ACCESS Licenses Palm OS Garnet Source Code to Palm

ACCESS has entered into a non-exclusive agreement with Palm, Inc., to license the Palm OS® Garnet® source code to Palm, Inc. ACCESS continues to license and support Palm OS. ACCESS and Palm have also agreed to an expansion of the two companies existing patent license. Under terms of the agreement, ACCESS has granted Palm specific rights to modify the code base of Palm OS Garnet for use in its devices such as the Palm Treo smartphone family and the company's other handheld computers. The agreement also grants Palm the right to use Palm OS Garnet in whole or in part in any product from Palm and together with any other system technologies.

Press Release

This is a rather surprising turn for Palm to get more freedom and control on Garnet. Its a win-win situation for both companies and may help bolster confidence in the future of Palm OS. This might also confirm Palm's stance on not licensing the upcoming ALP while developing its own version of Palm Linux.

Back to basics

Mobile Lifestyle is now changed to the Minimal template from blogger.com to facilitate gradual improvements. I didn't quite like the previous template anyway and it was kind of messy after my meek attempts at improving it. I hope this new template will allow me to build on something basic and improve it along the way.

SPUG down again...

This is the second time this year. Duh... just when I thought it was chugging along fine. Hope the server is not wiped out or anything drastic.

Update: Finally there's a notice on the site. But its on spug.sg, not spug.net.

Dear SPUG members, Due to a hardware failure, our site is offline until we get this fixed. - SPUG Comm - 27 Oct 2006

Spout (Zodiac game)

From the developer of Noiz2sa for the Zodiac comes a new game called Spout ported from the PC. It is a simple yet fun game which is hard to put down once you get the hang of it.

Although the graphics are in greyscale using basic blocks, you will look pass it once you are comfortable with the mechanics of the game. You control a moving square object with the joystick using the left and right directions to turn it. Pressing the fire button allows you to spray a stream of dots which serve two purposes; to propel your square in the opposing direction and to blast through walls. The objective of the game is to move up the screen and not crash into the objects or the left and right edges of the screen.

The only glaring issue with this game is that it is an endless game so the only main target is to beat your previous score. There are no bosses to kill or variations in gameplay other then increasing difficulty in penetrating ultra thick walls. However if you look pass this, it is a very addictive and challenging game to pass the time.

The game gets progressively harder as you need to break through sparse areas with little or no empty space.

As seen on TV

Continuing with my monitoring of gadgets used on TV series, the Tapwave Zodiac is still a favourite on Stargate SG-1 episode 10. Its definitely the preferred enviroment scanner used on all off world missions.

Colonel Carter scanning the invisible field

Closeup of Tapwave Zodiac

We also have a first sighting of Palm Treo used by Doctor Weir on Stargate Atlantis episode 10. Nice splash of "NORAD" across it.

Urgent call from SGC.

Make a donation

Yes, it had to happen. Now I am a cyber-beggar. See the

button and send me $$$ if you would like to show your appreciation for the stuff offered on my site or if you feel generous.

If you would rather not send cash, you may gift me something from my Amazon Wishlist(send email with subject "Molife Gifting" to fluid_motion _AT_ hotmail _DOT_ com for more details).

For the rest of you, you may use the "sponsored links". You never know, there *might* be something you want. If you have blocked them in Firefox or other browser, why not take a moment to enable them.

Bible-on-the-Go

Now you can carry your Bible in your phone wherever you go and leave that bulky hardcopy at home! This may not be a big deal to Palm and WinMob OS device users since they've had this for many years but this is specifically for those who use general purpose mobile phones that have Java support.

Go Bible is Free Bible viewer application which is a great addition to any Java enabled phone (for J2ME MIDP 1.0 and MIDP 2.0). It comes only in King James version due to licensing issues since its good and free.

Go Bible website

Zodiac-spotting

The Stargate SG-1 team rely heavily on the Zodiac for their inter-world expeditions. This time they use it to locate an irradiated creature.

tejpwriter, text editor for Palm

tejpwriter is a nifty text editor and viewer for your general plaintext document needs. If you work with text documents often, this is an excellent program to add to your Palm.

I have tried a few other similar apps but they are either too basic(Cardtext) or too confusing(like Palmfiction). tejpwriter has a simple yet attractive UI with almost everything you need to edit your text documents. It can supposedly even read Word docs albeit with some mangled codes but I have yet to test it out. It even has a built-in thumbboard for those who prefer thumb typing. Best of all its GPLed and FREE! Highly recommended.

http://twriter.atspace.com

Singapore Bus Guide in HTML

UPDATE: This is now a placeholder page, please redirect to Bus Guide for Isilo and Plucker for all updates. Thanks!

Following the popularity of the Bus Guide for Isilo and Plucker, there were some requests to support other formats. It is not practical for me to convert for every format so I have decided to provide the HTML files used to convert for the Isilo format.

Disclaimer: The data for Singapore Bus Guide is presented as-is. The author does not warrant the accuracy of the data provided or any failure resulting from its use. Use at your own risk.

Download Singapore Bus Guide for HTML

You may use it on any reader that supports HTML or convert to any other format you desire. The HTML will be updated according to when the isilo and pluckers versions are updated, usually on a quarterly basis. You may refer to Bus Guide for Isilo and Plucker page to find out about all future revision information.

My Sitescooper Guide

I have republished my old Sitescooper guide on Google Pages for those interested in Sitescooper. For those who don't know what is Sitecooper, here is a quick blurb.

Sitescooper automatically retrieves the stories from several news websites, trims off extraneous HTML, and converts them into formats you can read on your Palm computing device for later reading on-the-move. It maintains a cache, and will avoid stories you've already read. It can handle 1-page sites, 1-page with diffing, 2-level and 3-level sites, and it's very easy to add a new site to its list. -- Sitescooper.org

I have done some minor editing to update it to meet current software changes for Plucker and Isilo.

Sitescooper Guide

As seen on Stargate (again)

The Tapwave Zodiac is still the PDA of choice on Stargate; at least for the latest SG-1 promo where Colonel Samantha Carter makes a quick calculation on the Zodiac to determine the coordinates to create a gravitational field to bump a packet of chips.

With a little Stargate, anything is possible

Previous post here.

World Cup 2006 in your Palm

Keep track of all World Cup 2006 match schedules and scores on your Palm with these apps. I have briefly tried the following apps.

Football 2006 by Tinystocks
Good and free. Simple yet attractive UI includes basic info like venue and team history. Includes easy match score updates via hotsync conduit or appropriate internet connection.

World Cup 2006 Guide & Schedule Almost the same as Football 2006 with an attractive UI and stats like Teams and Referees. Also includes data syncing to update latest scores. Unfortunately the score update system is glaringly troublesome where it downloads a .prc file and quits the app the moment you complete it. After which you have to run the downloaded prc file and then return to the app. It has some rather irritating reflash problem when changing pages.

Worldcup by Thomas Pundt
This is mainly for people who prefer manually updating scores. It does not have updates via sync.

World Cup 2006 Planner
Almost the same as Worldcup but with a slightly nicer UI with coloured flags and includes data syncing.

World Cup Mobile 2006 by Resco
Very slick GUI design with lots of soccer news, trivia and info. Unfortunately its not exactly worthwhile unless you are willing to pay a whopping US$20+ for an app specifically for this World Cup.

Converting your videos for the PDA

There are presently quite a number of good and free programs that allow you to convert your DVD or videos into suitable formats for your PDA. These should get you started in a jiffy.

Video converters:
SUPER
Vemode

Video conversion tutorials:
How to Encode High Quality Video to Play on a Palm Handheld
Videohelp Tutorials

Generally you would convert to DivX or Xvid video format since these are easily supported in your player app like TCPMP and offer good compression and quality.

How to find Avantgo channel links

Avantgo channels are mobile-friendly and we like to use them in our offline readers like Isilo or Plucker. There is no direct way to see the URLs from the channels since they are called from within the Avantgo system.

A way to find these URLs is to use a search engine like Google. In Google, you use the "allinurl:" operator to find keywords within the url. Let's say you are looking for the Time Asia channel. You will type "allinurl: Time Asia Avantgo". The links may use "avantgo", "mobile", "palm" or other keywords within the url so you should try any possible ones until you get the right hit.

--- Help adapted from MobileRead Forums

Palm building their own [Linux] OS

Software developer David Beers has revealed inside information that Palm may indeed be building its own Linux OS.

It's confirmed: Palm is building their own OS

Meanwhile Palm, dominant in the US smartphone market, has been conspicuously quiet about the announcement of the ACCESS Linux Platform in February. Now we know why.

This is great news since Palm has been patching Garnet for their PDAs and Treo range all this while and better control of the OS is definitely a plus. Now Palm can continue building its Linux OS (compatible with Palm?) based devices without PalmSource.

Happy 10th Birthday Palm!

Palm Inc is now a decade old. Long live Palm. :P http://www.palm.com/anniversary

SPUG.net up, sort of.

SPUG.net is up. If you can't access it, use spug.sg or worst case access with IP address 203.123.8.125.

What's in a name?

Have some pleasure with ButtonSex. Amazing what a change in caps can do.

Mace on ALP and future of Palm OS

Former VP of PalmSource Michael Mace shreds some light on the Access Linux Platform and the future of Palm OS.

My take in a nutshell: Access has deep pockets. ALP will likely appear on devices beyond 2008. Palm OS on ALP is generally for backward support of your favourite Palm apps: Expect developers to migrate to Linux platform. Future of ALP looks promising.

And the lively comments below the article are also very informative, do check them out.

Access Linux Platform and the future of Palm OS

SPUG.net down

SPUG.net is down. Now you folks can have a more productive work week. LOL

Showtimes script for Singapore Cinemas

This is a perl script to grab movie schedules and info for use with the Showtimes application for Palm OS. This has been modified to handle the new Yahoo! Movies layout.

Download the latest sgyahoo perl script now.

Installation

You may follow the install instructions for Showtimes found here.

Configuration

Use the following URLs for this script when setting up Showtimes in Hotsync Manager:

Today's info - http://sg.movies.yahoo.com/showtimes
Tomorrow - http://sg.movies.yahoo.com/showtimes?d=1
The day after - http://sg.movies.yahoo.com/showtimes?d=2

Use all 3 urls for all three days' data.

Movie Info & Plots

This has been enabled by default. To disable plots, open sgyahoo.pm with notepad or any ASCII text editor and change "my $mplot = 0"; to "my $mplot = 1"; then save the file (ignore all quotes). Note that plots will take a longer time to complete.

Open getdata.cfg in Showtimes folder and check that the line "EXTRAMOVIEINFO 1" is present. If its "EXTRAMOVIEINFO 0", change to 1. (Ignore all quotes)

Copy errors after running getdata.exe

The Showtimes hotsync conduit may have problems with latest versions of the Palm Hotsync Manager in Palm Desktop. The common issue is failure to copy to the install folder. In such a case, you will need to perform it manually or follow the directions found here.

You will need to disable the showtimes conduit from within hotsync manager (note to check the default box) and do the following changes to the getdata.cfg:

1. Change "flipreg 1" to "flipreg 0"
2. Change "DESTDIR" following the instructions there, ie. "DESTDIR c:\palm\[your username]\install"
3. Use your Windows task scheduler or startup batch to autorun the program.

As seen on Stargate

I am a fan of Sci-fi series Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis and they use some pretty cool gadgets that are actual consumer computing products. The Dell desktop and laptops are a common sight as well as other more futuristic gadgets. The Tapwave Zodiac featured on a few of the series was one reason I got one. The latest SG-1 episode even has a pair of Zodiacs used to store the cure for the Prior plague (see screen cap).

Another neat product is Motion Computing's Tablet PCs. I have yet to see any of these in the local retail shops and they look gorgeous. Its featured in Stargate Atlantis and is often seen used by Dr McKay in tablet form within a bump case. Its also found in its desktop dock with keyboard in Dr Weir's office.

Got Tomorrow-ed

Hmm... I was wondering why there was a sudden surge in the number of hits to this blog. Upon checking my StatsCounter, I realised it was tomorrow-ed. No wonder... LOL

Talking Moose

I found this recommendation for a text-to-speech synthesis app called 'Moose' which is free.

Its based on a similar application from the old Macintosh called Talking Moose. Once installed, you may choose to make it speak the text from its app or highlighting your text from other apps and running it from the command bar. It can also be set to occasionally spew random quotes and even tell the time. Though the voice used is a robotic one, it is surprisingly clear. It can even read numbers as "thousand" or "millions" and even "billion" instead of individual digits.

It doesn't seem to work very well on my Zodiac 2, it keeps switching off after telling the time when I power it up and even randomly powers up and tells the time. I should say this is quite useful since my under-utilised Zod is now a talking clock, I press power and it tells me the time.