Raspberry Software release True Connect preview

[Guest pete_at_raspberry]

this is cool, but almost certainly pointless.

it is pretty impressive to show to friends tho.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

This seems to be coming up quite a lot. I get your point - its a productivity tool, and if you are happy using your phone without it, True Connect isn't going to add any new functionality.

But I would like to ask: Is there something you feel it should do that it doesn't that would make it useful? Or at least a bit less pointless! :)

Not promising anything, just looking for suggestions....

Thanks

Pete

[Guest abhayseth]

I think this is a fantastic app...! though it has connectivity problems the cursour does hang - but for sending out lengthy sms's its a dream come true. The cut/copy/paste works fantastic..! Good Job done Pete..!

I like it alot and will use it for writing SMS's!

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[Guest confused and hungover]

But I would like to ask: Is there something you feel it should do that it doesn't that would make it useful? Or at least a bit less pointless! icon_smile.gif

yeeesssss.... drag and drop!!!!!!! :)

Edited December 15, 2005 by confused and hungover

[Guest Jamma14]

Hmm - Interesting. Does anyone else get this? We would love to know!  :)

I'm guessing its an IP issue. Things to try: Confirm you have a valid IP (use ipconfig from a command prompt). Yes I know this is a trivial thing, but its worht checking! Then, consider - is it possible that the IP address has changed since True Connect was started? It grabs the IP address of the PC on start up, and never updates it (its a known issue). If you think it might have done, then try stopping True Connect (choose Exit from the right click menu on the Task Bar icon) and start it again (from the Start menu -> Raspberry Software -> True Connect).

If all this fails, we would be undyingly grateful if you would do the following:

With True Connect running, open the options dialogs and select the Main tab (the first one). Then, watch the status messages as you undock and dock your phone, and make a note of them.

Then send an email to [email protected] with the messages (they don't need to be word perfect, but its good to have some idea of the sequence) along with: Your PC OS, your type of phone, your IP address, whether your phone is locked, whether your phone is passworded (shouldn't matter, but we are starting to wonder if it does), your favourite colour, and your main ambitions in life.

Thanks in advance

Pete

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yeh fraid I'm getting it too! :D

I wanna have a play again! I'll send you a mail about it.

James

[Guest gavingovinden]

This software is amazing. It's truly innovative and something that can practically be used on a day to day basis. There is so much crap out there for smartphone and we need more programs like this. Simple, usefull and cool.

Good work fellas...

[Guest Paul [MVP]]

It should be bundled with a cradle to get the most out of it :)

P

[Guest gavingovinden]

It should be bundled with a cradle to get the most out of it :)

P

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yeah I was thinking that, definitely :D

[Guest Disco Stu]

Yeh fraid I'm getting it too!  :)

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For the record, I'm not having any problems.

I can switch between C500 and Magician and True Connect works perfectly.

This seems to be coming up quite a lot. I get your point - its a productivity tool, and if you are happy using your phone without it, True Connect isn't going to add any new functionality.

What about giving us a 'Say, for instance' example of how this might be a Godsend ?

Sometimes the usefulness of software isn't obvious until something specific is identified.

[Guest confused and hungover]

What about giving us a 'Say, for instance' example of how this might be a Godsend ?

Sometimes the usefulness of software isn't obvious until something specific is identified.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

maybe drag and drop? :)

also, if you could actually move a window like media player or msn mesenger onto your phone screen, it could save a little bit of space on your monitor(s)

[Guest pete_at_raspberry]

Thanks for all the suggestions folks.

Bundling a cradle: That would be good, wouldn't it. We all have cradles here at the office, not least since we started developing and testing True Connect. We'll look into it.

Suggestions for how it might be a Godsend: Well, the Raspberry website does have some ideas on this if you haven't looked. The "use of applications on your phone that you might otherwise not use" is quite good. Like having news headlines, sports results or stock quotes on a browser - by using the phone, you make use of the screen without having a small window on the PC which gets in the way. Personally, I find being able to respond to SMS messages directly most useful. One of my colleagues uses his phone for conference calls with True Connect - you can control the mute directly from the keyboard, and be freed up to get on with real work while the call is in progress! And even copy and paste the conference number from the appointment direct into the phone to start with. At the end of the day, it is a productivity tool, but we having used it for a while we find that we use the phone more and more in the office instead of having it just waiting for a call.

Using the phone as a second monitor: Well, nice idea but it isn't really what True Connect is about. I recall that there is a product out there for PPC which does this already. The screen size for phones, and the speed of communication is going to make a full-screen app a bit clunky, but I guess its doable. Maybe one day. And see the above: You can run apps like messenger and media player on the phone already - and having True Connect means they become that much more usable when you are sat at the PC.

Drag and drop: OK, OK, I hear you! But.... Its all very well for PCs to do drag and drop, applications have an API especially for this. But no API on the phone! I can imagine being able to drag files from the PC onto the phone, and perhaps have some sort of preset as to where they get copied to. Is this how you see drag and drop working? What would you expect to be able to drag off the phone, if anything? There might be more scope for PPC here, but it would be good not to leave phones out of a feature entirely. You aren't the only person to suggest this, and I can see how you kind of expect it to be there. But some more background to what you would expect to work would be good! I know how it all works, and this leads me to expect no drag and drop at all! But thats just my view... :)

Pete

[Guest confused and hungover]

some more background to what you would expect to work would be good! I know how it all works, and this leads me to expect no drag and drop at all! But thats just my view... ;)

Pete

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

for the drag and drop aspect i was thinking if you open the file explorer on the phone you could drag music, photos, etc straight from "my documents" on the pc to explorer on the phone and visa versa... beats doing it through active sync, and would also make the phone more like an extra drive in the pc, which would be a bonus for me certainly...

Using the phone as a second monitor: Well, nice idea but it isn't really what True Connect is about. I recall that there is a product out there for PPC which does this already. The screen size for phones, and the speed of communication is going to make a full-screen app a bit clunky, but I guess its doable. Maybe one day. And see the above: You can run apps like messenger and media player on the phone already - and having True Connect means they become that much more usable when you are sat at the PC.

yes, the phone already has msn and media player, but having the tinny speaker blaring out when you are at the pc would be pointless or connecting to gps to use your phones MSN would be pricey... maybe if you reduced the quality of the programs that are being displayed on the phone (much the way VNC server can reduce the quality of a remote desktop to save bandwidth) this would make it viable to move a messenger window or whatever from monitor to phone fluidly?

i really like this app so far... it certainly grabbed my interest, i'm a bit of a freak for multiple monitors and the opportunity to add just one more is too good to pass up :)

well done, nice app, hope this helped :D

[Guest fraser]

Just a note to say this is very good! I can't believe people are saying that it's just a novelty. I have used something along the same lines with VNC to have a three monitor system in work for several years, except that each monitor was a different computer altogether.

Being able to have the PDA in the same setup is fantastic. I use the ActiveSync remote display for the same thing. Well, I used to, looks like this is a keeper!

To the guys at raspberry: Kudos for considering dual-headed systems in the config page. The screen preview and the way you drag it around was very neat. All to often this is forgotten and apps don't work well on dual-headed boxes!

WRT cut and paste, drag and drop, there's a way it could work without being uber-complicated. The system I mentioned above provides text-based shared-clipboard. Factoring other data like files or images would be difficult, so the devs decided to keep it simple. For the PDA world, the only way I could really see drag and drop working would be something similar. You could drag a link in and it would paste it where you dropped it, for example the address bar in I.E. Or, could copy the content of a message across by selecting it and dragging it.

Drag and drop for files etc wouldn't really work. There's a dozen different file managers out there that folk use and you couldn't work in a drag and drop system without the app on the PDA also understanding it. And that app would need to be the one currently open for it to understand which directory to copy the file.

The only way i could see it working would be to detect it was a file being dragged and when the mouse warps onto the PPC, an application takes focus that has the drop targets to receive the file and start the transfer. The same app could be used to drag files onto the desktop. Might work, but it would mean a bit of work required on the pda end of things.

[Guest leoiden]

Hmm - Interesting. Does anyone else get this? We would love to know!  :)

I'm guessing its an IP issue. Things to try: Confirm you have a valid IP (use ipconfig from a command prompt). Yes I know this is a trivial thing, but its worht checking! Then, consider - is it possible that the IP address has changed since True Connect was started? It grabs the IP address of the PC on start up, and never updates it (its a known issue). If you think it might have done, then try stopping True Connect (choose Exit from the right click menu on the Task Bar icon) and start it again (from the Start menu -> Raspberry Software -> True Connect).

If all this fails, we would be undyingly grateful if you would do the following:

With True Connect running, open the options dialogs and select the Main tab (the first one). Then, watch the status messages as you undock and dock your phone, and make a note of them.

Then send an email to [email protected] with the messages (they don't need to be word perfect, but its good to have some idea of the sequence) along with: Your PC OS, your type of phone, your IP address, whether your phone is locked, whether your phone is passworded (shouldn't matter, but we are starting to wonder if it does), your favourite colour, and your main ambitions in life.

Thanks in advance

Pete

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

sorry for the late response got it to work thanks alot appreciated excellent application!!!!

[Guest pete_at_raspberry]

Drag and drop for files etc wouldn't really work. There's a dozen different file managers out there that folk use and you couldn't work in a drag and drop system without the app on the PDA also understanding it. And that app would need to be the one currently open for it to understand which directory to copy the file.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thanks fraser - good suggestions. And I was wondering how to respond without sounding too negative :)

The main problem with file drag and drop is the lack of a standard file explorer. This would make it somewhat awkward. Also makes it awkward for dragging files off the device onto the PC - True Connect would have to understand dragging on each application that supported it individually. I quite like the idea of dragging text, though. Quite similar to Copy and Paste now, but done just with the mouse rather than the keyboard. I'll have a think about it for V2.

Pete

[Guest pete_at_raspberry]

sorry for the late response got it to work thanks alot appreciated  excellent application!!!!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Glad to hear you got it working! Just wanted to say that this whole IP address confusion is sorted out, and the release version will work independantly of the PC ip address.

Pete

[Guest leoiden]

goog thing to know that it wont be activated with the ip awesome fix!

[Guest pete_at_raspberry]

Hi guys

Happy holidays to all!

Thanks very much for all the feedback and (very few) problem reports we have had - its good to hear that people like it!

One issue we heard of was from someone with an MPX200 with Smartphone 2003. There was a problem with typing using the PC keyboard - apparently the characters are getting garbaged. Has anyone reading this tried with an MPX200? We are wondering if its a firmware issue, which would make it somewhat tricky to fix...

Cheers, and thanks again

Pete

[Guest Kaspers]

Nice app but mine is working 'till 31 january...

Is your's doing that too ?

If not,, can you share your version with me ;)

I lik this programme soo much!!

[Guest pete_at_raspberry]

Nice app but mine is working 'till 31 january...

Is your's doing that too ?

If not,, can you share your version with me ;)

I lik this programme soo much!!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hi Kaspars

Glad you like it! :D

All the Technology Preview copies will work up to Jan 31st.

We are hoping to ship V1.0 this month. It will have a 14 day trial period, after which I'm afraid you will need to pay for it to continue using it - we'll announce it on Modaco when the download is ready.

Cheers

Pete

[Guest minty1978]

WOW, i love this app!!

keep up the good work.

works fine on my MDA Vario.