Firetop Adventure is yet another platform scroller (seems like there's been a lot of those lately). This time the story is a little spooky: your job is to root out an evil entity that's turning harmless creatures into hideous monsters. Although FA is still a little cartoonish, it does have an advantage over its purely run-and-jump competition in that it gives you weapons against enemies, lets you blast through walls with bombs (my favorite), and has some interesting puzzles.

Listening to or watching podcasts is great fun. If you think they are boring, meaningless or can’t entertain you during, say, a long fight, you’re wrong. For example, watching all the clips of X-Play, played back on my VGA HP iPAQ 214 (thanks to Smartphone & PPCMag / iPhone Life’s Hal Goldstein for the gift!) could entertain me for long-long hours.

This is your chance: the impressive Skyfire browser is freely available until August 30. Also, this week there’s lots of device news, including the official announcement of the Palm Treo Pro, the September arrival of the first Android device (from T-Mobile), and Reviews of the HTC Touch Pro.

 After 11 years, we will be publishing a final 2008 issue of Smartphone & Pocket PC magazine and then suspend publication! We are working hard to make it the best Windows Mobile issue ever, a keeper, a reference guide. In 2009 we will publish Smartphone magazine’s iPhone Life. Below, I’ve attempted to answer questions that have been asked of me: 

"Sunnysoft upgrades its Windows Mobile contacts manager Sunnysoft Contacts to version 1.5! Some new features include...

"Papyrus 2 brings many exciting new features, including: Search View for PIM item searching; Advanced filters management; Automatic attendees notifications, Popup selection effect for optimized display and much more! Papyrus 2 back-end engine was re-designing from the beginning and delivers the fastest experience for the pro user!"

Rumors are about that Verizon and Sprint will be offering the HTC Touch Diamond and HTC Touch Pro. Plus, there’s a great video on YouTube of the amazing Touch Pro interface. This week we’ll also note a few reviews of the new HP iPAQ 910 and leaked information about the Treo 850.

It was a long time ago that Smartphone & Pocket PC Mag discussed Doppler on desktop. Neither are other articles (like Podcasts on a PDA...) up-to-date either, let alone covering all the current podcasting / podcatching solutions for all the three mobile operating systems I (currently – don’t forget I’ll also support iPhone when I get it!) support: that is, Windows Mobile, Blackberry and Symbian S60.

Photo from ZDNet

I’m surprised I haven’t yet mentioned ChaCha, a free, human-powered service that lets you ask any question and sends you an answer via text message. Also, this week we’ll note an update of Windows Live for Windows Mobile and discuss various opportunities for downloading software, including freeware, directly to your device.

"...we have decided to temporarily offer you our individual software products at a reduced amount of 20% off retail. Don't miss this opportunity to secure your device at a discount!"

Compared to the capabilities of desktop multimedia players (see for example the excellent WMP vs Winamp vs iTunes vs MediaMonkey for more info on their capabilities), the mobile ones certainly lack when it comes to fetching, searching for, editing, storing and, in several cases, even accessing / displaying different kinds (album art and/or other images; textual genre / composer / title etc. info; lyrics etc.) of information in audio files.

We’ve recently redesigned our web site, and I’m impressed. It must be among the best Windows Mobile/Smartphone sites on the Internet. This week we’ll also note a video review of the Samsung and other device news, as well as a new version of Google Maps for Windows Mobile.

Nicky Boom is a port of a famous Amiga platform game. It's one of those games that makes me wish I had an Amiga back in the day. (I still remember that trip I made to Warren Radio in Peoria, IL back in the 80s and they just happened to have an Amiga on display. It almost seemed like a magical experience. Where have all the good times gone?) 

Along with tags and cover arts, lyrics are also highly sought-for and widely used metadata, particularly with non-English folks who would like to know the lyrics of the songs they listen to.

 

"July 30, 2008 – VITO Technology is proud to present Task2Gather - a brand-new free service for online task management. Task2Gather is one place for all your tasks and projects: family, social, business, and private. Task2Gather lets you put your tasks online and invite family members, colleagues, or clients to participate and achieve common goals."

I've reviewed a number of new software input methods this year for Windows Mobile touchscreen devices. They have all generally used the standard qwerty layout that would be found on a hardware keyboard. Fitaly throws you for a loop because it uses a non-querty layout, and incidently the name is derived from the arrangement of letters on the keyboard (just like querty).  The fitaly layout was designed in the nineties for pencomputers, when Jean Ichbiah thought that writing with a stylus required a different type of keyboard.

  I used to be a devoted FlexWallet user until it was subsumed by Ilium Software’s eWallet. I was always too lazy to try to convert to another wallet application. But, eWallet made it seamless, and I’ve never looked back because eWallet is by far the superior product.

Did you know that you can get free technical support on Windows Vista SP1 until 18 March 2009? 

Free, unlimited installation and compatibility support is now available for all worldwide customers using Windows Vista SP1, until March 18, 2009. Telephone support is available worldwide.

The built-in Windows Media Player has always suffered from a major flaw: it didn’t support resuming the song from the last position after restarting the player. XDA-Devs forum member Wolfman-XP (the same guy that has also developed AVRCP support for GSPlayer) has fixed this: he has released a plug-in that remembers the last position where you press(ed) the Pause button.