Gupta's Greats

TalkSender

Send talking e-mails from your Pocket PC

Looking for an exciting and more expressive way of communicating with people by e-mail? Try TalkSender, a Pocket or Palm-size PC program that lets you send voice e-mails with an attached text message or graphic image to anyone with an e-mail account. You can also attach a custom message picture with each e-mail that you send. The audio quality is dependent on the device playing the message, but it seems very good. You can record and preview a message before you send it. There is a help feature, but it is only available while you are connected to the Internet.

Although you can send voice-enabled e-mail from your Pocket or Palm-size PCs, you can only listen to them on your desktop PC ­ not on your Pocket PC. And you must be connected to the Internet via a wireless modem, cell phone or a regular phone line. You cannot compose a voice message off-line and send it when you connect.

TalkSender lets you send talking e-mails from a Pocket PC connected to the Internet.

TalkSender has its own address book; you cannot select an e-mail address from Contacts. Email addresses that you send to are automatically stored in a separate TalkSender address book. The voice messages recorded are in MP3 format. The text message in an e-mail is displayed as HTML to the receiver. So if your e-mail client does not support HTML, you might have trouble reading it.

TalkSender was in the beta stages when I looked at it and could be downloaded for free at (www.talksender.com/beta).

DockWare Pro

Turn your Pocket PC into a personalized clock and calendar

If your Pocket PC spends a lot of time in your data cradle, make it do double-duty as a desktop clock and calendar with DockWare Pro. The program can be configured to start automatically when your Pocket PC is idle for a particular time period and connected to external power. You can display BMP or JPG/JPEG images as a background to your customized clock and calendar. You can even load a series of images and have DockWare Pro page through them at a specific, user-defined interval.

DockWare Pro turns your Pocket PC into a personalized clock and calendar when it is idle.

You can choose between digital or analog clock displays. DockWare Pro can also be configured to display a month calendar, a day calendar or a long date calendar. You can also change the background color and the color in which the text and time are displayed. You can also activate a password protection option such that, once the DockWare Pro screen is displayed, you cannot go back to your regular screen until you enter a password.

DockWare Pro aligns images to the upper left-hand corner of the Pocket PC. If the image you import is smaller than the 240x320 pixels displayed by the Pocket PC's screen, you'll see blank space. If it's larger than that, some of the image will be cut off. You may have to use a graphics program to size your images for the screen. It would have been nice if DockWare Pro had an option to align an image to the center, left, right, top or bottom.

DockWare Pro squeezes a little more functionality out of your Pocket PC. It adds a calendar and clock to your desk, and displays your favorite images. Now if it could only play music...

There is a scaled down version called DockWare (without the "Pro") available for free from the developer's Web site. It has more limited configuration options and no password protection. DockWare Pro has been developed by Iliumsoft (www.iliumsoft.com) and can be purchased for $9.95.

CodeWallet Pro

Keep your important information handy, organized and secure