DiGTy Clock and Android

Been a while since I posted last time. In the meantime both OSes I have covered here have come to end or nearly the end of their lifetime.

It seems that Windows is headed to big businesses, and most of the rest will be split between Android and iOS. So, I had to change a little bit, too. I created one app for Android.

It is DiGTy clock widget for Android, the first new design of a digital clock since its introduction. As each piece of information on clock has different information value, it is more or less prominent on this clock, and everything is balanced in one beautiful design. As stated on the site this app is already available as beta and you must follow instructions on site to install it on your phone.

After you insert DiGTy clock widget on your home screen, it will look like on the picture below.

Desk & Archive v1.0 beta 2

Desk & Archive is a great help for you if you are a business user. It solves the problem of "messed" Windows desktop.
Many people keep different sort of things on their desktop without any arrangement, which leads to lower productivity. Here you have Desk as a way to create and track your unfinished documents, Launch bar for shortcuts to programs, pinned folders to Sidebar instead of shortcut to folders, and templates and bookmarks as tools for frequently used documents.
Many other features increase productivity. Feedback is much improved. Simple copy & paste offers several new features - when file is copied icon gets proper indication, when copy is completed you get notification with ability to select copied items (even if they are not visible) and undo the operation.
Other features include: tabs to clean clutter from your taskbar, automatic opening and closing of tabs which takes these tasks away from you and increases availability of locations you might need, preview of items on item tile with active preview of folders which allows opening of its items directly from preview, smart sorting which chooses best sort type based on content, ad-hoc items lists which allow easy opening of several folders at once and looking through those folders to see all items in all subfolders, unobtrusive and problem solving notifications, easy multiple selection with checkboxes, improved interaction with both keyboard and mouse, and many more hidden gems.
Test version is available for free at www.deskandarchive.com.

A novel file manager

If you are a heavy document user, take note of this novel file manager Desk & Archive. While it is not still published yet, it seems to introduce some new concepts that might be worth of taking a note.

Opera Mini - a bit of iPhone features

Though Windows mobile Internet explorer couldn't be called capable browser, and it is well behind Safari on iPhone, good thing is that Windows Mobile is a platform and you always have option to install another application (as iPhone is closed platform you only can't do this). Though this is still bad thing for average consumer, as it shouldn't bother with this.

One free option is Opera Mini. At the moment version 3 is available, but worth trying is version 4 beta. Version 4 has one really important feature stolen from iPhone - it shows zoomed out page, and then you zoom in just part of the page and read it on screen. Usually, you just need to press the button as Opera already suggests right part of the screen. If you don't like this, you can switch to classic small screen rendering. Another good thing is that you can quickly scroll with keys 2,4,6,8, and slowly with pad. And most of the things you can do with one hand, as during scrolling Opera selects link to click. Last, but not least, Opera uses its server to compress pages, and they load much quicker. Though, you may lose some image quality, depending on the settings.

iPhone vs Windows Mobile

Now, as iPhone is out it is about time to compare it to Windows Mobile. I must say that I haven't seen iPhone in alive as it is released only at U.S. at the moment, but I have read many reviews, and I feel confident that I wouldn't feel surprised facing the real product.
First of all iPhone will be very successful. It is sexy, and sexy products are always successful, unless they are a total garbage, and iPhone is not. However, I think that readers of this blog are looking for functional device, and I'll try to direct my comparison in that way.

• First of all, this product has no intention to be best mobile phone. It has intention to be best gadget. It puts calling at the same level as mail, Internet and iPod (music and video). And I think that for most people it is not. It is not even on the same level with regular phones, and not to say Palm Treo where it is enough to type just first several letters of name to call (in both Windows Mobile and recent Palm OS releases). So, the question is whether you are ready to sacrifice this for additional functions.
• Messaging is also less capable than average phone, and again much less capable than messaging with phones with full keyboard (like before mentioned Palm Treo). This specially relates to SMS.
• Internet is great. This is first mobile phone with real capable browser (on Windows Mobile you may try Minimo - Firefox for mobile devices, but there are just early preview versions not meant for the end-user). This is definitely great. But you use your mobile phone browser just in case that you are far from any computer, as its screen and price of browsing can't compare with the real thing. So, if you use this so frequently, it is a great news. For most people a welcome improvement, but not a switching point.
• Multimedia is where this phone beats all other phones. Though, most smartphones makers always thought that this is not the most important area for their users. But at this point it is a welcome change, and I think that others should make some improvements. Again, it is not so critical. You can't expect users to use this option so hard, as it drains battery, and it is not likely that one will risk that. This specially relates to videos. So it is more likely that people will use iPhone for some short personal movies than for the real movies (though at this point its software doesn't support recording of video). On the other side, iPod like functionality is more important - it drains battery less and is much more likely to be used. However, with 4Gb of memory you are more likely to turn to shuffle (there is also version whith 8Gb which should be more capable in this situation.)

Palm OS vs Windows Mobile

This is actually not fully Windows Mobile Tip, but if you are Windows Mobile user, and you need to use Palm OS, here is what to take care of:

• In Palm OS there is just one way to do things, best example is starting programs - while Windows Mobile has several ways to do this (Home, Start menu, Programs application, Windows Explorer) on Palm OS there is just one way to do the thing - just Home application. First you will fell you miss something, after a time you will get used to.
• Palm OS is more gadget oriented, it doesn't look like full blown OS as Windows Mobile is. So, you should not think in terms of files, but rather in accessing some application and using it. In some way it is limiting for power users, but for every day tasks it could be even better than full OS.
• Palm OS can't multitask, but in most cases, it won't be a big deal - you can listen to the background music, and other than that, you will rarely need to mulittask, anyway.
• Though Palm OS applications are very quick in terms of what one should do to complete the task, they have their own logic, and you should follow the manual to learn it. It is not as logical as Windows is, but once you learn it it is pretty good.
• Palm OS comes more or less ready out of the box with most features you might need installed, so you don't need to spend too much time installing applications. Windows Mobile seems more crippled in basic addition, but it should make you search for necessary add-ons and after their installation, it will definitely be very powerful.

I was a bit confused when using Palm OS for the first time, so I hope that this helps.

Passwords

Probably all of you are asking browsers to remember passwords. But it is a very risky business. Just simple utility can reveal all your passwords stored in the Internet explorer. And it doesn't even require installing, but it can be run from USB disk! Firefox is a bit better. If you use it properly. If you set master password under Tools/Options/Security/Set master password, you are safe. All your passwords are encrypted on the disk, and no one can read them unless he knows password. Of course, the same relates to you, so Firefox won't fill your passwords unless you supply him with master password on the beginning of the session. But if you don't use master password, there is even option hidden deep in dialogs that allows one to see all passwords (Tools/Options/Security/Show Passwords/Show Passwords). To be clear, this doesn't just mean that you are unsafe if someone has physical access to your computer, but also that simple virus could retrieve all your passwords and send it to the virus creator. Though Firefox with Master passwords is fine solution (specially from the security point of view), Roboform is a much more advanced solution, which is also free. There are several advantages of these solution:

• It can auto-fill all your forms, and even automatically log in, which both Firefox and Internet explorer can't;
• There is separate program for your mobile device (both Windows Mobile and Palm), and you can sync your passwords with your desktop - and it is always are nice thing to have all your passwords with you;
• Finally, this is important layer of security if you are using Internet explorer, which lacks it.

Pocket digital lamp

As your PDA has probably big and bright screen (if it is at least a bit modern one), it has enough light to be used as a flash light.
Now and then you will see the programs for this, but they are more or less useless. They can only turn your screen into white to get more light. If you don't need every bit of light, just run some program that has enough white on screen (Pocket Word is strongly suggested for this), and you'll have mostly the same effect.

Horizontal or vertical display?

This is the question to think both when you buy your desktop and mobile device. Generally speaking, vertical displays may fit better to most of user needs. Actually, all business needs fit better into vertical display:

• it is easier to track your agenda on vertical screen, as you can see more items on it - this is specially important for Windows mobile smartphones, as you may have less screen real estate than desired;
• it is easier to write/read text or tables (and this may also include surfing) - newspapers and notebooks are normally vertically oriented, which makes you much more efficient when using vertical screen, as they appear like more ergonomic. This is more important on the desktops than on the mobile devices, as even wide small screens are still acceptably wide
• reading e-mail is again much easier, as you can see more items on the screen, and on the desktop, you will have more space for preview pane.

While there are many Windows mobile devices with vertical display (most of PDAs work like that), almost all desktop displays are vertical. It seems that manufacturers are a bit conservative. Also, you should take under consideration that home use horizontal orientation is almost necessary, as you wouldn't be able to watch movies otherwise. Horizontal screen on mobile device may be useful in one more scenery - browsing of web sites that are made for desktop computers. The reason is simple - they were made for much bigger screens, and the wider small screen you have the more likely rendering of web sites may be more accurate (not to mention that on Pocket Internet explorer you will avoid horizontal scrolling).

Luckily, you don't have always to chose. Many displays can be used both horizontally and vertically. From Widnows mobile 2003SE there is ability to switch screen orientation. Many applications supported this even on older versions of Windows mobile. This is usually turns to be useful for web browsing, reading text, watching images. Still, if your phone/PDA has physical keyboard as input method, it might be useless to switch screen. Actually, some smartphones even require you to use horizontal orientation for messaging, which is not preferable.

On the desktop side, you also have displays that allow switching of orientation. On the image you can see Samsung Syncmaster 970p which has pivot function.

A Web Reminder

Once in a while you will see something on the Internet that requires more attention, but your time at the moment might be limited. But if you leave page without writing some kind of the reminder, it is likely that you'll forget to come back.

At first, I bookmarked pages in a folder "To visit". Unfortunately, solution was far from perfect. I usually forgot to check this folder.

After a time I came to real good solution. Drag the site favicon onto the taskbar! You will see it every time you start computer, so it is not likely that you will miss it. And it is also very accessible - just click the icon and you are on the site. And finally, it is very easy to delete it after you visit the page - just chose "Delete" from the context menu.

Take your photo album with you

While it is true that most portable digital devices have ability to show photos on their screens - from mobile phones to music players like iPod, the abilities of Pocket PC in this area are usually unmatched. Specially if your Pocket PC has screen resolution of 600x480.

The first thing to think of is to compress images a bit. Remember, your images are usually in very high resolution if taken by digital camera, and you probably won't have any use of it even if you zoom just particular part of the image. And scaling down the image will save you storage, and speed up your browsing

My favorite software for scaling down images is Irfanview. After you start it, chose File/Batch Conversion/Rename. Add all the files you want to convert to the left pane. Then chose the output directory where smaller images would be saved (a good idea is to make a new folder on your desktop). Select batch conversion, and under advanced options chose resize/set new size/set both size to. There enter the height (in pixels) of your mobile device - usually 320 or 640 (if you think that you will use zoom multiply it with the zoom level you need) in both width and height fields.

With these settings, you will get the photos of the biggest possible size. On the other hand, you will have to rotate your device if the photo is horizontal, but then you do the same thing with the physical album, right?

Now, you need some software to view photos on Windows mobile. Generally speaking, you can use bare bone Windows mobile device to view images. Still, this will lead to several problems:

• no full screen mode (unless you have smartphone with custom prepacked software)
• no thumbnails to easy browse your collection
• no slideshow
• no easy way to switch from one photo to another (most image programs support browsing with scroll buttons

As always, I will propose the simplest solution - the one that clears all problems, but does nothing more - it is simple and easy to use, and very fast. Such program is Viewer, and is available for free.

Text input - it is never too fast

An important reason for using Windows mobile device with touch screen is to type text faster. And though you'll probably input text faster than with 12-button mobile phone, it will always seems too slow to you.

I suggest using Letter recognizer mode on Windows mobile. Transcriber is attractive, but it has more complex job to do (splitting your pen movements into letters) which eventually leads to more errors, and what is the worst in this mode it is harder to fix error than in Letter recognizer. Eventually, you will even have troubles that Transcribers activates when you try to click on something.

Third possible input method, virtual Keyboard, is not very efficient, and the only reason to use it is that you don't want to practice even a bit of time as it requires zero learning period. Though, it might be interesting in some situations - usual keyboard shortcuts (e.g. ctrl + A for selecting all text or files) work as it would on desktop.

To input text efficiently with Letter recognizer, try to follow these tips:

• write the widest possible letters, you will see that rate of recognition improves that way;
• remember some shortcuts: you don't have to put horizontal line on f;
• don't rush too much - every error is high penalty for your input speed, so don't write faster than your skill and device capabilities allow;
• don't let your batteries drain too much, it may affect rate of recognition;
• find optimal time to soft reset your device, recognition may get worse as you may accumulate a lot of junk that take of your device resources while it is turned on.

Also, consider Quikwrite. These method claims a significant speed improvement with a bit of practice, as it is not based on character recognition, but on gestures. I must say I failed to get used to this, but it is worth a try.

Finally, full-time mobile typists may consider to buy device with keyboard, or buy keyboard accessory for their device. Eventually, you will be even able to roll it up into your pocket.

Turn your agenda into dashboard

Built-in functions of Pocket Outlook lacks several things:

• it is hard to track tasks - though you can have start and end date for them, you have just plain list not related to calendar, so it all ends in reminders which might come too late;
• there is no common look on tasks and meetings, and as they are all time related stuff, managing your schedule is much harder;
• birthdays are not integrated well - again you have reminders, but not much more than that;
• today screen is a nice idea, but not very well implemented - it is not space efficient, and it doesn't show more than your today (or next day) meetings. It would be much better if it showed your next 10 meetings or so, no matter how far in the future they are.

To fix all these problems, there is simple solution - tAgenda. It is a free today screen plug-in that displays all information you might need, with advanced customization. Unfortunately, it doesn't work on Windows mobile 2003SE or Windows mobile 2005.

If you need solution for Windows mobile 2003SE or Windows mobile 2005, or if you feel that your schedule is quite busy, and that just a new view with tAgenda on it is not enough, you may chose more complex tools like Pocket Informant, or Agenda Fusion. They allow similar views to tAgenda, and also improve many other aspects of Pocket Outlook.

Which phone for your Pocket PC?

I think that having Windows mobile on your Pocket PC makes choosing your mobile phone much easier.
The point is that features of Pocket PC are above even latest phones (of course, Windows Mobile smartphones may have comparable features, but still have smaller screen and sometimes not even touchscreen), and thus you have less to worry about some of the phone characteristics. You will probably do personal management on Pocket PC (the only reason to do that on phone is that you might have auto sound off on meetings on some phones like Nokia), listening to the music on it, surfing with it, sending and checking mail, reading text/e-books, entering any kind of data, and possibly even playing games (though this may depend on the response of your pad and buttons, as some Pocket PCs are not good for this use). So, you don`t need to think on all of this when buying phone.
According to my experience, the focus in buying your phone should be in small size (you already have one gadget with decent dimensions, so you have advantage of buying complementary small phone), calling functions, connectivity with your pocket PC (I strongly suggest Bluetooth phone if you have Bluetooth on your Pocket PC), battery life, screen that is readable on direct sun light, and features not included on your Pocket PC (like camera).

Take the clips

If you are extensive web surfer (or even better reader), you are probably aware of the fact that you forget many things you should remember, and that you have trouble in finding some important articles you have read. And you might feel the need to take these clips on your mobile device.

First solution for this is EverNote, which is capable for taking of all sort of notes, though I think it is best suited for clips. The most valuable thing is actually very simple - every time you open EverNote, you will see your latest clips, and that way refresh your memory. Second interesting thing is that you can reformat text, so that you can mark which part of the text is important to you with color. Then, it integrates well with browsers (both Internet explorer and Mozilla Firefox), so you can take clips directly from there. Finally, options to recall articles are nearly perfect. You have hierarchally sorted topics on the left, and every clip can get into several topics (popularly called tagging). Clips are also automatically sorted according to source (web, office document). And on top of that there is search as you type.

If you need those clips on Pocket PC, you will have to pay for full version, which also includes handwriting recognition.

Firefox users has one more interesting option: extension called Scrapbook. As every good product, it does just one thing - stores web pages or portions of it on your computer. Integration with browser makes the page look "as is" - EverNote has text with some formats and images, but not more than that. Marking with colors, adding comments and erasing is very easy. On the other hand, options to find articles are limited compared to EverNote - just simple folder structure and text search (but not as you type).

Both programs deserve attention - Scrapbook is ideal for storing full pages and articles, or for collecting data for one work. But when you collect a bunch of small clips, then EverNotes wins. The best thing is that you can use them both.