Archive for the 'Pocket Soft' Category
SMS messages are a big part of life for many of us and rarely a day goes by without me sending or receiving a text message.
The SMS handling facilities within Windows Mobile 6 are fine for the casual texter, but if you’re a power user who yearns for more functionality then you might want to try installing SMS Tweaker on your Pocket PC.
This simple application is designed to ramp up your SMS manager adding powerful new features such as the ability to view message threads. This means that instead of having to wade through all of your recent messages, you can choose to view only those from a particular contact, giving you the ability to quickly recount the conversation.
Other highlights of SMS Tweaker are customizable backgrounds for your texts (although generally these are pretty hideous unless you’re a five-year-old), plus the ability to change the language of notifications and alter the font size. It’s a very simple program and all of the available options are clearly accessible from the tabs on the interface.
A great way of improving your text life.
Review by James Thornton
SKMenu is a powerful menu tool, file manager and explorer and desktop organization solution for your Pokcet PC. With a huge range of features and functions, SKMenu allows you to personalize every single aspect of your Pocket PC user experience and puts other ‘launch’ type applications to shame.
Some key features include:
• Freely positionable SKMenu symbol on Today screen/Task /Tray bar
• Freely positionable SKMenu symbol as indicator with status display
• Indicator modes: digital, graphic
• Freely selectable SKMenu symbol size
• Freely selectable fonts (name, size, type)
• Freely selectable color for menu text
• Freely selectable color for menu highlighted text
• Screenshot option
• Freely selectable sound (.wav) for Screenshot option
• Clear Type On/Off
• Freely definable colors for SKMenu window like symbol background, fonts, separators, window background, highlight background)
• Freely selectable color for menu font
• Freely selectable color for separator line
• Freely selectable size for separator line
• Freely selectable color for highlight background
• Skinnable Menu window background (picture support .jpg, .png, .gif, .bmp)
• Assumption of actual theme for Menu window background
• Wallpaper effects: Tile/Stretch
• Import/Export function for skins
• Direct access to system settings
…and much more besides! Install SKMenu for a trial run today and you’ll never look back!
GPS Tuner is a high precision measurement, mapping and geocaching tool for Pocket PC. You are able to record high precision waypoints (even sub-meter) thanks to the averaging technique. GPS Tuner provides flexible management of waypoints, geocaching files, tracks and routes. GIF, JPG, PNG or BMP files can be used as maps. With Digital Compass you can easily navigate to a waypoint or walk along a route.
For your offroad trips
Excellent tool for hiking, geocaching, boating, flying, driving and many other sporting activities where monitoring of the length, distance and speed would be important. You are able to load Geocaching LOC or GPX files directly into GPS Tuner and start the treasure hunting immediately.
You will never be lost
With the help of the Digital Compass, you can easily get to a previously set geographical coordinate or to a selected waypoint. In case you wish to pass along a way (or its waypoints) from the beginning till the end, Digital Compass will also be useful to you.
Manage your waypoints easily
Save, modify, import or export waypoints with GPS Tuner. Defining custom picture, sound or video to your waypoint is just a click! You can also share your waypoint file with your friends, because GPS Tuner supports the common GPS Data Exchange Format: GPX
All the GPS functionality you could look for, in one product.
There’s nothing in this world as determined as a hungry penguin, as this platform jumping game proves.
The object of Greedy Penguins is to guide your little penguin down a series of platforms as the screen scrolls upwards. This isn’t as easy as it sounds, especially when you remember that penguins can’t fly.
You can choose one of four different penguins (Daniel, Bonnie, Justin and Doud) who you must then guide down a series of levels, gobbling fish and collecting coins along the way. Not all the platforms are safe to stand on - some have spikes on them, some fall away when you stand on them and others send you shooting back up in the air. All this serves to make it a tricky and, at times frustrating quest, which will take you ages to master.
There aren’t much in the way of options - there’s only one difficulty level and you can’t even enter your own name in the high scores chart (it just records the name of your penguin) so it’s hard to keep track of scores if lots of you are playing the game. One neat thing though is the online multiplayer mode, where you can hook up with other penguin pushers over the Internet and challenge them.
The graphics aren’t that tasty but if you’re hungry for a challenge that Greedy Penguins will certainly satisfy your appetite.
Review by James Thornton
PathAway provides affordable navigational support for aviation, boating, automobile (on and off-road), hiking, cycling, touring, rally racing, motorcycle touring, ballooning, scuba diving, fishing, hunting, paragliding, mountain climbing, ultra-light flying, canoeing, snowmobiling, athletic training, outdoor education, geocaching, mapping/GIS, mining, military training, surveying, site inspection, telematics, field data collection, security, search and rescue or any application where location is important.
Attach a compatible GPS (Global Positioning Satellite) device to your Palm, and use PathAway to navigate. PathAway works with all of the leading GPS handheld devices. PathAway supports Bluetooth, cabled, sled-based, and SDIO GPS devices. internal GPS devices such as the Garmin M5 and HP iPAQ 6325 are also supported.
Brand new version of the popular shareware utility for Pocket PC, Total Commander 2.0 adds new functionality to an already good program.
New in version 2.0
• Support for portrait/landscape switching
• Save column widths in full view
• FTP client, registry editor, and access to LAN (local area network)
Original features, still as good as ever:
• Copy, Move whole subdirs
• Inplace rename, create dirs
• Delete (no recycle bin)
• Zip and unzip
• Properties dialog, change attributes
• Built-in text editor
• Search function (also for text)
• Select/unselect groups of files
• Select with [Sel] button
• FTP client
• Registry editor
• LAN access
• Send/Receive via Infrared (OBEX)
• Brief, full and large icons mode
• Single or two file window mode
• Option to hide all files in ROM
• Directory hotlist as in Total Commander
• Directory history through dropdown list
• Tree view
• Configurable button bar
• Simple help function
• Supported languages: English, German, Catalan, Czech, Danish, Dutch, French, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish and Swedish
Add many features to your PocketPC with this great piece of shareware!
Being a big fan of the Wallace and Gromit series of films, I’ve always dreamed of living in a world made of clay. Now my dreams have been realized thanks to Platypus.
You assume the role of an orange flying craft that must save the country of Mungola by blasting the evil enemy invaders out of the sky. Essentially, it’s a side-scrolling shooter but with one difference - everything is made from clay.
The graphics in Platypus are like none you’ll have seen before. Because all of the elements were actually made from clay and digital captured, it makes for some truly stunning viewing. The animation is pretty slick too, and the splatting explosion effects are some of the best I’ve seen anywhere. The high-octane sound effects are impressive too and really help to set your pulse racing.
While the visuals are innovative and unique, unfortunately the gameplay is much the same as your average shooter, and after a while the process of blasting everything that slides across the screen becomes somewhat mundane. There is some stuff to collect and a few power-ups to improve your ship, which adds a little more life to this game.
In terms of options, you can adjust the sound and music volume, rotate the screen, and view high scores, but there’s no facility for setting your own game controls.
You’ll be blown away by the graphics but once the novelty of this has worn off you’ll realize that Platypus plays like any other run-of-the-mill arcade shooter.
Review by James Thornton
The game of Sudoku seems to have replaced the humble crossword as the king of bus travel pursuits.
What’s more, the way people are playing the game is changing too, and more and more people are using their mobile devices to crunch numbers on the move. Impossible Sudoku bills itself as ‘the most powerful mobile Sudoku game’, and while I’ve not tested all of its rivals, it’s certainly up there with the best of the ones I’ve tried.
When you first load Impossible Sudoku you’ll probably fall out of your chair when you see the game board. Unlike the games you get in puzzle books this one has loads and loads of little numbers as well as bigger numbers filled in every square on the grid. It’s a little daunting at first but don’t worry because these are here to help you. They are actually ‘auto marks’ that indicate the numbers that are available to enter in a particular square based on the current state of the grid. Don’t worry if it’s too confusing for you because you can switch the feature off (you can’t toggle auto marks, unfortunately and the change will come into effect in the next game).
There are lots of other things you can customize in Impossible Sudoku, and it’s actually one of the most impressive number games I’ve seen in terms of its options. You can undo, redo, mark, check moves, solve the puzzle, and access all manner of statistics. There are five levels of difficulty, and you can even create your own puzzles from scratch.
The presentation of the game is pretty impressive - there’s a choice of nine bright, colorful skins and the sound effects that play when you enter numbers are quite cool without being annoying.
In fact, the only thing that really lets the game down is its feeble help system. All you get is a one-paragraph description of the rules and there’s nothing in the way of tips and tactics that might help beginners.
Overall though, this is a wonderful simulation of Sudoku for mobile devices.
Review by James Thornton
I’m a big fan of spot the difference games and have recently become addicted to the ones you get in pubs where you need to touch the screen to find the differences.
Thankfully now I don’t have to stand around drinking for hours in order to get my fix of picture puzzles thanks to Crazy Spot. This well-presented mobile game charges you with the task of finding the differences between two pictures in the alloted time.
The images used are high quality photographs ranging from a herd of giraffes to a girl sniffing a flower. It’s a diverse mix of pictures, though I noticed that some of them crop up again and again, making it easier to solve.
To select the differences between the images you simply need to tap the appropriate area of the screen on either of the pictures. Be careful if you’ve got fat fingers because you often need to be very precise with your touching, particularly on the very subtle differences.
The game is a real joy to play, and the multiplayer mode only adds to the fun. Even spot the difference novices will love Crazy Spot thanks to the in-game hints system. The only thing that will really drive you crazy is the horrid techno song that plays in a constant loop.
Crazy Spot is a polished conversion of the spot the difference game for your mobile device.
Review by James Thornton
There comes a time when your Pocket PC’s memory starts getting clogged up with personal data you no longer need and you just want to wipe the slate clean.
Unfortunately, deleting all of your personal information at once is impossible in Windows Mobile, so you’ll need to get yourself a third-party app such as AllCleanup if you want to rid your personal information in one hit.
This program allows you to quickly remove your Appointments, Contacts, Messages, Tasks and/or files and directories on your Pocket PC or memory card. What I like about the program is the way you can select what type of information you want to clear, in much the same way as you would choose the kind of personal data to remove when you’re clearing your temp files in IE or Firefox, for example.
The user interface is well presented, with a list of the different types of data you can delete, each with its own clear and colorful icon. One click on any of the categories and the program will quickly remove all that data from your Pocket PC. Bear in mind, however, there is a 10 second delay in the unregistered version.
Unfortunately the program doesn’t give you the option to select individual Appointments, Tasks, Messages, etc. for deletion, so it’s really an all-or-nothing situation.
It’s also worth pointing out that the installation process requires you to enter a Startup code, which you need to obtain from the developer’s site by keying in the device code shown when you launch the program.
Despite the long-winded setup procedure, AllCleanup represents a quick and easy way of removing some or all of your personal information.
Review by James Thornton