Monthly Archives: January 2009

Agendus for Palm OS version 13.02 has been released with a huge number of changes-

* Today View: Added confirmation dialog appearing upon successful creation of a new event from the Smart Agenda slot when the Ask for type on Smart Agenda option is disabled
* Today View: Corrected certain icons in the Smart Agenda slot of the Today View not having a transparent background
* Today View: Addressed a performance problem occurring if the Smart Agenda slot is placed at the very bottom of the Today View
* Memo View: Made numerous improvements to the d-pad navigation in this view when the list is grouped
* Memos: Corrected extraneous characters appearing in the Memos list when grouped by Description
* All List-type views: Addressed Agendus not adapting properly to the wider screen on 320×480 devices when in landscape mode
* All List-type view: Corrected many List views not exposing the list on the entire screen in some instances
* Journal View: Addressed the scrollbar not behaving as expected
* Addressed attempting to dial a contact via the context menu on meeting/tasks with an associated contact not working if the contact had only one phone number defined
* Corrected user-assigned wallpaper not showing in some views…

James posted the following in response to today’s question about upgrading and I felt it deserved a place on the front page-

My Treo 650 has been my exclusive mobile for almost exactly four years now, and, given that I’m unemployed at the moment, will probably stay with me for another six months.  Cosmetically, it’s looking a little rough, but it works as good as new – very stable, even with some beefy third-party apps.  I probably would have upgraded sooner, but there were a few reasons I didn’t:

1.  Palm wasn’t putting out any devices that were significantly more compelling.
2.  I wasn’t ready to drop all my investment into the Palm platform.
3.  My wife, being fickle and having reception issues, ended up using all our upgrades over the past couple years moving up from a throw-away phone to a feature phone until finally insisting on getting a smartphone – a BB Curve.

I have found that I’m missing very little by not upgrading.  I had a Windows Mobile phone provided by work and found that to be simply awful.  The PIM apps are a pain to use, the browser is every bit as primitive as Blazer, and why is it that pre-installed Office document creation and management STILL doesn’t stack up to what was shipped on every Palm smartphone?

Having played IT manager for my wife’s Curve, I’m absolutely astounded by the popularity of BB devices and why RIM spent the last few years pounding Palm.  I’m taking the Bold and Storm out of the equation because they’re so new and don’t represent the devices behind RIM’s success.  BB’s interface is ugly and incomprehensible, and third-party development is the biggest joke in the smartphone world.  BB’s success begins and ends with push e-mail.  Take that away and all you have are doorstops and paperweights.

My Treo’s original battery still can handle two days of average use without a charge, the choice and capability of third-party applications are second only to the iPhone’s, and the PIM apps are comprehensive, flexible, easy to use and unmatched in the industry.  I only get green-eyed over Wi-Fi and 3G.  I really hope that the Pre stacks up, but I’ll get an iPhone 3G before I’d ever think of going to Sprint.

AstroInfo by Pruss v3.10N has been released and is a great quality application for free- “AstroInfo is a full-featured sky chart / planetarium application for amateur astronomers – or just for people who want to check the sunset time or see where Jupiter is.

Here are some key features of “AstroInfo”:

Plot planets, the sun, the moon, stars (over 860,000 stars included, with 99% complete coverage up to magnitude 11), deep sky objects (includes Messier, NGC, IC, Bennett, Caldwell, Collinder and sci.astro.amateur catalogs) and constellations.
Zoom in and out, and move around.
Real-time or accelerated display for the present time, or a past or future time.
Rise, set and transit times for sun, moon, planets, stars and deep sky objects.
Lunar phase.
Red on black night mode.
Measure angular distance between objects.
Draw Telrad / eyepiece field-of-view circles.
RA/Dec/Alt/Az data for all objects.
Customize colors (e.g., draw stars in white and Messier objects in red).
Web lookup of deep sky objects (on devices with Blazer mobile browser).
ARM optimized for newer devices.
Support Hi-Res+ Palm devices.”