News from Great Castle Wilson

Here is a list of the applications that were on my Treo 680. I don’t actually use my Treo any more, although I still have it. The only apps that I couldn’t live without on the Treo were eReader and SplashID, so once they were available on the iPhone, I switched.

One of the reasons why I purchased a Treo was that it would allow me to carry around many of the applications that I am used to from the other Palm handhelds I have owned. I’ve included the most interesting of those here, along with some new ones I needed to fill in some holes in the Treo’s functionality.

Bejeweled

This came free with the Treo. I’m not a big fan of the game, so I don’t think I would have installed it otherwise, but I suppose I’ll be able to amuse someone with it at some point.
 

Crossword Puzzles

I do like doing crossword puzzles on my PDA. This one supports wireless download of new puzzles, and has as good a UI as any I have seen.
 

Documents to Go

I have always had a bit of a love/hate relationship with this software. It (usually) works, and it’s nice to be able to read Word and PDF files on the go, but both the Palm software and the Mac desktop client frequently crash or otherwise screw up. If you’re going to do anything serious with this, make sure you back up the desktop copies of the files; DtG is quite capable of deleting them on you.
 

eReader Pro

As most of you know, I am a long standing eBook fan. I have purchased more than 100 books from eReader (a.k.a. Palm Reader, a.k.a Peanut Press) since 1999, and the wonderful thing is that I can easily carry all of these around with me!

Even though there are free versions of eReader available, I have purchased the “Pro” versions for Palm, Mac and Symbian; the extra features are nice, but mostly I just want to help fund ongoing development. I have also bought both of the “font packs”, which are amusing to play with, but not particularly useful. I tend to just leave the font set to “Officina Sans ITC Book 24″ since I find it that one easiest to read.

Of course, one of the real benefits of using eBooks is the ability to look up any word you find instantly. Anyone with a memory card in their device should also buy the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate® Dictionary, Eleventh Edition. It’s not quite a full encyclopedia but I can’t tell you how many times I have looked up something obscure and found it there.
 

Filez

This is a great piece of free software that lets you work with the filesystems on your device — both the RAM and external ones. It’s UI is a bit wonky, but I haven’t seen anything better and you can’t beat the price.
 

IBM Java VM

Well, of course I have this on my device. It’s an excellent tool, but a bit hard to configure. Opera Mini, which runs on it, is a great example of what is possible. Hey world, let’s see more cool Java apps!
 

KB LightsOff

This is a simple little utility for the Treo that lets you control the keyboard backlight. Leaving the backlight off will conserve power, but it’s also a lot easier on your eyes if you read eBooks in the dark, like I do.
 

Klondike

I bought this one a long time ago, and have been using it ever since. It has a great UI, and will warn you when there are no more valid moves. Even though One-Stop Solitaire has more games and is free, I still like Klondike the best.
 

Mapopolis

I installed this on the Treo, but it probably won’t stay there for long. The company that makes it no longer sells to end users. With no new map updates available and a UI that won’t even let you exit the app (on a Treo) without rebooting it’s nearly useless. If only Google Maps could track your GPS! (btw, if you find good GPS navigation software for the Treo, let me know.)
 

Missing Sync

No Mac user could survive without this, of course. Basically, it’s what the Palm Desktop for Macintosh would have been if Palm Inc. had cared about Macintosh users. The app that runs on the Palm allows you to mount your memory card over USB on the Mac, and even cleans up the Mac meta-data files(!) when you disconnect it.
 

Opera Mini

If nothing else, Opera Mini is proof that real mobile apps can be built with Java. On top of that, it’s a darn good web browser.
 

Power48

An honest to goodness, HP48 emulator for your Palm. It actually emulates three different high end Hewlett-Packard calculators: the 48SX, 48GX and 49G. I highly recommend this to any HP calculator fan. It’s a bit fiddly to install, but works great once it is.
 

One-Stop Solitaire

A nice, free solitaire app, which supports a number of different games. The UI isn’t quite as good as Klondike, but it’s still fun.
 

SplashBlog

An app that lets you generate a simple photo blog from wherever you are. This would be the killer app for my phone if I could just find an inexpensive unlimited data plan somewhere. Oh well, here’s my site, which I will probably only update until my 3-month unlimited plan runs out.
 

SplashID

This is a “password safe” that syncs between Mac (or PC) and Palm. Now that I have literally hundreds of websites, software packages, accounts, etc. that I have to keep of track of, this app is invaluable. This was the first thing I put on the phone after I bought it.
 

Sudoku

This seems to be the most highly respected of the sudoku apps for the Palm. As an added benefit, it’s free. I like the fact that it can generate games on the fly, and explain its hints to you. It would be nice if it could generate puzzles of differing difficulty levels.
 

TCPMP

An incredibly useful, free audio/video player. This one app effectively turns your Palm into a first-class PMP. Note: The last few times I tried to get to the website, it was down, so you might have trouble finding this one.
 

Phone Technician

One of the things the Treo can’t do out of the box is use MP3 ringtones. This application will provide that capability along with many others. My favourite: It allows you to turn on and off the cell radio at preset times. I use this to turn off the radio between midnight and 6am, extending my battery life and keeping my nights clear of interruption, without any user input required.
 

Voice Dialing

Ok, it’s a pain you had to pay extra for this, but it works, and works well! I installed it, tapped the app icon and said “call Mike Wilson home”, and it did. Awesome!

Well, those are the major ones. If you think of any other must-have Treo apps, let me know.