While you're busy flicking and pinching and shaking your iPhone, watching apps crash and getting a white screen of death, I've been busy editing Office docs and playing Insaniquarium. What, you can't do that on your precious touch-screen of joy? Pity. And yes, Palm OS 5.whatever, aka "Garnet" is pretty old. So what? Let's change the name to "Helen Mirren." See? Infinitely sexier.

I wrote about my love of the Palm T|X a year ago today. The fact is, I never owned a Newton. I went Palm OS and never looked back. Chalk it up to the fact that my pockets wouldn't accommodate a MessagePad 2000. Since I bought my first Palm Pilot Pro many moons ago, I've owned a delectable Handspring Visor (the expansion port was too cool, but modules were also too expensive), a Palm V and a WristPDA. I'd still use the WristPDA except for the fact that it won't hold a charge.

OK, we're still waiting for the next version of Palm OS. Where are the multimedia features the Be acquisition would add? What about this Linux-based rewrite? Who cares? The fact is, Palm got it right when it came to synchronizing data: make it simple, fast and reliable. Nowadays true, ubiquitous data sync is like a unicorn with herpes -- you wish you could find it, but there's always this glaring flaw: datatypes don't match up, making mush of your info. I chalk that up to Palm losing the battle they started long ago and never opening up their tech to become a real standard. But when it worked, man it worked well. There's a lot to be said for simplicity, and using Palm OS is like sitting in a classic car. You aren't worried about all the buttons -- you just drive.

So yeah, the iPhone has advantages, like a pretty decent browser, multi-touch and video playback that isn't a battery-draining and soul-sucking experience. But I'll keep my soul and the Palm -- because nothing says love like an SD card full of memories, games and work documents. There are still lots of little touches in Palm OS worth keeping it around (how about keeping your icons organized?). As Riley and Huey's Granddad would say, "there's no school like the old school." Word. Did I mention I can edit Word docs?

In the gallery I list a few apps notably missing on the iPhone but readily available for Palm OS.

The point of this post is to provide a handy list of software for Palm OS devices because many free apps are now hard-to-find. Commercial apps aren't, but I'm a cheap, cheap man. Follow along as I save you a bundle on hardware and software that'll put a powerful gadget in your pocket.

I wound up with a Palm T|X from my little brother who bought himself an iPhone (and the subsequent snobbery that comes with). It's been years since I used a Palm regularly, and the last one I tried was a WristPDA but was so hopelessly out-of-date that I abandoned it for a real watch (you know, that won't short out in the rain). My first PDA was, in fact, a PalmPilot Pro and was branded from 3Com. Those were the days, when Palm and Apple's Newton stood and chuckled at the nascent Windows CE platform. My how times have changed. The Newton is long buried (but not exactly dead), and Palm is largely in freefall. Why they spun out their OS years ago is beyond me, and it certainly hasn't helped their software situation any. Where Palm apps of every stripe once flowed freely there is now but a trickle, and every day that trickle gets slighter while developers move on to more robust platforms.

Still, what amazes me is how great Palm hardware is, and how you can really do quite a bit with it-- if you know where to look. So I've distilled my own adventures in Palm down to one handy little guide, full of useful apps and tips to get you started. You can find a decent deal on ebay for nearly any modern color Palm too. Don't be afraid to buy a unit with dead battery and buy a replacement battery. Do be afraid to buy something monochrome and without Bluetooth. I find the T|X is a sweet spot-- no laggy hard drive like the LifeDrive, an SD slot, Bluetooth and WiFi, and the ability to go fullscreen and landscape. If you crave tiny, check out the smaller Tungstens that slide open. Currently you can get an opened T|X on ebay for less than $150.

When acquiring this little guy I had three primary needs:
1) PDF Reader
2) Image browser
3) Quick note capture with alarms

See what works and doesn't, plus all the cool extra things I found after the jump.

Palm was once king of the mobile landscape. The Palm Pilot made reality what a decade of electronic organizers and ill-fated Apple Newtons never could; A practical handheld computer to store the junk from your head. Once Palm established the market Microsoft stepped in with Windows CE, early versions of which were laughable in comparison to the Palm. Three name changes, infinite version numbers and the integration of the mobile phone saw Windows CE grow up into Windows Mobile, and take the lead. It's an age old story of Microsoft takeover by market-share and, now Palm is only steps away from being swallowed whole bought outright by one of a host of other industry players.

John Dvorak explains that either Nokia or Motorola are likely to drop the hammer on a buyout of Palm sometime soon, and at a price of around $20 a share. eWeek reports their could be as many as 4 bidders fighting behind the scenes, although speculation runs wild as to who the two not named Nokia or Motorola may be.

Despite ads floating around inviting shoppers to the url, www.ontreo.com--Palm's site for the new Treo 680 released last week--had remained dormant until today. And it probably should have stayed that way. Engadget says the phone itself has a "whiff of 2004" about it, and that goes triple for the obnoxious flash-based bit of yesteryear that Palm has whipped up to support the phone. Aside from being blinding and difficult to navigate, it's one of those "hey, look at our cool site!" sites that tells you absolutely nothing about the product. Assuming you can find the information links (I'm not telling; you'll have to figure it out for yourselves), each of the phone's features is given exactly one paragraph of description before the detail links whisk you off, without so much as a how-do-you-do, to Palm's main site. Actually I'm okay with that. It's where they should have sent everyone in the first place.

There is one interesting tidbit buried in the site, though: apparently the the 680, like it's big brother the 700, will support TiVoToGo. That makes it almost worth the $199 pricetag right there.

You can read a paragraph about that, too, if you make it through the blinding orange and emoticon-headed masses with eyesight and sanity intact.

The newest version of the Leonard Maltin Movie Guide has been released by LandWare. If you are ever in the video store and want some guidance to pick out something good you can use this guide. This new version has the complete listings of both of the 2007 Movie Guide and the Classic Movie Guide by Leonard Maltin.

LandWare makes this product not just for the Smartphone platform, but also the Pocket PC, as well as their original platform of the Palm OS. This year's update now includes support for the Motorola Q, which is why this caught my eye. Just the other day I was watching "The Great Escape" and had a question about one of the actors in the film and my old "Video Hound" book never made it out of a box (or was lost tossed) during move back early this year. As I was watching the baby, I could not leave the room to use the other computer, so if I had this on my Q it would have been great. I just downloaded the trial version and will be checking it out this weekend.

Check out screen shots after the break.

[Via Qusers.com]

Sometimes the simplest applications make us smile.  Around here, we're generally not too fond of funky interfaces or whiz-bang graphics on every piece of software.  That is especially the case for PDA applications.  Take, for example, this wonderfully made donationware application called Flight Status.  Developed by some high school kid (Andrew), Flight Status fills a great gap on the Treo platform for the mobile professional.  You punch in your flight number and airline, and it sends you back real time flight status.  Don't remember the flight number?  No probs, just select the airline, departure and arrival airports, and it'll get the rest.  Simply said, it works.  Andrew has done a great job in designing a simple GUI, but we are wondering one thing:  When did a high school kid start thinking about mobile professionals?  Thanks to Eric Mack for the link.

Notice how we don't talk much about Palm apps around here? I used to be the biggest Palm fan out there. That was before the dark days of lousy hardware, bloated OS updates, and bugs from here to the 10th planet. Riddle me how Sony was able to get Flash on their PalmOS devices years ago, but Palm's own still don't have it? Explain why the OS has to be stuck at 5.x.x.x.x ad infinitum? Oh well, they lost me about a year ago (that LifeDrive is too little, too late, and it doesn't even work properly), but I still am intrigued by this latest development... PalmSource and Access are teaming up to create a Mobile Linux Ecosystem. Actually it's called the Access Linux Platform. Essentially it's the move to Linux PalmSource has been talking about for a while, only now we're beginning to see what shape it will take. Cutting through the marketing jabber, I see several open source items are making it into this new platform, including GTK and GStreamer. It also appears the existing PalmSource PIM apps will make the cross over. SQLite will get into the mix, but Palm's browser may take a back seat to the ACCESS NetFront browser. I'm a little worried about that one, since Palm's browser worked pretty well. Interesting times, but we shall see if this is the herald of a new age in Palm's OS, or the last nail in the coffin.

[Via MyTreo]

The best thing about converved devices like the Treo 650 is the availability of lots of your personal information in one, small device.  This blessing can also be a curse, if your data gets in the wrong hands.  Even worse, all those famous people that you know would have their phone numbers exposed to the world...and you know what kind of mess that can get you into.

Well, your Treo 650 may not have the bling factor of a Sidekick, but we're guessing that you carry it because you want to have a ton of important information within reach.  Of course, if that information falls into the wrong hands, you are in for a real headache.  This is where Central for the Palm OS can be your savior.  Central has a bunch of features, but one novel feature that can save your data from being stolen is the SMS Kill Pill.  Activated by sending a password to your Treo via SMS, the Kill Pill will force a data reset of your Treo, so your calendar, phone numbers, etc. don't fall into the wrong hands.

Other features that Central offers include several alarm functions (do not disturb, preset alarms), several cell phone antenna features (turn on after soft reset, turn off at prescribed times), and news and weather pull down capability.

The base Palm interface has essentially remained unchanged since the Original PalmPilot.  While the interface's simplicity allows for broad adoption of Palm devices, I'm like many Palm users out there that need a little bit more than just the basic stuff.  My interface of choice for years has been ZLauncher, primarily because it allows me to install and run programs from my Treo's SD card.  ZLauncher has all the other bells and whistles that its competitors have, including skins, icon sets, a great file management application, and quick launch capabilities.  The latest version, ZLauncher 5.32, has some tweaks for the latest Palm devices.

Marc Orchant over at The Office Weblog notes that Chapura's KeySuite has recently been updated with several minor enhancements.

Updates include:

• International, 24-hour time picker with an option for setting time in 1-minute or 5-minute increments.
  
• Year view in KeyDates (for hi-res handhelds only).
  
• You can set Week Start in KeyDates to any day of the week. All views now reflect this Week Start day.

KeySuite is an excellent Palm PIM replacement, especially if you are a heavy user of Microsoft Outlook.  KeySuite does an admirable job of replicating Outlook on the Palm.  I've used KeySuite over the years, and really liked it until I got my Treo 650.  Since KeySuite uses its own data file, it doesn't rely on Palm's sync utility.  This is fine, unless you are syncing your Treo, or other wireless device, with a Microsoft Exchange server.  With that scenario, only the Palm default mail and calendar applications are syncable.  Palm also implemented much needed calendar features like an attendees list, accepting meeting requests via the Treo 650, and settng appointments in multiple timezones.  So, despite the limitations, I now rely on the Palm applications for most of my PIM functionality.

The nice thing about KeySuite is that each application, Tasks, Calendar, Notes, Contacts, and Today, can be used individually.  As a result, I still use KeyTasks for syncing to Outlook and revert to the regular Palm applications for calendar, contacts, and email.

How does a Palm work on the wrist? I spent nearly two months wearing an Abacus (a Fossil sub-brand) WristPDA to see how useful all those Palm apps could function strapped to my arm all day. Here I'll give you a list of the software I used, and some tips on getting the most out of such a device. I picked up my WristPDA online for under $70 after reading MAKE's write up on the subject. The OS is just 4.0, but enough to handle some of the better old apps out there, and the device has more RAM than my Palm V (best form factor ever) or Handspring Visor.

So this was intended to be a data entry device for my wrist. The form factor is a bit small, but tolerable. What really killed me was Jot. Fossil/Abacus has included Jot because there's no silk screen text entry area on the watch— the entire face is a data entry screen. Problem is Jot just didn't "do it" for me. Switching to Graffiti2 didn't work so well either. Guess I'm just stuck in my OS 3.5 days. Besides, using Jot happens to interfere with some apps. This was probably the biggest problem with the WristPDA. Many apps are not designed to use it's one screen area, and almost none are configured for the change in buttons (you have a rocker switch on the side, and no application buttons). Turning Jot on and off takes several steps, so I wish there was a macro feature on the Palm OS in general.

See the apps I used after the jump.

PalmSource has partnered with MontaVista Software to develop Linux-based smartphone software. The deal probably doesn't do a whole lot for PalmSource, other than give it a little more cred with the Linux smartphone developer community. It may, however, help third-party developers, as they transition their PalmOS apps to Linux. And, of course, that'll help MontaVista, which competes directly with PS in the mobile OS market, and unlike PS, already has a functioning Linux-based OS on the market.