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User Tips Development Tips Affiliates FO News Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Comments |
Welcome
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... to the July edition of our User and Developer tips newsletter.
As always, please feel free to submit requests or ideas through the links at the bottom of this page. This is also where you will find subscription and removal information. Palm related items in our newsletters are marked with this icon  . WinCE items are marked with this  one.
Please note: This newsletter contains tips and tools that can alter your PDA. These items are offered here "as is" and without any warranty or support from FO. Please consider them carefully before using or trying them (and as always ... backup, backup, Backup! first). Thank you, 
Bill Shadish, Principal |
User Tips
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Software e*Mail (http://www.geocities.com/chitianzi/email.html) e*Mail (version 1.5.7) is now available as a free download that goes beyond the capabilities of the built in Palm email program. e*Mail breaks the 4k barrier of Palm's mail application. It also allows you to change the Palm clipboard size (1k by default) to as much as 32k. e*Mail has options for the sort order of the email list, can time/date stamp outgoing mail and includes several ways to delete unwanted emails. QuickType (http://freshmeat.net/projects/quicktype/) QuickType is a neat little utility that provides several ways to more easily enter text into the Palm. The major component of QuickType is to allow you to print an overlay, which then goes onto the Palm's graffiti pad area. (They show you how to do this). The left side of the below graphic shows some of the available overlays. Once in place, you can work with a variety of more intuitive ways of tapping in text, that are better than working with the default pop-up text character entry screen. The "T" example shown in the graphic is the Tap and Slash portion of QuickType, which allows you to do a number of things off of a single letter tap, by slipping (a short slash stroke in different directions) right after tapping the letter. You can see the types of things that can be selected after typing a "T" in the graphic. QuickType also a feature to automatically create a space after punctuation. 
 QuickType QuickType is a Palm OS extension. What this means is for QuickType to work, you must have X-Master, HackMaster, EVPlugBase or a similar tool to enable extensions. X-Master is included in the QuickType distribution kit and is fairly easy to use. Just load it in along with QuickType and QuickType in the X-Master interface. Tips Edgar's Graffiti Tricks Page (http://www.antioch.com.sg/edgar/graffiti.html)  Edgar's Graffiti Tricks This page provides a series of graffiti writing tricks that greatly speeds the entry of text into a Palm. For example, in the above graphic you can see that writing a "B" like a number "3" (on the text side of the graffiti pad) works a lot easier than trying to write a B the normal way. Where to go to Download? (http://www.mobilecomputing.com/showarchives.cgi?135:1) Mobile Computing has a useful and concise list of online locations where you can download trial or freeware PDA software from. Where to go to Sell a Used PDA? Get High Tech (http://www.gethightech.com) Parts, Units and Accessories. Sell Your Palm (http://www.sellyourpalm.net) Used Palm Pilots (http://www.usedpalmpilots.com) If you've just upgraded to the hot new Handspring Treo 270, or Compaq IPAQ and want to sell your previous piece of hardware, then these sites will help you to do so. They buy your old hardware and in some cases will even pay for your shipping to get your old unit to them. Most of these sites sell parts and often will take broken units too (that's where the parts come from...). Wireless Newsfactor (http://www.wirelessnewsfactor.com/perl/story/11150.html) This is generally a good site for all things wireless. The page shown covers a topic that cell phone users will just want to keep an eye on. "Mobile Phone Makers Patent 'Radiation Shields' To Combat Cancer Risk". Click their 3G section for an excellent discussion of this wireless technology. Palm Thumb Keyboard (https://store.palm.com/Catalog/productdetails.asp?productnr=P10876U&parent=2030&type=1)
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Development Tips Sites with Real Content for Developers
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Useful Development Tools DEVBUZZ (http://www.escribe.com/findgroup.html?query=palm) DevBuzz contains a tutorial on how to set up and use Remote Data Access (RDA) with a SQL Server database on Windows CE. This includes a discussion on security and data replication. RDA allows your users to access a backend server in always connected, as well as intermittently connected, modes. PalmOpenSource (http://www.palmopensource.com/) A good source of PalmOS code, with over 267 projects. Here are a few samples that can be found on this site:
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Affiliates
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This section continues the process of highlighting one of our partnering-program affiliates. We believe that you will find the skills and services offered by our select partners helpful to you as well.
This issue's FO affliate is CMC Energy Services. 
CMC Energy Services "CMC has partnered with Fundamental Objects to develop a home energy survey report, that will be used throughout the U.S. The object of the report is to facilitate improving residential energy efficiency whenever a home is bought or sold. The survey will be performed during a home inspection by specially trained inspectors. The FO designed software will store the information entered by the inspectors, calculate the savings and costs for each improvement, and write a report that specifies which improvements are eligible for financing on the home mortgage. In addition there will be an estimate of the savings for all eligible recommendations and a list of local suppliers/contractors. We anticipate that within 5 years, our database will grow by 2 million homes per year. CMC is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. Since its founding, CMC has been focused on programs and services that assist residents in reducing their energy costs, while improving the comfort of their homes. We anticipate that the new service we are developing will save enough energy in existing homes to support a 2% growth in new homes, without consuming additional energy supplies." -Doris Ikle, President CMC Energy Services More information about the FO partnering program can be found at http://www.fo.com/partnering. |
Latest FO News
Palm Tools
 foAudits 1.1 was released at the beginning of July. foAudits allows you to create customized Palm-based audits, checklists or punchlists under Windows, saving the template to a Palm PDA.
foAudits now includes:
 foAudits interface Click here (http://www.fo.com/palm/foaudits.htm) for more information about foAudits. |
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