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The Palm's standard Applications (the built-in applications such as the Date Book, Address Book, MemoPad, and the To Do List) together with the Palm desktop software seem simple, but there are some clever tricks to get the most out of them. The hacks in this section explore the corners of these well-known applications. You may find some new tricks you didn't know about before.

Palm devices, and the standard applications in particular, are models of simplicity. This simplicity came from the careful design of the original team and has been refined over the years. The standard applications work smoothly. For those of us who like to poke around inside the box, however, there are still a few things left to play with. Hopefully you will be surprised by some of these tricks. Some people may know them all, but most people should learn a few new things.

Come and explore what lies inside the standard applications.

Time—we all look for more time in our busy schedules. Tweaking the built-in Date Book application may not actually create more time, but it can help you manage your time better.

As with the other built-in applications, there are some simple things you can do to get the most out of the Date Book application. Each section in this hack covers a separate tip.

The Today view shows you any events for the current day, plus any To Do items that are due today, overdue, or unscheduled (see Figure 1-1). You can select the category for the displayed To Do items in the Today view separately from the current category in the To Do List. Otherwise the To Do items follow the preferences that you choose from the Show button in the To Do application (such as whether to show the due date in the view). You can also check off To Do items from the Today view as they are completed.

Figure 1-1: Today view in the Date Book

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The Palm's standard Applications (the built-in applications such as the Date Book, Address Book, MemoPad, and the To Do List) together with the Palm desktop software seem simple, but there are some clever tricks to get the most out of them. The hacks in this section explore the corners of these well-known applications. You may find some new tricks you didn't know about before.

Palm devices, and the standard applications in particular, are models of simplicity. This simplicity came from the careful design of the original team and has been refined over the years. The standard applications work smoothly. For those of us who like to poke around inside the box, however, there are still a few things left to play with. Hopefully you will be surprised by some of these tricks. Some people may know them all, but most people should learn a few new things.

Come and explore what lies inside the standard applications.

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Time—we all look for more time in our busy schedules. Tweaking the built-in Date Book application may not actually create more time, but it can help you manage your time better.

As with the other built-in applications, there are some simple things you can do to get the most out of the Date Book application. Each section in this hack covers a separate tip.

The Today view shows you any events for the current day, plus any To Do items that are due today, overdue, or unscheduled (see Figure 1-1). You can select the category for the displayed To Do items in the Today view separately from the current category in the To Do List. Otherwise the To Do items follow the preferences that you choose from the Show button in the To Do application (such as whether to show the due date in the view). You can also check off To Do items from the Today view as they are completed.

Figure 1-1: Today view in the Date Book

You can set repeating events for birthdays, anniversaries, or regular meetings. You can even set an event to repeat on the fourth Thursday of every other month if you want. To set a repeat, select an event in the daily view and press the Details button. Tap in the field that appears to the right of Repeat. This brings up the Change Repeat dialog box. To get something to repeat the fourth Thursday of every other month (or something similar) select Month and change Repeat by to Day. To switch from every month to every other month, change the Every Month(s) field to 2 instead of 1. The text field at the bottom of the dialogbox should change to say The 4th Thursday of every other month, as you can see in Figure 1-2.

So what happens when you modify a repeating event's time or repeat interval? In these cases, you are given a choice to apply the change to the current event only, all, or the current event plus future events. If you choose to apply the changes to the current event and future events, you actually split the event into two events. The original event lasts from the original start date through the date of the event before the one you're editing. Then the current event and future events become a separate repeating event, unconnected to the original event. Any changes you make to the original event will now no longer affect the split event, even if you move the split event back to the same time and repeat interval as the original event.

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Everyone already knows what you can do with the To Do List. This hack covers things that go a step beyond that.

This hack covers a series of tips and techniques for the built-in To Do List. Some more involved hacks for the To Do List, such as using it for project management [Hack #11] or managing school work [Hack #9] , are covered elsewhere in the book and won't be repeated here.

You can use priorities for grouping items within a category (see Figure 1-4). For example, if you have a category like Shopping List, then you might put items from the grocery store as priority 1, hardware store as priority 2, and electronics store as priority 3. Then, each store's items appear together in the list. When you have checked off all the items at the grocery store (priority 1), then you are done with that store. Thus, you will have more time to spend at the hardware store and the electronics store.

Figure 1-4: Using priorities for grouping in the To Do List

Here is a simple example of priorities. Let's assume that you are going to track CDs to buy, videos to rent, and movies to watch. For this example, the items will be combined into an Entertainment category. I use priorities to distinguish different types of media within the category. Movies will be priority 1, videos 2, and CDs 3. Also, I record movie release dates as the due dates for the items. That way, I will be reminded when new movies are out that I want to watch. You can see how this works in Figure 1-5. You can add titles by giving them a very early date (I used January 1) so that they stay at the top of each section.

So, you can see lots of new ways to use your To Do application besides simply writing down assignments. With some practice, you will find other ways you can use the To Do List.

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Just names and phone numbers, right? What could there possibly be to hack in the Address Book? Several small hacks allow you to do more with the Address Book.

As with the To Do List [Hack #2] , there are a few simple tricks and techniques you can use to get the most out of the Address Book. These techniques will help you do things that you didn't realize you could do.

You can use the Address Book to ease your job search or make it easier to stay on top of other kinds of prospects. Create a new category called Companies, Prospective Companies, or some such category. Then, add info on companies as you see ads posted by them or as you send them resumes or otherwise contact them. In the Notes section, keep track of job postings (title and date) and any communications you have with the company (sending resumes, interviews, etc.). Note the dates that things happen as well. If you meet with or contact relevant people in the company, add them as separate entries in the Address Book. Keep note of meetings and contacts with them as well. A good use for the Preferences option is to list contacts by company name, last name. Grouping everyone by company can make it easier to keep track of who you have been talking to, which makes it easier to follow up with those contacts.

Write your doctors' names entirely in the last name field to get them to show up correctly. After all, you want to see Dr. Smith show up in the list as Dr. Smith, not Smith, Dr. or just Smith. You can use the title field to indicate what kinds of doctors they are (dentist, family practice, or PhD).

After you have set up your primary business card, you may want to set up additional business cards. These could be a home address or a side business. Set up a new category titled appropriately. For example, I might create a category called Scott's Card or Scott MacHaffie. Create a single business card for yourself in that category—use one category per card. Then, whenever you want to beam an alternate business card to someone, switch to the appropriate category and select Beam Category from the Record menu. That will send over your alternate business card. You can see examples of doctors, companies, and business cards in Figure 1-7.

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If your Palm device supports it, you can be sure you'll never have trouble putting a name to a face again.

With a couple of easy steps, you can add pictures to the entries in your address list, as you can see in Figure 1-9. You need to have a memory card installed on your Palm device and your Palm needs to support this feature. To check, go to the Address List and tap one of the addresses. Tap Edit. If the Edit page says No Image, then your PDA supports images.

Figure 1-9: Address view, showing a picture

You have a couple of choices. If you are running a PC you can use the Image Converter application to copy files over. You can also just copy the files over directly.

If you want to use Image Converter, then either run it and select images from there, or from the Windows desktop, right-click on images and hit Send To → Image Converter from the pop-up menu.

With Image Converter running, attach your Palm device to the cable or cradle and launch the Data Import application. When Data Import is running, press the Connect button.

Do not hit Disconnect in the Data Import application while data is being transferred. Doing so could cause you to lose data off of your memory card.

You can select images from Image Converter. When you have all of the images selected that you want to transfer and your Palm device is connected via Data Import, then press the Output button. This will bring up a dialog box that prompts you to save the images to a drive. When you run the Data Import button and hit Connect, Windows treats the memory card as a new drive.

From the save dialogbox, you can select the Settings button to resize the images or to fit them to a specific size, as you can see in Figure 1-10. The images that are transferred over are not specific to the Address Book—you can use them for other purposes as well. If you want to size the images specifically for the Address Book, then you are looking at a square size of 88 x 88 pixels on most devices, although Treos use images of 96 x 96 pixels. You can also resize images down if they don't look good when squared to other sizes (e.g., 88 x 66).

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Write text and you're done—that's what MemoPad is about, right? Well, yes, in the same sense that music is just vibrations in the air. These hacks let you go beyond MemoPad's basic capabilities.

Because the standard applications have been fundamentally unchanged since the first Palm Pilot, they tend to be dismissed by power users. It is the standard applications' apparent simplicity that makes these hacks even more powerful.

As with the other standard applications, this hack is divided into a series of sections. The first two apply equally well to MemoPad and to the attached notes that are available in the other standard applications.

If you select text corresponding to an entry (or the prefix of one of the entries) in the Address Book, you can choose Phone Lookup from the Options menu to replace the selected text with the corresponding text from the Address Book. The prefix is whatever appears at the start of the line in the Address Book List view. For example, a company would match the company name. If you only have a first name for someone, then it would match the first name. Otherwise, the match will be on either the last name (if you are viewing last names first) or the company name followed by a comma and the last name (if you are viewing company names first). If the text you have selected matches more than one entry, then the Address Book List view will appear to let you choose the contact you want. The text that comes back is the same text that appears in the List view, except that it won't be abbreviated. Thus, whichever phone number or email address you had chosen to display [Hack #3] will get copied over when you select Phone Lookup. Note that you can select a single word in MemoPad by double-tapping it. This can make it easier to pick out a prefix to match for a lookup.

Memos (and attached notes) automatically start with an uppercase letter, even if you write it as lowercase. This is great except for the rare occasions when you really do want to start with a lowercase letter. The easiest thing to do then is just to write the letter twice (the second appears in lowercase) and delete the one that comes out in uppercase.

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As with the standard Palm applications, the Palm desktop is a fairly simple program. Don't mistake this simplicity for inflexibility, though; you can usually get it to do what you want even when the solution is not obvious.

The desktop is powerful, if you know how to use it. You can use the desktop to restore a Palm device or PC. You can command different views of data. You can take charge of importing data to load addresses and contacts from a variety of sources. All this power is freely available in the desktop.

If you sync with Microsoft Outlook instead of the Palm desktop, then you may not see anything in Palm desktop. Most modern Palm devices ship with Chapura PocketMirror. If you have enabled this conduit, then it will take over contacts, To Do's, and so on and you won't see anything in Palm desktop.

If you need to reinstall applications and you don't have the .prc file anymore, then you have an alternative. Any applications that you have ever installed on your Palm device are stored in one of two locations: c:\Program Files\Palm Handheld\ <HotSync ID> \Archive and c:\Program Files\Palm Handheld\ <HotSync ID> \Backup. You can modify this directory when you first install the desktop software, so you may need to look around a bit. Also, for a Treo 600, the directory will have Handspring instead of Palm Handheld. Also notice that if you have a space in your HotSync ID, then the name will get modified (at least on Windows). For example, "Jeff Ishaq" becomes "IshaqJ."

Once you have figured out the path, you can simply point the Install tool at these locations and select the programs you want to reinstall. You will also need to install any necessary .pdb files and any related .prc files. For example, some applications require third-party .pdb or .prc files such as WABA or CASL. Applications that have been selected for installation but have not yet been copied over to the Palm device can be found in

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Do you ever have trouble finding something on your PDA that you know is there? There are replacements for the Find tool which provide more flexibility in searching.

When you can't find what you're looking for, there are a couple of solutions. One possibility is to always add annotations to everything [Hack #8] . You can add notes to entries in the Date Book, Address Book, and To Do Lists. If you add a note to one of these items and do a search for words in the note, then Find will turn up the note. Then you can just click Done from the note and it will take you back to the related item. However, if you haven't been adding notes to everything as you go or you can't remember enough of the notes to search effectively, you need stronger medicine.

There are several replacement Find tools that have more flexibility than the built-in Find tool.

This application allows you to find a string anywhere within a word, rather than having to match complete words. This can be useful if you remember the last few digits of a phone number, for example. You can find it at http://www.beiks.com.

Despite the name, FindHack is a standalone application, not a HackMaster hack. This application allows you to select which databases and applications to search. Also, it does partial matching, supports wildcards, and allows for Boolean searching for complex criteria, as you can see in Figure 1-14. This works on Palm OS versions from 3.3 through 5.x. You can find this hack at http://perso.wanadoo.fr/fpillet.

superFinderHack provides more flexibility in searching. It remembers the last 128 searches that you've done. Also, you can set the order that applications are searched in. Unlike FindHack, this actually is a HackMaster extension [Hack #47] , so you will need to have HackMaster (or a replacement) installed. This hack only works on Palm OS versions from 3.1-4.x. You can find it at

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Do you ever have trouble remembering what To Do items or addresses mean on your PDA? Here are some tips that will make sure that never happens again.

It is easy to jot down a phone number or give yourself an item to do without including enough information to understand it later. Using the annotation tools (notes for To Do items, notes and custom fields for addresses) can eliminate this problem, if you annotate well. Here are the built-in Palm applications that can be annotated:

Address Book: Open a contact, then tap Details → Note.
Date Book: Open an appointment, then tap Details → Note.
Expense: Tap an expense to select it, then tap Details → Note.
To Do List: Tap an item to select it, then tap Details → Note.

The most important question to ask is why. Why are you writing down this phone number? Why do you need this To Do item? If you can articulate why, then add the reason as an annotation. You can also ask why again to digdeeper for the underlying reason. When you find the underlying reason, then you can add that as another annotation. For an example of additional details for an address, see Figure 1-15.

Figure 1-15: Additional information for an address

Describing how you are going to accomplish your To Do items is another useful type of annotation. For example, if your To Do item is to bake a cake, then the annotation might list the recipe. This is useful if you have an idea about how to do something—capture it so that the idea will be handy when you start in on your task.

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Use your Palm device to help you keep track of assignments and organize your time to become a better student.

Palm Powered handhelds can be extremely helpful for students because they allow you to carry all of your important personal information, as well as electronic references and e-books, in the palm of your hand. But unless you know the right tricks, you may not be using your handheld to its fullest potential. Whether you're a high school, college, or graduate student, you can use your handheld to keep track of all of the information relating to your classes, ensure that you never turn in a late paper, and even get higher grades.

First, enter all of the relevant information into your handheld on the first day of class. Many teachers and professors hand out course information sheets or a syllabus on the first day, and many students put them in a folder or notebook immediately and don't pay much attention to them. But this is the time to enter all of that information into your Palm Powered handheld, and you should capture everything you can:

Go ahead and block out time for every class meeting by creating a repeating meeting in the Date Book [Hack #1] .
Is there any contact information listed for the teacher or professor? At the college and graduate levels, you should expect to find a phone number, email address, office location, and the times the professor is available for office hours. Go ahead and add the relevant information to the Address Book and put the extra information such as office hours in the note for that entry.
Are there any important due dates like papers, presentations, or tests? Go ahead and add those to your calendar as well. You might also want to consider adding an alarm for a few days beforehand to remind you of the event—and to make sure you don't have to stay up all night studying for a test because you forgot it was coming up.

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If you are a collector, you can use MemoPad or a specialized utility to manage your hobby.

If you're a collector of anything from books to Precious Moments figurines, you may have a hard time keeping track of what you have in your collection and what you still need to acquire. Fortunately this task can be greatly simplified with a Palm Powered handheld. You can keep it simple and use a variety of Memo Pad entries, or you can use a more specialized application to track everything from what you have in your collection to how much you paid for it and an estimation of current value.

If you have a relatively small or uncomplicated collection, you may find that the built-in MemoPad is all you need to keep things under control. You can have up to 15 categories of memos, so you can create a separate category for each collection or you can have one Collectibles category. You can then use individual MemoPad entries for groups of items, say books by the same author, or Hallmark ornaments organized by year. This method isn't going to work for an incredibly large collection, but if you just want to make sure you don't purchase duplicate DVDs, this is a good method to use. Even better, when you get information about something you want to purchase you can add the relevant information to the MemoPad, so the next time you're shopping you'll have everything you need to make the best addition to your collection. MemoPad replacements, such as pedit (http://www.paulcomputing.com), allow you to sort the lines in a memo (see Figure 1-17), which can be useful if you have a lot of items listed.

Figure 1-17: Sorting in pedit

Shadow Plan is an outliner, but it also does a very good job of handling lists of all kinds. I've found that the best method is to start a new outline for each kind of collectible, such as DVDs, books, or hub caps. Within the outline, create top level

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This chapter covers creative uses for applications. Some of these hacks cover specific uses for both the built-in applications and third-party applications. Other hacks cover novel uses for third-party applications only. These hacks provide detailed instructions and advice for the given tasks. Even if you aren't interested in a particular task, you might still find some useful information to apply to something you are interested in.

There are thousands of applications available for Palm OS. PalmGear lists more than 20,000 applications. A few hacks can't even give a good overview of all the applications that are available. Rather than attempting that, these hacks go into more detail in limited areas.

Although the built-in applications are very useful and can be made to fit a variety of tasks, sometimes specialized applications are a better choice. Some of the third-party applications are general tools and some are specific to a certain task.

You can use a Palm device to help you manage complicated projects with resources and dependencies, such as a software development project.

Projects come in different complexities. Before choosing a tool to help manage your project, you need to consider the complexity of the project you want to manage. Different tools are better for different levels of complexity.

Project management software represents the world as tasks, resources, and dependencies between tasks. Although all project management software has a common view of the world, each package differs in how it lets you arrange things. So, when you pick a software package, you need to consider factors such as:

How many tasks need to be managed?: More tasks make a project more complex.
Can the tasks be grouped into higher-level tasks?: Hierarchical tasks make projects more complex.

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This chapter covers creative uses for applications. Some of these hacks cover specific uses for both the built-in applications and third-party applications. Other hacks cover novel uses for third-party applications only. These hacks provide detailed instructions and advice for the given tasks. Even if you aren't interested in a particular task, you might still find some useful information to apply to something you are interested in.

There are thousands of applications available for Palm OS. PalmGear lists more than 20,000 applications. A few hacks can't even give a good overview of all the applications that are available. Rather than attempting that, these hacks go into more detail in limited areas.

Although the built-in applications are very useful and can be made to fit a variety of tasks, sometimes specialized applications are a better choice. Some of the third-party applications are general tools and some are specific to a certain task.

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You can use a Palm device to help you manage complicated projects with resources and dependencies, such as a software development project.

Projects come in different complexities. Before choosing a tool to help manage your project, you need to consider the complexity of the project you want to manage. Different tools are better for different levels of complexity.

Project management software represents the world as tasks, resources, and dependencies between tasks. Although all project management software has a common view of the world, each package differs in how it lets you arrange things. So, when you pick a software package, you need to consider factors such as:

How many tasks need to be managed?: More tasks make a project more complex.
Can the tasks be grouped into higher-level tasks?: Hierarchical tasks make projects more complex.
Are there dependencies to consider?: Complicated dependencies push a project into the complex category.
Is there a strict ordering of tasks, or can the tasks be freely rearranged?: Being able to freely rearrange tasks is a sign of a simple project.
Do you need to track people and assignments as well as tasks?: More items (such as budget, equipment, or other resources) to track make for a more complex project.
How frequently will the tasks or dependencies change?: If there is likely to be a lot of change, then a simpler project is better.

A simple project has few dependencies and doesn't require a strict ordering of tasks. A simple project also doesn't require tight scheduling of the people working on the project.

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The best way to lose weight is to count calories and exercise regularly, while tracking your progress. Your Palm device can make this easier.

If you simply eat less food, your body will adjust by slowing your metabolism. The best way to counteract this slowing is to increase your exercise at the same time you are decreasing your calories.

Tracking all of this information is complex. How many calories were in that donut you had for a snack? How many calories do you burn while walking a mile? And if you successfully lose weight, how does that affect the calories you burn during exercise?

There are applications such as BalanceLog (http://www.healthetech.com) that can manage this information for you. BalanceLog contains lists of foods and exercises and the related calorie amounts. You can see a summary in Figure 2-7. For exercise, the calories burned per hour is adjusted by your weight. As you lose weight, you burn fewer calories. Having a program on your Palm device to track this is nice because you usually have your Palm device with you. Thus, you can enter meals and exercise in a timely fashion, instead of entering them when you get home and having to remember back over the day.

Figure 2-7: Daily summary in BalanceLog

Sustained weight loss only comes with regular attention to the details—food and exercise. As always, check with a doctor before starting an exercise program or altering your diet.

Another program for tracking calories and exercise is EatWatch (http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/palm/). EatWatch (Figure 2-8) is designed to help you follow the Hacker's Diet. The Hacker's Diet is a combination of reducing your calories and doing some calisthenics. EatWatch helps you on both these counts. It tracks your food intake and the number of exercises that you do. The exercises include sit-ups, push-ups, jumping jacks, running in place, and a few more. You can find more about the Hacker's Diet at the EatWatch web page.

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You are outside looking up at the stars, and you start to wonder what constellations you can see. Your Palm can help you identify the stars.

Your Palm has a couple of advantages over a traditional paper star guide. You are likely to have your Palm with you all the time. You probably won't have a star guide with you unless you are planning to observe the sky. A Palm device has a backlight, which makes it easier to see the constellations on the screen and read any associated text. Finally, a Palm device can help you manually aim your telescope or even aim it for you with the right accessories.

Because white light can cause you to lose your night vision, you should affix a red film over your Palm screen to filter out the troublesome wavelengths. For more information, see Astronomy Hacks (O'Reilly, 2005). Some of the astronomy programs have a night mode that converts all of the white text and graphics to red.

There are several astronomy programs available.

Astro Info (http://astroinfo.sourceforge.net), seen in Figure 2-12, is an open-source astronomy program. It displays information and a small picture for each of the planets and the moon. It also comes with several star catalogs that you can use to view different stars and galaxies. There is also a night mode, which changes to red text on a black background. Night mode only works on 256 color Palms, though. It doesn't work on recent Palms with 64K colors.

Figure 2-12: Astro Info screenshot showing Jupiter's details

Astromist (http://www.astromist.com) is a full-featured astronomy tool. It includes star and planet charts (see Figure 2-13), high-resolution graphics, and support for controlling telescopes via hand controls or Bluetooth. You can look at sky views, including rotating and zooming views. Astromist includes a catalog of 2.5 million stars and 18,200 deep sky objects. Astromist also has special tools for Jupiter (red spot, satellites) and for the moon.

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A spreadsheet is a useful tool—a hack in its own right. Spreadsheets can function as calculators, list managers, web layout tools, and more.

If you are going to make heavy use of a spreadsheet on your Palm, then it has to be easy to use. You need to be able to enter formulas and cells efficiently. Also, you need to be able to manage multiple spreadsheets and easily move between them.

There are several popular spreadsheets on the market:

Documents-to-Go: DataViz's Documents-to-Go (http://www.dataviz.com/) is an office suite that is bundled with many Palms. It lets you edit Excel spreadsheets and convert them to a lightweight format for quick editing on the go.
QuickOffice: The QuickOffice (http://www.quickoffice.com/) suite, like Documents-to-Go, offers Excel compatibility in a compact form. QuickOffice allows you to work with native Excel spreadsheets without requiring a conduit to strip them down to a simpler format. This allows you to work with a spreadsheet on your Palm device and then beam or email it to a coworker's desktop computer, where the spreadsheet can be opened in its full glory in Excel.
MiniCalc: MiniCalc (http://www.solutionsinhand.com) is a standard spreadsheet. It allows you to resize columns, change the formatting (both numeric and colors), and add a number of functions to your formulas, as you can see in Figure 2-17.

Figure 2-17: MiniCalc showing some of the available functions
TinySheet: TinySheet (http://www.iambic.com) includes a number of functions, organized by category. This is an improvement on MiniCalc which just gives you a single list containing all of the available functions. TinySheet provides control over formatting including colors and numeric formats.

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Programmers and scientists have specific calculator needs that the built-in calculator doesn't come close to meeting.

Programmers need to be able to switch bases to convert between decimal and hexadecimal. Scientists and programmers also need access to trig functions. Graphing is a nice bonus.

There are several replacement calculators available.

The powerOne Scientific calculator (http://www.infinitysw.com) has the standard trig functions. It also has statistics and base conversions, as you can see in Figure 2-22.

Figure 2-22: powerOne Scientific calculator

APCalc (http://www.palmgear.com) is a programmable calculator. You can write your own functions and map them to buttons. This calculator comes with standard math functions (see Figure 2-23) and base conversion functions. It also has Boolean logic functions and graphing.

Figure 2-23: APCalc

EasyCalc (http://easycalc.sourceforge.net) is an open source scientific calculator. It also supports base conversions and a reasonably large set of math and scientific functions. A small set of the functions are visible in Figure 2-24.

Figure 2-24: EasyCalc

Once you have found a calculator you like, you can set up the hardware buttons [Hack #44] so that the calculator soft key brings up your chosen calculator.

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When darkness falls, you can engage the backlight on your Palm and light things up.

You can turn on your Palm's backlight to act as a basic flashlight. However, you will need to disable the power-off feature if you need to use the flashlight for more than a few minutes (either that or you will have to keep turning it back on). This works nicely on a Treo with the lighted keyboard, but it also works fine on a regular Palm device. There are a couple of simple programs that do this for you.

FB Hi-Light displays a flashlight (bright white light) and has some digital sound effects. It is available from PalmGear (http://www.palmgear.com; search for the name of the application there).

The program TealInfo from TealPoint Software (http://www.tealpoint.com) allows you to create and use simple interactive databases and mini-applications. One of those programs (called Folios) is Teal Light which gives you a variety of choices for turning your PDA into a flashlight. You can choose from a set of different colors and different patterns, as you can see in Figure 2-25.

Figure 2-25: TealLight

As you can see, this is a very simple hack—the programs give you some neat options, though. Keep this idea in mind if you need a flashlight and all you have with you is your Palm device.

You can also easily create your own flashlight program. Run the Palm OS Developer Suite [Hack #49] . Create a new project and select Simple as the project type from the wizard. Make the following changes to AppMain.c. Note that the code you should add to the wizard-generated code is shown in bold.

	#include "AppResources.h"
	
	// Remember the original auto-off time
	static UInt16 old_time = 0;

	static Err AppStart(void)
	{

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Although it's not the Palm version of Linux that will no doubt blow our socks off when it eventually arrives, uClinux is a good way to play around with an alternative operating system on your Palm.

If you haven't heard already, Palm is switching operating systems, and in the not-so-distant future, Palm-Powered will mean Linux-Powered, but with all the elegance and grace of the current Palm OS. It's going to take a while, though. If you want to give Linux a whirl on a Palm right now, it's quick and easy. You won't get any of the graphical goodness you'll eventually get with the future version of Palm OS, but you will have a chance to play around a bit and run this powerful operating system right on your little handheld.

Unfortunately, Linux doesn't run on a lot of Palms. The good news is that it runs on a lot of older popular models, such as the IIIe, IIIx, V, Vx, and even some of the m series. You can usually find these Palms very cheaply [Hack #50] , so you can play around with this on the cheap. In fact, when I bought a used Palm Vx for $30, it included a USB-to-serial adapter, which was worth nearly the price I paid for both items!

The simplest way to get Linux running on a Palm is to pick a well-supported Palm, such as the Vx, and download a binary release of Linux from http://palm-linux.sourceforge.net/. At the time of this writing, they had versions that worked with the m500 as well as a bunch of older models. What you'll get is a small PRC file (such as uClinuxPalm.prc) that has the Linux distribution and a bootloader. Install the PRC on your Palm, and you're just about ready to launch Linux.

I say just about, because you need a couple of things. First, you need to be prepared to sacrifice everything in your Palm's storage. After you launch Linux, you'll lose all your settings, appointments, contacts, and even installed applications. You can reset your Palm and go back into the Palm OS, but it will be as if you'd performed a hard reset.

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Gaming on a Palm device won't rival a console or hardcore gaming PC. On the other hand, you can't slip your console into your pocket, either (and the PlayStation Portable, for all its power, is still about twice the size of your Palm). Mobile gaming is different from home gaming, but it is still fun. The hacks in this chapter help you make the most of your mobile gaming.

If you go back 15 or 20 years and look at PCs from that era, a Palm device starts to look good. With a screen of up to 320 x 480 pixels and 64K colors, a Palm puts older systems to shame. Thus, emulation becomes a real possibility. Remakes look much better on the Palm than they did on the original platforms.

Modern Palm games provide interesting challenges in short bursts. Many current Palm games also add a multiplayer element to keep the games interesting.

There are several programs that can help you with many chores associated with role-playing. These include dice rolling and mapping programs. But there are also adventuring kits (for players) and Dungeon Master (DM) aids.

If your idea of a pen-and-paper gaming session involves a bunch of people huddled around a table, rolling dice and consulting rule books, you'll need to add another prop to this image. Imagine that the dice spend most of their time in their velvet sack, and that the dungeon master and players put away their pens, pencils and papers in favor of a Palm and stylus. Here are some programs that will help keep the game rolling.

TS-ShadowDice (http://www.freewarepalm.com/games/ts-shadowdice.shtml) is a specialized dice roller for ShadowRun. ShadowRun has a unique approach to rolling dice. If you roll a six (on a six-sider), then you roll again and add the result. If you roll another six, you keep going. Thus, you can get numbers like 11, 13, or even 25 out of a single six-sided die. The TS-ShadowDice program knows how to re-roll sixes and add the results. In ShadowRun, you try to meet or exceed a target number which represents the difficulty of the action you are attempting. Each die that meets or exceeds the target number is called a

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Gaming on a Palm device won't rival a console or hardcore gaming PC. On the other hand, you can't slip your console into your pocket, either (and the PlayStation Portable, for all its power, is still about twice the size of your Palm). Mobile gaming is different from home gaming, but it is still fun. The hacks in this chapter help you make the most of your mobile gaming.

If you go back 15 or 20 years and look at PCs from that era, a Palm device starts to look good. With a screen of up to 320 x 480 pixels and 64K colors, a Palm puts older systems to shame. Thus, emulation becomes a real possibility. Remakes look much better on the Palm than they did on the original platforms.

Modern Palm games provide interesting challenges in short bursts. Many current Palm games also add a multiplayer element to keep the games interesting.

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There are several programs that can help you with many chores associated with role-playing. These include dice rolling and mapping programs. But there are also adventuring kits (for players) and Dungeon Master (DM) aids.

If your idea of a pen-and-paper gaming session involves a bunch of people huddled around a table, rolling dice and consulting rule books, you'll need to add another prop to this image. Imagine that the dice spend most of their time in their velvet sack, and that the dungeon master and players put away their pens, pencils and papers in favor of a Palm and stylus. Here are some programs that will help keep the game rolling.

TS-ShadowDice (http://www.freewarepalm.com/games/ts-shadowdice.shtml) is a specialized dice roller for ShadowRun. ShadowRun has a unique approach to rolling dice. If you roll a six (on a six-sider), then you roll again and add the result. If you roll another six, you keep going. Thus, you can get numbers like 11, 13, or even 25 out of a single six-sided die. The TS-ShadowDice program knows how to re-roll sixes and add the results. In ShadowRun, you try to meet or exceed a target number which represents the difficulty of the action you are attempting. Each die that meets or exceeds the target number is called a success. TS-ShadowDice can tell you how many successes you have for a given number of dice against a particular target number. It can also track your character's current physical and mental conditions, which has an effect on your target numbers.

DicePro (http://www.rivalgamelabs.com), shown in Figure 3-1, is a generalized dice-rolling program. It can handle various types of dice and also understands how to roll dice for several different games.

Figure 3-1: DicePro

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You don't use a Palm the same way you do a desktop computer, and games are no exception. Find out what you can expect from the gaming offerings for your Palm.

For the most part, you are unlikely to spend two straight hours playing a game on your Palm. It is more likely that you will play games in five or ten minute increments. Thus, games in which you can quickly grasp the current state of the game are good, as are games in which you can make noticeable progress in a few minutes of play.

Games like bridge or Civilization don't work well on a Palm unless you can finish an entire game in one quick session because you need to remember a large amount of information in both of those games. Tetris is a good Palm game because there is nothing to remember—the state of the game (i.e., the current pieces) is always visible. Tetris is a game that you can pick up and play for a few minutes, then set it aside and continue later.

Here are some games worth looking at, divided up into categories. This list is merely a small sample of the games available.

Role-playing games put you in the role of one or more characters in a story. Typically RPGs have a fantasy theme, but there are space and detective themed RPGs as well.

Section 3.3.1.1: Ultima.

The Ultima series (1, 2, and 3) is a remake (http://www.palmgear.com) of the original RPGs that improves on the originals. The originals only used 16 colors for the graphics. In this remake, the graphics have been redrawn in 256 colors, as you can see in Figure 3-9.

Section 3.3.1.2: Acedior.

Acedior (http://www.fade-team.com/content.php?content.13) is a graphical RPG (see Figure 3-10) based on the real-life disappearance of 16 monks in the fourteenth century. The game is a fictional interpretation of this history.

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Table of Contents

Section 3.3.1.1: Ultima.

Section 3.3.1.2: Acedior.