Firstly, of course it’s the new calendar applet I have released over the weekend. Not exactly an “official” release, but more of a release candidate, so that I can validate the applet’s device compatibility especially with non wide vga devices.

There’s a breakthrough in this major version release, as I have built an external program to query the PIM database in Windows Mobile, so that I can display the busy status for each day in the calendar’s month view. While this is possible in PointUI scripting engine, but it’ll result in a big performance hit. Since this is the first time I have ventured into POOM (pocket outlook object model) , I thought it was a personal breakthrough for me as well

Anyway, it’s a near but not a finished product yet, you can find more information about the applet and its development from this thread

Then, the weekend started brilliantly with the boys (my nephews) participating a half day 5-a-side soccer tournament, organised by their soccer coaching school, and held at Tampinese SAFRA club. It was scorching hot and I admire the boys perserverance  to withstand the heat to compete in this tournament. Before the game, we had a casual bet with Ray that he would have to score 6 goals, since he scored the only goal in the last tournament, which unfortunately was an own goal. Kang had a jibe on the bet, saying that it’ll be a 6 own goals. Eventually, Ray bagged 7 goals, in 6 games, helping his team to win the cup final. And no, they are all well taken shots, not own goals! Arguably the top goal scorer in his age group (under-8), and certainly he had grown alot  from footballing perspective, as evident from his performance in his games. Inspite of his achievement, Ray was not over the top, and instead gave credits to Kang, for shaping him to be such a prolific goal poacher! Kang did well too, scoring two goals, and a couple of assists which landed his team a plate champion. The boys however, were disappointed of the lack of trophies, as the organiser decided to pack candies as prizes to the cup winners! What a bummer!

Then I had the chance to meddle with the PSP firmware. It all started when Kang’s PSP firmware had upgraded to official firmware accidentally, and it means he couldn’t play the games he used to be able to play. I tried to have a go on upgrading his psp, and it turns out, as I have realised from reading the internet forums, that I need to have a “pandora” battery along with the custom firmware installers in the memory stick. The latter isn’t a problem, it’s the “pandora” battery that’s a breaker. Apparently, the battery has a function to instruct PSP to boot from the device’s ROM, where the official firmware is contained. In order to overwrite the original firmware, the PSP needs to boot from the memory card, and the only way to do so is to use the pandora battery so that it can instruct PSP to boot appropiately. The difference, in terms of hardware design, between a “pandora” battery, and normal PSP battery, is that the pin #5 in the battery circuit, is de-soldered (or removed) so that the instruction (to boot from the device ROM) is by-passed. 

In the end, it wasn’t a fruitless attempt, as I have upgraded yeez’s PSP (as she already had the custom firmware installed). Certainly there’s a feel good factor, although I’m going to experiment with the “pandora” battery later

One of the things I had wanted to include is a better flip clock animation. Coding was rather straight forward, although graphic wise it was abit of challenge and in the end, I decided to reuse the graphics rendered by the original Flipclock applet developer. 

The other feature I like to include in the Home applet is the ability to provide a quick glance of the various system resource status, such as phone signal, and battery level.  This would enable me to set “full screen” mode in Home2. Instead of writing individual piece of codes for each system control, I have decided to build classes so that I can reuse for every system control that I would like to track.  One new idea I have brought to this applet, is the concept of “Icon Ribbon”. This enables one to scroll through a row of system icons, even if the screen could not hold all these icons within a single row. The end result is a scrollable “Icon Ribbon” as shown in the video below.

More work is required to polish up the applet before it can be released to public. I just can’t wait for weekend to come

Version 1.6 is finally released. Here’s a quick summary of the fixes, enhancements and added features.

April-21: version 1.6 beta-1 download link for VGA/WVGA and QVGA/WQVGA

• Fix: Today indicator and text does not automatically get updated (when a new Today occurs)
• Fix: Bug in the appointment area which always default to year 2009
• Enhance: Optimize performance esply when you switch from month to month
• Enhance: Improved UI for All Appointment/Day view
• Added: Variable size applet support (applet now make use of the available applet space, based on your setting such as full screen, search button, etc)
• Added: Landscape support (for wvga screen, the appointments will show on the right hand side of the calendar)
• Added: Year view to select and jump to the month calendar view
• Installation Prerequisite: Home2 0.30b must be installed
• Installation Note: Install the CAB and add the calendar applet from the applet screen. The loading time of the applet could take a few seconds but this is only when you first add the applet, or when PointUI is starting up. Copy theTheme.XML file to your active theme folder for optimal display

calendar main screen (month-view)

Calendar Day View

Calendar Year View

Calendar Year View (landscape)

• Fix: Today indicator and “Today”/”Tomorrow” text not updated after a day
• Feature Added: Animation while loading calendar and displaying appointment summary on main screen
• Feature Added: Tapping on the appointment date (under the calendar) brings up screen that shows all the appointments for the selected date. The appointments are paginated (4 per screen) and you can swipe left/right to navigate from screen to screen.
• limited support for VGA/QVGA device
• Installation Note: Backup/Remove the calendar folder, Run Calendar-1.5-b1.CAB in your device’s file explorer. Copy Theme.xml to your active theme folder

Download Links

QVGA and WQVGA devices: Download

VGA and WVGA devices: Download

About a month back, PointUI finally announced their release of Home2 software, a Windows Mobile shell application that replaces the boring but functional Today screen. It was impressive to say the least, in terms of its performance and potential. However, the lack of applets means it’s all show and nothing beyond  in terms of making the phone device more productive.

That said, within weeks, there are  more and more third party developers began to create and release new applets to complete the usability of the shell program. Clock,  Messaging, Weather, Stock Ticker, Task, Appointment, etc are just some of the applets released by the developer community. Yours truly, shamelessly join in the bandwagon, and created a calendar and appointment applet, which can be found here