17 November 2004

Palm development kits are now free! As the popularity of Microsoft's handheld computing platform grows and grows, Palm have made a very wise decision in allowing developers free access to tools, SDK's, documentation and emulators for their own PalmOS. Simply head over to www.palmsource.com and sign up (for free). They've even gone so far as publishing a set of step by step articles walking developers through deciding exactly how they are going to develop, what flavour of PalmOS they are going to target, and which tools and SDK's they need to download to do so over at http://www.palmos.com/dev/start/. All in all this is a very wise decision. Mac OS X grows and grows in popularity among developers primarily because everything you need to start developing on the machine is free (as in beer) and readily available. Linux at its very core is popular because the tools and documentation you need are available for free (as in speech and beer) as well. Java I think still has the grip it has because the tools, SDKs and documentation are free. Applications drive an operating system's uptake, and so this can only really be good news for the long term future of the worlds fastest and most stable handheld operating system (yes, I actually prefer and use PalmOS over WindowsCE/PocketPC/Smartphone etc etc).   UPDATE: It seems that (excluding Java) C is the way to go for programming the Palm devices. Again this is a good call on the part of Palm because on a technical level you don't need to load up the machine with bulk runtimes, and applications can be very very small. On a practical level this opens up Palm development to millions of accomplished programmers out there that have been doing C for years (lack of official support for C++ is a little strange though). There are three ways to develop with C. One is Codewarrior based, which will set you back about 400 dollars, but which runs on Windows and MacOS (and we all know how much Mac users love their Palm devices). The second is command line based, and works with a derivative of GCC, the free C Compiler from the GNU project. We'll scratch that one of the list because no matter what the Linux chaps say, command line compilation is tedious, complex and so very 80's. The third is something called the PalmOS Development Suite. The latter is based around Eclipse. It integrates all the PalmOS SDK's and such right into Eclipse, an IDE that I still feel can teach Visual Studio a thing or two about how IDE's should look and behave. Suddenly I'm quite curious to try out development on a Palm device ;)   11:29:19 PM    comment [] iTunes Music Store Celebrity Playlists I've just had a three day workload reduced to about a day, and it's all writing. Contrary to popular belief writers can't just "write", they need to be in the mood. Of course in business, such "artistic" whims don't usually go down too well ("You want it today? Oh no, I couldn't possibly - I need to find my muse!"). So, to get the mood I have music, very very loud music. Heather and "the boy" have been relegated to the local park while I shift everything else I'm working on sideways to exceed my customer's expectations (love that phrase - it's a pile of poo of course, but it sounds cool). I've been listening various incredibly attractive female rock godesses scream and wail away at me all morning so I thought I'd drop into iTunes Music Store briefly to see if there was something new I could grab. Apple's legendary online music store has long been a great example of innovative thinking - you could call it "Think Different" for Music. One of the features on the site is the celebrity playlist. These are playlists generated by famous people with their own personal comments attached to the songs in the list. Typically these would be done by well known musicians so that you can get some glimpse into their influences and sources. Occassionally though, just occassionally, someone puts up a playlist from a non-musician (or in this case an hilarious wannabe musician). Today is one such day, and there at the bottom of the list of celebs is a list from William Shatner. Awesome stuff! Ella Fitzgerald, Jamie Cullum, and Ben Folds all feature. Sometimes, just sometimes, I'm reminded why I used to love Apple so much. Back to writing....   11:52:05 AM    comment []

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