Wake up to music instead of beeping

[Jason Dunn]

<a href="http://www.handango.com/PlatformProductDetail.jsp?siteId=311&amp;platformId=2&amp;productType=2&amp;catalog=0&amp;amp;sectionId=0&amp;productId=33659">http://www.handango.com/PlatformProductDetail.jsp?siteId=311&amp;platformId=2&amp;productType=2&amp;catalog=0&amp;amp;sectionId=0&amp;productId=33659</a><br /><br />Tired of waking up to the sound of beeping? With MobiAlarm you can wake up to the sound of your digital music instead!<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/mobialarm.jpg" /><br /><br />"You're bored of WindowsCE alarms ? MobiAlarm allows you to wake up with your favourite MP3/WMA/WAV song. Just choose a song, the time and the date of your rendez-vous and wait! That's simple and useful. Compatible with all PocketPC, you have just to download the PocketC runtime."<br /><br />You can download a trial version or purchase it for $4.95 (use the link above).

[ziadtraboulsi]

I just wanted to say that the MobiAlarm has bee developped by the french site Mobi-Mania.com

[Latch]

1. Set an Appointment on your calendar for when you want to wake-up.

2. Launch Windows Media Player, turn the volume way up and press play.

3. With the Media Player still playing, turn off the device.

When the Appointment goes off in the morning it will wake-up the device and the Media Player wll resume the song you were playing from when you turned it off the night before.

Warnng: While the media player is playing your pocketpc won't go into suspend mode... So if you think you'll sleep through the alarm for a long period of time... I'd recommend plugging in the charger cord before bed as well, elsewise sleeping through the alarm could drain your battery.

The above works well on the Jornad 54X series, but should work on others as well.

[Dr. Smooth]

You know, it's one thing when a software author builds a piece of freeware with a VB-hell ugly interface like that. It's another when he actually expects people to shell out money to fugly-up their $600 PocketPCs. On top of that, there's a free workaround to achieve what the app does.

Man, people need to get a grip on the importance of their coding. Not every tiny app is worth actual money.

I wish PPCThoughts would dig a little harder for quality apps. Look for good freeware. Sometimes it seems as if all you do is look at press releases for commercial software. How about acting as a filter for all the crapware that's offered at sites like pocketgear?

There is not much quality freeware out there, but here are some of my favorites: StopTime, Eval, Viewer (can't remember the author), RegEdit, Citadel's PocketExplorer, Wisbar (of course), PPCNewz, Pocket Backup, NeoTiles, Qtris, Batty, and Bounce.

Sadly, that's about it (but I'd love for other knowledgeable users to help me find more). When I was a Palm user, I had about 4 times the number of fun apps on my device. Must be something about the Microsoft mindset in PocketPC developers. They all want to charge money for their garbageware.

[Jason Dunn]

I wish PPCThoughts would dig a little harder for quality apps. Look for good freeware. Sometimes it seems as if all you do is look at press releases for commercial software. How about acting as a filter for all the crapware that's offered at sites like pocketgear?

The moment you start paying me and my team a monthly salary to install and test every application we post on, I'll gladly do your bidding. Until then, be polite and realize that it's impossible for us to install and test every application.

[PPCRules]

My thoughts were along the lines of Dr. Smooth's, but s/he made the point more bluntly than I could have.

Just from the UI, I put it in the "not-a-quality-app" category, but as for the functionality, it's definitely a freeware-level app. Actually, this is the kind of app that gives freeware a bad name. I guess everyone is free to try to sell whatever they want, whether it is worth money or not. But I too was surprised that 'Thoughts' would feature it on the front page. (It's ironic that a couple screen scrolls later, Jason makes the plug for what an important place 'Thoughts' has in the community - which I totally agree with.)

[Jason Dunn]

But I too was surprised that 'Thoughts' would feature it on the front page. (It's ironic that a couple screen scrolls later, Jason makes the plug for what an important place 'Thoughts' has in the community - which I totally agree with.)

To be completely honest 90% of the applications out there have drastically sub-standard UI. But when you consider that this is a young software market, with developers made up mostly of hobbyists, they don't have UI designers working for them. So I cut them a lot of slack - I'm just happy to see new software being developed all the time, regardless of how "ugly" it might be. I hadn't seen an application to do this specific function yet, I thought it might be useful to some, so I featured it. Trust me, if you saw all the "bubble" and "card" games that we DON'T publish to the front page, you'd appreciate our criteria more. :D

[Marc Zimmermann]

You know, it's one thing when a software author builds a piece of freeware with a VB-hell ugly interface like that. It's another when he actually expects people to shell out money to fugly-up their $600 PocketPCs.

Clap, clap, clap! This thing is the ugliest piece that I've seen in a long time and I judge the quality of some code by its looks, too. If the UI is sloppy as heck, the underlying code most likely is as well and testing might have been done only on the emulator. No sir, I wouldn't even touch it with a stick...

[lar3ry]

"You're bored of WindowsCE alarms ? MobiAlarm allows you to wake up with your favourite MP3/WMA/WAV song. Just choose a song, the time and the date of your rendez-vous and wait! That's simple and useful. Compatible with all PocketPC, you have just to download the PocketC runtime."

Damn! No matter WHICH SONG I set this program to wake me, it's always playing I've Got You, Babe by Sonny and Cher. What's up with that??? This has been happening every day since the second of February...!

[sheik]

I think the negative comments on here are somewhat harsh and uncalled for.

First of all, this is an app that performs a function that some people should find useful - so PPCThoughts is fully justified in running it as an article (if they needed a reason, which they don't).

As for people complaining about the price - come on, $4.95 is a relatively tiny amount to spend. That price suggests to me that they are not even charging for the software, but are putting a token fee on to cover their webhosting fees, future development, time spent answering support queries and such like.
The link appears to be going to Handango as well so once you take off their cut the developer will get even less.

The way I look at it is like this - if somebody produces something that is of some small benefit to me, I will happily buy them a pint down the pub. The cost of this app is completely comparable to that.
If you disagree, you can always code up your own version.

By the way, if you hate their garish UI that much then why not knock up an alternative header and 3 buttons for them? They might give you a free registration :)

/\dam (who has absolutely no connection to this product whatsoever)