Use A PC Keyboard With Your Handheld
MobilityWare has released a new desktop based application that enables a existing desktop PC keyboard to be used with a handheld for typing data directly into applications over a cable or wireless connection.
The KeyLink programs runs on windows PCs. A connection between the keyboard and handheld can be made through a HotSync USB cable, or wireless connection over WiFi or Bluetooth. Once connected, the program allows the keyboard to be used for data entry with any palm os application.
KeyLink provides extensive keystroke mapping, cutting and pasting from the PC, support for the "delete" key, navigating menus and shortcuts, launching apps and other features.
TapSmart KeyLink requires Palm OS 4 or OS 5 (Garnet). It is available for download for $19.95 [BUY]. Typical Palm handhelds supported include the PalmOne Tungsten, Zire, and Treo 600 models, SONY Clie models, and other specialized handhelds such as the Garmin IQ3600. TapSmart KeyLink also requires Windows 98, 2000, or XP, TCP networking or USB cradle, and the Java Virtual Machine version 1.4 or later.
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Palm screen on PC screen
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My wife has to sell a lot of candles (www.ccandles.com) to buy her new Palm.
RE: Palm screen on PC screen
It's not quite real-time, but MobilityWare has a solution for this, too:
http://www.mobilityware.com/HandShare/HandShareProduct.htm
Oliver
How to get a Palm screen on the PC screen
It just needs to be hacked to display full screen mode.
RE: Palm screen on PC screen
John Heard
http://www.mobilityware.com
RE: Palm screen on PC screen
There's a free, open source solution for this: VNC. We would need the VNC server running on the PDA, and a client on the desktop.
Problem is: right now, there's only VNC client for Palm OS. So the PDA can be a controller, but not be controlled.
Funny thing is: there are VNC servers for mobile devices. It's there for the Zaurus (but surely that was too easy, heh). It's more interesting to see that the server has been ported to PocketPC.
http://www.pocketvnc.com/pocketVNC.aspx
In fact, looks like M$ smartphones do include a propietary solution...
http://msmobiles.com/news.php/1764.html
And, hey, there's even a limited Java version! (*chuckle*)
Funniest thing is: since we can't use the free, open source alternatives, we have to pay for some half baked solution.
Niiiiice...
Question for the developer
I'm a bit suspicious as to why it requires access to the internet. I ran HandShare, with my firewall blocking it from the internet, but it would only give me continious errors. As soon as I gave it access privilege the errors stopped :/
What information does HandShare need to send or receive over the internet??
Regards,
Niall
RE: Palm screen on PC screen
Cobalt will open up a lot of this levelof functionality. VNC relies on running as a background task, and the current (Garnet and lower) OS model only has limited support for this.
I predict a port of VNC (or a server that at least responds to the same requests and returns data in the expected format) to arrive for OS6 devices fairly soon after their release.
~ "Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed." - DV ~
RE: Palm screen on PC screen
It should be about innovation rather than porting ... this is a similar argument to the whole "skins" thing elsewhere on PIC. While porting is far more technically challenging than creating a skin based off another device, it comes down to a similar notion.
But, porting is a necessary evil on the road to "cross platform development". Subtl difference, but one I hope you'll understand.
~ "Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed." - DV ~
RE: Palm screen on PC screen
HandShare does not send anything over the Internet when you are using it with USB. What you are seeing is a local TCP/IP connection over the loopback address of 127.0.0.1 The HandShare PC component is architected to accept TCP/IP connections, the support for USB is a seperate program that communicates with the Palm over USB and then forwards the communication over a Local (127.0.0.1) TCP/IP connection.
John Heard
http://www.mobilityware.com
RE: Palm screen on PC screen
Well, here we are, wishing for someone to innovate so we can substitute the non-ported VNC.
Innovation is nice. Meanwhile, wouldn't it be useful to be able to use the tools that already exist - and that the rest of the world is already using?
(more so when those tools are free and even open source - so innovation does not need to start from scratch :P)
RE: Palm screen on PC screen
Damn straight. Porting propogates code that has been optimised for one platform onto other platforms that need to then be tweaked to make the code run in that environment, which is then ported to another environment, and so forth through the vicious development cycle.
Standards and common communication protocols needed for things such as VNC. Scrap the codebase (well, not entirely, use it for reference), and rewrite the damn thing adhering to the communication protocols needed for a VNC client and server to talk to each other. The code on the PalmOS device will then be coded from the ground up to work on the Palm, NOT on a Debian Linux server, or a Mac OS9 server, or a Windows 98 server. But the key is that these apps talk to each other, and know how to respond.
As I said, porting is a necessary evil ... but it doens't mean I have to like it.
(BTW - My background is software engineering. I wrote a lot of code in C for the Palm VII to take advantage of the TCPIP stack ... then I moved onto cellphones in C ... now I am waiting on Cobalt and the underlying hardware to catch up to where I need it to be for me to start developing again ... so I am semi qualified to rant 8^)
~ "Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed." - DV ~
Thanks John
Regards,
Niall
RE: Palm screen on PC screen
Surely that CAN happen. But code can also be born "abstract enough" to be reasonably portable, right?
Scrap the codebase (well, not entirely, use it for reference), and rewrite the damn thing adhering to the communication protocols needed for a VNC client and server to talk to each other
On any "sane" system, there should be a salvageable part of the code. There will be another part that will have to be tweaked, and yet other that will have to be totally rewritten.
Let's talk about specifics. We don't have a VNC server for Palm OS. The part about getting the screen data would have to be custom written for the OS or even the hardware - I don't know. But what about the code to compress that image? And the code to send it over the network? Couldn't all of that be recycled almost as-is? (that is, if Palm OS had a real standard C lib)
So I still can't see why porting could be bad. Innovation is nice, as I already said. But here we're not asking for something innovative, but for functionality that has been in use for some years now! So, to me, it looks like right now we need more ease of implementation and less innovation.
Recently, on another thread, I said that the current situation with OS 5 reminds me of Mac OS classic. It was such a particular platform that porting was quite rare. Developers were kind of forced to (re)write their apps specifically for Mac OS, and that usually brought beautiful, solid, powerful apps - but also meant an ever diminishing number of developers and apps. You can see that that almost killed Mac OS... but then, OS X arrived. Now porting from other platforms is much, much easier... and, guess what? there are even more developers that take care to personalize the apps for the OS. The bonus is: if they don't, you are free to choose between the off-the-shelf, powerful app ported from Linux or a carefully crafted, OS X-specific work of art - but perhaps lacking in some respect. The funny thing is, that specific one sometimes is based on the same ported code!
So, again, I can't see easyness of porting could be regarded as a bad thing.
Useless
UZI4U182@suscom.net
Main PDA: NX70v + WL100
http://clieflash.shorturl.com
RE: Useless
If PalmGear puts it on sale for ten bucks, then we're talking. I just don't imagine I'll use it so much to make it more valuable to me than that.
nothing new!
did anybody remeber "keyz" (I don't remember the exact name) for Palm?
It was exactly the same solution and it was minimum 2 years ago.
I used and tested it on a Palm IIIxe.
It's funny but not as useful as an external Keyboard for the Palms :-)
T.W.G www.twgmusic.de
Palm Powered Handheld Reviews from T.W.G at: www.pdaforum.de
RE: nothing new!
http://www.genovation.com/product.asp?cid=2&pid=11
"Operate your Palm PDA using your PC's keyboard and mouse."
Pebbles
This looks like something the Pebbles project has had for years...
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~pebbles/
One by one, the penguins are stealing my sanity.
RE: Pebbles
John Heard
http://www.mobilityware.com
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Submarine Screen Door?
But the attraction seems quite limited. Besides an encrypted password app, I personally do not see much usage for the 70-80 apps that I have. Most already sync keyed data.