Birdsoft Blog

Welcome to the power of Extreme Agenda. I have decided based on Reviews, Support Questions, and Testing that it would be a good idea to step through a few of the things you should know about Extreme Agenda. So here is a quick guide that new users and seasoned pros can use to find some useful information to make XA a more powerful and even easier experience.

Options

Most of the programs settings are quickly available by choosing Options in the right soft key menu. They are sorted based on what they are used for including View Types. So if for example you are in the Contacts View then the program will bring up Options screen opened to the contact related options.  If you would like to set options for other views or for General Settings, Adjusting the Display, making view selections, or category information simply push left/right on the top selection bar to re-populate the list below with the related settings.

General Settings contains settings that are more global across the whole application. Things like System Shortcuts, Filter setup, and how lists behave are some of the options you can change here.

Display Settings allows you to customize every aspect of the program’s look including Colors, Font Size, Background Images, Title Bar Display and more. Additionally the program allows you to save the look of the program out as Theme Files so you can keep a particular look and color scheme and share it with others. The functionality for this is available in the option’s right soft key menu under Display.

View Selection allows you to turn on/off any of the various screens in Extreme Agenda. Don’t want to use our Year View? Well turn it off and it will not show up as a choice in any of the menus. Additionally if there are views you arent able to find available, check here and see if they were defaulted to off.

Category Setup shows you a list of all available category names that are in use in your Outlook data and allows you to set a color and an Icon that will be used to represent each one. The settings to use these are in General Settings or in specific view options. You can get to this same icon and color functionality when choosing Categories in our Tasks and Appointment Editing Screens.

Individual View Settings will be covered more in later sections…

System Shortcuts

The first thing people ask about or assume we don’t have is System Shortcuts. This basically means the Organizer takes over the basic functions of the 3 built-In Pocket Outlook applications; Tasks, Contacts, and Calendar.  So if you choose Contacts from the Home Screen or even the icons under programs it would now go right to Extreme Agenda and use our more advanced program instead.

We do have this and it can be found under General Settings in Options. We have decided not to force you into this right away in the install as others do. Why? Well if you are trialing software and you have multiple programs trying to do this you can mess up your existing link with this. And, we offer more flexibility in allowing you to only take over the sections you want to. So say if for some reason you don’t want to use our tasks, well you don’t have to. 

In our uninstall process we will clean up the shortcuts if you have turned them on for Extreme Agenda, so feel free to try them when demo-ing as well. It makes for a much more integrated experience.

Contact Shortcut to Spin is an exclusive feature added because the right button on Standard Home Screens( and sometimes on Pro Screens) links to the Contacts. Instead of going directly to Contacts, this gives you the option to have it take you to our Extreme Spinner Selection View with Contacts already pre-selected. That way if you have individual Contacts setup in your Spinner or just want an easy way to get at all of the Extreme Agenda functionality it is usually just a button press away… A real timesaver.

Filters

Category Filters are a powerful tool to filter the data that is shown in the program. In the right soft key menu on the top level view screens Filter is available to allow you to adjust the filter and turn it on and off. When turning it on only the Data Items that contain the Category or Categories you have checked will be shown in the views. When a filter is active a [F] should appear in the top Screen Title Bar.

Filters have two other settings under General Settings. Start Saved Filters allows your filter to stay persistant. So if you shut off the program with the filter active and then come back to the program the filter will still be active. Global Filter means that the one filter is used throughout the program. If this is off, then the filter is per view, so Agenda Views, Contacts View, and Tasks View each use their own Filter setup. The filter you are editing is based on from what view you entered the filter screen from and should display at the top of the screen.

Over the Air Updates

If you have a data plan or other internet connection on your mobile device and want to know if you have the latest update to the program it just takes one quick visit to the options screen. In the Main program just choose Options. Now in th right soft key menu Check for Update is waiting. It will check and if an update is available it will display a list of what the new program adds and also allows you to download and install the new update immediately. Most updates are FREE, but if it is a Major Revision it will let you know this and allow you to install a trial of the new software(you wont lose any data), and then you will be able to revert back if you dont want to upgrade yet.

[ Watch for this article to be updated more over the next few weeks ]

Well, I have finally been able to pretty much finish a rather important update of All-In Hold ‘Em, arguably the best Texas Hold ‘Em game for Windows Mobile. The product was very well pollished and successful and so it hit a little stagnant development time while other applications were realized to their full potential. Well now we are getting back to what really got us here…Poker!!

Version 2.8 will fix a few small nagging things that have been around in the Smartphone and Pocket PC/WM Pro/WM Classic versions. But where it really gets the goods is VGA and 320×320 screen support. We hope you agree that on the newer devices coming out like the Diamond, Touch Pro, Treo 800, and Treo Pro the game looks great.

 We were finally able to get an update for our Graphics Library and so are now building on something that we are quite confident in. And we did quite a bit of work under the hood! Why…??? Because we have an AWESOME Version 3.0 Planned… and we won’t be waiting long on getting to this.. We actually wanted to get to this 2.8 mark and then forge ahead with some really cool things… Basically we want to lock up the title for best Poker game on the Platform(s).

 So watch for Version 2.8 of All-In coming very soon… It still has the Best Artificial Intelligence on a Mobile Device, the Best GamePlay, The Best Career Mode, and tons of Customizations… And now it has VGA graphics to go along with it!!!

Note: Late addition.. We have decided to throw in WQVGA 240×400 support as well!   With some of the new code now underneath, it is much easier(actually started it about an hour ago an am about done). So we’ll bring the Samsung Omnia some Love too…

Update: It is out now!

Its that time of year… Birdsoft will be on a family vacation in the Northern part of Wisconsin, so we won’t have much internet access! That’s Ok, that would get in the way of Fishing, Golfing, Poker, and Family Time!! So I will be back Next week energized and ready to go…  Please see the FAQ sections for questions you may have.

Well, I haven’t made a “what are we doing” post in a while so I figured now is a good time for it. Here is the current plan for the rest of the year.

All-In

All-In is being worked on right now. We are finishing up our long overdue VGA support and already have done 320×320 support, and might even get in Widescreen handling in version 2.8. It also fixes a few things(our Graphics API finally came out with a version that fixes a couple small problems) and does some nice things with the buttons like Treo “Hard” Softkey and OK support and better Standard Device Back Support. Im hoping to have this released August 11-12th. So watch for Version 2.8 then… 

And then getting to that point will make it much much quicker to get to VERSION 3.0. Which we want out by the Holidays! And it will be cool!!!!

The VGA graphics in 2.8 Look Great! Hi-Res is cool… And will be even cooler in 3.0! 

Extreme Agenda

We really like Version 3.3 as it got us to where we want to be on the Pro Devices so now its time to tackle Version 4.0… Yeah, we cant tell you about that either but some of the stuff planned to go in are going to take it to a whole new level. You’ll be happy you are in the XA camp!! The plan is by the Holidays as well. We’ll see…

Other Applications

In the next couple weeks, after a 1 week vacation next week,  not only will All-In 2.8 be out but we plan on updates to make PokerTimer, The Dog Ate It, and ListWatch more WM5-WM6 friendly. It should be very short projects although The Dog Ate It will likely get a VGA update and a few other things as well, so that might take just a little longer.. And Extreme Text and FairwayWatch Desktop will also get updates hopefully in that timeframe. Some of this work has already been done, so…

So that is where we are at… Unfortunately we aren’t at the point where we can really start dropping feature hints and such for the 2 BIG releases, but with the new office we have new focus and some big plans. It should be a fun end of the year…

Thanks

Im in the new office. Very speedy move, took all of about 3 hours to tear down my glass L shaped desk and computers(the Mac Mini, Quad Core Vista, and Laptop and cradle) and move it to the new office.

The biggest problem was it appears that if you plug the KVM(a switch that lets you switch between 2 or more computer all using the same monitor, keyboard, and Mouse) back in in the opposite way, the monitors arent recognized the same so I had some driver/screen problems. Spent about  45 minutes of that ‘move in’ time on that last night… Well I tried switching the cords this morning, and Im back…

When doing the move I initially also spent some time moving my 8 years of emails over from Outlook Express on my home XP box to the Vista machine and Windows Mail. The ‘rules’ in Windows Mail should allow the program to do a lot of the sorting I do of orders and tech support and possibly some automated filling of orders without my help. Cool!

Should be interesting, Im sure Ill be much more productive, and a small drive home allows you to cool down at the end of the work day, and leave work at the office a little more… It should be nice…

 Ok, back to work…

I have been waiting for a long time for a shootout of the Big PIMs on Windows Mobile Standard. Obviously I think Extreme Agenda is on top or very near it. Especially on Standard(non Touchscreen) Devices, which I was there BEFORE the other two by a year or more( despite what the ‘review in question’ implies)… And unfortunately the PIM Shootout has come, and based on the scoring of this particular review Extreme Agenda somehow ended up 3rd. Now I guarantee that with other judges this shootout would turn out completely different, but I think its fair that in this judges eyes, the points went where he thinks they were deserved. And part of that I have to think is because of familiarity to the winning program. And a lot was because he didn’t quite do all the homework, which is understandable this would be a big undertaking.

http://www.mytodayscreen.com/shootout-smartphone-information-management/

So as a little rebuttal to the review, I will go through and tell you where we’re coming from on each of the points… You will probably want to read the review first for this to make sense…

Installation

Obviously we won because of size. Makes sense. We like to point this out any chance we can get. It actually probably should have been a bigger point gap, as PIMs are suggested to be installed into the main memory. And with PI we found ourselves having to clear off applications to get the almost 4MB necessary.

Configuration and settings

Unfortunately the review put too much basis on the Out-of-the-Box settings. I agree it makes sense to judge it here, but it just carries through most of the review.

Our design philosophy is a little different. We go for speed, usability and simplicity out of the box and in the program in general. But then you can tweak the heck out of it once you feel comfortable with the program.

We have designed the settings screen and placements almost too well it appears, as people including reviewers seem to think we have less options and customizations than we do. I think it can be argued we have MANY more options than Agenda One, but yet the reviewer actually put us in 3rd in this spot. I would guess its how its presented as being in the settings screens of the other programs almost gets overwhelming, where as we have hopefully organized it down very well, and put feature specific setups(like Search and the Spinner) in the menu only in that view.  We just don’t think the user did a good job reviewing the settings, as proof he didn’t find the ‘System Shortcuts’ so didnt really spend much time in our settings screens.

And just to Note, we have a “My View” type implementation as well like was listed for PI…

Interface Usability and Presentation

Navigation Menus - As noted in my comment, you can add Timeline View to the spinner, as well as single contacts, project view, saved views, applications and files. You can also turn on a straight menu based system or a ‘Next’ view right button system.

Presentation -  On the Day view shown in the example here is one example of leaving the program to “out-of-the-box” for this reviewers taste. How about if you configured the program to look like this instead. Yes, we end up showing more information and it can be presented much cleaner then theirs.(Note: Im not sure why he used Pocket Informants ‘Dates’ view against the other two applications ‘Day’ Views.)

And the reviewer didnt notice the display interaction and drawing being slow in PI with its default settings on? Are you sure you tested on a Standard Device? Honestly, PI was called a standout here, when in fact it is actually a struggle to even know what is selected a lot of times or what will happen if you select something. Im not sure where he got a menu, but context menus dont necessarily fit well into Non Touch Screen programs. So again, really, on a Standard Device?

And just a note as Im being totally fair here, I believe PI and AO both have Templates, just like XA…

Information Accessibility

Yes, we do integrate right into the OS as well. We went with not being as obtrusive so did not include it in the install process. This  can wreck other PIM installations you may have already done if you are trialing the programs. We do clean it up during an uninstall if you turn it on in our program. It can be found under ‘General Settings’ in Options under the System Section and gives more control on which sections you want to integrate.

For Coloring did he have status coloring or Category coloring turned on… Or…? They are in the settings as well…

Another one of those little examples that the reviewer overlooked about “Out-of-the-Box” is you can turn on Company Names in our Photo List as well(it was mentioned for PI). We just dont believe that that should be defaulted to On. We could be wrong. And what about presenting our Contacts in an Icon type Photo List. And…

Quality and Completeness of Included Views 

This section was a little confusing, but it appears that the reviewer doesnt quite grasp that you can accomplish a lot of the fancy features in PI with Category type filtering. Yes it does take it a step further, but then if you don’t use this feature, well its still in the way all over the Place. And I think he wasn’t up on our Link system, which is separate from our Projects view(try pushing action on an appt or task view; text links and linked items appear).

One thing we do consciously do, is try not to make a menu long enough it scrolls and hides options. So say for sorting(grouping), we moved it into the Sort Dialog easily accessible in the top level menu, and kept it clean. So only mentioning the Secure Wallet here just felt like PI was already the pre-determined winner. He likes the bloated menus… Personal preference.

Application Integration

We agree there are a couple things we need to work on here, but as explained in the last section, I dont think he quite followed everything available in both AO and XA…And he is obviously one who likes to have features there and visible(’in the way’), even if they will never be used… It makes it hard to be judged when a lot of your design philosophy is so that this isnt as big of a problem… 

Conclusion 

Overall a good review and Im not saying the outcome wouldnt be the same for this particular reviewer, XA is up against some good programs. But Im still waiting for a shootout in which all the homework is done, and I can look at what is said and say, “yep he did understand…”

I guess both AO and XA are designed under a different methodology as well. They are both more streamlined and ‘reigned in’ where as PI just kind of kept going, and yes no one will argue it has more ‘features’, but with that comes a lot of bloating and learning curve problems and outgrowing of the interface. And a lot of those features the majority of users will never use… Some reviewers feel that more than others…

I guess I just cant see a spot in any of these “events” where PI should be 2 and definitely not 3 points ahead of either of the other applications. Its just not really there…

I hope you do your homework… give all the Trials a Try…

I am hopefully going to attempt to 1. Release XA 3.3 and 2. start to move into my new office in Monona (Madison WI) today. There is something to be said for working in an office not in your house, productivity should climb very well and I may actually see people during the day… Im excited… And excited to get XA 3.3 out there. It is simply awesome and will be a great PIM for the new devices coming out, including the Treo 800w, the one handed usage matches up beautifully…

Phone Service Rant….

The plan was also to get the new Treo 800w today, but I did a bunch of calling yesterday and cant get out of the $400 early termination fees of Alltel even though their closest retail location to our new house is over an hour a way and Im using all other carrier’s towers down here… (Note to Alltel: Do you really think its a good idea to trap a longtime(~12 years+) customer into the end of their contract when they move out of a direct area, makes me guarantee I’m never coming back). And I tried calling Sprint to see if they’d help with covering the fees(I had heard they have done that) but did not have any luck(Note to Sprint: If you have a chance to get a new family plan customer with an everything Smartphone Plan purchasing 2 smartphones, doing a little something to help them jump ship is probably not a bad move). So anyway, now I also have to figure out how to get my Motorola Q off the Bootloader Screen of death or get a replacement somehow(yeah, Im probably out of warranty). And then in a couple months once Im within the home stretch, Ill drop my Alltel account down to the lowest it will go, and let it run out and come on over to Sprint(I guess or Verizon, if they have the 800w by then). Needless to say, I am a little irritated by the Mobile carriers. I wonder if I was the first one to be…?

Ok, A little update on where Birdsoft is at…

I have FairwayWatch working very well with GPS now, and just have a few finishing touches to do on it for usability and testing type stuff. And then I have to add the storing of all rounds in the database instead of as separate files, for easier analysis and synching… I have a new Desktop version started as well, which will be a big improvement…

Its fun that I actually have to golf to work. And boy the first time out with it was a weird one. I just got a new bag(mine was probably close to 20 years old, but was name brand so I lived with it), and so wasnt quite used to the new stand and backpack type straps… And then to carry around a Treo and a Bluetooth GPS. It was an akward round. And as I figured out later, it works much better to keep the GPS in your pocket for several reasons, one of which was both the GPS and TREO dropped out of my mesh bag compartment on the 4th hole, and I spent about 25 minutes walking up and down the fairway to find them… Oops.

It taught me a bunch about usage on the course(had to simplify how surveying points were entered and helped me come up with some other cool options Im putting in) and boy let me tell you that it works great once you have the course surveyed. While surverying it was tricky to remember that you need the GPS and the TREO, another reason you cant just leave the GPS in your bag. I kept getting to the other side of the green with the Treo and realizing that the GPS was in my bag over there.

Can’t wait until I get the 800w or ??? with GPS built-in…  But it is sure neat even just with a Bluetooth solution…

So watch for this before the end of the month.

But since I am running out of time…

My flagship product is still Extreme Agenda. And it has been nominated twice in the Smartphone and Pocket PC Magazine Awards. And I had thought all along that there were some big features I really wanted to get in 1. Before judging started and 2. Before this new awesome crop of next generation devices really hit the market.  I really think that with a solid group of impartial judges that havent already picked favorites, I have a good chance of taking a PIM award on 1 or both platforms. 

  So I have been doing some XA development and am very excited at what is coming for Version 3.30 probably next week. Calendar Text has been added to the program. As has support for the new Windows Mobile 6.1 longer screens 240×400 and 480×800. And now I am completing Drag-n-drop and more context menu support for Pro/Classic devices on the Calendar, Week, and Timeline Week views. Oh, and I believe I have the Q9h strange exit problem resolved too…  We’ll see, I might even throw in a couple more things as well…

So thats whats going on right now.. Back to the C++…

For those celebrating the 4th of July.. Have a safe and happy holiday…

Birdsoft

My silly New Years Resolution this year was that it was the “Year of Golf”. It was a fun little game I played so that I can hype up the fact that I want to play a little more golf and hopefully get back to the level I was right out of college. Don’t worry I’m not good…

It is kind of a built-in excuse to play more and to finally replace my irons that I bought right out of college(~12 years ago). They were nice clubs but at the time I dont think they pushed custom fitting clubs as much. Im a little on the taller side so have been playing with clubs that were over an inch too short for me for 12 years. It definitely made me bend my knees but…  Anyway, I already have the new Taylor Made Irons and had them lengthened, and if the driving range stays accurate I may have added 12-15 yards to my iron play. Nice.

We also moved to a location where some really nice courses are more accessible along with a good driving range really close. So Ive already taken advantage of the range quite a bit for my ‘Year of Golf’. Its a good quick stress reliever when my head is spinning with C++.  Oh, and I also took the oppertunity to update my wife’s clubs so she plays a few more times too…

And finally, my father-in-law, brother-in-law, and I are semi-competitive and besides fishing the other competition that we have fun with  on our ‘Up North’ trip is golfing. I was pretty dominant for a few years, but now they both have purchased clubs and taken up playing a little more, so… I better too…

But the point of this as it pertains to Mobile is that with this I have set aside a few weeks to update one of my popular applications, FairwayWatch - our golf scorecard application. I plan on using it more, but if Im going to do that I will need to have it compatible with Standard devices(I carry a Q). So what Im looking for is feedback on what would make this a must have for all you golfers out there?   Here are some things I am planning on or already have added…

• Standard Support - I’m porting it to Win32 and WM5 and above only. Using it with the soft keys makes it infinitely more usable one handed, and obviously it has to be for Standard Devices. In doing so I also get to use our new editing and options list based dialogs.
• Other Interface updates - we have ideas for a bunch of things to optimize the use so it is much easier to use on the course.
• 320×320 Screen and better Treo support. Obviously some of the things above help with this too.
• A Facelift - Color Themes and way bettter looking Buttons and better use of the screen space. Some themes will be light on dark for better contrast in sunlight.
• More Statistic Tracking - We have an idea on some but would love to hear more ideas…
• Internet course library from within the program
• A desktop verison with score card printing and multiple round analysis which will also allow for easier course entry and basic synching. Because of the switch to Win32 we will have to use slightly new file formats so conversion utilities will probably end up in the Desktop version.

We are thinking it would be good to combine all rounds into one file for each course instead of separate files which would make analysis much nicer. Thoughts…??? Other ideas?  What would you like to see…

We want it to be your year of golf too…

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Well, what I really had thought would be a pretty quick Update with some really cool features and a lot of the Ulti-Planner leftovers caught up turned into a longer update with a lot of cleaning up done. A couple of the new features made it in but a lot of them are being held over for 3.30 which we plan to release much more quickly.

I had forgotten just how much work it was to do the VGA support the first time around. It is a lot of graphics work and a lot of adjustments to get it looking good. But I think I suceeded. And 320×320 screens are going to look great too, Extreme Agenda is ready for my dream device(come on Treo 800 please have a 320×320 screen).

Photo Icon List was the big piece that did get in. I have had this idea for a long time and finally sat down early in 3.25 development and worked out how to accomplish it, and I think it turned out very useful. I tend to leave my regular device in that mode a lot.

We did a number of things behind the scenes code wise and also had to do some things to make the Pro/Classic Devices feel more correct. ‘Ok’ buttons on Dialogs, the Help system with access to it from the Start Menu and a few others…

We’ve also added support for some new ideas from different developer’s we really liked. SPB Mobile Shell support is available with 3.25. The integration information is available in our forums. We think it turned out pretty cool, and we are big fans of that product to make your WM Pro device that much nicer. With this we also had to add a whole bunch of command line handling which should further help in integrating with other products out there. We will post the documentation for this on our forums soon.

And then we have added the files to make it compatible with AppToDate over at modaco.com. This is an effort to have one program that you can check and see if all of your applications are up to date. Of course with XA you can also use the “Check for Update” in the Options Menu, but having them both can’t hurt.

We did work to make it so theme files can look a lot better with light text on dark backgrounds, as we noticed when trying to simulate some of Mobile Shell’s themes that some of our text just didnt look good and was not able to be changed. Hopefully we have moved in the right direction for this. By the way, XA looks great if you use Mobile Shell’s cool generated backgrounds(kind of Vista-ish) as the Spin and regular XA background image and simulate the theme. We have given you some of the theme files and information for this in our forums as well.

And thanks to Doug at MyTodayScreen who suggested the “New Appointment” and “New Task” be added to the Spinner. He really does love that view. I guess you can’t blame him.

Specific Standard issues that were brought up were also addressed such as Treo 500 keyboard support in contact search. If you had one please try 3.25 and let me know if I did not correct a fix you had brought up.

 So that’s the development of 3.25. We now plan to work on a few other things along with 3.30 which will contain the rest of the really cool new features coming over from Ulti-Planner or otherwise. Drag-n-drop, Single Tap Mode, and more… Hopefully we’ll have it out by the middle of May if not sooner!!!

Thanks