PalmPilot shareware
It's been a few months since I've looked at new software releases for the PalmPilot, and some new applications have arrived that I've found essential. Two of them come from TealPoint Software, and are shareware. If you are having trouble making Grafitti recognition work for you, then it might help you to improve letter shapes if you could see what it was that you are writing on the Grafitti area. TealEcho ($11.95 shareware) echos your exact stroke to the main display area in a large size, and can really help to improve some gestures. I am confident enough with Grafitti that I don't use it any more, but it helped me iron out some problems with letter shapes, and I have heard from quite a few users who rank it with Doc as an essential PalmPilot utility.
TealGlance is a keeper
The other utility I want to recommend has some annoying features, but it is useful enough that I am still running it. TealGlance, also $11.95 shareware from TealPoint Software, displays an overview screen as you power on the PalmPilot. If you use one of the application buttons to go directly to the application it doesn't show, but it can be called up at any time by running an application, or by repeating the command stroke (/) twice. The autolaunch behaviour is configurable, but I am happy with this default. The overview display includes date and time, today and tomorrows appointments, and the top few to do items in your list. Exactly what is on screen, and how long for, is configurable. The annoying part is that sometimes it seems to be on screen for longer than you want, and at other times for not long enough. It always stays for the exact same length of time, so this is really because sometime I just want to spend longer reading my urgent schedule than at others. You can dismiss it early by pressing the power button, and call it up again with the double command stroke, so this isn't really significant.
TealGlance is a HackMaster extension, so it requires HackMaster already installed to use. I use HackMaster with TealGlance, FindHack and MenuHack.
HackMaster: http://www.daggerware.com/hackmstr.htm
MenuHack: http://www.daggerware.com/mischack.htm
FindHack: http://w3.teaser.fr/~fpillet/pilot/
LaunchPad
I've also been considering replacements for the Application screen. The standard PalmPilot version suffers from showing all of the installed applications on a single display, without any categorisation of applications. For I long time I have used PAL, which adds some extra fields to the screen, and allows you to allocate all installed applications to a category that you can define. A couple of months ago I tried LaunchPad, and switched to that instead of PAL. Both applications are similar, and I'd happily use either. They can both be set to launch from the Applications silk screen button, both show the current date and time and battery status. PAL is $5 shareware, and LaunchPad is freeware. Source code for LaunchPad is available.
LaunchPad: http://www.nwlink.com/~emilyk/LaunchPad/
Words and design by:
Paul Lynch
Last updated: November 21, 1997