Leslie Franke

Looking for a free winter ZLauncher theme. I have uploaded a Christmas theme, to my download section, from LCD Gear. Though Christmas based, the backgrounds can be changed to fit any look or season. You can get the new theme from here.

I have created a new Palm Icon Manager icon set based on many logos that will be familiar to you. You can get these Palm icons from my download section. The icons were drawn in Icon Manager and thus while not perfect copies of the logos themselves, I believe they strongly resemble their real counterpart.

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a popular way for web publishers to send content and articles updates their readers. The compact nature of RSS makes it the perfect format for bringing information to Palm screens. Because of the many different types of Palm devices, and the way they are used, there is not one best RSS reader for usage on a Palm device. Some users will probably prefer to download the feeds to their devices for offline reading later, while other users may want to use their wifi connection to read their RSS feeds online.

Some of the best RSS readers for the Palm are described below.

AvantGo
http://avantgo.com/ - Free

AvantGo will allow you to view mobile RSS subscriptions either offline or online using a wireless enabled Palm. AvantGo is very simple to setup your RSS feeds and has a very good inteface for reading RSS news. If you already have the AvantGo software installed on your device another program installation is not necessary. In addition, AvantGo does not suffer from the awkard user interface that some Java based readers do. Disadvantges to AvantGo include no podcast support and a limit on the capacity downloaded for the free version. As RSS feeds take up little space this should not be a problem unless your AvantGo account is already almost full.

Note: There is another way to access AvantGo on your handheld that does not require the client to be installed. You can get access to AvantGo by hitting the site made for the Blackberry, http://rim.avantgo.com, from your Palm’s web browser. As an aside you can even use your desktop web browser to acess AvantGo this way. Outside of a few formatting and rendering issues these url works well.

Bloglines Mobile:
http://www.bloglines.com/mobile - Free

A disclaimer. I am a big Bloglines fan, and use it as my main aggregator for my desktop. The mobile version works well on a wireless device for several reasons.

1. Bloglines Mobile gives a single aggregating source. In English, it easily allows me to access my feeds and keeps my read states in sync across my Palm, and desktop/laptop computers.
2. Bloglines Mobile does not require an software to be installed on the Palm. If your Palm has a web browser, it will work on your device.
3. Bloglines allows you to choose which feeds, from your Blogines account, you want to show up on Bloglines Mobile.
4. Bloglines Mobile has a simple and consistent interface with very readable font.

The disadvantage to Bloglines is that is requires a constant connection. If you do not use the reqular version of Blogines and/or do not find the need to keep your feed read states in sync, one of the other choices on this list is probably a better alternative.

Plucker and Sunrise
http://www.plkr.org/ - Free
http://sourceforge.net/projects/sunrisexp - Free

Plucker is a free offline web and ebook viewer for the Palm. Sunrise is a Windows desktop applicaton that converts sites or RSS feeds to a format readable by Plucker. If you are just going to read RSS feeds offline the Sunrise/Plucker combination is the best choice. Plucker is fast, the conversions happen quickly, and the Plucker reader has by far the best user inteface.

The disadvantage of using Plucker/Sunrise is that it requires you to get the feeds through a sync with your desktop computer. Thus you will not be able to instantly see the latest updates to your RSS feeds.

Quick News
http://standalone.com/palmos/quick_news/ - Commerical

Quicknews is probably the most powerful RSS reader for the Palm. QuickNews offers several features that the other RSS readers do not, such as card storage for downloaded feeds, and podcast support in conjection with Pocket Tunes. In addition you can set it to get you updates at any time. However, it seems to be much slower to download articles than the other readers. Unless you need podcast support, one of the free alternatives is probably a better way to go. For most people AvantGo, Bloglines, and/or Plucker will be more than you ever need.

Other Readers
FeedBurner - http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/mfr - Free and Commerical
LiteFeeds - http://www.litefeeds.com - Free
Feedalot - http://mob.feedalot.com - Free

Feedburner and LiteFeeds both require the J2ME java runtime environment and thus suffer from the poor java user interface. They also both retrieve feeds rather quickly. Feedburner’s free version only allows you to use feeds hosted at feedburner.com and it doesn’t keep track of read articles between updates. Litefeeds does keep track of the articles you have already read but read articles get deleted. In addition RSS feeds are only update when the LiteFeeds crawler reads the feeds thus no instant feed updates. Feedalot offers both a web and mobile interface (similiar in idea to Bloglines). Feedalot also has a Firefox Extension to synchronize RSS feeds between Mozilla Firefox & Feedalot (Live Bookmarks).

Opera is now offering a sneak peak of Opera Mini exclusively to all Opera Community Members. This version, like the previous version, runs fine on a Palm OS.

Getting Opera Mini on your Palm is fairly straight forward and simple. (If you have not already installed the Palm Java VM, you need to go to Palm’s WebSphere Everyplace Micro Environment Download page and download the WEME571.zip file.)

1. First you need to acquire the Opera Mini .jad and .jar file. (See this post at Mobile Read. You may find a straight PRC file out there but this would be a violation of Opera’s user agreement.)

2. Upload the .jad and .jar files somewhere on the web which you can link to in the next step.

3. Finally open your IBM Java VM, click on the Install button, enter the URL to the .jad file and click the OK button. This will install the file on your Palm.

Note: If you already have a previous version of Opera installed you will either need to rename the new version or delete the old one before you undertake step 3.

Opera Mini Initial Screen

Opera Mini Default Bookmarks

Flickr on Opera Mini

Palm Addict on Opera Mini

I am not a big mobile game player on my Palm T3 but occasionally like to play a game when a few minutes present themselves. Recently I ran across a game from Smart Box Design, called Farkle, that is one of the best games I have seen for the Palm platform. Farkle (or Farkel) is a dice based game that is a cross between Yahtzee and craps and which is played with six dice. The game play is straightforward and simple. The object is to score points by rolling combinations of dice, until one player’s score reaches the winning threshold (10,000).

You can play Farkle against friends & family or choose between six virtual players, all with distinct personalities and names such as Nervous Nell and Steady Stan. Each player starts their turn by rolling all six dice. From this roll, any or all of the scoring possibilities may be held and the remaining dice rolled again (If all six of the dice are held, then all six may be re-rolled). This continues until the player decides to keep the points they have accumulated, during their turn, and pass or until no scoring combinations are rolled (called a Farkle). When a Farkle occurs all points accumulated for that players turn is lost. Farkle three times in a row and 1,000 points are subtracted from your score. When the first player crosses the magic threshold, all other players get one more chance to top that player’s score. If a player can, then that player wins. Otherwise, the first player to cross that threshold is the winner.

Like all games from Smart Box Design the presentation of Farkle on the screen is outstanding. The graphics are very crisp and clean (plays in 160×160 or 320×320 mode) and the sound effects are not overwhelming, adding nicely to the game’s atmosphere. Overall, Farkle is one of the best games I have played on the Palm platform, very addicting and entertaining.

Joel Suplido, of 1src fame, has made his ClieSource Icons collection freeware. This collection is one of the nicest ones out there. According to Joel, “These icons are now FREE. 100% of the past sales will be donated to the American Red Cross Hurricane Katrina Fund.”

For anyone interested, I’ve converted my Palm bookmarks into del.icio.us bookmarks at http://del.icio.us/palm. Of note to many may be the Palm freeware part of this collection, available by drilling down into the links or available directly here.

For those who have not heard of del.icio.us, think of it has a social bookmark manager. You can create a personal collection of links, categorize these links with keywords (tags) and then share these links with others. In addition, you can view the links collected by others and subscribe to their link collections by RSS.

Navigating through del.icio.us is easy. When you first come into the page you will see in the right-hand column a listing of categories, such as Desktop, DeviceSpecific, or EyeCandy. Clicking on an arrow will open the category up to reveal a list of sub-categories (tags). Clicking on a tag will bring up a list of links to choose from. Additionally, a second column of related tags will appear on the screen allowing you to further drill down into a sub-catergory.

Note: An RSS feed of these del.icio.us links is available here. In addition, you can get a RSS feed to any of the subcatergories by clicking on the little, orange RSS feed button at the bottom of the screen.