PalmSource Euro Powered Up Award Winners

PalmSource today honored five Palm OS developers with Euro Powered Up Awards at the PalmSource Euro DevCon 2004 held in Munich, Germany. The awards celebrate Palm OS developers who have created innovative software applications representing the best of breed in the Palm Powered economy and take advantage of the advanced features of Palm Powered smartphones and mobile devices.

Selected from approximately 1000 nominations, the five award winners include: Facer Launcher 2 by PocketCraft Software; Snails by PDAmill; MMPlayer by Almacom; funSMS 4 by fun communications GmbH; and Planetarium by Andreas Hofer Software.

The 2004 Euro Powered Up Awards are sponsored by PalmGear.com, palmOne, Tapwave and PalmSource and are open to developers worldwide. Special consideration is given to applications localized for the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region. 2004 Euro Powered Up Award winners were nominated by the Palm OS community, including peers, fans, PalmSource employees, partners, and Palm OS licensees, based on the following criteria:

• Innovation — Solutions that are truly unique and run on the latest Palm Powered devices
• Popularity — Solutions that lead the industry in sales or downloads
• Benefits — Solutions that enhance quality of life
• Ease-of-use — Solutions that deliver power through simple and elegant software design
• Support — Solutions that are regularly updated with readily available product support

The 2004 Euro Powered Up Award winners were recognized in the following four categories:

• Best Enterprise / Productivity Solution:
  Facer Launcher 2 by PocketCraft Software
  Facer Launcher 2 is a launcher application providing end-user personalization, customization and flexibility on Palm Powered devices. These three main components are achieved through personalized themes, sounds, and a plug-in system that allows for integration of other third party applications. Facer Launcher 2 was created to increase the functionality and practicality of Palm Powered devices with a Today Page and fully customizable skins.

• Best Games / Entertainment Solution:
  Snails by PDAmill
  Snails is a fun action/strategy game for Palm Powered devices and features graphics, sounds, background music and game play. The game has been designed for touch-screen control and takes advantage of the high-resolution display of next-generation Palm Powered products. The game includes full background music and audio effects to create a platform-quality entertainment title for Palm OS. PalmInfocenter Review  

• Best Multimedia Solution:
  MMPlayer by Almaco
  MMPlayer is a powerful mobile multimedia player for Palm OS that supports a wide variety of codecs, formats and protocols including DivX, avi, mpeg-1 and mpeg-2 video plus mp3, Ogg and MIDI audio. Users can download additional skins to achieve a truly personalized multimedia playback experience. Additional features include a five-band equalizer, customized playlists, streaming video support, full-screen mode, and email attachment playback supporting the VersaMail email client.

• Best Wireless / Over-the-air Solution:
  funSMS 4 by fun communications GmbH
  funSMS 4 makes sending and managing SMS messages simpler and more convenient than ever before. The graphical user interface makes the application easy to use while integration with the Palm OS address book helps users identify incoming messages. SMS messages can be exported to the Memo Pad and To Do List and a signature can be automatically added to every outgoing message.

To celebrate and recognize the extraordinary contributions of the late Bozidar Benc, president and founder of Croatia-based Benc Software, an additional category has been created for the 2004 Euro Powered Up Awards.

The Benc Software: Tribute to Excellence award pays tribute to Benc’s legacy by recognizing a European-based Palm OS® developer who embodies the principles and ideals of Benc Software, a pioneer in the Palm OS developer community. The award will be presented annually at Euro Powered Up Awards ceremonies.

• Benc Software: Tribute to Excellence:
  Planetarium by Andreas Hofer Software
  Planetarium is an astronomy application for Palm Powered™ devices that plots star charts and offers unique and useful features for the beginning stargazer as well as professional astronomers. The application can calculate the position of the sun, moon, planets, stars, hundreds of deep sky objects, comets and asteroids for any time and any geographical position and draws a sky map of any section of the sky with all 88 constellations. Stargazers can use it to help them find or identify objects in a clear nighttime sky.

Each of the five winners will receive a trophy, Palm Powered device and promotional marketing package from PalmGear.com and PalmSource to promote its winning application on the PalmGear.com and palmsource.com web sites. Each package is valued at more than 8,000 Euros. “PowerByHand is pleased to contribute to the growth of the Palm Powered economy and reward the hard work these developers have done to create new and exciting applications for the Palm OS platform,” said Ryan Wuerch, CEO at PowerByHand, the parent company of PalmGear.com. “We look forward to promoting these applications on PalmGear.com and increasing the exposure for these top Palm OS application developers.”  

PalmSource has more than 320,000 registered developers who have collectively created a variety of applications for Palm Powered smart mobile devices, ranging from email, messaging and Internet communications, sales force and field automation, personal productivity, multimedia, groupware, financial management, and games, enabling customers to tailor their devices with software that meets their individual needs. 

Localized German Palm OS applications can be downloaded and purchased from http://software.palmsource.de/ and English versions are available through PalmInfocenter Software Store. Applications can also be purchased direct from the developer.

“The Palm OS developer community continues to innovate at a rapid pace, and I’m pleased to be able to recognize the contributions of these five companies,” said David Nagel, president and chief executive officer of PalmSource. “We believe the breadth and variety of Palm OS applications is a key differentiator driving the growth of the platform, meeting the needs of millions of people with diverse interests and software needs.”