Natara Blog

We love our customers, so to help celebrate Valentines this year we wanted to give them something special. From now through Tuesday (Feb 16th) you can get 40% off any orders placed through the Natara online store. No minimum purchase. Just use the coupon code VAL2010 at checkout.

A minor maintenance update of Bonsai Desktop v5.0.3 has been released. This is a free update for all 5.x users (paid upgrade for users of Bonsai v4 for Palm OS Desktop Edition, Bonsai v4 Desktop Edition or earlier versions). This update only contains changes made to the Bonsai Desktop (PC application).

Download the update from the Natara web site.

Changes in this update include:

• While in the outline view, changed the “Select All” (keyboard shortcut Ctrl-A) so if any outline rows are selected or if the entire text of the current outline item is selected then the entire outline is selected. Otherwise Ctrl-A will select the entire text of the current item. If you wish to select the entire outline, use “Select All” twice (i.e. press Ctrl-A twice).
• Fixed issues with exporting outlines to a Bonsai Palm PDB format.

See the readme file for a complete list of changes in this version.

A new major update of Bonsai Desktop v5.0.1 has been released. This is a paid upgrade for Bonsai for Palm OS Desktop Edition and Bonsai Desktop Edition users. The new version targets the desktop application; no changes have been made to the Bonsai for Palm OS application.

Download the 30 day trial version or purchase a license. Existing users can obtain an upgrade from the Natara customer portal. The upgrade is free if you purchased a full license on or after April 1st, 2009 or $12 for Bonsai 4 Desktop Edition users.

Changes in this update include:

• Bonsai Desktop support of outline to outline file synchronization. Can be used by Bonsai USB users wishing to keep their outlines in sync between their local desktop and corresponding outlines on their USB drive. This feature can also be used to share an outline among multiple users.
• Support for syncing outlines to Palm Pre devices for use with Bonsai for Palm OS software ***VIA*** the Classic emulator by MotionApps. Bonsai for Palm is certified for the Classic emulator and Bonsai Desktop can sync your desktop outlines with the Pre when it is connected as a USB mass storage device.
• Improvements to the Find/Replace operations.
• New Quick Filter feature.
• Ability to duplicate outline filters and views.
• Optimized Bonsai background processing, particularly improving CPU usage when the Bonsai application is placed into the background.
• Support for importing and exporting of Bonsai outlines files in a Bonsai Palm (.pdb) format.
• Added Alt+’0’ desktop shortcut to mirror the Shift+ Keypad ‘+’ shortcut for expanding the entire outline. This complements the Alt+’1′ … Alt+’4′ shortcuts for expanding the outline to level ‘n’.
• The “Edit/Insert File Link” menu now allows multiple file links to be inserted.

See the readme file for a complete list of changes in this version.

While Bonsai v5 is compatible with the current release of the Bonsai Palm product, this is probably the last major release that we will try to maintain compatibility with Palm OS. Future releases (Bonsai v6 and beyond) may have data formatting changes that will no longer support Bonsai for Palm OS.

A new major update of Bonsai Desktop v5.0.1 beta has been released. The install is for Bonsai desktop-only and Palm OS Desktop Edition users. User of Bonsai for Windows Mobile will be getting a new build with this update soon. This is a paid upgrade release for Bonsai Palm/Desktop Only v4 users. The new features target the desktop application; No changes have been made to the Palm OS app. More details including the download link can be found in the forum.

Changes in this beta update include:

• Bonsai Desktop support of outline to outline file sync. Can be used by Bonsai USB users wishing to keep their outlines in sync between their local desktop and corresponding outlines on their USB drive.
• Support for syncing outlines to Palm Pre devices for use with Bonsai for Palm OS software ***VIA*** the Classic emulator by MotionApps. Bonsai for Palm is certified for the Classic emulator and Bonsai Desktop can sync your desktop outlines with the Pre when it is connected as a USB mass storage device.
• Improvements to the Find/Replace operations.
• New Quick Filter feature.
• Optimized Bonsai background processing, particularly improving CPU usage when the Bonsai app is placed into the background.
• Support for importing and exporting of Bonsai outlines files in a Bonsai Palm (.pdb) format.
• Added Alt+’0’ desktop shortcut to mirror the Shift+ Keypad ‘+’ shortcut for expanding the entire outline. This shortcut is easier to access on laptop PCs verses the keypad version and complements the Alt+’1′ … Alt+’4′ shortcuts for expanding the outline to level ‘n’.
• The “Edit/Insert File Link” menu now allows multiple file links to be inserted.

Fathers Day is coming up this weekend, but you don’t have to be a dad in order to take advantage of our sale. When purchasing Natara products through our web site, you can take 15% off any order that is under $20. Double that offer (30%) if your order is $20 or more. 

• DayNotez 3 Palm Desktop Edition: Normally $34.95, just $24.47 with the discount.
• Bonsai 4 Palm Desktop Edition: Normally $37.95, just $26.57.

Save up to 30% depending on how much you spend. Any of our products, any upgrade!

For purchases of $20 (USD) or less, take 15% off use Coupon Code: fdsale1509

For purchases of $20 (USD) or greater, take 30% off use Coupon Code: fdsale3009

(And with the money you save, you can still afford to get dad the tie he deserves! )

[offer expires June 22nd, 2009]

For those of you who have “scored” a Palm Pre and want to run some of our apps under the MotionApps Classic emulator, we have gotten certification for Bonsai, DayNotez, and Project@Hand.

So, what does certification get you? From the MotionApps web site:

The Classic Certified Logo will help you easily identify Palm OS applications that are fully compatible with Classic and run well on a new powerful Palm Pre. Those apps will perform well and provide a familiar user experience. Even better, you can expect to see a significant improvement in the performance as Classic will be faster and more responsive then Treos and Centros were with Palm OS apps.

Keep in mind that Classic still does not support hotsync back to a desktop application, so running our apps on the Classic emulator means running them as “device only” apps. Quanto (one of our few apps that currently has no desktop counterpart anyway) was also tested on Classic (and works fine) but was not made into a certified signed application since there was a limit of 3 apps per developer at the time we submitted our products. Also, although Comet may work in Classic on the Pre, I doubt it would be very useful since the Pre’s call history log is not accessible from the Classic emulator.

The signed (Certified) Palm version of of Bonsai, DayNotez, and Project@hand can be download from the appropriate download pages on our site.

A new Bonsai Desktop v4.2.8 beta has been released. More details including the download link can be found in the forum.

Changes in this beta update include:

• Added toolbar for WM touch screen devices. The toolbar is not configurable at this time. The ability to configure the toolbar will come at a later time, possible sometime after the initial release of the WM product.
• Find command is now supported. The find can be activated using the toolbar or the Menu/Edit/Find menu. The find supports incremental searching as you type. Options for the find can be accessed by clicking the “>>” button and include options to match case, include notes in the search and select direction of search. Currently the search begins at the current cursor location and ends at the top or bottom of the outline. I plan to change this so the search will wrap around to the top/bottom of the outline and continue until it gets back to the starting location.
• Added note pane to the outline view in the WM application. The note pane can be shown and disabled via the View/Note menu. The size of the note pane can be adjusted on touch screen devices by tapping, holding and dragging the splitter (the divider between the outline and the note pane). For non-touch screen devices, the size of the note pane is fixed. The setting of the note pane status (enabled state and size) is not currently persisted but this will be added soon.
• Fixed problems handling non-English characters by the WM application. The outline files written by Bonsai on the WM device will be in a UTF-8 encoding. The PC version of Bonsai can read this format but currently only writes the outline in a “local code page” encoding. The sync engine also behaves in the same way. This means that if non-English characters are used in an outline, the region settings on both the PC and WM device must match. With this change and the proper regional settings, non-English characters can be used both in the outline and in the outline file names.
• Fixed problem browsing the outline list after opening an outline.
• Resolved crash that sometimes occurs when configuring an item’s keywords.

We are happy to announce that we have now officially released Comet 2.3.1 (both desktop and handheld). This is mainly a maintenance release, but you should update your existing software when you get a chance.

For those of you not familiar with Comet, it is our call log history tool for Palm OS smartphones (Sorry, no Windows Mobile.. Only Palm OS Treos and Centros)

On the desktop side, changes since the last official release include:

• Fixed sorting issue with duration column
• Added column header "glyph" (graphic) to Call Type, Note Icon, and Peak Hours column headers.
• Fixed issue where recovering a desktop file neglected to add notes from handheld side.
• Notes that exist on the desktop for entries on the handheld that do not contain notes are now restored.
• Deleted records on desktop are now also deleted on next sync to handheld. (known issue: deleted records on Handheld are not yet picked up by desktop)
• Updated grid version
• Updated toolbar version
• Safeguards against corruption when switching users
• <user>.dat.sync maintenance file now added
• Fixed issue with manually deleted records not staying deleted.

And on the handheld side:

• Fixed issue with Comet posting wrong phone number when using "dial alternate".
• Fixed issue with Comet dialing extra (extensions) when using "dial alternate" if not done via the spacebar.

You can download the update or a trial copy from HERE

It’s been a long time in coming, but we’ve finally done an official release of DayNotez for Palm OS version 3.0.5.

Some of what’s changed since the last release include:

• Improved sync code responsible for opening the desktop db. It will now be able to locate the db if the “My Documents” folder is moved by the user.
• Fixed problem where under certain conditions the database could not be created if the directory did not exist.

and in the handheld app itself:

• Fixed an issue which caused a crash on some systems when closing the SD archive after you modify an entry.
• Fixes problems being launched from external apps and the maintenance (hidden) launch after each hotsync.
• Is now aware of DateBk6 new range of IDs 
• Resolved a problem where private entries become unhidden in certain circumstances.

Those that already own DayNotez 3 or would like to trial it for 30 days can get the new version from out download page.

Anyone wishing to purchase DayNotez 3 can do so from our purchase page.

This new version of DayNotez for Pocket PC resolves a minor installation issue found with the initial 1.5 release.

This is a free update for all DayNotez for Pocket PC v1.x users. See the README for more details or download the setup HERE. Since the update is mainly targeting the installation, if you have already have DayNotez v1.5.0 installed, there is little need to update.