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While the announcement of the death of Palm is certainly pre-mature, there has been definite trends of users and developers shifting into the Windows Mobile market.  Using Google Trends to show the keywords Windows Mobile and Palm OS (Google Trends Graph) you can see why this may be.

What I'd like to know from you, informally and as developers, is what your plans are for the Palm and Windows Mobile market.  Do you currently have a Windows Mobile device?  What dev tools are you currently using or am interested in?  Any other thoughts on the future?  And of course, feel free to email me directly if you really don't want to post publicly.

On the support forum, Discuss This Article.

There seems to be some database problem with the forum area.  I'm lookig into it, so try it later today.

Service Pack 1 Released!
Finally, SP1 has been released with a the normal set of bug fixes and even some improvements.  This was a tough upgrade and I'll be the first to admit that all the "bugs" produced by various combinations of controls and scripting have not been eradicated.  But a lot were.  And the new Custom Fonts are probably the "rawest" of the new features, though they do work and can work well.  Overall though, the SP1 is good and should be applied.  Do note, that you will need to make sure you have your PRO license handy as it does need to be re-entered.  Another new "feature" is that I'm leaving the PRO65 codeset alone and all new codesets will be placed into their own folders, in this case, "Pro65sp1", so be sure to adjust your projects accordingly.

Now stand-by for some library and tool updates!

New Device!
As I'm sure you've noticed, the highly anticipated Palm Treo 700P has been released and seems to be getting good grades.  PDA Toolbox seems to be working well on it, but I don't have one (yet?) so I can't say 100%. 

Release News
Well, the service pack 1 has taken longer than expected and now is in the 4th BETA.  Among bug fixes and refinements, there are two major new features: Listboxes (both static and dynamic) and Custom Font support (up to 10!).  Now that we "back on track", hopefully it will be a week or two before the final 6.5 Service Pack 1 is released.

Spring Is Here
Around Denver, it seems that Spring has started full-force. Despite a bit of snow a couple days ago, the sun has been quite sunny and putting everyone in pretty good "springy" moods.  With that, I've started to look seriously at updating PDAT PRO to the next update: Service Pack 1 (sp1).  One thing that I know a lot of you will welcome is bringing back bar-code scanning into the PRO codeset.  I guess I really underestimated how many DO use that feature and it's a real show-stopper when moving from Standard to PRO.  Anyway, my intention is to concentrate more on bug fixes than new features, though there may be a couple.  It typically takes between 3 and 8 weeks for a service pack to be complete (with you guys testing).

New Releases
The Private Eye Library has been updated to version 1.20.  Mostly the fixes are for data recovery after a hard-reset and re-installation of your application on the user's PDA.  If data was encrypted, it was confusing and error-prone to recover the password to un-encrypt it.  The release has been in the field for a month or so for testing.

PDAToolbox.org News
Things have been going well considering we moved from a virtual private server to a shared server.  Yes, the forum software is noticeably slower, but it does seem to function better than the last time we tried putting it on a shared server.  I have been fixing odds and ends such as the ability to upload attachments etc. And people are finding the site.  We're getting new users everyday.  

Give ESD Sites Competition
A new Palm OS software catalog site has opened at PalmSoftware.org at www.PalmSoftware.org..  This site has just opened and I encourage everyone to post their software links there. PalmSoftware.org does not take a commission and routes all customers to your home site.  The advertising is minimal and should make a great site for browsing titles.  Now what they really need is visibility, so besides adding your software there, perhaps consider doing a link to their site.  The ESD Sites need some kind of decent competition or they will continue to treat us like dogs.  The only way we can really get any leverage is to get the visibility the ESD sites try to reserve for themselves. 

New Releases
My docPDAT has been updated.  There was a bug that was crashing docPDAT when reading Digital Ink gadgets.  Also some recent library definitions were added to the docPDAT.ini file.  See the docPDAT page at www.PDAToolbox.org/devtools.

Yes, welcome! PDAToolbox.org is the centralize spot for all things related to PDAT including updates, add-ons, and the support forums.

For all you PDATNutsAndBolts.com members, I'm sure you are asking yourself "why?" and wondering what is going on! First, this was going to happen in March 2006, however, an internet problem I have been having has moved up the time! Also, Jared, the original webmaster of the Nuts & Bolts, has been graciously keeping the PDATNutsAndBolts.com domain alive and current, and I don't think he needs the burden of this any longer. So the venerable domain is being allowed to lapse. The last excuse is that operating the Nuts & Bolts was rather expensive and in these times, I have to be more budget aware.

By consolidating the PDAT sections of SandsUSA.com/Libs, SandsUSA.com/PDAT and other areas plus the obscure PDAT download area of the Nuts & Bolts, and the TechDocs/Links will make this getting PDAT info and updates much more of a one-stop process.  The latest PDAT IDE, librarys, tools/utilities, and documentation will be available from here, all in one place.

I hope our new digs are as good as the last ones! Destee.com had been our host for the last few years and operated a very reliable server, but things do change, and so we are now here. So a "Thank-You" to both Destee and Jared for the PDATNutsAndBolts.com domain.

So our own forums are back. I have completed upgrading and moving the last 2 years of thread data to www.PDAToolbox.org.  If you have any business pending on the InvisionFree forums, go ahead and take care of it, but get back onto our real forum. I will keep the InvisionFree forum for the "emergency" times.

Thanks to everyone for their patience in this transition!

-Rick Sands