When you have to sketch something quickly without the need for fancy features, this small application is fit for the task. All the application does is to display a full screen white page for you to draw on. The down button will erase the doodle and the center button will close the application. This application weights under 50kb and was designed to give me a paper to draw what I’m trying to picture something.
Download Confetti v.1.0 (.cab file)
I got a few occasions to play with an iPod Touch this week and the iPhone might just be my next gadget.
I know I have my HTC Touch and it’s the best phone I’ve owned but once I played with Apple’s most recent gadget I realized how uselessly complicated Windows Mobile is. While I love the unlimited possibilities it offers, it still is a bit too complicated for me. I only use it for music, games and internet browsing so a faster, more stable platform might do it for me.
This, however, depends on what will happen with my HTC Touch which wasn’t brand new and unlocked as the seller told me. It will also impact the promising future of Gecko, which I wanted to complete myself at some point.
I have not made my choice yet, so it’s time to go double-time on the development of Gecko. The community will be able to pursue the project once it’s well started.
So I woke up this morning (I tend to do that a lot) and there was SNOW on the ground! You know what this means? I’ll get to take out my gloves and hat and use my oh-so-beautiful snowmobile.
Aside from enforcing most canadian stereotypes in two small lines, I got to play with an iPod Touch. It’s pretty sweet!
I’m still doing great progress on Gecko, by the way. Moving may take some time but I should be able to poop a beta somewhere in november.
Just to let you know the Gecko repository project is not dead at all. However we are moving next week, my phone might be broken and I have a lot of other stuff to do (like not failing maths). I still have some free time to work on the project (about 45 minutes everyday) and I should produce a beta sooner or later.
It’s a fun project and I really enjoy working on it but it also has some costs. I will have to buy a domain name, some hosting and I’m not feeling like paying for it. That’s why there is a donation button on the right bar and I would really appreciate donations, no matter how small they are.
Thanks for your support!
If you have ever used Linux, you probably fell in love with the Package Manager. This sweet application lists most of the programs available for your computer so you can download one of many of them in a convenient way with having to search for the application.
Why not make such a thing for Windows Mobile? Simply leave one or more servers with a crapload of properly named CAB files and a client for Pocket PCs to list and download the applications. This would allow people that find the standard installation procedures too complicated to have an easy way to install their favorite freeware and shareware applications without any hassle.
Unfortunately I don’t have the required skills to start such a project but if anyone is interested I’m more than willing to help!
I made my decision: I’m keeping my Touch. Now I won’t do like with my Treo so I will sell my TyTN right away before it loses value. I’m starting the auction at 100$ (it’s low, really low) and it will end in 7 days.
Do I need to mention it’s in mint condition? Take a look!
Highlights: Windows Mobile 6, great condition, complete, free shipping, no reserve!
Today I received my HTC Touch after two long weeks of anxious waiting. After 5 hours of trying to fix it after I accidentally messed with things that shouldn’t be tampered with, I finally managed to get the Onix ROM to run on it and so far I love it!
Unlike my TyTN, the Touch has no keyboard and almost no buttons. It took me a few hours of pressing an absent “OK” button before I got used to it.
I can’t believe how small it is!
After a couple days of work, I released an updated version of Tippy, a finger friendly tip manager for Windows Mobile. The download is available in the downloads section.
Enjoy!
Tippy v.1.1
If there’s one thing I love about Windows Mobile, it’s 3rd party software. Whether you need to look like you own an iPhone or simply get your weather, Twitter, Facebook, stocks and RSS feeds to your today screen chances are that some developer has a free solution.
However there should be some simple rules developers should not go past. I’ve seen these broken several times with predictable results (actually I just uninstall them) and someone needed to make it stop. Here are some basic things you should respect when making your application:
Leave us our title bar
There has been a lot of applications released recently that go full screen at launch and hide both the top and bottom bars. When you lose your title bar, you also lose your ability to multitask, one of the most important features of Windows Mobile. This is especially important for home screens since they are the launch point for most applications and thus should allow the start menu to be accessed. While I really liked PocketCM and other finger-friendly contact, picture and music apps, I can’t stand not seeing my top bar (especially since that’s where I can my task manager).
Go out the way you came in
This is probably the most important of all rules and yet there are many, many violators to it. When I install an application, I want to be able to uninstall it and never hear from it again. However some applications (such as WeFi) will leave your device unstable or with fuckloads of registry entries and files that are no longer used. Some will unfortunately end with a hard reset and a lot of frustration.
Provide a CAB to install your files
Seriously folks. Most people got tired of using activesync to install their applications a while ago. EXE installers require you to connect your Pocket PC to your computer and sync it to get the application on your device. You can use Pocket PC Installation Manager to make your CABs and EXEs if you can deal with a small “Made with Pocket PC Installation Creator” message at the end of your install. Alternatively, you can buy a CAB file generator or make the INF file yourself.
Keep the size proportional to the use
Windows Mobile devices are not computers. They usually have between 30 and 300MB free to install applications. In the former case, huge apps are generally a no-go. If you made a web browser, chances are that it will be big, but if you made a chronometer that needs 7MB of free space to install, you won’t be getting many downloads.
This weekend I got some time to work on my applications a bit. I bought Basic4PPC and the payment will clear tomorrow. I made a few applications and three of them are now ready for release, here they are!
Sekuntia is the Finnish word for seconds. It’s a simple stopwatch with laps. It was made to be extra finger friendly and to support all resolutions. Right now it supports QVGA, VGA, SQVGA, SVGA, WVGA and all all those in landscape. The application is fully working and ready for release but I will fix a few things once I unlock the extra libraries for Basic4PPC.
A simple tip calculator and bill splitter for Windows Mobile. This one was made with square screen devices and finger friendliness in mind. Once again I will release it after I get the FormLib DLL. I might also add a few languages before release (translators are needed!)
A lil’ something to create shortcuts to anything in the Start menu. This one was also designed for square screen devices. There are better solutions out there (look on XDA-Developers), but most won’t work on 240×240 screens.
I’m working on quite a few projects right now. Since I don’t have a registered version of HB++, I have a few really advanced or completed projects just waiting to be compiled. I also started working with Basic4PPC a bit since you can create and test projects without a computer. Here’s what I’m working on:
-Random Facts for Windows Mobile. I’m adding “daily facts” this time and might add it to the PalmOS version too. Also this version reads facts from a renamed text file instead, making homemade files easy to build.
-Chronometers both for PalmOS and Windows Mobile. Since the time stops as soon as you hold a button, it’s pretty much worthless on PalmOS.
-MemTest, a small utility to show how much dynamic heap you have on your PalmOS device. This is useful for UDMH users.
-A small game for PalmOS, nothing too fancy.
All of these will be open source, of course.
Recently I’ve been looking day and night for a cheap now PDA phone on eBay. Oh sure I really like my TyTN but the slide out keyboard is just taking too much room. I decided to get an iPaq hw6925 instead. It’s about the same thing but with a frontal keyboard, a square screen and GPS. Once I get this baby running on Windows Mobile 6 it should make for a great phone for pretty cheap.
I should be getting it around mid-september.
Being bored and (almost) full of cash, I decided to pay eBay a trip and look for a better smartphone than mine to buy for a low price (possibly without losing over 50$). After looking through many phones, I found out Palm still had the better solution. Here I’m talking about the recently released Treo 800w. For the first time, a Palm device had Wi-Fi and GPS (what I used to rant about back in the days).
I found a really cheap one (a sealed in box one!) currently at 137$. I quickly read the description and bid 160$ at 8 hours from the end.
It turns out the “Bad ESN” thing I overlooked meant the phone is either stolen or some other nasty stuff. In other words, it’s banned from Sprint (the only carrier to have it) and most other carriers won’t want it. Many people mention having trouble activating their Treos and I still don’t know unlocking it will change things. That means more hours on the phone with various Rogers tech-support folks.
Nonetheless it’s still a damn cheap GPS/Wi-Fi device even without the phone and I’ll just sell it back if shit happens.
I’ll give you news.
UPDATE: Someone outbidded me. Phew!
We all heard about the 1000$ iPhone app that just turns out to show that you are stupid enough to pay 1000$ for a picture. Well it turns out some people including me won’t pay a cent for it. I made this out of boredom so you can enjoy being a douchebag too.
Head to the downloads page to get it on your Pocket PC (about 50kb)
HKLM/Software/Message then hold power to shut down and restart it.
