October 14, 2003
Palm's New Basic Applications - PalmCorner Weekly Features (Updated)
Believe or not, Palm has revamped three of their four basic applications with the release of their new Palm devices, and as a result, I'm back to using these applications once again. Datebook, Addressbook, and Todo List programs have been replaced by new programs Calendar, Contacts, and Tasks, and I'm happy to report that it's more than a simple name change.
The new program called Calendar has an agenda view that has a new interface (with color background) that is pleasurable to see and use. If you use Versamail, it can also display a number of unread messages as well. As you can see it also displays the birthday entry from the contact database (I'll talk more about this later). If you set up the default view to the agenda view in the display option, then whenever you use the hardware button, the program will start in the agenda view.
By the way, one thing nice about all these new applications is that they should work on other Palm OS5 devices. I installed these programs in my Palm Tungsten C, and I'm using them without any problems.
Read more about these programs by clicking the hyperlink below.
Besides the agenda view, the program now offers a modified monthly view and a new yearly view. When the screen is expanded, the monthly view shows the previous and next month's mini-calendar.
By tapping on the mini-calendar, you can navigate to a different month in the monthly view. Another feature I like is the preview function in the monthly view. If you tap on a date with events, a pop-up window shows the list of that day's schedule. If you move your stylus away from the date, then you are still in the monthly view. If you lift the stylus, then you go into the daily view of that day (previous behavior in Datebook). The pop-up schedule is really a nice feature that I used in the Datebk5, and I'm glad to see it here.
The yearly view now gives you the annual calendar, and tapping on a month will bring you to the monthly view. Also, now you can color code the categories, and they will show up as a circle in front of your entry in the daily and the agenda view, and as color blocks in the weekly and the monthly view. Furthermore, you can have the category list shown in the daily, weekly, and monthly view and filter the appointments or events using a category. So, if I want to see only appointments or events related to one of my categories teaching, then it's really easy to do. Nice touch, Palm.
One of the major shortcomings and gripes (depending on who you talk to) in Addressbook was the lack of additional address fields in the program. So, if you put someone's work address, then there was no way to put in their home address. The new version overcomes this. Now we have three different address fields in the program, and several additional fields such as chatroom ID and birthday.
In fact, if you enter someone's birthday in that field, it magically shows up in the Calendar program (see the Agenda image above). You can even assign a alarm reminder to the birthday (e.g., 3 days before). In addition, there are now 9 custom fields (yes, 9 instead of 4).
One of the nice features is name searching using the navigator pad. If you press the right side of the pad, a list of blocks shows up at the bottom of the list, and you can use the navigator pad to scroll up and down the alphabets to move the contact list. Pushing the right side of the pad will move you to the next letter on the list and so forth so on. This is a handy feature when you don't want to take out your stylus to navigate.
Finally, the improvement in the task view is also extremely useful. Now you can filter your tasks by pre-assigned dates: due today, last 7 days, next 7 days, and past due, and when you tap on the filter, you can see how many items fall under each filter. Furthermore, you can now set an alarm to a task as well as schedule repeated tasks.
Most of these improvements are significant, and I've been using third-party software to compensate for the lack of these features in the original built-in program. So, perhaps now you see why I have returned to using these built-in applications.
Palm has also released the new Outlook conduit and new Palm Desktop to take advantage of the new features in the Palm applications.
All in all, these are significant improvements, and kudos to Palm for making this happen.
Posted by Ken | PermalinkWow! I'd love to get these on my Tungsten, but unfortunately Palm has yet to make them available for download... Hopefully they will as there is no reason why they won't work on my Tungsten C.
Posted by Jonathan Greene at October 13, 2003 01:24 PMI want them too.
Posted by Edlin at October 13, 2003 09:03 PMWith all of the PIM's improvement, Palm has done an excellent job. But one thing's missing, from the Tungsten T3 manual (PDF), I notice that the new PIM still doesn't offer name sorting based on the contacts' first names. That is really disappointing! That means I still have to use 3rd party software like Address Plus to have this feature.
Posted by maykel at October 14, 2003 06:53 AMI'd LOVE to see them on my Zire71 but somehow I have the bad feeling that this is not gonna happen. (Please, PalmOne, prove me wrong.) One thing I am missing though: Icon support. As a Datbk5 user I think this is a pretty useful feature if you want to see at a glance what's coming up, especially in the month view.
Posted by akiba at October 14, 2003 10:53 AMAnyone know if the Mac Desktop supports these new fields as well?
K
Posted by Macfixer at October 14, 2003 11:35 AMIt's super. I'd like to download it now! I hope that will work on my Zire 71.
Posted by Filip Hajduga at October 14, 2003 01:21 PM"By the way, one thing nice about all these new applications is that they should work on other Palm OS5 devices. I installed these programs in my Palm Tungsten C, and I'm using them without any problems."
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could the author share how he accomplished this feat? apparently these are not available for download from palm- yet he was able to install them on his older tungsten...how is that possible?
Posted by theevaluator at October 14, 2003 01:31 PMInstruction for transferring is pretty simple. You would need to find a Tungsten T3 or E somewhere, and then install a file program such as Filez, and then beam the ROM applications (calendar, contacts, and tasks) to your old PDA one at a time. The whole process shouldn't take more than 5 minutes. If you need a more detailed instruction, let me know, and I will publish it here.
Posted by Ken at October 14, 2003 01:37 PMI would love to be able to get the new PIM software on my TC. How were you able to install the new PIM on your TC. Palm support says that this cannot be done. Please advise.
Thanks,
Vijay
Posted by Vijay at October 14, 2003 04:42 PMKen, even if that works... How do I get to sync it with my desktop without the conduit...?
Posted by akiba at October 15, 2003 09:08 AMI guess you would need to install the new desktop that came with the Tungsten T3 or E. Hopefully, palmOne will update the desktop software on their web site. Write to Palm and let them know this is what you want. I think if enough people ask for it, palmOne will eventually come around.
Posted by Ken at October 15, 2003 09:18 AMGod these are ugly... I certainly won't sacrifice DateBk5 and Contacts4 and Wassup for *these*!!! Yikes!
A whole new OS, you'd think Palm would look at the *best* out there, and take some queues. I.e. everything available in the best Hacks, DateBk's split-screen/icon features, Wassup's day overview (and modular!), etc. etc.
Oh well. Hope you can erase stuff from flash like in the Palm IIIx days!
mindslip
Posted by mindslip at October 16, 2003 11:04 PMMacfixer -- I can hapilly report that the Palm Desktop 4.1 (included with the new PalmOne devices) does support the new features as far as I can see... at least the Address Book does and Calendar supports categories, which is really handy for my time tracking. I think new features in Tasks are supported and 32k Memos as well.
Posted by Mike Rohde at November 18, 2003 01:25 PMI picked up the T3 recently so I can now enjoy the new fields and apps... the issue I am having though is which place I should enter birthday and other info. I can't figure out which place - Apple's Address Book or the Palm contact card shoudld contain the new details. Neither seems to sync over...
For now I am leaving stuff in the Apple Address Book and hope a future iSync update fixes this.
Posted by Jonathan Greene at December 4, 2003 10:16 AMI'm not sure about the Mac conduit, but if you enter the birthday in the contact database in your Palm, it will show up in the Contact program in your Palm Desktop as well as Calendar. However, you need to install the latest Palm Desktop program that came with the device. I'm not sure whether Mac Desktop has been updated though.
Posted by Ken at December 5, 2003 05:19 AMI had a M505 and recently bought a T3. I use datebk5 and regret that I find I still need to do this as the one view that I tend to live in is the datebk5 weekly view (that shows all the events planned for the week) and not just bars that you have to point to in order to view the info.
Posted by Harvey at December 26, 2003 03:15 AMI know it's one view I wish I had also, but the Agenda view compensates for me. Hopefully, things will get better with OS6.
Posted by Ken at December 26, 2003 06:46 AMAs someone who just went through this process (transferring the new applications from a Tungsten E that I just bought to my Zire71), there are a few important notes:
1) The new applications (Calendar, Contacts, Memos, Tasks) use new HotSync conduits, which are installed from the CD that comes with the Tungsten E. There are updated conduits for both MacOS X and Windows.
There is also an updated Palm Desktop for Windows which finally supports things like datebook categorization and birthdays (long supported on the Mac Palm Desktop).
2) The new applications also use new internal databases. As a result, the proper way to upgrade is to HotSync with the old conduits/apps, install the new apps, clear out the old databases, and HotSync with the new conduits. You cannot HotSync to both the old and the new applications at the same time. (See Palm's Tungsten E support pages on this.)
3) Palm provides a "compatibility" layer for the old databases. To enable this compatibility mode you need to copy the ROM versions of address book, datebook, memo pad, to do list from the Tungsten E along with the new applications.
Posted by Paul at December 31, 2003 09:39 PMFYI - the "compatibility layer" gives several benefits:
a) it enables functions such as "phone lookup" to use the new databases
b) it allows older applications which write to the older databases to read/write entries in the new applications
c) it hides the classic applications from the launcher
As a final postscript on my Zire71 experiences, after LOTS of work, I finally got a stable configuration with (most) of the new applications.
The "kicker" is that the new Contacts application is incompatible with the Zire71! While it appears to work, it causes 2 unacceptable problems on the Zire71:
1) The Zire71 powers itself on after 15 seconds, and does not shut off. Turn it off, and it powers on again. After 6 hours, the battery is completely drained. No workaround (tried everything including copying all Tungesten E ROM files and libraries, soft-resetting, etc).
2) The Photos application doesn't display pictures properly. The thumbnail view is ok, but when displaying the full-screen versions, you get a white screen. Again, no workaround.
Installing the remaining applications (Calendar, Memos, Tasks) works ok. You can then configure the Conduits to sync to the respective applications (including the classic Address Book).
All-in-all, the new Calendar application is well worth the effort (and yes, alarms do work properly). And the Tasks application is something I may actually use now.
One final note - the Tungsten E (and, I assume the T3) include a new preferences "keylock" which prevents the palm from powering by buttons other than power. On the Zire71, keylock works fine in "automatic" mode, but does not work in "manual" mode, since holding down the power button is hard-coded to the Brightness control.
Posted by Paul at January 2, 2004 05:06 PMThe new apps are great on the Palm, but, as far as I can tell, Palm Desktop for Mac v4.1 does not support the new features and fields and they do not sync (even though the desktop app has fields like Web Site and Birthday). So, while nice and useful, only to a certain extent at this point.
Posted by Alexander Grossman at January 21, 2004 04:00 AMAs someone who's been using the new applications (on a Tungsten E and installed on a Zire71) I can definitely say that Palm Desktop for Mac fully supports the new features!
You must, however, install the Palm Desktop conduits that are included with the Tungsten E or T3 to properly sync with the new Palm apps.
Palm's web site is very clear about the Mac support. The birthday field properly synchronizes, as do the new fields. For any address book entry, more than 4 fields are entered as Comments on the Mac desktop, but they do synchronize. In addition, Palm Desktop's calendar categories (including color choices!) synchronize with the new Calendar app.
Posted by Paul at January 26, 2004 12:43 PMHas anyone had problems with Palm Calendar not syncing with the Outlook Calendar?
Posted by DaveG at May 11, 2004 04:33 PMTo leave a comment or read updated entries, please visit GearBits' current site. Thanks.