06:10 PM by Colin Dunstan in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

Thanks to Diesel eBooks for providing us with an exclusive 20% discount on any e-book purchased at their webstore. The discount is valid until 2/15/05. Just key in the following code at checkout: dieselfat53

Diesel eBooks is a new e-book store providing instant access to over 35,000 mostly commercial book titles in various formats (Microsoft Reader LIT, eReader, and Adobe PDF).

Personal experience: Diesel eBooks support is excellent. Two weeks ago I was contacted by Scott from Diesel eBooks who informed me that they had increased their e-book inventory. I was more than happy to confirm that the particular items I was previously missing (books by George R. R. Martin) are now in stock!

05:28 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

What computer game is more common the good 'ole Solitaire? It's popular because it's just plain fun. But it took me some time to find a version I liked. Now that I've made the discovery here's a little of what I've learned.

There are a bunch of freeware solitaire games out there for Pocket PC. They all seems to have the nearly fatal flaw of ugly cards and a user interface that takes all the fun out of the game. But I've stumbled upon a couple of programs that are pretty amazing, and bring a lot of the fun back. I'll briefly describe them here, but that doesn't mean there are not other good Solitaire packs that have received some attention recently also, such as PDA Mill's Solitaire I and II

King Sol Solitaire 2004 v2.0
This program seems to be quite an award winner... It has been recognized in Pocket PC Magazine each year from 2001 as a best product award winner, through 2004 when it was a finalist in the 2004 Pocket PC card games category. And when you give it a try you will immediately realize that it's a nice piece of software that distinguishes itself well against any freeware offering.

It has a snappy and responsive play, and the cards look recognizable. I only tried out Klondike, because that's really my only interest right now, but it's a very pleasant game to play. The graphics overall are really excellent and the sound effects are a fun addition if you're not playing during a business meeting.

One of its strong points is the way it tracks statistics, where you basically get to see how many games you've played, how many won and lost, etc. and can even produce 3D charts with your results. (I didn't try that, so I'm just going on the features list with that one.)

Another feature that is almost, but not quite delightful, is the way you can choose to tap a card to automatically play it. This is my favorite feature in solitaire game UIs, and something I was used to on Palm solitaire with the excellent freeware program "Patience." But it just doesn't seem to quite work right here, and is inconsistent. And annoyingly, it's limited to playing only a single card, so you can't tap at a card and expect the other cards on it to move along also.

Unlimited redo is another welcome feature, and you can customize the game to your favorite look as well.

A list of King Solitaire features as provided on the website...

# Statistics! View your game statistics with the most complete solitaire statistics database anywhere. View your results in amazing 3D charts, sort tables by any data field, and compare your results against other players.
# Customizable! King Sol Solitaire 2004 is completely customizable! You can set backgrounds, card backs, and sound schemes. You can even create backgrounds and card backs from you own image files. Visit our customization gallery today!
# Unlimited undo/redo
# Save/Restore games
# Bookmark your place in a game
# Auto-playing of cards
# Game timer and scoring
# Pause a game at any time
# Shuffle number (over 2 billion shuffle combinations)
# Create your own "favorite games" list
# Select a random game to play from all games, favorite games, or games you have played.
# Auto-save game and continue later when game is closed

I can heartily recommend this game for purchase, but I do have a few minor complaints.
* The discard pile is on the top left. That means that you have to put your hand over the cards to tap it. A minor annoyance, but when a program is this good, you get picky.
* It only seems to use part of the screen. Not a big deal, but I wonder if maybe that's intentional to provide compatibility with smartphones.
* There's really no indication of when the game is over after there are no (helpful) moves available for you to make.
* My biggest complaint is a personal preference. It looks like you have to play with a set of Klondike rules that do not allow you to take a card from the ace-thru-king pile you are trying to build. Once a card is played there you can't remove it. Unfortunately, in my mind, that strategy makes for the most interesting part of the gameplay. Together with that, it seems that you can't move half of a stack of cards on the main playing area. You can only move the whole stack or the bottom card. That's kind of a dealbreaker for me, but probably not for most people, especially if you are playiog different solitaire varieties.

All in all, it's a really nice program and a lot of fun. If you are in the market for such a game, I highly recommend that you give it a test run. It might be just what you are looking for.

Solitaire City v1.00
This game can be found at Solitaire City and also has a nice trial version. This trial is time based, and I think it gives a few hours of play and a couple of nag screens. [Full disclosure: I was given a copy of the registered software by the author for this review. The program first came to my attention when I won a registered copy for my Palm in a contest, and have kind of had my eye on it ever since because it's well-made, and the author seems very nice and was very helpful when I had a hotsync issue with it (my fault, not his). ]

There are only 8 solitaire games included, but that should be plenty for most people, and they have 37 rules variations all together. All kinds of options make it a very flexible program, and the rules issues that bothered me in King Solitaire were not an issue here because I had my choice of how the game was played.

There is a spectacular training mode to help you learn the games. Maybe the best I've even seen on a Pocket PC program. In fact, I even tried out the training mode for another version of solitaire just because it was so cool. You may want to give this program a try just to see the training mode. And while it tells you what to do next, it really doesn't force you to do anything and seems to play like a live game. Not really sure how he did that, but it's really nice.

The best feature of the program, though, is the actual playability. With really spectacular graphics, smooth action, fun graphic animation, easy to see cards, music and timed scoring you are almost carried away with the whole mood and action. After I tried King Solitaire and saw how nice it was, I kind of felt bad for the Solitaire City programmer, thinking it might be a lost cause to try to compete. Boy was I wrong! This program kind of opened my eyes up to what you can do with a solitaire game. I don't know how much farther you can take it, but I'm starting to think that more creative animations and sounds might continue to add to the experience, so there's probably even more that could be done to add animated sequences that add fun but don't distract or slow down the play.

There's not a whole lot to complain about here, but trying to be picky again, here's a few things I noticed:
* Not a lot of solitaire games are included right now
* It's a little pricey for a handheld card game at about $19.
* The draw stack is top left again, and makes you cover the screen to tap if you're right handed
* The scoring is nice, but you really leave wishing you could choose opponents on the high score ladder to compete against. Maybe as simple as a pre-populated opponent's high scores (which you would choose, unlike the prepopulated high scores that it comes with). Or maybe as fancy as a contest against a player, where you choose that opponent (who would then have a quick animated appearance, and make comments all through the game based on what is happening). The opponent would randomly "win" a certain number out of 10 or out of 25 rounds, which you would have to beat to win. Maybe that's pie in the sky, but I think it would be fun if the comments weren't too lame or unattentive to the game situation.
* There is a message when the program thinks you have lost. It doesn't always seem to know when you've lost and you seem to be able to ignore the message and continue to play, sometimes even winning. But most of the time it's accurate, and it is kind of comforting to get that confirmation you're done.
* It's easy to start a new game with a single tap. That's great, but I wish there was an undo for new game because I accidently hit that in the middle of a particularly interesting game, and I would like to have finished to see what would have happened.
* I don't think it had the option to replay a hand with the same shuffle either. It might have, because there are so many options, but I don't think so, and that would have been nice.

You'll notice though, that my complaints are minor and more like a fantasy wishlist. The program is spectacular, and if I could only recommend one program, that would be it. But since King Solitaire is also very good, I'd say try both. Both are good, and it's going to come down to a matter of personal preferences.

==============================

King Solitaire is $14.95, and it's not clear whether upgrades are included or not. This program can be found at http://www.rapturetech.com/PocketKing/KingSol.htm. The trial gives you 40 hands, but only a couple of the games give you a true random shuffle. Still, it's plenty for a trial run. Instructions are available in the program for all the varieties.

Solitaire City (http://ppc.solitairecity.com) is $18.95, comes with a 30-day money back guarantee, free technical support, and 2 years of free version upgrades. It is currently a fresh release at v1.0, but looks and acts more like a "version 5" of something than an early release.

02:32 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

I wanted to publicly thank Sammy McLoughlin from PalmAddicts for his personal New Year wishes and for the kind words he always has for us.

In case you are a Palm fanatic - or simply into mobile gadgets - and have somehow missed Sammy's popular site, you should head immediately over to check it out.

Alex

10:18 AM by Laurens in Archive | Sunrise

I just released Sunrise 0.40-pre4. The big new feature in this release is that the conduit can now update documents during HotSync.

09:31 AM by emale07 in Miscellaneous | Lounge

The first six (6) replies to this thread will receive invites.

[Alex: emale, thank you for the invite offer! In case you are running out of invites here, make sure to also visit our other thread where Gmail accounts are still up for grabs!]

06:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

In case you've missed any MobileRead news from this week, here is our usual roundup:

µBook
ubook 0.9b e-book reader available

Announcements
Mobileread RSS Tweaks

Current E-Books Trends
New battleground for 2005: the e-book

E-Book Readers
Bookeen answers regarding Cybook review

E-Book Webstores
Fictionwise 20% discount - one day left
Mobipocket eBookstore Holiday sale, last day

Other E-Book Resources
CCEL Christian Ebook Library
Project Wittenberg

Other Gadgets
Video Projection with PDAs!

Palm
Font Collector - converts fonts for your Palm device
Linux announcement may mark the end of Palm OS (Sunrise author)

Pocket PC
MorphGear now free and open-source
Naval Ship Warfare and Mario Docker for PPC
PalmOS to Pocket PC: Part II - Conversion
PocketRSS V2.0.15 out
PocketScumm V0.7 released
Resco products 30% discount till 12/31/04
Tom's Hardware reviews the Dell Axim X50v

Portable Audio/Video
Archos PMA400 video player to be showcased soon
Stream music to your Airport Exress from anywhere

Smartphones
Cabir source code slips out - mutants to be expected

Sunrise
News on Sunrise 0.40 pre2
Sunrise 0.40 pre3 bugfix release

WiFi / Bluetooth Technologies
WiFi-enabled PDA doesn't affect pacemakers

05:42 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Times Online has published an interesting article hinting that reading e-books on dedicated e-book devices could be ready for mainstream in 2005.

There is already a healthy market for written material that can be downloaded on to a handheld computer or a mobile phone, but even the most die-hard geek will admit that back-lit liquid crystal screens are a strain on the eye, and the battery power needed to read an entire book is vast.

The article mentions two dedicated e-book readers: Sony's Librie and Matsushita's latest version of the Sigma Book, both of which require energy only when a book page is being turned (the Librie uses E-Ink technology, the Sigma Book uses Kent' Cholesteric technology).

11:31 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

This is Part II of an article describing my conversion from a PalmOS Sony Clie to a Toshiba e405 Pocket PC. Click here for Part I To recap briefly, my motivation for switching was multi-fold:
* I had to replace my Clie soon
* The current Palm PDA hardware just didn't excite me
* I like to try new things, and this seemed like a good time to try PPC
* There was a special on www.woot.com for a $150 refurbished Toshiba (if you haven't tried Woot, give it a look!)
* It looked like it might be a while until Cobalt gets straightened out
* PalmOne and Tapwave seemed to be the only significant sources of Palm devices, and one was dedicated to smartphones, the other gaming handhelds.
...So, bottom line, I decided to make the plunge even though I really prefer the simplicity and efficiency of the "zen of Palm."

Data Conversion
The most serious part of this exercise was the conversion of data. For me, this was exacerbated by the hundreds of pages of organized and categorized and formated data. Certainly a large part was Calendar, Memo, ToDo and Contact data in the basic PIM apps. But there was also a lot of other stuff. My copy of ShadowPlan outliner had most of it, but also things like ebooks, encrypted passwords, HandyShopper, etc etc.

You really have two options for the basic PIM data...
1) Manually re-enter it by copy and paste from the desktop PC, and manual entry on the PPC where necessary
2) Automatic conversion from Palm Desktop to Outlook

I chose #2 for the basic PIM data in the 4 basic Palm PIM apps. My free solution was Stratabase Resync. It worked okay, but didn't give me that warm satisfied feeling like everything worked well. You may want to do a printout of your Palm address list as a minimum to check and see if everything went according to plan. In my case, I printed to a .pdf file, which seemed like a convenient way to go.

If you have a way to sync directly to Outlook (which is the required desktop PIM app for Pocket PC to sync to), you are all set. Just sync your data to Outlook and then set up your PPC. The data will be there. Note, however, that due to a restriction in Activesync, all the memo notes will be synched to the MyDocuments folder on your PPC, with no folders for categories, or even a subfolder to hold all the notes. They're just thrown in along with everything else. I didn't like this, so I found an alternative, Tombo, which I think is much better anyway. More later, when I list the apps I'm using and how they compare to my old Palm apps.

Other Sources Of Info On The Web
There are a number of reviews out there comparing Palm and PPC, and discussing conversion. Very interesting reading, but you have to remember that they are all somewhat biased based on what they have previous experience with, and what the author cares about. (Just like this article is baised because of my background and preferences.) Plus a lot of the articles doing comparisons are pretty old, so they may not really reflect the newer features, especially for Palm.
To give you a sample of how popular this subject is, here are a few links I found with just a quick search on Google...
http://www.clieuk.co.uk/vs.htm
http://www.cewindows.net/faqs/convertpalm.htm
http://computertimes.asia1.com.sg/sp...,1554,00.html?
http://www.pdabuyersguide.com/tips/palm_vs_pocketpc.htm
http://palmtops.about.com/od/pda101/l/blchart.htm
http://www.palmone.com/us/solutions/...ogo/chart.html
http://www.clieuk.co.uk/bye.shtml
http://www.comp-talk.co.uk/Articles/POS%20v%20PPC.htm
http://www.writingonyourpalm.net/column010924.htm
http://www.writingonyourpalm.net/column011001.htm
http://palmtops.about.com/cs/pdafact..._Pocket_PC.htm
http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article...,111825,00.asp

Okay, so suppose you've survived the core conversion and you have your PPC set up and you have all your basic PIM data over there. Now what? In my case, it was a very manual process of trial and error to get the right programs to hold my data effectively, and then to cut and paste everything over into the new format and organization. After many false starts I think I've come up with a plan that works well. For me it does, anyway!

Software Replacements on PPC
Here are the basics that I used (Palm -> PPC):

* DateBk5 -> Pocket Informant (PI)
You gotta try PI! My favorite benefits are the weekly view with text in boxes (you may have to set vertical or horizontal orientation of the day layout to get it to look like you want) and the monthly view that lets you have a full month calendar on the screen, and when you tap any day it shows the appointments in a list just below the month calendar. Wonderful!

* Graffiti -> Fitaly
You don't need Fitaly, of course, but I just hated the PPC built-in input methods. I do like, however the PPC method of chosing the input method from a drop down box you can access at the time of input.

* SecureIt (password vault) -> eWallet
I like eWallet both because it has a desktop app available, and because it has a Palm version in case I go back to PalmOS.

* Handy Shopper -> Handy Shopper!
And even better, the data files can be copied directly!

* MyBible -> PocketBible (also from Laridian, and has NIV)
But eSword is what I'm actually using right now. Free and has a lot of commentaries and resource materials available. Can buy NASB for it. I use Modern King James Version right now, and it is adequate. But I miss the NIV.

* Sony Backup Software -> Sprite Professional
I can't understand why the default is to backup to the internal Flash ROM on my Toshiba (that ROM gets cleared out in a hard reset), but fortunately the default can be changed in advanced mode. The scheduled backup is what I like, and you can set all the parameters like target and what to backup, etc. I am running it on schedule each day at 3:30am when (hopefully) I am sleeping. Then I hope to get an xcopy batch file working to automatically copy the contents of the SD card to my PC using a card reader. Not sure if that will work yet, but it would really simlify and speed up things if it does. Right now, even though the SD card contents doesn't change much, I end up copying it all for every backup, and that takes a long time.

* MemoPad & ShadowPlan -> Tombo
This is a free and wonderful app. Slick, fast and reliable. It stores each "memo" as a text file, but you can do categories and they show up as folders. I miss Shadow, but not as much now that I'm using Tombo. I haven't seen a single other app that works well for me in the memopad/outliner category.

* Patience (Solitaire) -> ??
This is one of the programs I miss a lot. I loved the version on Palm because it was fast and slick and you could double tap cards to play and move them. On PPC, cards look ugly and the UI is awful in my opinion. Solitaire City improves on the look I think, but until the UI improves with tappable play, I'll pass. Instead, my mind-numbing game has become PDAMills Gamebox Asia (Mahjongg). It's a lot of fun. Lots of game emulators are available on PPC also, but that's not really my thing. Until I figure out how to do it and how to play the games... Then I may be hooked!

* iSilo -> iSilo! Yippee! That's a big deal to me and I'm glad the PPC version is almost as good as the Palm version.

* eReader -> eReader! Another big deal for me that things are interchangable. See my tip for how to use bold fonts for reading.. https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...2928#post12928

* Adobe Acrobat Reader -> Adobe Acrobat Reader!
This works much better for me on my Toshiba because of the faster processor. On the Clie, it was so slow turning pages I just gave up.

* Noah Free Dictionary -> Pocket Dict

* DocsToGo -> MS Pocket Excel and Word
This is a sad comparison as DocsToGo is much better, even in the very old versions I was using on my Clie!

* FileZ -> Resco Explorer
I didn't buy it, though, because I so far have been surviving with the built-in file explorer in Win Mobile 2003 SE.

* Launcher -> Multiple options, but you will want a task manager.
I'm using a combo of SPB Pocket Plus for the Today Screen Launcher with tabs, vBar for the task switcher that allows you to switch apps or close apps, and program menu plus which is a cascading start menu very nice for app launching.
But there are many other options like WisBar Advance and cLaunch (tabbed today launcher like Pocket Plus, but free) and Pocket Launcher (a full-screen tabbed launcher like Palm which seems to also work with WisBar Advance) and many more.

Lots of other stuff is available, of course. Multimedia players, Karaoke, Pocket Streets is nice, Vade Mecum and Sunrise are a nice combo, email, voice recorder, journaling, photo albums, time accounting, skype VOIP, etc etc The list goes on and on!

For the freeware, be sure to check at...
http://www.freewareppc.com/ and
http://www.pocketpcfreewares.com/en/index.php

Well, that's it for now. Hope that is helpful info for someone moving from Palm to PocketPC!