PDA software

[chrisvenus]

Well, now I have a shiny PDA I need shiny software to put on it. What can people suggest? Things I think I need are:

1) Mapping stuff - I'm sure I've seen people with london streetmaps, underground maps, and all that kind of thing on PDAs. Is there a simple package to install to get all this?
2) Other useful stuff - things that have been suggested to me so far are a dictionary package and astronomy package (I like stars).
3) Games - yeah, its me. SUggest some good fun games.


And just to make your life a bit easier my Ipaq is running Windows Mobile(TM) 2003 Second Edition. I've got a good sized screen with nice high res so there shouldn't be any performance issues with it.

So, yeah, tell me all the cool things I should be doing with my PDA.

Comments

[twicedead.livejournal.com]

Do you have the .NET mobile framework on it?

[chrisvenus]

If not then I will probably be getting it on there pretty quicksmart (or at least I am happy to put it on the moment something asks for it).

[twicedead.livejournal.com]

Woo! Then I can give you Mobi-Wraith, a half-built, half-arsed system for reading Grapevine files (for wraith PCs only, so very useful) on your PDA!

:D

[chrisvenus]

Awesome! :)

In all seriousness though is the source available? As you've probably seen I'm running a game starting in a month and a bit and one thing I want to do is have character sheets on the PDA. I've never played with display stuff and particularly not on a PDA. If I've got something that has some of the rendering stuff in place then I might be tempted (in the unlikely event I find time) to adapt your wraith thing and make my own file format and put Legacy characters on it.

[twicedead.livejournal.com]

Buggery, I've just discovered that i must have left it on my old PC when i switched jobs.

But it was very simple. Grapevine had the useful facility of outputting PCs as a structured XML file. .NET reads XML very easily, you can just say "treat that file as a datasource" and it essentially becomes a database connection.

Then you use the simple data display elements in the .NET mobile framework anbd the compiler in visual studio to build some simple forms to display the information. Visual Studeio .NET even gives you a PDA simulator to test your code on.

[chrisvenus]

the main problem is that my .NET program is all web based so I know how to output HTML and stuff through ASP.NET but I've no idea how to build standalone Apps. :) I'm sure its not hard but it just *feels* like too much bother. :)

[twicedead.livejournal.com]

If you've been using visual studio then there's almost no difference between using ASP.NET and VB.NET. You put the controls on the forms (they're just a bit smaller and more limited for a mobile device) and then you write some code behind it. It's probably easier as the event structures are simpler for a stand alone application than for a web based application - you don't have to worry about screen refreshing and the like.

[chrisvenus]

Yeah, I guess if I actually use the designer it is probably *really* easy. I just much prefer to just instantiate objects myself rather than drag and drop them into place. :)

[scat0324.livejournal.com]

<pred>Windows Mobile 5.0</pred>

http://nanika.net/metro is pretty cool as free apps go, if you need to navigate around London (or other places, but I've only used the London data). Anything else you'll have to pay for it.

[metame.livejournal.com]

I was hoping you'd do one of these threads (as my iPaq 4350 is likely to work with anything yours can despite being a bit older).

So to kick things off:

Mapping: I have a copy of Microsoft Map Point and that has a 'pocket version' you can save to and a 'Pocket Streets' player that works with PPC2003. So that's how I do mine. Or simply leaving open a multimap.co.uk browser window (turning off 'fit to screen' to make things legible)

Productivity:

Spb Pocket Plus is a neat utility that sorts out a few things including neatening calendar, tasks, and tabbed shortcuts to the basic Today screen which I found made everything a few clicks closer. it also fixes a few other probs with the basics, and adds tab browsing to pocket IE

Dashboard does a similar today screen thing, but takes over a lot more... I got bored with it so don't use it any more.

in terms of ToDo lists and the like I just use a Pocket Word doc (cos I'm that simplistic me) and calendar items...

I have got a mind mapping thang downloaded, but haven't used it yet - the small screen may make it unworkable.

Other:

Tweaks2K2 sorted out a few things for me - worth a look

Tomeraider is a good document format for large docs.

I had a look at various other web browsers but didn't end upsticking with any - let me know what you find if you change?

Games:

Scrabble is good if you like that kind of thing
Pocket GNU Go similarly...
I like PocketSlay, but it is a bit simplistic after a while.
Doom - cos it takes me back (Quake is also playable and Wolfenstein)
Worms World Party is cool, again for nostalgia reasons as much as anything else

And NB you can run almost anything from the storage card rather than main memory, so just stick stuff on the card.

Mapping...

[sea-of-flame.livejournal.com]

I just tend to use multimap beforehand, grab the actual map image from a screenshot, save & sync to the PDA.

But then, this is just as a last resort when I don't have a printer available - my usual method would be to just grab the multimap printout at the time, so I wouldn't tend to use a full paper map anyway.

If you do find a good mapping program designed for PDAs though, do let me know!