Nobody's life: Palm

Plucker and PPI

Sun, 13 Nov 2005 07:27:23 GMT

最近在palm上重温《罪与罚》，在Manybooks.net上可下载，我装的是plucker格式，方便和PPI所提供的“即点即译”功能相结合。

到snapshot下载PPI。

进入到PPI里，在"Look Word in"一栏选"Custom"，然后填上我爱用的ZDic_DA

进入到Plucker的Preferences里，找到"Lookup"，在"Action"中选"Look up in PPI"即可。

再进入到小说里就可以“即点即译”了。英文小说就是这么看完的。

将此篇献给还没有被我劝败成功（买palm）的朋友们，比如小强。

KeyguardTime+ 5.1 (Treo)

Mon, 07 Nov 2005 23:00:31 GMT

KeyguardTime+ 5.1 has been updated recently over at MTDN.

It's now added 6 languages supports [English (enUS), French (frFR), German (deDE), Spanish (esES), Chinese simplified (zhCN), Chinese traditional (zhTW)]
PIMs support
Battery status graphically displayed
Voicemail, data, and roaming indicators
Seconds hand/digits optionally shown on key popup
NVFS DBcache memory display (on the 650)
New setup forms
Miscellaneous other improvements and issues resolved
More details.

Using Getdeblu

Mon, 07 Nov 2005 04:35:09 GMT

Recently I found some good use of Getdeblu, that can be used to receive basically any files into the expansion card through Bluetooth, IrDA and Hotsync. I have a monochrome palm Acer s10 that I had never succeed with hotsyncing it with a Mac, even using Missing Sync for PalmOS. But I will still keep it for its excellent battery life, for the comfortable grayscale for e-Books reading at night, etc.

Below are some of the settings I use most often:

I used to save interesting articles as text files so I can read it later in my palm. These text files are usually larger than 4K, if you beam it over to other palm device the Memo Pad will be the default handling application and giving truncated files in the form of many many memos. This is irritating. With Getdeblu, the default application can be changed to Getdeblu and saved it to any other path of expansion card at 'HotSync directory', and my desire text reader will take care the rest.

In Treo 650, the default application to handle photos will be Media. But I found it extremely slow in loading and opening a photo. So if my friends were sending me photos from their phone, I use RescoViewer as default and quickly show them how crisp the display on my Treo and the slow Media won't be able to embarrass me.

Friends beaming over few games for me to try? No problem, I normally accept them into expansion card, instead of Applications, under /Palm/Launcher. In fact, I have, all my games saved in SD card, YMMV.

P.S. On s10, newer versions of Getdeblu will cause fatal exception, I can only install version 1.0.

Checking Hotmail in your Palm

Mon, 24 Oct 2005 05:39:42 GMT

There's no way for VersaMail or SnapperMail to directly fetch Hotmail or MSN mail, as Hotmail uses a closed protocol that SnapperMail does not support. But I encountered a link that allows us to check Hotmail or MSN mail directly in PDA's web browsers, it works on Blazer but not on Xiino.

Missing Sync for Palm OS 4.0

Sun, 23 Oct 2005 12:27:26 GMT

I just purchased Missing Sync for Palm OS 4.0, now I can mount my palm handhelds directly to the Mac for file transfer, it's like drive mode that being missed in the latest handheld, Palm TX. Oh yeah, I have TX for almost a week.

The syncing process seems to be faster compared to the PalmSource Hotsync Manager, besides the speed, it has a far more neat interface showing all available conduits, with installation window just side-by-side.

But what I missed was to perform a network synchronization between handheld and desktop (I used to do so between PPC and PC), so Missing Sync seems to provide this network HotSycn between Mac and Palm via Wireless network. I was able to initiate a network sync with firewall shut off, however, I still got error and the synchronization never completed. Whoever success in network synchronization between TX and Mac, please drop me an email

Treo resets after hotsync

Fri, 07 Oct 2005 07:23:34 GMT

I have not installed anything in my Treo 650 these days and used only PIM and Documents To Go mainly for my work. Because of that, the last hotsync I performed was nearly one month ago and I depended on BackupMan heavily to keep my entire data backup.

Yesterday I was installing the Destaller Lite to the latest version, at the end of hotsyncing my Treo 650 reset itself and gave me the error message:

PIMsDataMgr.c, line:135,
checkRecordChunk means chunk is null

I did several hotsync and my Treo ended up soft reset itself with the same error message. I did Google search and gleaned as much information I could which related to my case. It seems that it was mainly caused by corrupted contacts and so the advice was to delete several databases listed below, and set the conduit settings to “Macintosh overwrites handheld”:

ContactsAVIndex-PAdd.pdb
ContactsDBIndex-PAdd.pdb
ContactsDB-PAdd.pdb
ContactsSimDB-PAdd.pdb
AddressDB.pdb

To make it safer, I beamed all my contacts over to my monochrome palm Acer s10, just in case and also the contacts in my Treo were more updated. So I did another round of hotsyncing, guess what, my Treo hang at synchronizing contacts! I did hard reset, used dbScan and fixAddressdb to scan for corrupted databases yet all looked O.K. When I opened Palm Desktop that I’d never used for long time, it pop out a message saying, “Volume is locked”. I quickly did another Google search and found out that my permissions for Palm Desktop have become corrupted. The instructions here asked to delete several files but actually a reinstallation of Palm Desktop would solve the problem.

After restarting my Mac, set conduit settings to “Macintosh overwrites handheld” the problem gone away. I beamed my contacts from s10 back to Treo and everything worked as normal.

In the end I still have no idea what would be the actual culprit, causing problem for me. Anyway, Google really helped a lot.

Diddlebug again!

Fri, 17 Jun 2005 16:02:41 GMT

Just updated my Treo 650 to software version 1.13, it helps me to cope with the very precious RAM available. Immediately I have Diddlebug installed back, now I am very happy with my Treo again!

This is the screenshot in which Diddlebug is one of the utilities that I used to practise my chinese calligraphy:

I will post more if I feel like doodling again.

Treo 650 Updater 1.13 (Unlocked GSM version)

Fri, 17 Jun 2005 14:38:48 GMT

Finally, palmOne has released this patch which improves memory handling issues, and the 512 bytes syndrome is now gone (with fingers crossed). I've updated mine, however, it frees up only 3MB and I'd expected more. Installation of the updater is pretty easy, I backed up all my data using BackupMan instead of the conventional hotsyncing with desktop computer. Performed a hard reset and followed everything in the instructions. If the update was successful, the smartphone's software version number will be Treo650-1.13-ROW, and of Firmware 1.28 under Phone Info. If you don't see your Firmware and it appears as blank, don't panic, just on the radio and you will see it.

Today palmOne seems to have gone into overdrive with updates, and indeed this is a good thing to us palm users. Other updates are as follows:

Sprint PCS Treo 650 Updater 1.12
Rogers Treo 650 Update 1.13
LifeDrive Update 1.0
PhoneLink Update

Reset utilities

Tue, 14 Jun 2005 05:26:28 GMT

Look like I really like to talk about 'soft reset' occasionally, but my Treo 650 just doing fine without giving me any nasty problem nowadays. Currently I'm using mReset, it does only one thing that's to soft reset your device. It's small but may not be enough.

I found another two apps for this purpose, but they offer more than a soft reset.
1. ResetMe 0.1 - it gives you the option of either performing a soft or warm reset. It's nice, however, it seems to me it's rather redundant. If you know how to perform a warm reset you can hold down the Up button while resetting with mReset, likewise, hold down the Power button and release after seeing the circular palm powered logo will turn into hard reset. Unfortunately, some people just forget how to do it, this is highly recommended for those forgetful. :p
2. Soft Reset 1.1 - this one let you choose to whether to calibrate the digitizer after every soft reset. It also sort of allows you to launch another application immediately after every soft reset.

Well, I will still stick to mReset, as it's really very very small! (5K in my unlocked GSM Treo 650 w/o the memory patch, 781 bytes in other Treo 650 with unofficial version 1.23 firmware update)

Zero Out Reset

Mon, 13 Jun 2005 09:47:14 GMT

Happened to browse through palmOne's Knowledge Library about "Resetting your device", and just noticed the 'Zero Out reset' for Treo 650, Tungsten T5. It has been there for quite sometime, but I just learn it today. Because these two devices use a non-volatile memory, it's possible that a low level utility can still recover information from the device memory even after a hard reset. So be reminded if one day you're going to sell off your Treo 650/Tungsten T5 on eBay, a hard reset is not enough to completely erase everything on these devices. (For Tungsten E2: a hard reset produces the same results as a zero out reset - completely rewrites data on internal memory. No need to perform the zero-out reset.)

Same thing applies to the new LifeDrive, there's "Quick reset and Secure reset", which explains the difference between 5 mins and 30 mins hard resets. Just imagine one day you're going to let go the LifeDrive, do a secure erase reset if you are turning the device over to a new owner. As simple as that.

For more information, Brighthand has a very good post on resetting, including something as "Double-Soft reset", "Extended Hard Reset" which I've never heard before.

During a trip

Mon, 13 Jun 2005 06:58:53 GMT

Recently I visited Malaysia and brought along a few 'toys' with me. Let's see what I'd brought during the trip:

1. Treo 650 (a must)
2. Acer s10 (complementary to Treo as somehow I really afraid that Treo became instable again)
3. Tungsten C (searched for available hotspots)
4. Seidio 2-in-1 retractable headset for Treo 650 (listening to mp3)
5. Seidio retractable Sync / Charge USB cable for Treo 650
6. Innopocket Sync / Charge USB cable for Tungsten C
7. Brando AC to USB adaptor
8. Canon Powershot S45

After seeing what I brought along, all my friends laughed, "See! Wow you have so many toys!" "You can't live (leave) without PDAs!" As I had passed my 1G iPod shuffle to my sister, otherwise I could add it to 9 items. They might have laughed out louder.

Applications I used during the trip:

1. BackupMan - fully automated backup solution, a safeguard for palm.
2. MetrO - public transport route calculation.
3. Progect - a powerful project manager application, I use it for many things, shopping, inventory, ToDo lists, outliner, checklist, etc.
4. SkyChart - we went to Langkawi Island and I used this little application for casual stargazing. However, too bad we couldn't see any stars on the beach, that night was too windy.
5. Tide Tool - displays tide and current graphs, also displays times of sunrise/sunset and moonrise/moonset, and moon phases in theory. Even so, we still missed the times for sunrise/sunset.
6. Virtual Malaysia Palm Guide - travel guide to Malaysia, with databases of travel destinations, accomodations, restaurants, shopping malls & events coverage all year round.
7. Malay-English dictionary - last but not least, this is a free Malay-English dictionary in iSilo format, though iSilo itself isn't free. (courtesy to Palmdoc)

Finally, these are some photos taken by my old Canon S45:

Langkawi island:

Penang island:

The very famous Kek Lo Si Temple in Penang.

Infamous crow. LOL.

Songbook Tools

Tue, 31 May 2005 02:58:41 GMT

I am wondering how many fellows out there have their favorite songbooks on their palms. Carrying a PDA nowadays is equivalent to carry a range of ebooks, games, and mp3, to most people if not all. I know quite a number of my friends use their palms as mp3 player. It would be nice when listen to a song and sing it the same time, here comes our palm to help us with the lyrics.

Inspired by risumfiriri (he has a great site on palm, if you know Chinese you must visit it, if you don't know then it's time to learn, or you can use babelfish for translation), Progect Manager which is a project manager application can also be used as songbook manager.

See the screenshot below, open up Progect Manager and set up the list, the lyrics were written as notes:

As simple as that, but this is not end of the story yet. You can view these lyrics in your desktop, by simply export them as DOC (html), remember to tick at "Note" otherwise the notes won't be exported:

I used BBEdit to view PalmDOC in Mac (DocReader for PC users), and saved it as html. It's now become as below:

Nice huh?

Scheduling soft reset

Wed, 25 May 2005 15:29:35 GMT

I find my Treo 650 very often slowing down to a crawl and I have to soft reset to fix this issue. So I thought to schedule soft reset events perhaps a daily basic will be a good practice for the Treo. Special case like Tungsten T5, I'd heard many users complained about a daily crash for their T5, because of running out of memory or some sort. I have no idea if a schedule soft reset for T5 would help, but it is a must-have for PPC devices, and I have a feeling that current PalmOS devices becoming so much complicated and tools like DBCache for T5 and UDMH are necessary to keep the device stable.

I found an inexpensive way for scheduling soft reset in Treo 650 automatically , it is applicable to other devices I believe. There are only two freewares needed, crony which allows you to make schedule periodic events, and mReset which does only soft reset.

By selecting "Start app", click on the tool sign besides you will see the second screenshots as above. The ID value can be determined by a palm resource editor such as Bird, for mReset the ID valus happened to be 0. Click OK and you are almost done, for Min, Hour, Day, WDay and Month are all your preference. You can see in the third screenshot that, mReset is the application will be started on schedule.

sms2csv.php for Treo 650 (php version)

Wed, 25 May 2005 13:47:49 GMT

I have a previous entry about backing up and conversion of Treo650 sms messages into plain text file. It is a PC executable file and hence it's not convenient for Mac users with a Treo. I've written a php version of sms2csv, with modified code from C++ version by Viacheslav Kaloshin.
I am running it on my own server for my convenient, if you don't feel comfortable enough to use it, please feel free to download the script and run on your own server.

here

Good old freeware: B'Alerted PhoneInfo

Mon, 16 May 2005 14:05:43 GMT

This program was intented for VisorPhone users, but I've just tried it on Treo 650, it is very good. It shows the total usages of incoming and outgoing calls and duration time, and they all summarized at a glance. You can even set your service plan settings for the rate.

Download here

Convert Treo650 SMS message to plain-text file

Mon, 16 May 2005 13:18:13 GMT

Learned this over at Pumb, by using sms2csv which allows users to backup Treo 650 sms messages into csv file and can be viewed by Excel.

1. Download the latest version 0.4 and run the sms2csv.exe, one downside is it doesn't has a GUI so you need to execute at command prompt.

2. Go to your palm backup folder (for PC, it is C:\Program Files\palmOne\your username\Backup) and look for Messages_Database.PDB

3. Copy Messages_Database.PDB and paste it into the same directory where your sms2csv.exe is, run command prompt and key in code sms2csv "Messages Database.pdb" > messages.csv, the csv file will be generated in the same directory of where the sms2csv.exe is.

Keyshades, Getdeblu updated

Sat, 14 May 2005 15:25:22 GMT

Keyshades 1.0 and Getdeblu 1.1 have been updated, these two applications are must-have for Treo 650 in my opinion. In fact, I have them.

Old entry: Keyshades
Old entry: Getdeblu

How to delete the preset Favorites buttons (Treo 650)

Sat, 14 May 2005 07:09:22 GMT

Have you ever wonder about to delete the preset Favorites buttons on Treo 650? When just received the Treo, there are already favorite buttons preset to Contacts, Voicemail, Camera, Web and Messaging. However, I never use Voicemail at all and I don't use RealPlayer and Blazer, I want to delete them to change to other Favorites of my choices. But I couldn't, as there's no option for me to delete them. Courtesy to Chehui from PIL, actually there is a way to customize this.

You will need a palm resource editor such as the famous RsrcEdit, but here I am using Bird as it is free.

Install Bird.prc and look for the file, PhoneFavorites2DB. Tap twice to open for the "Record List", delete all the records #0, #1, etc or accordingly. Click on "Apply" to save and return to the main window to save once more time. That's it.

1. The original preset buttons. 2. After deletion, all blank. 3. A new set Favorites buttons of my choice.

Now whenever you want to edit any favorites button, there's a "Delete" button for all, sweet.

Spring cleaning and data backup

Fri, 13 May 2005 08:26:58 GMT

Recently I'd gotten some problem using my Treo, it started off when I used Destaller Lite to delete Power DA, it prompted to ask for a soft reset in order to proceed. After a reset, my Treo had lost Hotsync ID and several applications pre-loaded automatically prompted and said they'd already expired, please register, thanks. I'd this situation long ago, I just simply did a hotsync with the desktop and select the username then everything would set. Sadly, I never realized to backup from Mac by hotsync is another story. It installed EVERYTHING for me and many applications were repeated here and there and ended up another soft reset...Therefore, a part of the whole story was written in the previous blog. And I think I was slow to this, I would have emptied the backup folder content before I did a hotsync. Why I didn't think of this?? "A mystery never explained". Anyway, the Treo refused to turn on radio on its own as set by TreoGuard as usual. The radio still refused to turn on when I long press the ON button...

OK, enough for the complains, I decided to do a clean installation for most applications rather than restore device by BackupMan. As I like to test out different applications on my palm, the Treo is now inevitably becomes my 'test drive' for this purpose (unfortunate Treo!). Until then, something stubborn and did not deleted were remained there to mess up the system. Think in a better way, I have this opportunity to do a "spring cleaning", and now I have an idea to really decide which applications are must-have and always remain in it. Based on this, I can make a clean backup using BackupMan. Over sometime when data going to accumulate and things started to go wrong (crashes again!), I can always go back for this 'virgin' backup. Many other databases can then be copied on card using file manager, and later import to overwrite. Do you get the idea?

What I did was as follows:

Preparation before hard reset:
1. I have tons of memos. I backup memo into other palm device (or spare palm any name you like) by beaming MemoDB.pdb over from Treo, or choose to export memo from Palm Desktop and save a copy. I will prefer the former as this way will preserve the whole things. I hate the categories being messed up by unknown reasons.

2. Make a separate copy of Backup folder, and delete the username (Hotsync ID) from Palm Desktop.

3. As I syn using the sophisticated iSync solely for Mac, I won't have to do another exportations for datebook and tasks.

4. Using FileZ (I must say FileZ is far superior than FileProg, despite the fact that FileZ is difficult to use if without a stylus, other than that everything is fine) and from Options select "Send Tree to Memo", I get a list of every applications I've installed at a glance. But it's always good to view a little long list in a desktop computer huh? I am a fan of PsMemo, and the author has another piece of application called PsDB, in which I can have the option to "Send to PsDB" from PsMemo. This generate csv file in memory card, of the directory /Palm/Program/CSV, and can be viewed in Excel. This list can let me decide what shall I retain or get rid forever after the hard reset.

After these preparation done, I can now do a hard reset. Seeing the list I have made in Excel, it's very clear what to install from the Backup folder which I'd saved in a separate copy. After applications restoration almost done, it's time to make iSync conduit works. Let the Treo synchronized a while, it really takes sometimes to complete. Although it's very troublesome to do this kind of work, but it's worth in order to make the platform more stable.

MLaunch

Thu, 12 May 2005 23:15:30 GMT

Just saw this over at HI-PDA!, it's still in beta stage and welcome other Treo 650 users to test. It uses the 26 alphabet letters on Treo's keyboard to launch applications or DAs, long press will do and provided you launch this in application where you can't do typing. In other words in SMS or datebook or memo, you won't be able to launch MLaunch.

Small tips: from BMP to JPEG

Thu, 12 May 2005 13:08:50 GMT

I took screenshots on Treo occasionally, using snap because it's free. It generates screenshots in bmp format and stored in the directory of /Palm/Program/Snap. I am using Resco Viewer as it is fast compared to built-in Media (also a photo viewer) in Treo. And I just found this in Resco Viewer, long tap the screenshot which in bmp format, to crop it will be converted to jpeg. I never know this in palm we can do a simple picture conversion. :)

Hiding unused applications

Tue, 10 May 2005 14:57:37 GMT

Just came across this freeware, Obfuscate which lets you quickly and easily hide ROM-based applications from your launcher. It does what it claims, very useful as I already accumulate quite a number of apps. I like the look of original native palm launcher and I always choose to view 'All' for the categories. When I press 'Home' button on Treo, I always saw 'Quick Tour', 'Bluetooth', Card Info' in the first place. Using Obfuscate, just hide whatever and it's now clean and neat. I am sure people tend to use other third-party apps more than ROM-based.

Update: Obfuscate had caused some nasty soft resets and I'd spent almost two hours in doing hard resets (VERY VEry VeRY very pissed of!) to erase and restore data. Each time after a crash I lost my Hotsync ID and the Hotsync Log in Treo said "Never synchronized". And the problem came, when I did simply a hotsync with the Mac I'd gotten EVERYTHING back into the Treo. EVERYTHING replicated here and there, and I just realized the Backups folder actually contains EVERYTHING that I'd previously installed but later deleted applications. This is amazing as when I used a PC the backups folder would just kept up-to-date and synchronized, eliminated applications that I'd deleted. This is never a good way for me to do a backup from Mac after a hard reset. I don't know about other Mac users, are you having this problem as me? I quickly checked the Backup conduit settings over my Mac, only three options "Backup", "Restore from Backup", "Do nothing". I think I cannot change anything from the setting, it just "Backup" EVERYTHING, and better use a backup applications such as BackupMan (this apps not really stable in Treo 650, sometimes OK sometimes unreasonable refuses to do its job properly), or RFBackup which has been recommended by many people in blogs or forums, but the drawback is it's very SLOW compared to BackupMan.

Oh yes, last but not least, how I know Obfuscate caused a soft reset? By dialing #*377, and a dialog pop up would tell you the last soft reset was caused by what:

Move your games to memory card

Mon, 02 May 2005 06:56:44 GMT

Before I owned a Treo 650, I used to install games in main memory and yet I didn't feel any constraint by doing so. Now I have Treo and many of these little games actually occupied a lot of space due to NVFS issues. (I still haven't updated the firmwares being discussed over at TreoCentral) Therefore, I just found the "Copy" function that have been ignored by me for years to be very useful.

The little puzzle game Grouper which I mentioned earlier yesterday used 40K in main memory of Treo, however, when I 'copy' it to memory card it showed the size only 16K! See what a difference. If you have games in the main memory, go and 'copy' them to the memory card and delete them from the launcher. Next time just remember to change destination from handheld to card while installing a new game at hotsync manager.

Mass SMS on Treo

Mon, 02 May 2005 05:50:42 GMT

To mass send SMS is easy with 'Favourites' button on Treo 650. There's no need of third-party software like funSMS, and you can assign the groups of people you want to send for SMS/MMS.

Go to Phone application and add a new 'Favourite'

Select the Type as Message (SMS), and from there the Label can lookup a group of people you want to send sms to. Any letter can be assigned as quick key to send message to the group of people. This is very useful if you have different groups of people in church and business projects.

Must-have apps on Treo 650

Sun, 01 May 2005 13:34:53 GMT

This is a question being asked frequently by newbies, so I'd listed 10 apps mainly of utilities for Treo.

1. Radio Control (freeware)
- set the time for radio turn on/off, it can be customised to turn on radio after a reset.

2. KeyCaps650 (donationware)
- KeyCaps650 allows you to easily capitalize letters or use punctuation without using the shift or option keys on a Handspring Treo 650.

3. KeyShades (freeware)
- controls the keyboard lighting. It is intended for the Treo 650 only.

4. LEDOff (freeware)
- it turns off the LED. No more blinking LED, it's off and it remains off.

5.mReset (freeware)
- it does one thing -- it will soft reset your device. No longer need to fiddle around with the tiny pin and hole reset.

6.FileProg (freeware)
- Now I hate FileZ, which is very uncomfortable to be used in Treo, it's the only application that I need to take out the stylus for navigation. FileProg is a better choice for file management tool on Treo. (Thanks to the tips from Treonauts)

7.FieldPlus (freeware)
- a control panel plugin that adds the capability to select text using the Treo 600/650 navigation pad. It also allows the command bar to be opened by holding the menu key.

8.crash (freeware)
- because I use flexiskin, so I find this software particularly useful.

9.coLauncher (shareware)
- Don't overlook the thumbpad, I am using this application since the day of Treo 90. For fast launching applications.

10.PowerRUN (shareware)
- you know, this one must have to move applications to memory card and save your Treo 650's RAM!

Some other cool apps for Treo:
1. Profiles (freeware)
- Missing profiles of you mobile phone on your Treo 600? Using this freeware application you can create any number of 'profiles' and switch between them instantly - in the same way as on your mobile phone...

2. KeyguardTime+ (freeware)
- Treo 600/650 popup which graphically shows the current date and time, along with the status of key Treo hardware, at the push of a key, or for a short period each time the device is powered on.

3. TreoSelecText (shareware)
- to select/highlight text on your Treo 600 / Treo 650 without removing the stylus or struggling with a fat and/or stubby finger.

4. TreoNaviText (freeware)
- Use the Option and 5-Way Rocker combinations to move the cursor faster.

5. TreoGuard (shareware)
- utility for your Treo 600/650 that can play MP3 ringtones, save your battery by turning off the screen during calls, save your hearing by disabling alarms during calls, stop accidental key presses from answering or ignoring incoming calls, schedule your phone to turn on/off at a specified time each day, and much more!

6. RFBackup (freeware)
- backup to memory card. Other optional backup softwares for Treo are Cardbackup and Backupman.

7. TCPMP (freeware)
- can play audio files and DivX, XviD movies.

Grouper

Sun, 01 May 2005 03:05:47 GMT

I am hooked with this game again, and I got the reason:

"Grouper is a cool puzzle-card game played by finding groups in a set of cards. It is based on the original card game Set, which is a modern kind of a match-the-tiles (Memory) game. But instead of matching 2 cards, Grouper requires 3. And there's a catch: instead of looking for matches that are the same, now you're also looking for matches that are completely different!

I had not been playing this game for a few months, and found they'd redefined the difficulty to Passed 3rd Grade, The Thinker and Analytical Genius, in contrast with previously levels of easy, medium and hard. Well, hard is still hard for me, and now the name "Analytical Genius" really scares me! The challenge of this game is to look for groups of same matches, as well as groups of different matches! You've got to differentiate four things within cards, namely card color, number of spots, spot color and spot type. This got to be confusing very easily. Interestingly, one of the comments I spotted over freewarepalm is this, "Women are (really!!) a lot better at this (try it out against your wife - or husband of course)" LOL

Download here

Some screenshots:

Hope it can make you become smarter after playing this game!

Some thoughts on StyleTap

Sat, 30 Apr 2005 03:32:30 GMT

StyleTap (beta) is released and claims to run PalmOS apps on PPC, it's very interesting software and I can think of its great potential. However, I got fatal error while trying to run this interpreter on my only PPC Acer n30 (error code: access violation Pc: 0x560d8. The program will now terminate). Well I am not trying again, it looks good to me but not for me yet. I will still use PalmOS device as my main PDA of daily use.

Seriously I feel that this is not for everyone, sooner or later ppc users would find the equivalent programs written for ppc platform besides only developed for palm. Although PalmSource always claims that there're more than 22,000 apps developed for palm, in reality we palm users will never have the chance to have so much apps to run in our devices (for example some apps are specifically designed to run in Treo such as keyshades, or in TG 50 such as KeyQuick, or Tungsten C such as NetChaser. These apps give our devices some sort of personality so every PalmOS device will not be the same), it only means we have great varieties in choosing our favourite programs. If take a look at Palmgear's top popular apps picked up by users, you can find that most of them already have equivalent in PPC platform. Just to name a few, as I am not professional to do a serious statistics yet still make sense, if you want good database software in PPC you can use ListPro, this is as powerful as Smartlist To Go or HanDBase. If you want to read ebooks on PPC you can use Team One's Reader which supports various format, why the need for e-reader from palm? If you want something like splashwallet or PMT xl, you can use eWallet Professional. In fact, I feel that this emulator is of no point of getting for long-time PPC users. However, I would rather look at the optimistic way, PPC users can use palm apps and they might like palm too. StyleTap is an interpreter/emulator, it can never replace any PalmOS devices. I can imagine some palm users whom find themselves disappointed and tired of recent palmOne products (because the lack of wifi) would be very happy about this. Now they can make the shift to PPC and please don't blame palmOne or PalmSource again.

Nonetheless, I have a feeling next time when I drop by any PDA computer shops down town, I will be hearing the sales personnel explaining to the newbies of PDA, "you can run all palm apps on pocket pc with an emulator, if you buy pocket pc you have both worlds!" Now I know why my fellows tend to consider PPC for their first purchase of PDA, because it's more expensive and so the sales personnel are happy to promote them. palmOne Singapore, please do advertise more. Oops, off-topic.

sms crashes on Treo 650

Thu, 28 Apr 2005 15:01:03 GMT

I encountered this problem twice where messaging can crash my treo. I noticed this happened when all my messages in Inbox, Sent and Outbox had over 270 messages, what happened next was my Inbox suddenly disappeared out of a sudden. I couldn't send out sms and when there were incoming message, the treo soft reset itself. This happened before I did the firmware update for GMS Treo 650. I solved this problem by hard reset and restored device by backupman. I got back the 270++ over messages, I tried to delete SMS Messages2 database but it didn't work. I had to delete manually all the messages one by one and this way working fine. So I lost all the sms at one time, this disaster never end yet and happened again a month later, just after I updated the firmware. Everything same when all the messages reached a 'saturated' quota, all messages in my Inbox disappeared out of a sudden, but the treo didn't reboot itself and I was able to send and receive new messages.

This is very strange. It seems to me I would need to do housekeeping for sms on treo, only so I hope it won't be happening every month. I am not sure whether this nasty problem ever happens in other carriers' treo. If so, I will suggest everyone to clean your inbox frequently.

Firmware update

Sun, 24 Apr 2005 15:04:14 GMT

I just did a firmware update 1.15 with palmOne Singapore, basically it addresses only the soft reset problem and yet the NVFS memory issues and soft speakerphone have no fixed for GSM version. But there is rumoured beta testing firmware update 1.21 seen in SPUG, and the actual download can be found here, credited to KVPUG member alwimy.

Reading through the thread,
-this beta firmware update really helps to bump up for free memory
-the OS version becomes Garnet 5.4.7 which is the same version of the Palm OS for Sprint Treo 650 after applying PalmOne's official patch
-but some reported that no improvement in speakerphone/BT headset/Earpiece volume
-and one downside after the update is slow network search but improved reception.

Somehow, I would rather wait for the official upgrade for GSM Treo 650. I nearly run out of memory for treo, I now have only 4.1MB! After I did the firmware update, I quickly restored Treo by backupman which resides on SD card and afterall my Treo just kept rebooting like crazy. I showed it to the palmOne people and she avised me to do a warm reset, but she forgot how to do. Lucky, I know how. And she asked me to go back and do a hotsync to restore back my data, if not then call the number and come to get a replacement. Well, I guess after hotsyncing this would not solve the problem because all my third-party softwares were there to make it worst. Lucky again, I have crash installed on the Treo, and each time I tried to restore or perform a soft reset it reboot like crazy and showed the dialog saying something "memory...chunk...is null.." which only aliens would understand the meaning. But based on that I had the feeling I run out of memory when tried to load something to the system. I had QuickNews installed recently and this software really occupied many precious room in Treo, so after warm reset I deleted QuickNews and soft reset. Guess what, "he was The One", I found the culprit.

If only palmOne could quickly release the official patch for GSM Treo 650, I will pick up QuickNews again for feeds. For the time being, I am using plucker and JPluck. They serve me very well for both news and feeds.

Headset for Treo

Sat, 23 Apr 2005 01:38:15 GMT

I didn't have the habit to listen to mp3 on PDA, as I already have an iPod, so the Treo has been doing mostly PIM, gaming and phone jobs for me. Because of The Core Pocket Media Player, and a freeware HandBrake on my Mac for making conversion of AVI and MPEG from DVD easier, I started to realize the need for a headset while watching movies on-the-go. Also I'll be able to carry as much movies/MVs on the road as possible, to show that Treo is actually more than a phone. (I used to show my colleagues what the Treo can do, with the hope that one of them might purchase one or an equivalent :o))

So I bought a palmOne stereo headset adapter, this is nice because with this I can attach various earphones for the day. This is also useful as my other PDAs (Acer s10, n30) use 2.5mm jack rather than the conventional 3.5mm. It works just fine, after all I didn’t know what I was thinking and I went to get another Seidio 2-in-1 retractable headset. Now I end up with two solutions, obviously I will use the adapter a lot because I can then use a pair of iPod in-ear headphones. But after a few times of usage, there’s noticeable static noise at the background and sound a bit odd while playing videos on TCPMP. With the Seidio 2-in-1 headset this is not the case and sound quite good and more natural. (maybe because the Seidio headset directly plug in to the 2.5 mm jack)

When I got the Seidio one I immediately gave my mom a call, the sound is so crispy clear and also very loud according to my mom. It comes with phone volume control and when it was adjusted to the maximum, it only takes effect when I use it with phone, and it won't adjust volume for mp3. I also noticed that when I was listening to mp3 or watching movies, it didn't sound through the earbuds when sms came in. I don't know whether this is a software bug or limitation. However, I won't be buying bluetooth headset as I last heard that audio gateway profile is not on Treo 650, this is required to push audio thru BT. I rather 'invest' on a wired stereo headset, and I will only need bluetooth while doing hotsyncing and networking. Not so bad.

My PDAs history

Sat, 16 Apr 2005 12:25:11 GMT

While I tried to write my PDAs history in my profile, however, system prompted that profile cannot exceed 255 characters. Anyway, I don't think I have owned a lot, a total of 21 only. Until recently I met with Treo 650, I know I am satisfy now and will hopefully stop upgrading for the moment (I'm not sure this would be true for the rumoured Tungsten X, :o). To me, nothing can beat Treo.

My PDAs history:
HandEra 330 -> Acer s10 -> m500 -> Treo 90 -> Treo 180 -> SJ30 -> SJ33 -> TG 50 -> Zire 71-> Tungsten T2 -> Tungsten C -> Tungsten T3 -> iPaq h2210 -> TJ37 -> Zodiac 2 -> Asus MyPal A716 -> Tungsten T3 -> Treo 600 -> Acer n30 -> Treo 650 (dropped and sold off) -> Treo 650

Yes, I had two Treo 650 previously. Most of them are palms, I have owned only 3 PPCs but still prefer Palm. Why? Just preference matters, it would be really tired to go into details which OS is superior.

TCPMP rocks

Sat, 16 Apr 2005 06:33:01 GMT

This is not new, but I'd just gotten sometime to play with The Core Pocket Media Player, and really impressed how easy to use and how smooth it's to watch movies on the Treo! And how great is Picard the developer, he has been doing updates very efficiently within few days, from versions 0.60 up to 0.63, the latest, added many bugfix and supports, it is now becoming the most useable version on most palm devices.

In summary, TCPMP supports various codecs:

Audio codecs:
- Mpeg 1 LayerIII
- Ogg Vorbis
- Musepack
- Adpcm, uLaw
- AC-3 (except on smartphones)

Video codecs:
- DivX
- XviD
- Mpeg4-SP (plus B-frame support)
- Mpeg1
- M-JPEG

Containers:
- AVI (*.avi)
- Matroska (*.mkv, *.mka)
- MP4 (*.mp4, *.m4a)
- Ogg Media (*.ogg, *.ogm)

Last but not least, this is really good.

Tips to boost Treo 650 speakerphone volume

Thu, 14 Apr 2005 14:20:34 GMT

According to RudyChow from SPUG or TreoCentral, following these steps can boost the actual speaker output significantly:

1. Make an outgoing call.
2. When you hear the connecting tone ("ring-ring"), switch to speakerphone.
3. Increase the volume via the side volume buttons (of course remember to press the side key to confirm the increment). Hang up.
4. Play an MP3 file or a ringtone. You will immediately notice the difference.

I have tried on my Treo 650 (unlocked GSM), after following the steps I called my mom to test it out. Initially the speakerphone still soft but when I pushed the volume up and side key to confirm, it really works now and I have no worry while I am in a noisy environment (this is somewhat similar to this trick, but it didn't work for me unfortunately). The neat trick is, while increasing the volume at step 3, be sensible and don't push the volume so high and set to 3 or 4 would be good enough. Otherwise the speakerphone might get busted and faulty. If you want to go back to the original setting, a soft reset might work.

I love my treo even more now!

Shortcuts on Treo 650

Thu, 14 Apr 2005 13:58:15 GMT

Because of that graffiti 1 now working on my treo, I started to notice the presence of graffiti library in the treo. There's the potential to write graffiti on treo just that one will need third-party software to make use of it. Then I saw another presence of Shortcuts library, however, there's no Shortcuts list in the Preference. Simply missing. If you can still remember, write a stroke followed by 'ts' will give you the current time. In the case of treo, by pressing 's' and Alt key you can get the stroke sign and still get these old shortcuts work for you. So you get it, but how can I edit the Shortcuts list in treo?

Remember how we could get Notepad and Voicememo working for treo 650? Same thing, I transfered the Shortcuts.prc and Shortcuts_enUS.prc from Tungsten T5 (why Shortcuts is missing in treo?) and performed a soft reset by A Reset, our old friend Shortcuts is now listed in treo's Preference. That's easy, isn't it?

I believe Shortcuts.prc from other OS5 devices will work as well. Why not give a try? Do remember to backup everything in advance.

Keyshades

Tue, 12 Apr 2005 14:34:44 GMT

This is a freeware by doomsey from TreoCentral, keyshades is a free alternative to KBLightsOff and mLights to control the keyboard backlights on Treo 650 (may work on the Treo 600). Currently usable keyboard backlights utilities are sharewares. It's really good to see the freeware alternative. There's no screenshot to show, after installation of keyshades, it will soft reset itself. By long pressing the side button I can now toggle on/off of the keyboard backlights. What's more, it's only 7KB!!

Besides keyshades, doomsey has Kill Touchscreen which allows users to disable the touchscreen, and Reset Netlib which solves a myriad of networking problems that can crop up. The most common of these is the stack running out of sockets.

These applications were intented to be used in Treo 650, may work on other OS 5 devices.

Graffiti 1 on Treo 650/Tungsten T5

Tue, 12 Apr 2005 13:27:57 GMT

Igor Nesterov, the developer of YAHM, has onced again make it. The patched version of graffiti 1 is now working on PalmOS 5.4 Garnet. It works like a champ on my treo, also I can write capital letters directly on the middle of the screen.

Why on earth people would like to write graffiti on a treo, when already has a thumbpad?

Soft reset

Tue, 12 Apr 2005 12:38:59 GMT

The design for the reset hole in Treo 650 is very bad. Many times when I need to perform a soft reset I have to take off the Boxwave FlexiSkin, just for soft reset. Today I spotted this newly available freeware, A Reset v6.0 which helps soft resetting for changes to be saved in palms. This really come in handy for Treo, must have!

Notepad replacement

Mon, 11 Apr 2005 13:47:50 GMT

I am in a dilemma of getting myself a notepad replacement for my Treo 650. I was a great fan of Diddlebug, with the convenient of plugins enhancement it's great to be the choice. However, the application alone uses 245KB of RAM in Treo due to the way NVFS system works. So I have gotten myself the Notepad.prc from a friend's Tungsten T5, it's much smaller and with only 134KB RAM occupied. The Notepad from palmOne is simple to use, and I don't understand why it's being missed in Treo. I use Notepad for reminder after scribbling for notes. But it's too plain for sketching. After all I spotted two freewares, PenPenCol and Sketcher, both support for Hi-Res colour devices.

They have been around for sometime, but IMO diddlebug and BugMe! are far too popular to get away all the attention from them. After trying, I found that PenPenCol is very much the same as Notepad, i.e. you can write as much as you can in one page with the aid of a scroll bar. But PenPenCol has the feature to display the whole content in one window, and it saves the notes in expansion card with the Bitmap format so that they can be used later in PC.

The notes can be saved for only the current page by selecting to save '1 frame', or to be saved all by "1 page at four frames", one note created in memory card usually more than 100KB. So 4 frames together can be 400KB in total. Is it too large?

However, it lacks an alarm. And it doesn't have an eraser, but I think with the 'Undo' it's still fine. To me, if it has alarm I would certainly go for it. It doesn't occupy too much RAM, in fact it's same size as Notepad from Tungsten T5.

Sketcher is another application that I am considering. It's very much the same as Diddlebug, it has an eraser and alarm which PenPenCol doesn't have, it can attach a note which Notepad cannot do so. But it can be used for colour drawing which Diddlebug cannot.

A pretty neat list interface.

After writing so much, I think I will stick to Sketcher as it has everything I need.

Palm Open Source

Tue, 05 Apr 2005 22:36:11 GMT

Found this site when I searching around for new softwares, PalmOpenSource that is created by the Open Source Initiative which is a non-profit corporation dedicated to managing and promoting the Open Source Definition for the good of the community. I think this site hasn't been mentioned much elsewhere. And yes, I love freeware, especially those provide us the source codes.

Receiving non-palm files into your palm

Mon, 04 Apr 2005 16:06:56 GMT

This is irratating when you have your Palm with IrDA, Bluetooth and hotsync recognizes only *.prc and *.pdb files. But I came across this freeware Getdeblu, it can be used to receive any files via IrDA, bluetooth and hotsync into expansion card. It works on Treo 650, I am so happy! I have tried beaming a PPC file with an extension of .pwi into the Treo 650, I just want to make sure it really accepts any non-palm file.

The setting is straight-forward, an asterisk * is used to denote any file types, by pressing the Add button you can write anything to see the default application that is assigned to receive the file. For example, if you write mp3 instead of *, the default application will be realplayer and Hotsync directory is /AUDIO/ of the expansion card. Since I wrote * for any files, the default application will be Getdeblu, and the hotsync directory can be set by you. In this case, I just use the card's root directory and by pressing Set these will be saved.

So beaming over from my PPC to Treo, it accepts this alien!

By using a file manager I can now see it in Treo's expansion card. This application is really useful, and palm is possible to work as a portable drive.

timer/stopwatch for Treo 650

Mon, 04 Apr 2005 04:09:48 GMT

I am in search for a timer/stopwatch application for Treo 650 as current version of BigClock doesn't seem to work perfectly. So I came across these two good old freewares, they at least won't reboot the treo.

Toast Timer

you can set as much as timers you need, this is quite similar to TikTok, but I prefer the neat interface of toast timer and it works straight as timer. Just something to note, it can only be run on RAM otherwise there will be no alarm when times out.

stopwatch

Treo as a gaming console

Sat, 02 Apr 2005 05:24:36 GMT

I never know that I can use the Treo as how I used my Zodiac2 last time. After installation of Firestorm v.1.3.2, now I always hook on to it for gb, gba and gbc. Too bad the current version of LJP doesn't support Treo 650's 5-way navigation button, or else I can dump the Firestorm instead. My main complains for Firestorm: update is slow and no supports. I wrote to them for some bugs encountered in Treo and didn't get their responses anyway. At least they can reply me in this typical way, such as "We are working on a major release of XXX that will have a lot of new features, and this idea is already in and working. Blah blah blah.." to acknowledge receiving my email. I also noticed that in their forum, my problems or bugs on Treo have been raised a few times by some users, and I didn't see any formal replies by them.

After all, this emulator is still buggy after nearly a year released and costs so much, consider LJP is totally free. The only plus point for Firestorm maybe that I can run the emulator and the ROMs straight off the SD card. I really think that they shall improve Firestorm for other PalmOS5 machines, since LJP still on their way making it to work better.

USB-Charger 1.1

Sat, 02 Apr 2005 03:04:15 GMT

This is a new application from Palmgear.
This application lets you charge Palm via the USB-Cable which is connected to the PC. It is the only program which ever was able to do that. You can save your money by buying an expensice USB-Charge cable.

It costs only $1 USD, and I just purchased Seido 2-in-1 retractable USB sync-charge cable which costs me US$16.45. But is it because I connect the treo 650 with a Mac? This program doesn't seem to work for me.

Treo 650M

Fri, 01 Apr 2005 14:40:55 GMT

http://mytreo.net/news/archives/000434.php#more

This is interesting. Treo 650M that runs on MS PPC2003SE. I wish this is not only for April Fool. In terms of specs, Treo 650M seems to be more advanced than the original Treo 650, with up to 128MB RAM and 64MB of flash ROM; and for the sake of the memory issues, Treo 650M will not run on NVFS! Besides having the bluetooth (version 1.2 instead), Treo 650M will have Wifi! Also the battery has been increased up to 2200 mAh.

Sounds good to me. It's a windows mobile-based operating system, these are actually typical specs for a PPC. This could be better than my current Treo 650 that suffers NVFS and limited wireless options. We would see if Treo 650M will be suffering soft headset problem, provided this is not April FOol. LOL.