Birdsoft Blog

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!

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…

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

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

I have purchased a Mac Mini for iPhone Development. I have played with Macs a bit the past few years, but never really sitting and doing anything for long or trying to accomplish anything on it…

So I did spend part of today setting it up and trying it out.

It was an interesting experience. The Mac Mini is nice in that I will just get a KVM switch so I can use the same monitor,keyboard, and mouse as my current development box. I had to buy one ps2 to USB adaptor and the KVM will be around $30 so not too bad with a $600 mini. I expected to have invested a lot more with Apple’s inflated prices (it would have been $100 for their mouse and keyboard and $600 for their monitor).  Though I do still have to buy a Touch for testing. And possibly more RAM.

Initial impressions… It was very nice to setup. I plugged this stuff in and it worked and found and used my wireless network very easily during setup.

But man, I just don’t see why people brag up OS X… Its flaking out and getting in my way more than it is “intuitive and bug free”. Ive already seen system errors in one day of just playing around(it makes the little blue screen jokes that Apple geeks make seem silly, especially since I havent seen one in years)… And trying to watch Developer Videos from iTunes was just plain goofy. It ‘may’ be a little prettier(coming from XP) but some of that was getting in the way of functionality for me as well. Yeah, a few small things were placed nicer in the UI, but others….

 So now I’ve been there and done that, I don’t think I’ll drink the Kool-Aid, and definitely not when the cost is so high for something not really as good.

But who knows maybe my opinion will change…

But I do now have the iPhone SDK up and running and have played with compiling some sample applications and stuff so, now its time to decide where I want to go with it…Ideas?

In about 2003 after the success of my Student Planner “The Dog Ate It” I decided I have the development skills that I could easily compete with the “Big Boys” in the Personal Information Manager(PIM) world on Pocket PC(PI and AF). I had actually been around some of the development boards a couple years earlier when the first incarnations of these PIMs were just getting started with a Basic Week View much like what was found on the Grandaddy of all PDA PIMs, DateBK for Palm (Ive since met the Developer, a very intrigueing guy!). I don’t know why I didn’t see it then and just take over the market in its infancy!? It parallels why I sat on a nearly complete Extreme Agenda later on, both mysteries in ‘what was I thinking?’

 Anyway, they had both been around for a while, but I had some good base code and ideas and so finished up Ulti-Planner and in June of 2003 released it. Unfortunately I was the new guy in the already established “PIM Wars” and so having a couple years jump on me in development, advertising, and customer base well it was a tough little market to jump into. And so, while sales were “pretty good” I needed better to survive and so leaned on the dominant spot I had in the Pocket PC poker market, and went with 2 flagship products. Part of my problem I still believe was that somewhere in there I decided to be “the cheap alternative” with a low price and no upgrade costs. And while I had a lot of fans because I was also argueably ahead in ‘ease of use’ for the time the ‘cheap’ got me more sales, but maybe lost some credability as I now trully believe that people use price as more of a ‘quality’ marker than they even should. And as such, while I developed the heck out of Ulti-Planner in parallel to my other titles that first couple years, the revenue just wasnt coming that could afford me the ability to work more exclusively on it. I got it to where I felt I was very close to parallel to PI and AF in features(no small feat with them having a few year development head start). It even had VGA as I did splurge on an Dell x50v at the time and so added cool features like calendar text.

 And then Windows Mobile 5 came around, and while they had the budgets for devices and connections with Microsoft that you need Ulti-Planner didn’t get converted over as fast as possible. A lot of work was needed about that time as to be a good PIM you need to do a lot of cache-ing of data and direct access to the databases that Microsoft uses for Pocket Outlook( the development API just isnt fast enough). Well they changed that in WM5 which broke all of our Custom code. So during this time Ulti-Planner lost part of the market share it had captured. So the underdog slipped lower and lower. I eventually did get my x50v updated to WM5 for testing and with the emulators got there, but I was watching the other Developer blogs at the time and know they were ’supposedly’ working on WM5 months before it ever saw the light of day… I didnt have WM5 support until May of 2006… Ouch…

I had some very good original ideas, some of which were even then used by everyone else, pretty cool! For some reason a lot of the PIM War forum discussions at the time degraded into ‘who copied who’. Essentially the truth of it all is that almost everything whether the developer also came up with it on their own or not, could be considered copied from DateBk and other earlier Calendars and Addressbooks on earlier PDAs. That being said, because I couldn’t work on it full-time for revenue reasons, a lot of the refining and even a lot of the big ideas weren’t fully explored in Ulti-Planner yet.

Somewhere in there, mostly for All-In development, I did purchase a MPX-220 WM Smartphone. It was a pretty cool and advanced flip phone for the time. And during and after the development of ’All-In SP’ I also did a ton of work on converting the code of Ulti-Planner (which is based on MFC, a C++development library popular on the desktop and Pocket PC) over to the more generic Win32 (for some reason MFC is on PPCs but not Smartphones), and re-coded it so everything would draw on the smaller 176×220 screens and with no stylus. Luckily a lot of the back-end classes for data and database stuff was re-usable, but it was a lot of work. So way back in November of 2004 I actually had a non-touch Screen Calendar application working. I even posted a page on our site asking for Beta Testers in June of 2005 showing some early screenshots seen here…

 And then another great mystery happened. Why I waited so long. Now part of it was some other development that needed to be done and some was that I just had some development left on Ulti-Planner SP that needed to get done, but I did sit on the project for a while until the hints of great devices like the Q were coming… Why I didnt just release UP for SP before Papyrus(the only other real SP integrated task and calendar solution) ever came out was a mystery to me. But another top notch developer did  see the light around that time(I hope not by seeing my Beta Page??) and released a pretty good product in this gap(Papyrus). Developer One had some ok non-integrated offerings that were the only other real alternative, and I’m sure just an early experiment into the market. Why I didn’t just go for it then is beyond me…

But in June of 2006 I finally had Ulti-Planner for Smartphone finished, and obviously renamed, and Extreme Agenda was born.

This time I saw a much better return at a little nicer price-point and that’s all it took for me to dive whole-heartedly into doing what I had always wanted to do with it. I quickly integrated Tasks(it appears I only had it out a week without it) and then within a month had the Photo Contacts List in there. Features came fast and furious and I quickly out-distanced the features of my competition. Version 2.0 was out by November with a built-in “Secure Wallet” and so many other features that I was easily the market leader on Smartphone.

Also In November my main rival came out. Developer One released Agenda One. It really felt like Extreme Agenda in that it had been completely re-written to run well one handed(without a stylus), and show the data in a lot of the same ways as XA did. I actually liked a lot of what they did on that and they did do a few really cool new things that made things even simpler and more refined. And Mostly Pretty(it depends on a lot of fancy icons)!, But a lot of the success I attribute to the partnerships, advertising money, and fan base they already had with Agenda Fusion. They have a little better connections!   

They did do something that I wanted to in releasing it to TouchScreen devices very quickly afterwards. Which shocked a lot of the PPC world, as why would you intentionally compete with your own product… I now know the answer that John, the owner of DevOne, gives and its a thinker… He’s a good guy that I enjoy talking to and he definitely has a more business type mind than I can take credit for… And I will say that Agenda One has pushed me to Innovate even further even faster.

In 2007 I made strides to get XA to where I really wanted it to be as far as features I could foresee before moving it over to touchscreen and phasing out the Ulti-Planner Product. I worked all summer (and it was prolonged do to weird things like floods and stuff around our town) on getting version 3.0 out the door. It has some great things in it like our Spin Selection screen which is so popular it may be built into other products, and the integrated Project View, based off our product “Project-ing”.

And the end of the year(complicated by our family moving and…) it was finally time to build back in all of the touchscreen features, Square Screen Pro device handling, and add “Finger Friendly” things so that Extreme Agenda could be our one PIM moving forward. With Win32 and the new development behind it, it is Lighter, Faster, and more Refined.  At the same time as our Pro/Classic additions in the 3.1x releases we also went to a really cool List Based Editing scheme which not only looks good, but makes everything easier to manipulate on our end which will make new feature development that much faster… We just have 1 more update that will add a few more things in that Ulti-Planner had (Master Tasks, Journal, VGA, Drag -n- Drop) and we feel that we have actually pulled ahead(ok, for you skeptics or other PIM fan-boys) EVEN in the Windows Mobile Organizer Market. Yes there will always be a few features that we have that they dont and vice versa… And yes we will add features if that is what is important, we do it all the time…

Competition

Agenda Fusion is still a good product but is very stylus intensive and Im not sure of its true future as obviously Agenda One as stepped in by the same company. AO is a very neat application with a lot of things going for it, but they are not as free with innovation. Yes the product was neat and innovative, but the extended features you recieved and had to pay an upgrade free for in their Version 2.0 wouldnt have even been enough to make a .x upgrade in Extreme Agenda by itself. For example, we put in the [Contact Linking] feature, that was one of the big major features they advertised, in our free 3.1 upgrade and you might not have even noticed it mentioned.

And yes we noticed Pocket Informant just came out with version 8, and yes it does some good things and always has. But PI, as our advertising for Ulti-Planner used to point out, has always felt like it has outgrown its interface. There are just too many features in it that you will never use which makes the options, menus, and use just plain too confusing and a large learning curve.  And PI8 tried to address this but I (yes I’m biased) think it fell a little short, and had some very substantial growing pains that went along with it… And going from stylus to no stylus is much harder than the other way around. We’ve essentially done both with this product.   But, Ive always liked PI the best of the rest, and their development won’t rest so… Im glad we’re back to competing with them and they’ve gone away from marketing someone else’s product as PI for Smartphones…

And yes, Agendus has come over to join the party… But I think even a year later they haven’t quite got down Windows Mobile development, and so have released some rather peculiar and problematic versions of the product which is not what you want to do. Im sure they have picked up a lot of people making the move from Palm OS to WM with the “promise” of familiarity… But I really hope most of those people are trying the other offerings out there as well. Im sure they will be pleasantly surprised by the more refined and native WM 3rd Party PIMs…

As I hope you all do too… On Windows Mobile Try the Trial Versions of all the Great PIMs and then decide which you like best… Don’t just go by what you see first… You may be sorry… 

The Future of Extreme Agenda

Believe me I have pages and pages of ideas for Extreme Agenda.. I hope now Im on the right road to taking over the Windows Mobile PIM world, and that WM keeps growing and growing…!!! It appears that with the continued success on Standard Devices and early new success of the Pro/Classic Version we can. And some of the ideas are just plain Awesome… So if you haven’t already, come Join the Windows Mobile Organizer Revolution!!

And the design and thinking has now changed. Utli-Planner was designed with consistancy and ease of use in mind and that has carried over. But Extreme Agenda, it was like somewhere in there we were enlightened. So everything is based on Great Controls, Good Looks, Effortless Usability, the best default options… Its amazing going back and looking at the stylus heavy Ulti-Planner and thinking, wow why didn’t I just do this and this and this and it would have been so much more friendly… Well, XA is…

Thanks for reading this… And I hope you aren’t offended if I was too candid anywhere… It’s a blog and I’m an honest guy. That’s what happens…

Enjoy!