Recommended Palm Freeware (and other software)

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This section lists some good Palm freeware and shows you how to get it.
Also you are given some advice on using AvantGo and Document Readers
and all sorts of other handy Palm tips and Tricks.

Check Download.com for the most
popular Palm downloads.

CNET's Top 10 Handheld Computers

APPLICATION LAUNCHER

Handscape. Because of its unique 'views' (more later) and ease of use. My Palm categories are divided into 'Applications', 'Astronomical', 'Communications', 'Games', 'Planner', 'Planner utilities', 'System' and 'Utilities' and a few more I'll not bore you with.

'Applications'

* CSpotRun (always keep a copy of the Karma Sutra at hand, read on the way to your best woman's place). See my notes on document readers below.
* Diddle
* MobileDBLite (e-commerce glossary, emoticons v2.0, history of the Internet, HTML reference, palm bar, world info)
* AlbumToGo (greyscale images - comes with an image converter for use on your PC)
* AvantGo (get AvantGo - excellent for online and offline browsing, and see my rant at the bottom of this page)

Doctor Salami's page here tell you how to set up AvantGo for 'live' web browsing.

Recommended AvantGo channels:

Bloomberg Personal, Business Week OnLine Handheld Edition, CNET Ners.com, CNNfn, Computer Currents, ft.com, Industry Week, Mercury Centre, New York Times, PlamPower Magazine, PCWORLD.com, Salon.com, Suck, Sydney Morning Herald, The Economist mobile edition, The Industry Standard, The Wall Street Journal, Wired News, The Guardian (cool)

Doctor Salami cares about you. Here's how to use Hotmail with AvantGo 3.3:

Create an AvantGo account that has your Hotmail account; then

In the MobileLink configuration add the server and set up exactly the name and password of the Hotmail account.

This should make your Hotmail accounts appear on your Palm!

'Astronomical'

* SunCompass
* EarthandSun
* PalmGlobe
* RiseSet
* Sol!
* Planetarium (well, this one *is* shareware)

'Communications'

* Address (Palm OS)
* Mail (Palm OS)
* IOU Mate

'Games'

* BJ's Blackjack
* DopeWars
* Fours
* Galax
* Giraffe
* InComing (shareware)
* MineHunt
* Patience
* PocketChess
* SolFree
* Tank
* Tiger Woods Golf (commercial)

Franklin Planner for Microsoft Outlook
(as used by Doctor Salami)

'Planner'

* Franklin Planner applications (commercial) with the Handscape views of Calendar (what's next in my DateBook) and AnaClock (a little - or big - analogue clock)

'Planner/Utilities'

* Checklist
* DiddleBug
* Expense (Palm OS)
* HandyShopper
* IOU Mate
* Memo Pad (Palm OS)
* Titrax (quite good freeware time tracking application)
* URL Track

'System'

* AlwaysOn (Over-ride Palm OS auto shut-off)
* ClipList
* DBCleaner
* Graffiti (palm OS)
* HotSync (Palm OS)
* SoftTrack (software tracking tool)

'Utilities'

* BigClock
* Oblique Strategies
* Quotes
* StopWatch
* Sums
* TimeZones

'Dictonary''

* Noah (3 different database sizes) - awesome freeware dictionary!

void4.gif (6680 bytes)

Flight

ELITE FANS... RIGHT ON (PALM) COMMANDER!

Elite for the Palm. Elite for the Palm. Elite for the Palm. Elite for the Palm.

Yes...again you can sit back in your Cobra MkIII and trail the cosmos. 'Elite' was written in 1983 for the BBC Microcomputer and took the world and my young life by storm. When you ask yourself deep questions about who you are, for many this game Elite ranks as a first dance with geekdom. Trading, Bounty Hunting, Piracy, Smuggling...many of you were there. To quote from Genuflections of 80s Games:

Is it possible to once again voyage the heavens, to move through the cosmos against a backdrop of distant suns glittering against the void like spinning diamonds. It is a journey vaster than Magellan's, one's spirit soaring on solar winds, cocooned in the vessel of a true galactic Zen warrior: the Asp Explorer?

void3.gif (2601 bytes)

Trade

Now with Void for the Palm you can relive this truly amazing feeling of freedom and power.

Void, as with Elite before it, is a heady mix of arcade and strategy. You take the role of a space trader, traveling from planet to planet buying and selling wares ranging from Alien Items to Slaves to Narcotics to Food. The spaceways are crowded with pirates whom you fight, police who you run from (or blast through), other traders (if you decide to live a life of piracy, you hunt these) and more. Void is open-ended: there is no 'finish'...you play against yourself, or, more accurately, you play against the asirations of what you may be...

You trade, steal or fight (or all) your way through near-infinite galaxies. To win a trading trader, you need to know where you are going and you consult your Galaxy Map before leaping into Hyperspace (Elite fans will remember the Thargoids lurking in 'witch-space'). You trade off cargo-space (how much you can carry and make a profit on) for fuel (how far you can leap each hyperspace jump). Sometimes the best profits are to be made from far-flung systems.

elitec64.jpg (5680 bytes)

Commodore 64 'Elite' screenshot.
Palm version's not bad, huh?

You trade according to the current prices in each system. If you decide to trade in contraband (like narcotics) you can make greater profit and thus earn more credits and better equip your ship, but if you are caught, the police will be after you. Similarly if you waste other traders and steal their cargo to sell at the nearest starport.

Void also emulates the ranking system of Elite, enabling you to grow in power and majesty as you accumulate 'kills' for each Pirate you wax.

A truly excellent Palmtoy. Love it.

You have to pay just under US$10 for Vopid, but you should. Colour version on Palm IIIc. Search for it a PalmGear.

When editing any files in your Palm, make sure you use the quicker cut, copy, paste, and undo strokes instead of the menu the menu. Highlight you text and use Graffiti strokes:

Psin Modem for Palm, Visor and Psion
Psion 56k Travel Modem for Palm, Handspring Visor, and Psion
(5 Star Customer Rating)

If you want to read a long text file, you need two things,

(1) A document 'reader' and,

(2) A file converted into the proper format for the 'reader' to read.

Okay.

Unless you are using some proprietary format, like Peanut Press, you will want to find a 'Doc' reader. CSpotRun (mentioned above) is a good free one but I've heard that TealDoc is also good (although it is shareware costing US$17). AportisDoc was the first 'Doc' reader but who knows if thats been updated for a while. Then there's 'Documents to Go' (buy it, buy it, buy it - its is excellent) which is well, excellent, and lets you read formatted Word and Excel files and does the appropriate PC to Palm document conversions when you HotSync (so if you've updated your Word file, the updated version will be sent to your Palm so you can read it). This way you get better Office/Palm integration. Cool and very handy if you regularly need to refer to Word and Excel documents in meetings (or at least need to have them handy).

This means, of course, that to turn a text (or Word, or whatever) file into a file readable by a Palm doc reader, you need a �onversion program: you mainly need to convert the text into a Palm format. These are .pdb and .prc files. It's usually an easy 'drag and drop' operation if you're using something like 'Desktop to Go'. There is a free one of these converters at PalmGear (a Word macro). Once that is done, you just install the text file like any other file you put on your Palm.

If you don't know about this stuff, all you've got to get your head around is that filename extensions such as .PDB and .PRC are recognised by a Windows PC, so it can sort of *know* that they are there, but it can't do anything with them.

.PRC are files that are Palm applications, and

.PDB are data files used and/or created by Palm applications
(like my Australian radio station Triple J tuning guide on this page).

So. A file containing data created by any application gets the extension .PDB when stored on a Winows 'puter (e.g. MemoPad database, a DOC document, or ToDo database). When these files are HotSync'ed to your Palm, they are stored as data or application 'databases', which don't have filename extensions in the Windows sense of word. They are instead identified by two 4-byte length numbers, a creator id and a type which are normally hidden from the user - you will need special applications in order to see them.

A Palm (unless you're using a hack or something) will display only applications and not data 'files'. This is why you can't 'see the Triple J Tuning Guide if you load it into your Palm unless you have a doc reader installed.

But I like 'Documents to Go' because it adds a hotsync conduit and takes care of all this stuff on-the-fly quickly and easily (don't listen to the reviewer at Amazon who had problems - he's just not set it up properly). If you get this application, you can also download a free application that will allow you to load Word and Excel attachments into you Palm e-mail system (Attachments to Go). Brilliant!

There's also a cool macro program someone developed that can covert Word (only Word - no Excel files) doc to text files within word 97 and up called PalmDocs - version 1.9 is the latest and you can get it at Download.com. You'll need a doc reader like CSpotRun.

A good place to get pre-formatted texts to view in your Palm with your reader is to MemoWare.

There's also my larger Palm links page here (just scroll down 'till you see them)

Remember, just search for any freeware stuff I've mentioned at Palmgear or Download.com

Go to PalmGear and download 'MochaPPP'.

This application allows you to connect your Palm to the web via the
HotSync cradle (or sync cable in like a Travel Kit) and share your PC's modem
with your Palm - Palm Surf at a wowee-zappo 57,600k!
It does this by making your Palm believe your computer's
modem is a connected to the Palm COM port.
So: you make a PPP connection to your ISP using your computer's
modem when your Palm is placed in the HotSync cradle.

Boxer (from PalmBoxer) lets you transfer any type of file from one PC to another using your Palm as a storage
device - just like a floppy disk. You will not, of course, be actually able to read all the different type of files.

Its free, too.

IntelliSync also does all of this and more.

If you have a Palm III there should be a bonus
CD with a program called PocketMirror.

If you have a newer Palm (IIIx, IIIxe, IIIc, V, Vx. VII), PocketMirror should
auto-detect Outlook and ask if you want to HotSync with it. If it didn't, look
on the Palm Desktop CD for a directory called Chapura or PocketMirror and install it from there.

Pocket Mirror and IntelliSync will sync Outlook with the native Palm databases, such as the address book and the calendar. They don't replace the native databases, but work within the limits of the native databases. You can choose how you map some of the fields (For example, do you want to put the birthdate in one of the generic fields?), but the native Palm databases are inherently more limited than Outlook's expansive databases.

IntelliSync is a more featured porduct and does this sort of thing for the 'power user'. Its the best bet if you wish to come as close to Outlook on your Palm as possible.

This is not true for the IIIe which does not come with an Outlook conduit.

Look at www.chapura.com for more info on PocketMirror.

Peruse the posts on the topic at Deja.com (search phrase was "Palm Outlook")

Get AutoSync

...and set it to activate a HotSync at whatever time or interval you choose.

WarmSync will also do this.

It's not as full-featured as AutoSync, but it's freeware.

K. How can I import large groups of names into my Palm?

You probably know that you can import a large group of people into your
address book via a .csv file format.

Did you also know that if you are sent an updated list
of people, you can import this updated list and
ensure that the old data is not written over and/or erased?

If you are using the standard Palm provided conduits, you can use file linking
to accomplish this. Wow, never ceases to amaze me how cool this Palm thingy is!

While we're on this topic, UnDupe is a great piece of shareware.
After running UnDupe on your Palm make sure you select
"handheld overwrites desktop" when you next sync or
else you will still get dupes from your desktop PIM.