 Image Viewer
Most recent PDAs come with their own image viewing software; for example,
the T5 comes with an application named Media, which can be used to list and
view images, send them to other PDAs (via infrared or bluetooth), and organize
them into albums. It works with a new part of the Palm Desktop, making it easy
to copy images to your Palm, and take them off.
FireViewer was
our original (2001) recommendation in this area, and was at one point one of
the best image viewers available for monochrome PalmOS units. It now supports
colour screens as well, including the T5. This program is no longer free (which
was always a good selling point), but it does come with FireConverter, a powerful
Windows program for converting regular images (.bmp, .gif, .jpg) and even movies
(.avi, .mov) into files that can be viewed on the Palm.
However, FireViewer is not as slick and easy to use as SplashPhoto, from
Splash Data. SplashPhoto works like an interactive photo contact sheet,
displaying all of the images on your device in a single, scrollable page of
thumbnails, and allowing you to zoom into them, beam them to others, or or
turn them into a slide show. It has a 30-day full-functionality demo version.
Another well-regarded image viewer for the PalmOS is AcidImage, from Red
Mercury.
Note that you can't actually do any drawing on your Palm with either of these
programs--for that, you will need something like TealPaint (from www.tealpoint.com).
But our experience has shown that is usually much easier to create images on
your computer (or with a digital camera), and to use the Palm simply as a viewer.
In recent years, with units that come with faster processors and more memory, the possibility of playing video on a PalmOS handheld has become a reality. Our favorite video player for the PalmOS is the free Kinoma Player (www.kinoma.com), which already comes bundled with many higher-end units. We have produced a number of clinical procedure videos using Kinoma Producer, and these are available on our Common Currency website.
|
