PDA 24/7 is having their annual holiday season sale and Smart Box Design will be featured on the first day, December 1st. If you are looking for some deals stop by PDA 24/7 daily for the next 20 days. See you there.

We had a great snowstorm yesterday that has closed most of Bellingham, WA. The paper asked residents to stay home if possible. The schools are closed which I m sure all the kids are celebrating. The snow is a beautiful sight to see. Snow still holds a child like wonder for me as I barely saw it growing up in Southern California.

The attached pictures were taken from my Zire 72 PDA. The views are from my second story bedrooms. The water in the background is Bellingham Bay. Canada is just a mere 10 miles or so north of here.

Although the Treo and Zire PDA have been criticised for the low end camera I think it is fine for quick pictures that you want to share online. I find it very convenient having a camera with me at all times as I take my Zire with me everywhere. I am thinking about moving up to the Treo 680. I will take a look at it as soon as the snow melts and I can get to the mall.

Win a copy of any of my mobile games. Send me a picture from your Treo, PDA or Phone, and I will randomly select a winner or two. Send email to tsherman(at)smartboxdesign.com (replace the “at” with “@”).

I love forums. They are rich with content and the casual nature of them often result in some very entertaining posts. I added a forum to Smart Box Design about a year ago. I used phpBB2 which is a very well known. Unfortunately, each week it was getting hacked, and I was spending more time fending off hackers than actually creating software. Thus I closed it down. After searching and reviewing several bulletin boards I settled on vBulletin. After spending most of the day installing it and doing basic configuration I can only say that I AM THRILLED WITH IT. It works great, has more features that I know what to do with it, and is fast. I will be announcing its comeback in my next newsletter. But if you wish to post please do so by clicking this link. Smart Box Design Forum

I am a list guy. I make lists for everything; who to call, changes I need to make to the Web site, gifts for family, home repairs, etc. However, I have several reoccurring tasks, such as doing my push ups every morning and giving my cat her medication twice a day, that does not fit well into a task list. TraxItAll fills this niche.

TraxItAll “…does something no other program can do: it automatically tracks anything on a daily basis.” For example, to track my cat’s medication, I made the header Cat-AM and then Cat-PM. I then selected to track this task daily and finally made the data entry a Yes No choice. This took all but a minute. Now when I give my cat her meds I tap the box next to the date and it fills in with a Yes, if I forget, I tap again for a No. For my push ups, I topped the column with Push Ups and selected count as my entry choice. After I do my push ups, I tap the box next to the date and it increments by one for each push up I did. Quick and easy.

TraxItAll is the type of program than is simple but deep. The more you use it the more there is. For example it has a great reporting system so you can track your progress over time. You can even set goals.

There are few features I would like to see added in the future. I think there are several opportunities to use color. For example Yes could be green and the No red. Also, I would like to be able to resize the column widths to squeeze a little bit more data on the screen.

TraxItAll has a wonderful flash demo that you can watch here and is thoroughly documented. If you want to be more organized you need to try TraxItAll.

Shaun McGill a well known writer in the mobile world has written a wonderful book name My Digital Generation about his generation and technology. You will no doubt find and learn something of yourself when you read it.

The first three legit comments (as determined by me) about this book or Shaun McGill will receive a free copy of Smart Box Design’s game Triples for Palm OS.

Here is an excerpt from the book: “When I was very young we used to have an outside toilet and I remember being scared that a big spider or rat would come and visit while I was taking care of business yet at no time did I think it odd that the toilet was in the garden. My brother and I used to have our baths in the kitchen sink and again it all seemed perfectly normal. We used to play in the street because there were hardly any cars and when the man who lived a few doors down picked up the local children to let them sit in the back of his open bed truck while he drove down the hill no one shouted “paedophile!” at him…” “…I remember snow very vividly and being able to build a Dad sized snowman and then roll his head down the hill just before the global warming melted him- in those days global warming was called the Sun…”