We have been busy trying to get the first beta of Bonsai for the Windows Mobile platform ready for release. While it is very close, we are not going to make the June target. The good news is our new target is early July; this week, as a matter of fact.

In the mean time, we have a set of screencasts showing the new beta. As mentioned in the forums, this is NOT a feature-complete beta, but most of the core Bonsai features are working. Product release is still months away.

The Bonsai Boys (George and Rich) have posted a beta build for Bonsai v4.2.7 that addresses a crash that can occur when scrolling through the keyword list. Also fixed is a problem where keyword list changes on the Palm could be lost during the HotSync. Nothing much more added at this time, but those interested in trying it out can download the from HERE.

Those interested in the forum thread on this one can read about it HERE.

I’ve updated the Comet Beta Build with a bug fix and and couple of visual enhancements. As you can see by the screen shot to the left, Comet desktop now has some glyphs (fancy speak for simple graphics) in the column headers for “Type” “Note Icon” and “"Peak Hours”. I’ve also changed the note indictor icon (everyone say “ooohhhh” )

The conduit was also updated with a bug fix. Comet will no properly scan all the notes on the device/handheld and add any of those that are missing to the desktop. Due to the way the conduit was trying to be efficient in the past and not have to scan all the notes, some were getting “missed” in situations where the desktop database was being rebuilt from an existing Comet note database (like after you upgrade computers or recover from a hard disk crash). There was also a case where exactly one of your notes was being skipped with each HotSync. That could make the note come and go. This fix should resolve that issue.

Although these are not major changes, I did want to get something out in the blog to let users be aware of the beta being out there. The download file can only be used with an existing full release installed since it only contains some of the files. There are no updates to the Palm application in this download.

Also, we (Rich and I) have been trying to provide a “changelog.txt” file in all of our releases which gives a history of what each build release contains. You may want to just look those over also to see if any problems you have been experiencing have already been addressed.

We’ve also been getting several requests for ports of our products to various other (none Palm OS) platforms. As far as Comet is concerned, we are considering a Windows Mobile release in the future, but no work has begun on it yet.

  Jonathan Green*, an online friend of mine who is heavily into all things Nokia, has posted a short write-up with his thoughts on the latest beta release of the Garnet VM. The Garnet VM allows those that own devices such as the Nokia N800 and N810 tables to run Palm OS5 applications in a virtual machine. If you are familiar with StyleTap, then this is quite similar. The Palm Garnet VM is actually a product of Access (you know… the one’s who bought PalmSource a couple of years back… the folks who wrote Garnet itself)

Check out Jonathan’s post HERE

(*Jonathan is pretty much a gadget freak and quite familiar with Palm, Windows Mobile, iPhone and RIM devices also. Nokia/Symbian seems to be what keeps him happiest at the moment. Check out his other blog a atmaspheric | endeavors )

We have added Bonsai 4.2.5 to the Discontinued versions section of our support pages. As of the 4.2.6 release of Bonsai it will no longer support Windows OSs prior to Windows 2000. (Meaning Win 98SE and NT4). The newer release requires system calls that are only available in newer releases of Windows.

This new Bonsai version contains bug fixes for the Bonsai Desktop application that have been made over the last 3 months. No changes were made to the Palm application. A complete list of changes can be found in the readme (look for the “Changes in version 4.2.6″ section).

The documentation has been updated to include instructions for running Bonsai on a USB drive (non-U3 support). Details can be found here. Another new section discusses synchronization implications for USB drive users who also sync outlines to their handheld device.

To download this update, please see the Bonsai download page or use the Bonsai Desktop Help/Check for Updates menu.

If you haven’t heard of “Android”, it is Googles mobile phone platform/OS. Although there currently are no physical android phones available on the market right now, Google does have all the stuff a developer needs in order to start making apps for the future devices. In order to entice developers (similar to what iPhone/Apple and RIM are doing) they have created the Android Developer Challenge. This “challenge” is offering up $10 million in awards for the great mobile apps built on the platform.

One of the more interesting of the entries I have seen is enkin. 

Enkin from Enkin on Vimeo.

It utilizes the live video, GPS, and orientation sensors in the phone and then overlays live “Tags” over 3d video. Pretty cool. I wish them luck in the challenge, and I hope to see more innovative apps like this keep coming out for smartphone devices.

George has update the Palm DayNotez 3.0.5 to build 2904 and can be downloaded HERE

Changes in this build:
- Fixed an issue which caused a crash on some systems when closing the SD archive after you modify an entry.

You can find out more about previous updates to this version in our Natara User Forums.

… is a new post over on PalmAddict sent in by Sven Rothe.

Indeed, with Bonsai from Natara http://www.natara.com/Bonsai/index.cfm i have lots of possibilities on the palm in one program wich lots of the gtd apps are missing! I can link my structured tasks to Tasks OR Events! An item on the list can even stay just an important note for reference in the specific context without the need to be actionable.

Read the full post…

Thanks for the positive write up Sven!

One thing I’ve done since I’ve been in the mobile device business to take my own unscientific observations of devices I see people using when I travel. I mainly do this while at an airport waiting for a flight. I try to keep an eye out for anyone talking on or using a PDA or smartphone and mentally keep tabs on what the trends happen to be.

Years ago when I started doing this there really wasn’t such a thing as a “Smartphone”, so I mainly took note of PDAs. Of course, the majority of those devices were Palm OS device, so I was mainly trying to track of if people were using Palm Vs, HandSpring Visors, Sony Clie’s, etc. Occasionally I would spot the rare “Business type” pretending they were actually being productive with earlier WinCE device.

As years went on, Palm made carrying “Smartphones” a trendy thing to do. I think that I mainly ended up counting just the number of Treos… and tried to sneak peeks at what they were actually doing with them (always getting a kick out of seeing someone using or just having a Natara application on it).

A couple of years ago when Rich, George and I were going to the Microsoft MEDC (”Mobile and Embedded Devive Conference”. Microsoft’s equivalent of Palm’s PalmSource developer conference) the majority of “Smartphones” were Treos also. I have to say though, I’m not certain iff the majority of those were Palm OS or Windows Mobile Treo devices since both existed at the time… and this was a Microsoft event.

Last year while at the airport for a family vacation trip the mix of devices I spotted started to change. Treos were no longer the majority, but about even with the number of Windows Mobile and RIM devices I spotted. Still, I held out hope for Palm. At the time I had no clue as to what their much anticipated secret third product line was, which turned out later to be the “stillborn” Folio. It’s been a steady downfall ever since.

Last week I was on vacation again with the family and at the airport. We were headed to sunny Florida (Sanibel Island). Given the area that we were headed to I assume that the majority of people who were traveling on the same airplane probably where also there for vacation purposes (and not business). What I saw (device wise) surprised me. I didn’t see a single person carrying a Palm device (Treo or Centro). I didn’t see a single Windows Mobile device (with the exception of the one I carry). I didn’t even see a single iPhone in use while at one of the countries largest airports (Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport) What I did see where lots of RIM BlackBerry devices being used by a younger (20-ish) crowd. Not at all what I had expected. Every person who I spotted with a phone either had a standard “feature phones” (Razr, LG, Sanyo, etc. Those cheep phones that cell phone carriers practically give away) or a BlackBerry devices.

I understand the steep drop in Treo counts. I don’t think we’ll ever see what we saw back in the Treo “Hay Days”, But what I don’t get is where are the Centros? Where are the iPhones? Where are the Motorola Q’s and T-Mobile Dashes? Why all of a sudden the surge in “CrackBerry” phones? I guess I shouldn’t all be that surprised. For the past year now we have gotten a steady stream of requests for ports of our applications to the BlackBerry platform. I assumed we hadn’t gotten as many requests for Windows Mobile ports because folks that were aware of our products knew we were already at work doing that, and that very well may be the case. I also have been waiting for more requests for iPhone support, but so far those have “trickled” in. But still, the number of requests for BlackBerry support for our products outnumbers the other platforms combined. Perhaps it is because of the fact that if you get stuck with a BlackBerry, your choice of 3rd party software is slim to say the least (even compared to the number of current “hacked/unofficial” iPhone 3rd party applications available today).

So, I’m curious. What has been your “unscientific observations” of the more popular devices you see other folks using today?