dizzysoft software

As someone who has been programming palm software for about 10 years now I am really excited about the Palm Pre. I believe the hype that the Palm Pre will be the iPhone killer (or at least, maimer). When you combine my experience with Palm software with my recent obsession with Twitter it might make you wonder why I haven’t written some Palm Pre Twitter software or some sort of Twitter program for the Palm Pre.

More About: Palm Pre Twitter Software

The US government has a web page that posts the Privately Owned Vehicle (POV) Mileage Reimbursement Rates. You can check this site whenever you need to know the current reimbursement rate. This is where I get the information posted at the top of this website.

You can be automatically informed when this rate changes by subscribing to this RSS feed, which uses wotzwot.com’s RSSxl page to take that information off the GSA website. This rate changes every year or so, but potentially could change more frequently as gas prices increase rapidly (as they did with Katrina in September of 2005, as you can see from the site’s “Previous Automobile Rates”).

More About: What is the current mileage reimbursement rate?

http://dizzysoft.zimorama…aintain_0_5.zip

Years ago I developed the very successful and simple Mileage program for the PalmOS. It was a great way to keep track of automobile mileage for business use and saved me a lot of money on my taxes. Recently I decided I needed an easy way to keep track of the maintenance on my vehicle, so I wrote this simple program- Maintain. Although this program can be used separately from the Mileage program, it is designed as a companion to Mileage; it reads your latest mileage entry and tells you if there is any service that is overdue for your vehicle.

More About: Maintain 0.5

Although this program is for fun, I wrote it for a purpose. I had a problem that needed to be solved and decided to write a palm program to help. In keeping with a good programming philosophy, I decided to write the program to not only solve my own dilemma, but make it as broad as possible so other people could use it for other purposes. My conclusion was to create an abacus. I have added various features to the program to make it very useful.

You can download dAbacus only from dizzysoft.com.

More About: dAbacus (ver. 1.0)

I’ve tried to make Mileage as intuitive as possible, but just in case you can’t read my mind, here’s how you can use the program:

More About: How best to use Mileage

1. From the starting screen, press “new” to enter a new trip.
2. This will bring you into the “Specific Trip” screen where you can enter the information for this trip. The date on top will first show the current date, if you want to change this, tap it with your stylus and select a new date. Enter the appropriate information. I usually start with entering the “Purpose,” “From,” “To,” and “Start” odometer reading and come back later to enter the “End” odometer reading.

This is the long-awaited program that will allow you to access your Mileage data from your desktop computer. This program will convert your Mileage database into a readable file that can be viewed in any web-browser, or editable in almost any word-processor or spreadsheet program.

Download GetMileage

This program has been written in the Java programming language, which will allow it to run on ANY operating system, provided you have downloaded and installed the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) appropriate to your operating system. Get it from the Java web site (www.java.com). Follow the installation directions at the web site to install the JRE.

The history of GetMileage

More About: Version History for GetMileage

0.25

• You can select what format you would like the data to be written in- HTML or CSV.

0.21

• You can bypass the automatic search function.

0.2

• Program searches for the Mileage database for you, and if it can’t find it, asks you to look for it.
• Program didn’t “remember” location you last sent the HTML file to. Now it does.
• If HTML file already exists, asks if you want to overwrite it.
• Compiled as a package to avoid potential conflicts with other Java programs.

0.1

Before you can use the GetMileage program, you will have to do the following:

• Download the free Java Runtime Environment (JRE) for your particular computer operating system (e.g.: Windows, Linux, Mac) from the Java web site. Follow the installation directions at the web site to install the JRE.
• Move the GetMileage program (GetMileage.jar) to a location that you will be able to easily find it.
• Click (or Double-Click, depending on your operating system) on the GetMileage.jar program to start it.

Once the GetMileage program is running (by clicking or double-clicking on it) you will see the program’s main window. In order for the conversion to take place, you will have to:

More About: How to use GetMileage

• First, click on the top “Source” button in the GetMileage program. GetMileage will search your computer for the Mileage database. If it does not find the file, you will have to search for it yourself (with a file dialog window that will appear. Once you have found the database you will see the file path (directory and file name) for the Mileage database appear to the left of the “Source” button.

1. Before you have a copy of the Mileage database on your computer you will have to install the Mileage program on your handheld, enter data into the program, and perform a hot sync with the desktop computer. Do this before searching for the Mileage database or using the GetMileage program.
2. If the automatic search feature does not find the database, and has completed its search, it will call up a file dialog for you to search manually. If you would like to skip the automatic search feature (for instance, if the search is taking too long) you can bypass the automatic search by holding the CTRL key on your keyboard as you press the “Source” button with your mouse. From this dialog locate the Mileage database, select the database, and press the “Open” button. If you don’t know where the database is located…