The Tungsten PDA

While many, to think of a programmer for a large company like Palm, imagine a serious and boring person, the reality is that they are human beings who have their good days and bad days. And there are days when you get up funny. These days, used to include small jokes in the programs they write, what is known as Easter eggs (easter eggs in English), which can only be done to activate certain actions in an application, which in normal use would never be .

It is well known for example the fastest way to write a document in Microsoft Word, or photos of dogs that appear to bear a special page on a server running PHP (same as this one). For the curious, worth an example a summary of other Easter eggs in Excel, WinRar, Gimp, and Firefox among others.

Palm And of course we would not be less. There are also Easter eggs in the applications of our aircraft, even with any utility. Let's see how we can implement them:

Started by an Easter egg that lives up to its name. Depending on the version of the operating system, the procedure is slightly different:

• 2.xa PalmOS 4.x: go into the Preferences application, and within it in the General category. Then in the bottom right corner of the screen, draw a small circle in the direction of clockwise. An Easter Eggs will appear in that corner. To remove it, we just have to draw another circle.
• PalmOS 5.x: go to Preferences, and now in the section Power. We draw the circle and the egg appears.

A decorated Easter egg and all

Now let's see how much easier to call a taxi, even without a Treo. With the "Easter Eggs" of activated before you go to the Memos, and while holding down the key address below, we wrote a line from the center of the area of graffiti, toward the left edge of the deck. A funny taxi pass through the screen from side to side.

Calling a taxi from the notebook

It is also possible to see the claims of people who have worked on PalmOS, in an animation. Again, the procedure depends on the version of operating system.

• PalmOS 1.x and 2.x: go to the application memory, and holding the stylus to tap in the number of operating system version, click on our finger on the button address below.
• PalmOS 3.x and 4.x: in the application launcher, go to the menu, go into Applications, and enter "Info ...". Find the button down version of everything. Now hold the stylus to tap into the title bar, and press and hold down the direction of the finger.
• PalmOS 5.x: once turned the trick of "Easter Eggs" commented earlier, we press the button on the house (that is, we're going to the application launcher), enter the menu option "About applications." Press the button to scroll down and keep doing tap and hold "OK". We repeat this step two more times, and then keep the last hit bottom. This way the credits and will not disappear until you release the button. I have not been able to reproduce it in my Tungsten E2, probably because when you press the button on the house was already in the launcher, opens the program favorites.

Appropriations from the creators of PalmOS

There is a way for the Palm stay indefinitely waiting for the PC when you connect to press the HotSync button, instead of giving us an error timeout a few seconds: We enter the application hotsync, and holding the button down direction We tap into the top right corner of the screen. A message that says "It's enabled the DLserver wait indefinitely." The timeout is reestablecerá to make a hotsync.

Another Easter egg consists of writing an abbreviation with a certain format. (For those who have not read the manual for your Palm, an abbreviation is to write the symbol of licit over some text, which usually become a word most frequently used long, we've defined in the Preferences). Specifically, write a symbol of licit, 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:

• [bond] 1: a kind of active mode debugging with the serial port. This can quickly spend the batteries. It was off with a soft reset.
• [bond] 2: similar to above, opens the serial port. Soft reset to turn it off.
• [bond] 3: off "Auto-off".
• [bond] 4: shows the user name and number. Without apparent utility.
• [bond] 5: Danger, clears the user settings, and the registration of hotsync. To restore the best thing is to make a hard-reset and synchronize with your PC.
• [bond] 6: shows the date you created the ROM machine.
• [bond] 7: alternating between mode NiCd and alkaline batteries. Useful to the bar battery works correctly with NiCd batteries. If the internal battery Palm is the only option is Lithium Ion.
• [bond] 8: In older models like the Palm V or Palm IIIx, invests the backlight of the screen.
• [bond]. i: the option to receive IR for a while. Not helpful to leave it on our depleted battery.
• [bond]. s: alternating between serial or infrared mode. In series mode, the information would be sent by infrared is sent by the serial port.
• [bond]. t: alternating loopback mode for the driver of exchanges by infrared.

As we see not a few Easter eggs hidden 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 Easter eggs always brings me to my next thought: if innocent as these features hidden for years hidden in the operating system and programs that we use every day, how to trust that there are no other programs in much more dangerous in the we write personal data, credit card numbers or other confidential information? Unfortunately only free software, which makes available to the public its source code, we can give that assurance.

By: Mark Gonzalez Troyes in Palm Tricks
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