage log” for an app that tracks mileage, but I don’t think “Trip” is considered generic by this definition because the name doesn’t describe exactly what it does (trip planner? assistant for clumsy people? Grateful Dead tribute?). Instead, it is considered a “suggestive” mark which can indeed be trademarked. Being a common word isn’t a problem as long as it isn’t “functional”, as “Apple”, “Flash” and many other words are trademarked in a specific application.

2) Incontestability
After five years, a registered term does not automatically become “incontestable”, but only if an “affidavit of incontestability” is filed with the PTO. Even then, the term can still technically be contested, but the term cannot be ruled invalid due to “prior art”, “functionality” or “lack of distinctiveness”.

3) Infringment
Even if it’s incontestable, just including the term as part of a competing product’s name is not automatically infringement, especially when only a limited number of words could apply to an app that tracks automobile mileage. Otherwise, people would just trademark all applicable words (”mileage”, “log”, and “trip”) and nobody would be able to name a competing product anything at all. The intent of trademark law is to prevent confusion, not limit competition.

When determining potential trademark infringment, the PTO assesses the “likelihood of confusion” on the part of customers, e.g. whether they might purchase one product believing it to be the other. If Steven’s product were called “Trip Deluxe”, or even “iTrip” then I think there would be a fair case for infringement. I think it unlikely, however that someone would think “TripLog” and “Trip” were actually the same product.

When one of you has a problem with a technical device, he tells the manufacturer the system specifications right away. Hell, some of my customers have even included a full list of all files in RAM into their bug/CS requests. However, asking customers for system specs can go very wrong…feast your eyes on the true story below (anonymized to protect the guilty):

I work as an IT guy for an upscale Austrian ***** company. So far, all has went well - until yesterday. Our CEO called the customer support hotline of a major software manufacturer, described her problem and suddenly started screaming at the support rep as if he/she had been gravely insulted.

After interrogating her to see what the problem was, I found out the following mind.boggling truth:

The CS guy asked her: “what computer do you have”?

Our CEO didn’t understand that this information was needed to actually find and fix the bug. Instead, she thought that the manufacturer was trying to blame her holy (Apple) device - and became pissed as sh*t.

For me, this story once again proves my basic assumption: what is clear to us, isn’t clear to others. Tell customers WHY you ask them for data - it might cost you a bit of extra voice, but will pay out in the long run…

Feel like telling us your worst-ever CS experience?