Celebrate 4th July with Fireworks from Astraware!

This free software application is for our friends 'South of the Border' (and no passport required either! {Grin})

KEELE, Staffordshire, UK - 28 June 2007 - Astraware is pleased to announce a brand new version of their fun application Fireworks which is available for a limited time.

Fireworks is a simple FREE application, showing sequences of fireworks flying and exploding into the air. As 4th July is traditionally a time for fireworks and celebrations in the USA, the features have been created to help our American friends highlight one of their major holidays - Independence Day! Fireworks features a selection of patriotic backgrounds including the Statue of Liberty, Mount Rushmore and the Stars and Stripes, and offers a choice of stirring tunes including the Star Spangled Banner and Stars and Stripes Forever!

Fireworks is available for devices running Palm OS (supports 160x160, 320x320 and 480x320 ~ FredPC). and Windows Mobile. including support for 240x240 square screens and QVGA landscape smartphones. What better way to celebrate 4th July than with some Fireworks? Download your copy today at http://www.astraware.com/fireworks - it's available for a limited time only! Oh, and did we mention, it's FREE?!

This looks like a really neat little application. Hopefully they'll develop a version for us to use on the 1st of July - Canada Day!

Resco Explorer 2007 v3.10 Released

Resco has just updated Resco Explorer 2007 to version 3.10! Resco Explorer 2007 is the top-selling file manager application for Palm OS handhelds, supporting zip archives, encryption, backups and various network protocols including FTP.

This release adds support for Windows Shares(SMB shares). This allows easy access to files shared via Windows folder sharing over Wifi, Bluetooth or GSM/CMDA(VPN) connections. The program can also access SMB shares hosted on Mac and Linux systems.

Resco Explorer allows you to treat files on a network share as if they were on a memory card - you can encrypt them, pack them into zip archives, move them around the host system or copy them to your Palm.

Accessing gigabytes of MP3's, documents, movies and files has never been so easy before. Just put them into a shared folder and download them to your memory card when you need them.

Resco Explorer costs $29.95 and can be purchased at various distributors like MobiHand and PalmGear ($24.95 until the 7/7/2007). An evaluation version is available from http://www.resco.net/palm/explorer/default.asp

As soon as I get some time, I will be evaluating Resco Explorer for all you loyal Canuck-PDA readers.

Astraware expands to the Palm Foleo

Palm and Astraware today announced the first two games for Palm’s new Foleo mobile companion - Astraware Sudoku and Astraware Solitaire. Additional titles from Astraware will follow.

Astraware Sudoku is a logical puzzle game suitable for players of all abilities. Features include six levels of difficulty, pencilmarks in a choice of styles, optional completion and tracking of pencilmarks plus an advanced hint system. In addition, it comes with a selection of built-in puzzles and, after registration, allows the addition of pre-built puzzle packs available free from http://www.sudokuoftheday.com.

Astraware Solitaire features 12 of the most well-known and best-loved single-player card games including Klondike, Spider, Freecell and Pyramid. Each game has a wide range of custom gameplay options so users can enjoy the games with their favorite variations on the standard rules. The game's style and interface has been designed to mirror the feeling of playing with real cards and offers a range of display options as well as detailed statistics to track progress. Astraware Solitaire has been optimized for the high-resolution display on the Foleo mobile companion and for use with the trackpoint controller.

"The Palm Foleo is a unique and exciting new type of device, and we’re thrilled to make two great popular games available for its users," said David Oakley, chief technology officer for Astraware. "The Foleo is an ideal companion for high-powered, time-starved executives, and Solitaire and Sudoku are ideal games to let them relax once their work is done."

By building the Foleo on an open Linux-based platform and publishing the tools developers might need, Palm hopes to establish a vibrant developer community to create new applications that extend the mobile companion’s built-in capabilities. Astraware demonstrates the ease with which exciting technology and applications can be ported to the Foleo mobile companion.

More information about Astraware is available at www.astraware.com.

For more information on the Foleo mobile companion, please visit http://www.palm.com/seefoleo. To sign up for notification about Foleo availability, please visit http://www.palm.com/foleonotify.

Manitoba Chiefs Want Air Use Money

Want a shock? Read the full CBC article via the link below. And in this case it doesn't matter if you are using a Palm OS Treo, Pocket PC Treo, or a dumb old cellphone from who-knows-who. This one will effect us all if the First Nations have their way. Here's my reaction:

On Wednesday, 30 May 2007 CBC News online carried a story about the Manitoba First Nations wanting to be paid every time some one uses one of their natural resources. They feel that this should include the air above their land, so that every time a cellphone radio wave crosses through, someone (in this case the provincial telephone company) should be paying the First Nations a 'cut'.

Personally, I think this is a ridiculous concept! How far do you think I (or any one else for that matter) would get if I went to Air Canada and demand a payment every time they flew over my land? After all, I own property (and live) near an International Airport, and they are making money traveling 'through' my private property! There is satellite signals to consider too... they carry billions of bits of information and communication signals, and they do it by flying over my house for a measurable amount of time! They owe me! What if I tried to charge for each radio wave (AM and FM) passing over my back yard? They owe me too! Lets not forget television signals, and the hundreds of thousand (if not more) of hand held Family Radio Sets in use by kids today. I'm sure those kids can afford a buck or two out of their weekly allowance so they can pay up every time they want to talk to their friend on the other side of my block. They ALL owe me... after all, it is my land, it is my air to tax!

Back to the First Nations / MTS thing. Besides being preposterous... It's not like we have cellphone charges that are reasonable when compared to the U.S.A., for example. Canadians already pay much higher prices for cellphone service than our neighbours to the south. This type of 'air use' fee, which, if enacted, will undoubtably be taxed tacked on to our already high cell bills, is far from 'fair use' in my books!

Here is a link to the full CBC article.

Manitoba Chiefs Want Cellphone Revenue
Manitoba First Nations are seeking compensation from Manitoba Telecom Services for every cellphone signal that passes through First Nations land, saying the airspace should be considered a resource like land and water.
'When it comes to using airspace, it's like using our water and simply because there's no precedent doesn't mean that it's not the right thing to do.' — Ovide Mercredi, Grand Rapids First Nation
At a recent economic development summit, the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs resolved to negotiate revenue sharing with MTS for transmissions signals that cross the land, water and air space of their reserves and traditional territories.
"[The request is] based on the understanding that we do have some fundamental rights as indigenous people to land, water and airspace," said Chief Ovide Mercredi of the Grand Rapids First Nation.

A New Global Memory Card Standard

Here is some really interesting and exciting news. It seems that a group of less well known hardware manufacturers have gotten together and released something we almost never see from the "big guys" in the memory industry. A new memory card standard (no it's not that they created a new standard... everyone is always changing the 'standard' to something equally proprietary and definitely more expensive than what ever the last standard was) that is smaller, faster, and larger than virtually any other standard out there, and it's compatible with... drum roll please ... MMC (the precursor to SD) and USB (that's the big news... they're compatible!) You can plug them straight in to a USB port, or put them in an adapter and use them in any MMC (virtually all SD slots support MMC) slot.
For a change we are going to get a new memory card standard will work with our existing equipment, and is bigger (starting at 8GB, they are expected to hold up to 2,048GB - yes GB!), better (MMC and USB compatibility built in) and faster (480Mbit/sec)!

I want one of these in oh... 512GB should be large enough for a while anyway... for use in my TX!

Here is part of a Computer World article about the miCard. I encourage you to follow this link and read the full article.

Taiwan's miCard Chosen as Global Memory Card Standard
01 June 2007 (IDG News Service) -- A Taiwanese research institute has produced a new global memory card standard, called the miCard (Multiple Interface Card), designed to work in smaller consumer gadgets such as digital cameras, mobile phones and any device with a USB plug, which are common on PCs.
The purpose of the card is to make transferring pictures, songs and other data between gadgets and PCs easier. The card won the stamp of approval from the MultiMedia Card Association yesterday and is expected to be available globally starting in the third quarter.
Users [that's US - Canuck-PDA] will not only benefit from the versatility of the card, but also its speed. The miCard will transfer data at 480Mbit/sec, and throughput will improve over time. The first miCards will be able to store 8GB of data, but the maximum capacity is expected to top out around 2,048GB. The compatibility with both USB and MMC slots means most users won't need separate card readers anymore. MMC cards fit most consumer electronics, while USB connections are built into a wide range of IT hardware, including laptops, desktops, printers and home entertainment gear.

Kudos go to SlashDot where I found a comment entitled "A New Global Memory Card Standard" which got me interested enough to pursue the rest of this story.

Palm unveils the Foleo

From Palm Inc.:

CARLSBAD, Calif., May 30, 2007 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Building on its vision that the future of personal computing is mobile computing, Palm, Inc. (Nasdaq:PALM) today announced the Palm(R) Foleo(TM), its first smartphone companion product. The Foleo mobile companion has a large screen and full-size keyboard with which to view and edit email and office documents residing on a smartphone. Edits made on Foleo automatically are reflected on its paired smartphone and vice versa. Foleo and its paired smartphone stay synchronized throughout the day or at the touch of a button. This powerful combination is for productivity-minded business people who want a more complete mobile solution for email, attachments and access to the web.(1)

The Foleo mobile companion turns on and off instantly and features fast navigation, a compact and elegant design, and a battery that lasts up to 5 hours of use. Its applications include email, full-screen web browser, and editors or viewers for common business documents such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF files. The Foleo stays synchronized via Bluetooth(R) wireless technology and uses the smartphone's radio or the Foleo's built-in Wi-Fi radio for general Internet connectivity. [Read More]

Cake Mania: Back to the Bakery Review

Having immensely enjoyed the first installment of the Cake Mania series, I jumped at the opportunity to review the expansion to the popular game, Cake Mania: Back to the Bakery. Being an expansion, there aren't too many new things to be expected. What do you do in the game? Basically you use your stylus to perform tasks in baking cakes that match the orders of your customers. All the while the clock is ticking, but there are other distractions such as cupcakes and a TV to keep your customers patient. Gameplay and the basic feel of the game remains identical to the first Cake Mania. The only real difference from it is that the story is different and some of your customers are different. Difficulty? Not hard at all if you've been through the first Cake Mania, and it's not hard to get up to speed either. In fact, I've consistently surpassed the "Baker's Goal" for each level, several times by $500 (quite significant).

While the first game involved moving into different stores every "year" in the game in order to save up enough to buy back Evan's Bakery for the heroine's grandparents, the expansion has a different story. You're stuck in Evan's Bakery, but now you've entered a contest where the grand prize is a Hawaiian vacation. This you want to win for your grandfolks, so you're on a renovation shoping spree to prettify the bakery for the contest. Watching the bakery change its furnishings every few months is new to this game.

All in all, a great little game that is ideal for mobile devices. It's easy to pick up, fun to play, and makes great use of the touchscreen, like the one on the Treo 680 I tested this on. An excellent example of casual gaming!

By the way, my high score was 44545. ^_^