The Tungsten PDA

Although many, the thought of a developer of a large company like Palm, imagine a serious person and boring, the reality is that they are human beings who have their good days and bad days. And they also have days when they get up funny. These days, little jokes advantage to include in the programs they write, what is known as Easter eggs (easter eggs in English), which can only be activated by certain actions in an application, which in normal usage would never .

She is known for example the fastest way to write a document in Microsoft Word, or the photos of dogs that appear when loading a special page on a server running PHP (like this one himself). For the curious, availing itself of such a summary of other Easter eggs exist in Excel, WinRar, Gimp and Firefox among others.

And of course our Palm would not be less. There are also Easter eggs in the applications of our devices, some even to a profit. Let's see how we can implement:

Let's start with an Easter egg that lives up to its name. Depending on the operating system version, the procedure is slightly different:

• 2.x for PalmOS 4.x: enter the Prefs application, and within the General category. Then in the bottom right corner of the screen, draw a small circle in the direction of clockwise. An easter egg will appear in that corner. To remove it, just have to draw another circle.
• For PalmOS 5.x: enter Preferences, and now in the Power section. Draw the circle and the egg will appear.

An Easter egg decorated and all

Now look at the easiest way to call a taxi, even without a Treo. With the "easter egg" of earlier on, let's Memos application, and while holding down the down arrow key, write a line from the center of the area of graffiti, to the left edge of the deck. A funny taxi across the screen from side to side.

Calling a taxi from the notebook

You may also see claims of people who have worked on PalmOS, in an animation. Again, the procedure depends on the operating system version.

• For PalmOS 1.x and 2.x: go to the application memory, and holding the stylus by tapping on the number of operating system version, press with your finger down direction button.
• For PalmOS 3.x and 4.x: In the application launcher, go to the menu, we went into Applications, and enter "Info ...". Select Version button down at all. Now hold the stylus by tapping on the title bar, and press the down arrow key with your finger.
• For PalmOS 5.x: once turned the trick of "easter egg" earlier, you hit the house (ie go to the application launcher), enter the menu option "About application". Press the scroll down button, and holding do tap the "OK". We repeat this step two more times, and last we were pressing the button below. Credit and will not disappear until we release the key. I have not been able to reproduce it on my Tungsten E2, probably because when you press the button of the house being already in the launcher, the program opens favorites.

Appropriations from the makers of PalmOS

There is a way for Palm to stay indefinitely waiting to be connected to the PC when you press the hotsync button, instead of giving us a timeout error after a few seconds: We entered the hotsync application and holding the button down direction , we tap into the top right corner of the screen. A message that says "It also enabled the DLserver Wait indefinitely. The timeout is reestablished when doing a hotsync.

Another easter egg is to write a short with a certain format. (For those who have not read the manual for your Palm, an abbreviation is to write the command over some text bow, which normally become longer and a word often used, we have defined in the Preferences). Specifically, write the symbol of bow, a point and a specific character. We can write in any text area, for example in a Memo. Depending on the number (or letter) used the result will be different:

• [link] .1: active a kind of debug mode with the serial port. This can quickly spend the batteries. It is deactivated with a soft reset.
• [link] .2: similar to above, opens the serial port. Soft reset to disable.
• [link] .3: disable "Auto-off".
• [link] .4: displays the user name and number. Without apparent utility.
• [link] .5 Danger, clears the user settings, and the HotSync log. To restore it you better do a hard-reset and syncing with your PC.
• [link] 6: shows the date that created the ROM machine.
• [link] .7: mode alternates between NiCd and alkaline batteries. Useful for the bar to work correctly with battery NiCd batteries. If the internal battery Palm is the only option is Lithium Ion.
• [link] .8: older models like the Palm V and Palm IIIx, invert the backlight of the screen.
• [link]. i activates the Infrared option of receiving for a while. Useful for not leaving it on running our battery.
• [link]. s: alternating between serial mode or infrared. In serial mode, information to be sent by infrared is sent via the serial port.
• [link]. t: toggles loopback mode handler Infrared exchanges.

As we see not a few hidden Easter eggs that our palm. In fact there are many more, also exist within specific applications, and even within the Palm Desktop for Windows. We can find a list on this page.

This theme of the Easter eggs always brings me to this thought: if innocent hidden features how are you have for years hidden in the operating system and programs that we use every day, how confident there are no other more dangerous in programs we write personal data, credit card numbers or other confidential information? Unfortunately, only free software, which makes available to the public source, we can give that assurance.

Deals in other equipment ...

By: Mark Gonzalez Troyes in Palm Tips
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