SPB Software House, the makers of the famous Spb Pocket Plus, recently released a free screenshot tool, Spb Screenshot. It saves the pictures as BMP or PNG, and it is triggered automatically after a time delay or if a hardware button is pressed.
Personally I prefer this one, because it just works! It can be found at the SPB Club or on freewareppc.com
Just in case you aren’t happy with the battery lifetime of one or more of your gadgets: our sister site TamsPalm currently has a review of PPC Tech’s new mobile device charger that allows you to charge your favorite device on the go:
Please get the full scoop over at TamsPalm’s!
In the last years, Handango has grown to become the dominant ESD – in fact, the folks felt strong enough to do an insane price hike recently(which will probably reduce their importance significantly). Their Yardstick reports have always provided an interesting insight into the mobile software market – here’s my take on the 2007-yardstick.
First of all, let’s look at the number of new applications/software houses added. Symbian has dominated the list, the Palm OS grew the slowest(suffering significantly from last year):
The average application price and order size have both decreased slightly – which is interesting, as I predict the recent rate hike to increase prices significantly:
From a top-seller point of view, SPB’s domination of the PocketPC market has not changed – in fact, SPB now has of the top-ten titles coming from its portfolio. Other platforms show a more balanced app/house ratio, although games are notably absent from the top-ten lists this year(except for a few casual-gamer exceptions):
Overall
Palm OS
1. PocketMirror Std. (Outlook synchronization) - $29.95
2. Agendus Professional Edition (PIM enhancement) - $39.95
3. SplashID (information security) - $29.95
4. Ringo Pro (ringtone player) - $29.95
5. Agendus Premier Edition (Outlook synchronization) - $59.95
6. Snap (data entry tool) - $9.95
7. Agendus Desktop Edition (Outlook synchronization) - $39.95
8. Diet & Exercise Assistant (_tness assistant) - $24.95
9. PocketMirror Std. Upgrade (Outlook synchronization) - $19.95
10. SplashWallet Suite (personal ID manager) - $59.95PPC
1. Spb Pocket Plus (today screen plug in) - $29.95
2. Spb Mobile Shell (today screen plug in) - $29.95
3. Pocket Informant 8 (today screen plug in) - $29.95
4. MobiTV (streaming television) - $9.99
5. SPB Backup - $19.95
6. MIcrosoft Voice Command (voice control) - $39.9Microsoft 39.99
7. Spb Diary (today screen plug in) - $19.95
8. Spb Time (clock) - $14.95
9. Spb Phone Suite (phone features) - 19.95
10. Spb Brain Evolution (brain trainer) - $19.95Windows Mobile® Standard
1. Ringtone Megaplex (ringtone library) - $19.95
2. SBSH Facade (home screen plug in) - $14.95
3. MobiTV (streaming television) - $9.99
4. HandiTV (streaming television) - $24.95
5. Fizz Weather (weather monitor) - $16.95
6. SmartphoneNotes (note manager) - $17.95
7. Agendus Standard Edition (calendar manager) - $19.95
8. Agenda One (calendar manager) - $29.95
9. PocketStreamer Deluxe (streaming media) - $24.95
10. IM+ (instant messenger consolidator) - $29.95Symbian
1. SBSH Papyrus (time manager) - $19.95
2. Handy Calendar for S60 (calendar manager) - $39.95
3. LCG Jukebox (music player) - $24.99
4. Pro_Mail (email viewer) - $27.99
5. Quickoffice Premier (document manager) - $49.95
6. Handy Weather for S60 (weather monitor) - $19.95
7. Advanced Call Manager (call manager) - $19.99
8. WorldMate Professional (travel assistant) - $69.95
9. Ultimate Voice Recorder (voice recorder) - $14.95
10. IM+ (instant messenger consolidator) - $29.95
From a sales/device perspective, the trend is clear. The adoption of new devices has slowed down somewhat, especially in the established platforms but also in the Symbian space. Interestingly, the Treo 650 still is the single-strongest sales getter. As for application categories, producitivity apps and gaming stuff seem to take the lead this year(see above).
For me, the trends in this yardstick are clear. The established platforms have begun to see market saturation(for PPC, the Palm OS situation should rather be called catastrophic). Windows Mobile Smartphone is currently at a turning point; and Symbian and BlackBerry are growing insanely fast.
What do you think?
Resco is giving away their football game “Table Soccer” for free! The offer is only available until March 12th, so hurry up to get a free copy here. Have fun! 
Google has published an SDK and an emulator for his new mobile operating system called Android. This new operating system is based on Linux and shall be pre-installed on some mobile phones soon. Maybe it will also be possible to install Android on existing smartphones, which currently run, for example, Palm OS or Windows Mobile.
Below there are some screenshots of the emulator which currently includes a browser, Google Maps, a contacts application and some demo applications.
HTML Browser
Using the WebKit layout engine, this browser displays almost every web site I opened correctly. Pages can be rendered in different zoom levels and look always like on a desktop computer. The speed is also O.K. - even using this emulator. Unfortunately, Flash contents couldn’t be displayed, at least not on YouTube.com.
Contacts / Address Book
Google Maps
This application has the same features like on other operating systems: a normal map view, traffic view, satellite view, different zoom modes and a routing mode.
Android is not availible on real-existing phones yet, furthermore, the system - at least on this emulator - has only very few applications and I am missing many additional ones. But many things concerning Android could and probably will change in 2008. At the moment, the base system with its APIs seems to be stable and powerful so that it will be able to run a lot of programs (some developers have even started developing for Android).
A web site called InsideMicrosoft has managed to get its hands onto a paper covering many aspects of Windows Mobile 7. Currently, the authenticity has not been confirmed - but some of it sounds rather plausible(even though there seems to be no actual screenshot in here - all of it are mockups). Here is a short summary of the changes:
General UI concepts
This release of Windows Mobile is targeted at one-handed usage; people using the touchscreen should touch the screen with their fingers rather than a stylus. The product will use its integrated camera for “motion capture”; physical gestures like shaking the phone will be used for some functions.
For example, shaking the phone left and right allows you to navigate forward and back in Internet Explorer:
Tap “bubbles”; ribbons
The device will feature a variety of ribbons that can be tapped with a finger(no idea how they want to do that…a toolbar that’s tappable…like 1cm² icons???). The user interface will prioritize icons somehow; and will act similar to an iPhone’s by popping up a bigger icon showing the currently-selected icon:
My conclusion
The document states that Windows Mobile 7 will hit the road 2009. That means that they still have more than one year to go; and Microsoft is known for changing its plans significantly while a product is actually being coded.
If Windows Mobile really ships in the form shown above, many business customers would insist on being able to get back to the classic UI. If it really materializes, this UI will be little more than yet another UI frontend, joining the likes of Palm’s and T-Mobile’s.
WM devices always stood out from the crowd by having MORE features than the rest - iPods and iPhones rarely get bought for the hundreds and hundreds of things that they can do. Thus, I am pretty sure that Microsoft won’t kill its classic UI system dead…
What do you think?
Get the full scoop here….
Some people are not happy with Microsoft’s standard UI of Windows Mobile. They say it is too complicated or too slow. Although Windows Mobile 6 is more stable and perhaps also faster than older versions (especially WM2003, 2003SE and 5), many users prefer, for example, Palm OS, which is more simple and also faster. Now the developers of Pointui want to create a stable, efficient and simple user interface which runs on Windows Mobile devices.
The home screen shows a status bar displaying your mobile provider, active data sessions, battery status and so on. Below there is a big widget which can be changed. Currently you can choose between an analog or digital clock, a calendar, a task (or appointment) list or the weather. In the lower line there are some four to programs.
When you start it the first time, it offers you a tour through its features:
The application uses the same scrolling method through the widgets or lists like TouchFLO or Picsel Browser. Furthermore, you can handle this application using your fingers as all buttons are big enough.
The next screenshots show other home screen widgets. Unfortunately, only one widget can be displayed at a time:
It has also a built-in keylock. If you tap onto the lock icon, it is activated. You can open it the same way like in Slide2Unlock (or at the iPhone).
Using the other icons in the top bar, you can view and edit some system settings:
Turning on and off worked for the phone and Bluetooth adapter, but not for the Wireless LAN module. But this doesn’t necessarily need to be the fault of this program, as my MDA III (running Windows Mobile 6.0) has some Wireless LAN problems. It is also strange that these pages (and some others) don’t appear in the standard (blue) colour theme.
In the second part of this article we will go further into details and cover other features, e. g. the support of the phone or the cooperation with standard Windows Mobile applications.
You can find more information and downloads on the developer’s site.
Currently, the developers of the Linux distribution Kubuntu are asking their users which additional applications could be integrated into the next version of the distribution. People which have created an account on the Wiki page can write new propositions or add checkmarks to existing ones.
As I am looking for a solution which enables me to sync my Palm (and Pocket PC) with my Linux computer, I added “a good and reliable solution to synchronize data with Palm PDAs and Pocket PCs“. There are a few programs (KPilot, for instance, or SynCE for Pocket PCs), but none of them really worked here. One didn’t find my PDA, another one cleared all databases (!). Syncing my Pocket PC was even more difficult, I had to do much on a console (which I hate) and it never worked stable. And after a reboot, I could do the whole procedure again.
What I want is a synchronization solution which needs one little and easy configuration. After that, it should work stable and reliable. The next version of Kubuntu will be released next year. If there will be a better PDA support then, I will probably install it on my computer.
Do you want this, too? Or how do you sync your PDA with Linux? If you are also interested in this feature, you can write that onto the Wiki page, or, if you don’t want to register there, you can write a comment here.
