Comments on: Quickies: JackFlash for Treo, Action Names, NSBasic, IR Games

...but only if you want to fail considering excellent software alternatives (no, I did NOT say the best, for those with another datebook chips on your shoulders). Get a life - please.

Why stay away? Because they made a few bad PR mistakes? Do you drive a car, and forgive the car manufacturers for releasing toxic chemicals into the atmosphere for decades! If that is your reasoning then your wrong! ("This is just ones and zeros baby, it's not a gas" - Austin P.)

Most likely it is because they need to update tinysheet font viewing preferences, I'm still having trouble with formatting cells. You know, when you format a whole row to have large font but it still doesn't re-size till you type in each cell and reformat.

I really wish everyone would just drop this issue. No denying it was a huge marketing blunder...but it's over! C.E. Steuart DeWar shook hands with Iambic (and showed a good deal more class than Iambic's executives I must say). Now all is well with the world. Let there be peace! :-)

It did not end with the domain name deception. In addition to deleting registered users from their support forum and forcing the elimination of the independent Yahoo! forum, they also continue to retaliate against those who simply and courteously expressed concern. Check out the latest chronology at http://home.cfl.rr.com/rmattes/iambic.htm . I personally recommend against doing business with those people. What makes you think that they'll treat you any differently than their other registered users they've deleted?

Regards,
Tanker Bob
http://home.cfl.rr.com/rmattes/palmframe.htm

Foo fighter you have been so vocal (your post at pdabuzz) I thought you of all people would not turn the other check. Don't tell me you have gone mellow

Reading the article in the link above just made me mad again. People should boycot this company until it goes bankrupt as far as i am concerned. They haven't learned anything - it is clear that these guys aren't just some naive idiots who made a 'mistake' - this is their approach to business. If they go bankrupt over this - Palm software companies would definitely think twice about pulling similar, obviously unethical crap.

Software cannot be separated from business practices. I do not use ActionNames, but from what I hear, it is a great application and if you had any part in it, you are to be congratulated. But it makes me nervous doing business with an outfit that, because of its poor business ethics, might shaft me when it comes time for an upgrade, or if I lose my registration code and need a replacement, or if I have a question that might in any way offend them--as happened to many people with the recent debacle.

I am very sorry you lost your job, and I hope you find another soon. I hope you find one at an organization with smarter business ethics. But if you continue to believe that only the software matters, you are taking risks.

Uggg.... I just followed that link above to that timeline. I must say that I am completly disgusted with this company.

Ted Tschopp

P.S. on a side note, it is interesting how many people who know me from my other walks of life (www.tolkienonline.com) and not as a Palm Guy who went out of their way to personally thank me for registering datebk.com and pointing it at correct site.

>>When did you last buy anything with a Microsoft trademark, hmmmmmm?

..the real question is when did i last use a Microsoft product that i ACTUALLY PAID for?
;)

Do be aware that Iambic does NOT hold a near monopoly on any category of PalmOS software. Microsoft DOES hold a near monopoly on consumer operating systems and office productivity software for x86-based PCs. Many people have no choice but to use Microsoft products, because "everyone else does". People DO have a choice on PalmOS, and they are choosing to not support unethical companies.

--JM

The problem some people have here with iambic are on two levels.

Lets get down to the simple facts.

Number one:

Iambic is a vibrant commercial US based company, employing some of the finest programmers around and by that providing the whole Palm community with a broad variety of simply excellent and sound software for a fair price and is by that helping the tumbling US economy.

If some competitors would succeed in truly harming iambic, it will not bother Greenspan but would be not beneficial to US or the Palm community.

Pimlico on the other hand is doing a single sound (but overloaden) product worth criticizing – datebook.
There claim to work more ore less for the benefit of fat mountain Gorillas is bringing pupils here to tears. This may be a very honest claim. Anyhow. I personally never met a gorilla myself able to confirm that he truly benefited directly from Pimlicos Datebook.

If Pimlico would not exist anymore (the Pimlico freelancers and self declared animal protectors can go the day all mountain gorillas are safe) few of us would be harmed – if iambic would go, it would be one excellent US Company less.

Number two is software protection.

It’s fairly easy to run Pimlicos Datebook forever without ever registering it.
Most of youngsters do – and that is neither fair, not healthy for the software industry.

Iambic on the other side is protecting their and their customer’s legal rights on the product with a sound and an elegant protection system – basically impossible to crack. I like that commercial healthy approach – its only fair.

And THAT is the real reason of the hate against iambic shown here!

And this is the true reason why most of the critics here want iambic to go the way of the Edsel. To have a free ride.

Crooks always want to get a free ticket and are ruining the software industry, the US economy and harming Palm as well.

May your own flame stay with you.

B.

Trevor posted: "If it makes you all feel better, I just got laid off from iambic. I was a software engineer there.

They are a good company, and the engineers work hard and try to make the bestsoftware they can. There are only a few left now."

Trevor - Sorry to hear about your layoff, but your arguement isn't with those holding iambic accountable for their conduct. Your beef is with iambic's ethically-challenged management. It is their conduct that caused the backlash against iambic. I'm sure you and your fellows are very talented and work hard. Before all this, I used to recommend iambic products when they seemed appropriate to a user's needs, but now I never recommend them. I won't deal or recommend a company whose management thinks they can tell lie after lie to the user community and that we're too stupid to figure it out.

Perhaps things would change if iambic's management apologized to Bert and the rest of the community for their repeated lies.

Regards,
Tanker Bob
http://home.cfl.rr.com/rmattes/palmframe.htm
Hanging out at http://www.pdaavenue.com/

I'm always repelled by the one crying their purity and overclean ethics so loud from the statue. Mostly this caps as you are the biggest crooks.

Your anyhow not doing business with anybody - I'm surte. You now steal software elsewhere but onlythrow dirt at the good guys, Probably you switch now to the really moneyless shareware producers and steal their software from now on. Thats good news for iambic.
Thank you for going away.

If I were a person pirating software, I would probably hide behind a I.M. Anonymous, like you are!

I work at a company that provide me with a Palm M515 and software that they PAY for. I'm using ActionNames myself, WordSmith and a few other programs on my Palm. This are all legally obtained software. I even paid for and registered HandStory, and payed for it out of my own pocket!

The friends I mentioned are young people who buy their Palm's themselves, or get them from their parents. They don't think that it's wrong to pirate software, because they are used to doing so with music, programs for their home computer and so on.

I just made that statement of showing links to pirated software from Iambic, because a person posting above stated that this was almost impossible to do. Which is not true at all!!

Reality check: outside of the PR screw up and predatory business tactics the program does suck: it's buggy and looses data constantly...better off using nothing than a bug ridden crappy program.

I have to admit that their business practices are shady, so much so that I am posting anonymously so that I don't get in trouble for talking badly about them (is Big Brother listening?), but I will say that I've already invested in ActionNames from a long time back, and I've been using it for so long that it just doesn't make sense to me to move to something else. I can't agree that its a bad program. They've had a couple of releases that probably could have used a little more work before being put out, but I wouldn't go so far as calling it "buggy." I won't buy anything new from them, but I'm not getting rid of ActionNames, either.

I agree. I use it, I like it - it ain't perfect, but I haven't found a similar app that I like better.

Personally, I don't tend to consider the politics of various companies, merely the quality of their products. Else I'd boycott Domino's Pizza for supporting anti-abortion PACs, eschew any company that was around during WWII and traded with Germany, picket any company that disagreed with my personal desire to see all child molesters executed within a week of conviction....

Let's keep our personal politics personal and private, shall we? Or at least allow that simply because others disagree with you, doesn't mean they are idiots, or that you have to berate them about it...

Unless they're Canadians, of course, and then all bets are off.

Everytime that I install Datebk4 or 5 I have to delete it. Its just too much (as in features etc.). ..even for a slef-proclaimed power user. Action Names is much better to work with.

>>Let's keep our personal politics personal and private, shall we? Or at least allow that simply because others disagree with you, doesn't mean they are idiots, or that you have to berate them about it...

Gee guy, the whole argument in favor of an unregulated, capitalist economy (the wet dream of every Republican AND their 'sponsors') is that the government doesn't need to get involved because people will vote with their dollars. Now alongs comes somebody like you (you are of course, not alone) to tell us that we shouldn't even do this? I agree that we shouldn't continue to boycott companies for trading with Germany during WWII, but, according to your very clearly laid out logic, we shouldn't have boycotted those companies THEN either. Now, obviously Iambic is not guilty to the same degree as those companies that did business with the Nazis - BUT - they continue to be behave in a bullying, greedy, and unethical manner (check the link thats been posted twice above). People definitely should NOT 'keep our personal politics personal and private' - at least not if they wish to live in a society that is even remotely fair and just.

Well, I do agree that Action Names has some good feathers, er, features (heh), but don't worry about the product that much. If the company goes under (and who knows, maybe that would be poetic justice for their continuing stupidity in dealing with their customers), SOMEONE will either pick up and run with the product, or another will be written that does the same thing (there is obviously a demand).

Maybe this next time around, it won't take so long between versions for bug-fixes and feature requests. :)

You must spend a awful lots of time with the datebook in the rom. Especially with 2000 contacts. Maybe it's time to optimize your work buddy!

I think you're completely wrong, and missing the point of the datebook replacements. The whole business aspect of PDAs is to make you more organized. Datebk5 is perfect for doing this (AN is OK, but not as good IMHO).

Why would you not want to categorize your appointments, and then further set them apart by assigning them different colors, font sizes, and linking them up with the applicable contacts to ensure notes are being taken on the right person? The built in datebook can do none of this.

Having alot of contacts does not mean you're a power user, it means you have alot of contacts. What you do in how you organize them along with the integration of the datebook should determine whether or not you are using the PDA to it's full potential.

Same thing with To-do integration, you can organize them in many more ways that having a category, how about coloring them as red, yellow, and green based upon the hot nature of them? Or using a bold font for certain categories so you can pick them out when turning on your PDA?

There's a million uses for Datebk5 (and probably a thousand for AN). It should be one of your most used programs, and I would think you would want the most robust tool at your fingertips, which clearly is Datebk5 (AN comes a distant 2nd).