(Last edited Feb 29, 2008)

This is part ten of the Putting it all together series. If you haven’t read part one, please check it out here.

Sorry if this series ended up being much longer than I had anticipated. There’s so much important information that I wanted to share that I felt I needed to continue until I think I’ve covered most of them. The rest of the tips and stuff will now become an individual posting.

Taking a breather from daily posting

In case you guys haven’t noticed, I’ve been taking a bit of a breather recently. Rather than posting frantically daily, I’ve been taking it a bit easier and posting every other day. Perhaps you guys are tired of reading so much stuff day after day anyway. Please don’t fret and leave. I’ll still be writing, but not in the same feverish pitch I was doing at the beginning, pushing pages of stuff each day.

Newly re-created Flash simulations of older posting

As you have gathered, the majority of my time was spent writing new posts, revising, and adding more features to old and new posts. By only posting new material every other day or every few days, I hope that it will give you more time to read the older posts and also give me more time to prepare. This way, you won’t feel so overwhelmed by so much information, especially if new stuff keeps piling up. And I’ve been going over previous posts and re-creating most of the Flash simulations, making them easier to follow by adding the color notes which pauses the simulation and explaining what’s happening next, and tweaking them. Originally I was under a lot of pressure to push them out along with the posts so they were a bit jerky but now I’m taking it a bit slower and going through them, refining them so that the motions are smoother. So, you may want to check back on those Flash simulations from the older posts. They will be slightly different and hopefully easier to follow.

This is probably a good time for me to mention either subscribing to the newsfeed (either the atom feed) or the Feedburner feeds or even subscribing via email so that you make better use of your time and still be informed and updated if there’s new material.

Subscribing to new posts via RSS news feeds or subscribing via email

If you look on the right hand side, under My Feeds you should find a list of buttons where you can easily subscribe to the news feeds for your news feed reader. Or, put your email address and subscribe, to receive new postings in your email. Don’t worry. Everything is done from the Feed providers so I actually don’t have your email address or anything. By subscribing to the news feeds or via email, you now don’t have to keep coming back to check for new postings. That’s another way to better make use of your time.

Links to RSS explanation

If you have no idea what news feeds or news readers are, here’s a few links that may help provide some info in a not so technical language. It’s very much like html, which makes web pages look the way that it does, except the text is a short brief summary of an article and provides a link where you can read the full article in depth on the internet. Here’s a few links that explains rss: BBC article on RSS, Yahoo on RSS and a more technical article from IBM.

What rss feeds and feed readers do is that they provide all the news to you in one place. If you enjoy reading world news, sports, technology, entertainment, etc, simply subscribe to its news feed using your preferred news reader viewer or aggregator. Once you’ve subscribed, when you open your news reader, it will provide the latest unread feeds to you. The feeds usually provide a few lines of what an article is about. If you want to read more, simply click on the link and you will read it very much like a browser. If not, simply scroll to the next feed. So, rather than going all over the web to BBC, CNN, and other sites to read the news, they instead, come to you. So, you can easily browse and glance over lots of news stories in half the time. And that doesn’t just apply to news. There’s audio casts, podcast, video cast. So, the feed readers provide a brief description of what the posts are, whether it’s about the lastest news, latest mp3 sample, latest video, etc. And a lot of them support images so you’re not just getting plain text. I think it’s the coolest thing out there.

There’s most likely a feed for your interest whether it be food, cooking, forums, cars, etc. Do a search and you should find lots of feeds that suit your interest. One main problem nowadays is that you’ll probably end up being bombarded by feeds every day to a degree where it feels like information overload. Don’t come back and blame me though!

Feed Readers

Bloglines, 24 eyes, Newsburst, NewGator, My Yahoo

I personally find that the simplest way to get started with reading rss or news feeds is to use something that works immediately without installing anything. By that, I mean, using any one of the many web-based feed readers like Bloglines, 24 Eyes, Newsburst, NewsGator, or add it to your Google Reader account, My Yahoo personalized web page. Here’s an extensive list of news feed readers from the WikiPedia.

I personally like Bloglines because first of all, it’s the first online reader I found and it’s free. I don’t need to install anything. I don’t need to download them for offline reading and don’t have to wait for all the info to download. I simply read them as I go. I love how I’m able to read all my feeds in one click. By clicking on the My Feeds tab, I will have ALL the unread latest postings, feeds show up in one frame. I simply scroll down this page until I get to the end. Unlike many other feed readers where I have to keep clicking on each feed or entry to read what’s next, I don’t have to. That’s what I love about Bloglines. One click for everything. No more clicks unless I want to go the main article. I’ve tried a few other web based aggregators but always come back to Bloglines because I love how it works.

Okay, back to Palm discussions. Anyway, I hope to take it a bit easier now. It’s a lot of work, but I do enjoy it. I hope you guys have enjoyed the postings so far. Thanks for reading and I hope that you’ve gained some knowledge of how the Palm works and gotten some information that you didn’t know before. Hopefully I have convinced a few people to get a Palm. Please drop me a line if you have any comments or want to let me know that my postings have influenced you in any way. If you have found my blog postings useful and helpful, please support me by purchasing software or accessories using the affiliate links. They will go towards hosting fees. Whatever else that is left over will be donated to either World Vision Canada or Foster Parents Plan.

Expanding your systems alarm tones collection

This is one gem that every Palm user must have installed. If you’ve ever complained about how the Palm device was only able to use ONE default alarm tone for everything, this is the answer. Or, if you’ve always wanted to be able to set a specific alarm tone for one thing and another tone for something else, listen up.

By default, the Palm device only has a limited collection of seven alarm tones: Alarm, Alert, Bird, Concerto, Phone, Sci-fi, Wake up. Even if you have the capability using third party clock and alarm applications which allows you to use different alarm tones for each alarm, you are still limited to having only seven different alarm tones. Well, those days are no more. Thanks to Geeksounds and Emerald Sounds, you can have an extensive collection of midi alarm tones to choose from, ranging from classical music pieces to Beatles songs, movie themes and more.

Geeksounds was the first of its kind to crop up, replacing the default System_midi_sounds file with a replacement that has a much larger collection of music alarm tones. Then came Emerald Sounds which has everything that Geeksounds has plus some heavy metal tunes from bands like Metallica plus much more other tones. The current version of Emerald Sounds is version 3.0. Compared to older versions, many of the older TV themes (many 80’s TV themes) and movie themes have been removed but there’s newer songs in its place.

Please disable pop ups in your browser when clicking on any link just in case there’s spyware or trojans that may try to install on your computer. Freewarepalm has lots of pop ups and I can’t confirm or deny whether they try to install spyware or trojans. Or get Geeksounds from myTreo.net.

Those with a Treo 650 may find that the monophonic midi sounds of Geeksounds and Emerald Sounds may seem quite backwards compared to the crisp and loud sounds of the default Treo tones so you may want to keep this in consideration when you try out Geeksounds or Emerald Sounds.

In order for Geeksounds or Emerald Sounds to work on the Treo 650, you will need to do a few extra steps.

Using a File manager like FileZ, find MIDI Ring Tones which is the default alarm sounds file in the Treo. Rename the file to something else like oldMidiTone or something that will remind you of this file. After you install System_MIDI_Sounds.pdb to the Treo, rename the file to MIDI Ring Tones. Check to make sure that it’s done correctly by going into Sounds settings and check whether you can see the database of Geeksounds sounds. But, if you don’t want to give up your default alarm tones of the Treo but still want the old Emerald Sounds alarms for third party applications like Watchmaker, you can still simply hotsync and install the pdb file so that WatchMaker and others will still look for the System_Midi_Sounds.pdb file for the alarm tones. That way, your Date Book app will still play the nicer sounding alarms and you can still use the Emerald Sounds alarms you’ve set with Watchmaker.

Here is a list of the songs available in the Emerald Sounds version 3.0 (some older songs from version 2 were removed):

1 2 step, 99 Luftballons, Adams Family, Alarm, Alert, All the Small Things, Amazing Grace, American idiot, Another One bites the dust, Appassionata, Austin Powers, Back to the Future, Barbie Girl, Basket Case, Battlestar Galactica, Beep, Beverly Hills Cop, Bird, Bohemian Rhapsody, Bolero, Bop, Boulevard of Broken Dreams, Brahms, Bumble Bee, Candy Shop, Canon, Carl’s Mom is a B***h-Southpark, Charge!, Chariots of Fire, Cheers, Coca Cola, Come As You Are-Nirvana, Concerto, Crawling, Dallas, Death, Do What?, Don’t look back in anger, Dueling Banjos, Enter Sandman, Final Countdown, Flintstones, Funky Town, Fur Elise, Ghostbusters, Godfather, Good Bad Ugly, Greensleaves, Gurgle, hall of Mt. King, Halloween, Heart and soul, I miss you, Ice Ice Baby, In the End, Indiana Jones, Innuendo, Inspector Gadget, James Bond, Jingle Bells, Jurassic Park, Legend of Zelda, Let’s talk about Sex baby, Lifestyles of the the Rich and Famous, Lone Ranger, Loony Toons, Lose yourself, MacGyver, March Slav, Mission Impossible, Monty Python, Mortal Kombat, Munsters, Muppets, Nokia, Ode to Joy, Peanuts, Phantom, Phone, Pink Panther, Poison, Police Academy, Power Up, Rattle, Reveille, Rocky, Rudolph, Samba de Janeiro, Sci-fi, Scooby Doo, Sesame Street, Silent Night, Simpsons, Simpsons-Itchy & Scratchy, Simpsons - Stone Cutters, Slurp, Smells like Teen Spirit, Smurfs, Smurfs v2, Sonata, Spongebob Squarepants, Star Trek, Star Trek-Deep Space Nine, Star Trek-Voyager, Star Wars-Cantina, Star Wars-Death Star, Star Wars-Imperial March, Super Mario Theme, Superman, Take On Me, Tales from the crypt, The Anthem, The Unforgiven, Toccata, Twilight Zone, Twilight Zone v2, Twinkle, Uncle F**ka, Wake up, Warbler, We are the champions, Wherever I may roam, Wonderwall, X-Files, X-Men, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Yellow Submarine, YMCA.

Wow! I won’t even attempt to count how many tones there are but there’s a lot more than seven. Unfortunately, even after installing Geeksounds or Emerald Sounds, you are limited to using only default alarm tone within the Palm. But if you use other third party applications that allow you to assign a specific alarm tone for each, you can then take advantage of this much more extensive collection of sounds. Datebk5, Agendus and many other third party date book applications and clock applications will allow you to set individual alarm tones for each alarm entry as well as a default alarm. But if you want to make sure that they ring, you must have these applications installed in RAM. If you install Datebk5 on the SD card and set up an alarm, it won’t ring at its specified time unless you have it turned on. But if it’s in RAM, even if you turn off the Palm (there’s still a trickle of electricity), it will ring at its specified time.

To install Geeksounds or Emerald Sounds, simply download the file from either Freewarepalm.com or Palmgear or wherever else. Most times, the file is in a compressed format, .zip. You will first need to use an unzipping utility like WinZip or WinRar so that the file becomes a .pdb (Palm database) file.

Install this file into your Palm using Quick Install and do a Hotsync, so that the pdb file will be installed on the Palm. If you don’t get any errors in the Hotsync, the file has been installed correctly on the Palm.

Now, you won’t be able to see it in the launcher because the pdb file has been changed and replaces the default System_Midi_Sounds file in the English language Palm devices and it isn’t a program. The only way you can tell that it’s installed is to go into the Date Book application. Tap on the top left hand corner to access the menu options. The first menu list is Records. The next list is Edit. And the next is Options. Select Preferences. Then, tap on the black down arrow (drop down menu) for Alarm Sounds. You should now see a huge list of alarm tones as opposed to the default seven tones you originally got.

Simulation of how to access the Alarm tone files and select your default alarm sound

If you have difficulty figuring out how to access the alarm tones, here’s a simulation that will demonstrate what to do. This simulation is actually done on the Zire 21 simulator (for this particular instance) because someone was inquiring whether it was possible to load Emerald Sounds onto the Zire 21 device. As I’ll demonstrate in this simulation, it is very much possible as the Zire 21 device also has the System_Midi_Sounds file very much like many other Palm devices.

Alternative Flash links: ImageShack

Flash demo on Z22

Here’s one that I’ve recently created demonstrating it on a Z22. In it I have shown how the System Midi Sounds file size changes from the default of 3.5k to 53k. Checking it in FileZ as I’ve shown in the Flash simulation will allow you to determine that you have correctly installed the Emerald Sounds file and replaced the old one with this new one. Then, just as in the Zire 21 simulation, I have shown how to go into the Calendar and make the alarm tone change.

Or, if you have other third party clock applications I’ve discussed below, you can also discover new alarm tones from them. If you do not know how to install programs or hotsync or set up an appointment in the Date Book application, you may wish to refer back to my previous postings where I’ve discussed it. Install programs with Hotsync. Creating an appointment in Date Book application

One note. If your default Palm alarm file is not named System_Midi_Sounds it means that your Palm device is not an English Palm device, and you will need to do a few extra steps.

First, you have to find out what the name of the alarm file is named.

In the case of a German palm device, it’s named MIDI-Systemsignale instead of System_Midi_Sounds which Emerald Sounds and Geeksounds assumes and replaces.

In French devices, the name of the file is Sons_sytème_MIDI.

In Spanish devices it may be Sonidos_MIDI_del_Sistema. Can anyone confirm?

Alo, try searching under “smfr” for type or “psys” for CreatorID (cid) and see what results you get. You should note down the name that is the equivalent of System_Midi_Sounds on your non-English Palm device. You may need to use a file manager program like FileZ to search for the name. I’d think looking in the “Midi” area or “System” area may help you find it. Delete that file but make sure you have the name exactly noted first (spaces are _ in the name and capitals, hyphens must be noted). It’s very important to be exact in noting the exact name of the file. Then, rename the System_Midi_Sounds file to whatever the name of that file you deleted (eg. MIDI-Systemsignale, Sons_sytème_MIDI, etc). Then, it should work. Just as a precautionary measure, do a soft reset (poke a pin at the reset hole) to make sure it takes (similar to doing a reboot for a Windows installation to take.

LifeDrive alarms

An additional note. It appears that maybe the LifeDrive has also changed the alarm file from System_Midi_Sounds to SoundsAlerts so if it doesn’t work, see if renaming the file will do the trick. Or, as as I’ve explained, search for the smfr or psys and find out which file is associated with those.

Aside from the freeware choice of Geeksounds and Emerald sounds, you have the option to purchase programs that allow you more features with regards to alarms. Here are a few suggestions:

TechSounds, KoolSounds

For those with Sony Clies, you can get these alarm sounds: Clie Sounds Alarms (Deluxe), and Clie Sounds Alarms

For me, I’m pretty happy with the freeware Emerald Sounds so I haven’t tried either of these so I can’t comment on them. Someone over in the Palm Addicts forums was mentioning that techsounds or koolsounds (can’t remember) was causing problems. With any new files or programs, make sure you have a backup, or create a backup JUST BEFORE YOU INSTALL NEW PROGRAMS OR FILES. I think I’ve mentioned it many times already but it’s very important to take heed. If anything happens (and sometimes there’s conflicts or the program crashes), you can easily restore your previous backup to the Palm so it’s back the way it was just before you installed the new program or file. Without a backup, in the worst case scenario, you may end up having to do a hard reset and then re-install everything back. But you may not be able to load saved or unsaved preferences files back. So, be careful and be safe and do your backup before you install anything new. It only takes a moment but can save you a lot of hassles.

Create your own sound files

MiniMusic’s NotePad, the full registered version which allows you to compose your own music via notations includes an app named miniAlarm which allows you to move the music files you’ve created in NotePad into your System_Midi_Sounds file so that you can create your own Geeksounds or Emerald Sounds collection. But, unfortunately, NotePad costs $29.95. I purchased it because I wanted the musical notation feature of the program as a way to learn music.

Utilizing your new alarm collection with 3rd party software

Third party date book applications like Datebk5, Agendus, will allow you to set different alarm tones for each entry so that you can easily distinguish one appointment from another without even looking at the Palm. Unfortunately, although there are freeware date book applications available like KsDatebook, A5, etc, they do not have the capability to set independent and individual alarms and rely on the default Palm datebook to set one as the default for everything.

On the other hand, there are clock and alarm applications that run independently of the date book that can ring different alarm tones. Some of them supply their own alarm tones while others rely on the System_Midi_Sounds file. With those ones that do rely on the System_midi.pdb file, you can take advantage of the new extensive alarm tone collection you’ve just installed on your Palm. I will discuss a few of the free clock and alarm applications.

Big Clock

Big Clock has been around for quite a while back in the days when the Palms were monochrome with low resolution. It still works fine on OS 5 Palms but it does show its age as the program is in low res of 160×160. But it still works fine. But, this free clock, alarm and stopwatch application does not offer the ability to use the System_midi.pdb sound files but instead offer its own independent alarm tones for its alarms. I will now show how the program works via a simulation.

Simulation of Big Clock application

Alternative Flash links: ImageShack

The simulation will play through to the end unless I’ve inserted a pop up note for specific points.

To continue playing the simulation, press the button.
To go back to a previous paused segment, click on the button.
To pause the simulation at any time, press the button.
To scroll forwards or backwards in the simulation, click anywhere on the left (to go back earlier in the simulation), or right (to go forward in the simulation) on the progress bar.

WatchMaker

WatchMaker is another freeware clock and alarm application that works on OS 5. It shows several very beautiful hi res clock faces ranging from analog clocks to digital to a Salvador Dali one. I personally love how I’m able to set up to 6 different alarms plus a countdown alarm of up to an hour, which rings without any pop up messages. In addition, I am also able to run another instance of this same program by changing a few things, namely the CreatorID and the name of the program. So, I can have 12 different alarms or more, each with their own distinctive alarm tone depending on how many copies of the program I have installed. So I have have an unlimited number of alarms set up on the Palm.

Again, I will attempt to show how the program works by showing a simulation.

Simulation of the WatchMaker application

Alternative Flash links: Image Shack

Setting alarms for daily activities (no more time disputes)

I personally love Watchmaker and have set it during the day to remind me of various tasks. I have it set up to indicate when it’s time for specific activities for my son like his piano practice, homework, etc. The great thing is that since each alarm has a distinctive tone, we all know what time it is just by listening to the tone. I’ve set up another alarm with a distinctive tone at the end of the session. So, the alarm is set up at both the beginning and end with different sounds.

The best thing about using and relying on the Palm for the alarms and timer or countdown feature is that there is no longer any dispute of the time or what the task is. We both trust that the Palm will ring at the right time and that it has no bias whatsoever. No more dispute of when the activity started or when it will end. It just happens. If there’s something different in the schedule, I simply load up a timer application or use the countdown feature in Watchmaker to make it ring when the countdown is finished. The end result is the same. There’s no dispute of the time.

There are other applications that can use your mp3, ogg or wave file collection as an alarm tone. Such applications include: wavAlarms, and 2 Play Me, Digital Sounds Bank for Clock Deluxe which requires Clock Deluxe.

Here are some that are for the Treo 600 and 650: Premium SMS Ringtone for Treo (Rainbow), Polyphonic Ringtones for Treos (Rainbow), mp3Ringer, and Lightwav PRO which functions as a mid/wav/mp3/ogg/wma/aac ringtone, CallerID manager.

Again, back up the Palm before installing these programs, just in case.

Hopefully I’ve helped make your Palm experience just a slight bit better now that you have a larger alarm collection to choose from and the capability to ring a distinctive alarm for each alarm you set. And, maybe you’ve discovered the trick to rounding up the kids to do something or limit their time on certain activities.

Thanks for visiting and supporting Palm Discovery. If you are not reading this article from Palmdiscovery.com or palmdiscovery.net, the website you are reading it from is guilty of copying and posting my content without consent. Please visit Palm Discovery for the original source of the material.

: archives categories rss newsfeeds xml feedreader alarm geeksounds emeraldsounds clock bigclock watchmaker techsounds koolsounds mobileclock bobsalarm gettingstarted palm wavalarms 2playme digitalsoundsbankforclockdeluxe clockdeluxe premiumsmsringtonefortreo polyphonicringtonesfortreo mp3ringer lightwavpro minimusicnotepad cliesoundsalarms

Try or Buy CryptInfo and store all your account info securely on your Palm