Need help from Palm OS developers...

[yashg]

We are developing a website to sell software and games for all types of mobile devices/PDAs and I need some help from some Palm OS developers and enthusiasts/users.

I am new to Palm software because I am basically a Windows Mobile developer. I was wondering how can we decide about the compatibility of the software with various Palm OS devices. We have thought of a few possibilities -

Palm OS version
Screen resolution

So can anyone give me some information about different versions of Palm OS and the popular screen resolutions of Palm devices? Also are there any other aspects on which I can decide whether a software will be compatible with a device or not?

I'd like to ask developers - when you develop and compile your applications how do you make sure it is compatible with most of the devices?

[Greek]

Old devices and Z22: 160 x 160
Handera (discontinued): 240 x 320 (I think an early Garmin had QVGA too).
Newer high res: 320 x 320
T3, T5, TX, LD all have 320 x 480 or 480 x 320 pixels.

All current devices display 65000 colors, m130 did 4096, older IIIc had 256 colors. Others were monochrome with 16 shades of grey and very old had 4 shades.

I can´t help you much more as I am just an user. :)

Regards,

[dmitrygr]

you can feel free developing to OS5.0 and above, as most devices are like that now. high/low resolution is taken card of by the OS so you need not worry about it.

[I love my mom]

the Z22 Doesn't have an SD card slot. The Treo smart phones have cameras, and some have a weird resolution. Some devices have bluetooth and some don't (only the old palms). TX has wifi. I understand that you probably experienced this with PocketPC's, but be aware...

[yashg]

Thanks for that information guys. But I need some more help.

Let me clarify that we don't actually want to develop the applications ourselves. We just want to sell third party apps for different kinds of devices like Handango and PalmGear. So I was wondering what should we ask the developers to fill in while they add their applications. Should we show them a list of different Palm OS version and ask them to choose which all versions they support? Similarly I was thinking of asking to select different resolutions that their software supports.

We are going to create a database of various Palm devices available out there in the market and when users search for software for their device, we want to display them only those software that are compatible with their device. So I think Operating System version, resolution and screen color - are three parameters that we should match to decide the compatibility of the software with the device.

Do you think we should consider any more parameters? Where can I get some information about different versions of Palm OS?

[pruss]

Is there really a need for one more Palm software sale site? For instance, I sell on palmgear, pdassi, mobihand, addit, software.palm.com and my own page on zlthemes.com. Sales from every venue other than palmgear, addit and my own page are small. When I had listed on handango, sales were very small. To update with new versions on multiple sites is a non-trivial amount of work, often not justified by the sales.

A new site would be unlikely to have sales sufficient to justify the effort of submitting new versions, I fear, unless it offered something very different to the developer (e.g., low commission--but mobihand's commission is already moderately low), or was going to do massive advertising.

[I love my mom]

Yes, you need to determine wether they have bluetooth, and whether they have a card slot. Programs like TXT+ require a memory card.

[yashg]

Is there really a need for one more Palm software sale site? For instance, I sell on palmgear, pdassi, mobihand, addit, software.palm.com and my own page on zlthemes.com. Sales from every venue other than palmgear, addit and my own page are small. When I had listed on handango, sales were very small. To update with new versions on multiple sites is a non-trivial amount of work, often not justified by the sales.

A new site would be unlikely to have sales sufficient to justify the effort of submitting new versions, I fear, unless it offered something very different to the developer (e.g., low commission--but mobihand's commission is already moderately low), or was going to do massive advertising.

You have raised a very good question. Why one more website? Well first of all PDA software market is really small compared to other forms of software and it is dominated by two big players the market is growing and there is definitely room for others. Developers are not happy with the huge amount of commission charged by the two market leaders and they can always use an additional sales channel.
Right now there is not a single ESD site that concentrates on the developers.
Our USP:
1) Low commissions
2) Innovative marketing
3) Customer support - most of the big names suck big time in customer support, we being a small company can score here.
4) Thrust on emerging markets like India and China - these markets are small compared to developed markets of Europe and US but they have huge potential.

Besides this there are going to be lots of developer centric services which we can't reveal right now. But when we are ready, we will have something special for developers.

[yashg]

Yes, you need to determine wether they have bluetooth, and whether they have a card slot. Programs like TXT+ require a memory card.

Thanks for that info. :)

[pruss]

1) Low commissions

Mobihand does that.

2) Innovative marketing

Good, but of course it depends on how it's done.

3) Customer support - most of the big names suck big time in customer support, we being a small company can score here.

If the customers know ahead of time how much better your support is. In my experience with palmgear, the support work lands on my lap pretty quickly anyway. ;-)

4) Thrust on emerging markets like India and China - these markets are small compared to developed markets of Europe and US but they have huge potential.

This is promising, except that I pessimistically expect the Palm platform to be on its way out, and so by the time the India/China market develops, it will be too late for Palm developers.

[pruss]

I should say what would attract me--a way of scriptable, automated releases. If I can just run a command-line script after a build to upload a new version, perhaps changing a bit of text, without having to go to some website, log in, click here, click there, that would be very attractive. (software.palm.com has that via ftp)

[yashg]

PAD files do exactly that. PAD file is a kind of xml file that you can put smewhere on your website and just give the URL to the sites selling your software. PAD s becoming a very much like industry standard and even the biggies like download.com and Tucows support it. We are also going to support PAD files. You can google up for PADGen utility which is a freeware tool to generate PAD files.

So once you have created your PAD file and uploaded somewhere on the web, next time when you upgrade your application, also update the PAD file. All the sites tracking your PAD file will automatically update their records.

[khertan]

And of course ... none of palm esd know something about padgen ... :(

When i make a small update of one of my own shareware it s take more time to update all web site than correct the bugs.

[yashg]

I know. I am developer myself. I know how painful and time consuming it is to update each website.

That is going to be our USP - developer centric ESD!

[mazzy]

Yashg, good to hear your planning on challenging the existing players.....I have a few questions for you though,

1) is your site going to be any different to handango/palmgear on the buyer side, will it at least be comparable in terms of buying experience?

2) When are you signingup developers

3) when are you launching?

lastly all the best for your venture and i hope it goes well for you :)

[Aces]

Let me weight in as a user. I use Palmgear because it has the most number of software titles out there, and it seems fairly easy to use. When I'm looking for software for my Clie TH-55, I find it in one of two ways. Either I hear about it in the Applications forum, here on 1src; or I search PalmGear using various search criteria. Probably the only time I used a different website to buy (Handago) was because the software was only purchasable through that site.

But I am probably not your target customer. I've been using PDA's for over 5 years (all Palm O/S). And it isn't very often I'm looking for new software. You might want to start a thread to solicit comments from all sorts of users. Unless you've already done your research.

Best of luck!

[yashg]

mazzy and Aces thanks for your views. Frankly speaking we have not yet given much thought on the user end. It's an idea and it is still evolving. Actually I am going to ask users what they would like to see in an online software store.

1) is your site going to be any different to handango/palmgear on the buyer side, will it at least be comparable in terms of buying experience?
At least one thing is sure for now - free download protection forever. Handango charges $3 in the name of download protection so you can re-download the software you paid for in future. We are going to offer it for free to everybody. We have a desktop product and one of the most common request we receive is for re-sending the download instructions. Some times users come back to us after a year and ask for the download again.

2) When are you signingup developers
Very soon. We are building the developer module right now. We will invite some developers to list with us in the beta phase.

3) when are you launching?
Not sure. We first need to find out what users exactly want and build the interface accordingly. I will start a separate thread thread about that here.

I agree to Aces that searching and finding the right software will be key to a great user experience. To attract users and offer them what they are looking for, we need to get more and more developers to list with us. To get developers to list with us we have to offer something more than handango, palmgear. So we are working on that aspect first. The next phase will be to build a front end for the site that offers better user experience.

[pruss]

I know. I am developer myself. I know how painful and time consuming it is to update each website.

That is going to be our USP - developer centric ESD!

Yes, but if none of the other ESDs support PAD, then updating the PAD file is still going to be yet another thing to do... Or at least writing the scripts to update it automatically on release.