New version of Mazer for Palm Pre & Pixi

A new version of Mazer, my fun free game for the Palm Pre & Pixi has just landed in the Palm App Catalog.  This version includes

• an improved look and feel,
• performance improvements to make the ball move more smoothly, and
• much improved physics, giving the player much more control over the ball.

See the images below for an idea of how the game looks.  Then run over to the Palm App Catalog and download it for free!  Have fun

Mazer – A Great free app for the Palm Pre & Pixi

On Feb 1st I released a really fun free app for the Palm Pre & Pixi smartphones called Mazer. Mazer is a puzzle game that gives you an unlimited number of mazes to complete, both alone and racing against an automated opponent.

You control a ball by tilting the phone, rolling it around the game using a highly accurate physics engine.

Mazer also gives you Cannonball, a game where you navigate a ball around a board containing many different types of obstacles, such as holes to fall down, worm holes that transport you to other parts of the maze, and much more. There are over 50 levels already, and more on the way.

Some screenshots are shown below.  Mazer is available now from the Palm App Catalog, for the wonderful price of $FREE.  Enjoy!

Flickr Addict for Palm Pre adds Groups & Blocking

Flickr Addict and Flickr Addict Lite v0.2.1 have just been released on the Palm App Catalog.  This release adds two features that many users have asked for:

• Group selection.  Previous versions of Flickr Addict allowed you to download photos from two Flickr groups, iPhoneWallpapers and PalmPreWallpapers.  This version allows you to add any group you like.
• Photo and user blocking.  Sometimes images are downloaded which you might not like, and you can now block both individual images, and all images from a particular user.  You can also manage your blocked list to unblock images and users later.

The video below is of the previous version, v0.2.0.  Try it out for free with Flickr Addict Lite.

New release of Flickr Addict for the Palm Pre

Version 0.2 of both Flickr Addict and Flickr Addict Lite have been released on the Palm App Catalog, just three hours or so after submission, so kudos to Palm!  This release is an incremental improvement mostly, but it contains a number of features that a lot of people asked for:

• Manual sizing of wallpapers.  You can now pinch to zoom the image in order to manually select just a portion of the photo to use as a wallpaper.
• Better randomization of images.
• More options on how often images are changed.   Some people felt that 5 minutes was too short, and one hour too long, so you can now change the wallpaper every 5, 15,  and 30 minutes, and every 1, 6 or 24 hours.
• More information on the currently displayed image.  You’ll see a new button at the bottom of the screen when viewing a full screen photo.  Clicking it shows the title of the photo and the person who took it.

It also includes some bug fixes, and improvements to downloads to make them go faster.

The big news for  users of the free Flickr Addict Lite app is that this release gives you two days use of the full app features, before returning to Lite mode, so you get to see what all the fuss is about

See the demo of the latest version at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRUckwtvF6U

New version of ‘Irish Rain’ app released on Palm App Catalog

I’ve just released a small update to my Dojo powered Irish Rain app for the Palm Pre and Pixi which I blogged about before.  The new version, v0.1.5, changes temperatures to celcius, and adds a progress bar to show when the data will be loaded.

The app is completely free, all the better to keep you (Irish People) from getting drenched!

Flickr Addict v0.1.9 released on Palm App Catalog

The latest version of Flickr Addict is now available on the Palm App Catalog!  This is a huge upgrade which I blogged about a short while ago when I submitted it for review.  Check out the video below to see what it can do.  If you would like to try it out before you buy it, the free version, called Flickr Addict Lite, is also available on the Palm App Catalog.  Enjoy!

Flickr Addict Lite v0.1.9 released

Flickr Addict Lite v0.1.9 has been released in the Palm App Catalog. See here for more info.

The full version of Flickr Addict v0.1.9 is still in review.  However as it was submitted before the lite version, it should hopefully be approved quite soon.  If you have downloaded both the Lite and full versions, and are wondering why they are so different, this is the reason – there was a massive rewrite since the last version.  You’ll have it soon

Update Jan 8th 2009: Flickr Addict v0.1.9 is now also available in the App Catalog.

Flickr Addict gets a huge upgrade

Flickr Addict, my very cool (if I do say so myself) Dojo powered application for the Palm Pre & Pixi smartphones, has just been given a massive upgrade. Flickr Addict automatically downloads photos from Flickr and sets them as your wallpaper at set intervals.  It is completely configurable, and very easy to use.

Following some very helpful user feedback, I have added the following features:

1. New image gallery, very similar to the Palm Photos app, which makes it very quick and simple to view all your downloaded photos.
2. Full screen preview of all wallpapers.
3. The ability to randomize the selection of photos from a user.
4. The Palm Pre Wallpapers group on Flickr is now selectable, in addition to the iPhone Wallpapers group.

See the video below for a demo.  This version of Flickr Addict and Flickr Addict Lite is currently in review for the App Catalog, and will hopefully make it in soon.  However the previous version is in there now and available for download, and will be updated automatically when the new version is out.

webOS tip: Linking to an app in the App Catalog

If you’re writing a webOS application, and want to open the App Catalog to show a particular app, Palm have provided a ‘magic’ URL you can open in a browser which causes the app catalog to show an application.

For example, I have a ‘lite’ version of Flickr Addict, called imaginatively Flickr Addict Lite, that offers the user a choice to go to the full version in the app catalog.  The code for this, given that the app ID for the app is “com.chofter.flickraddict”, is:

new Mojo.Service.Request('palm://com.palm.applicationManager', {
    method: "open",
    parameters:  {
        target: 'http://developer.palm.com/appredirect/?packageid=com.chofter.flickraddict'
    }
});

Huge performance increase on IE for Dojo 1.4

Performance charts have just been published for the newly released Dojo v1.4, and the focus that the team put on improving Internet Explorer performance has really paid off.

On IE6, IE7 and IE8 there are speed improvements across the board of between 25% and 40%.  That’s huge.

See the charts (courtesy of Pete Higgins) here – http://dante.dojotoolkit.org/taskspeed/report/charts.html?exclude=puredom+jquery126+prototype1603+firefox35+safari40+opera100+chrome30+chrome40+opera96+firefox36+firefox30+firefox20+mozilla19+safari32+defaultbrowser0

Run the tests yourself here – http://dante.dojotoolkit.org/taskspeed