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March 22, 2004

Good Ol' DAs on Palm OS 5

Back in my Pre-OS 5 days, I ran hacks and a lesser-known utilities called DAs or "Desk Accessories". These were little applets which could be launched with a DA launcher (normally powered by hacks) and float over an open application, somewhat like very basic multi-tasking. Very often, DAs could support, augment or even replace complete applications.

DAs never seemed to take off outside of Japanese Palm OS users, for whatever reason — maybe because it was a niche phenomenon and many of the descriptions were in Japanese. But I loved DAs, and used several of them regularly, particularly ezConvDA for quickly converting all sorts of measurements, RAM DA for checking my RAM consumption, QuickSync DA for fast HotSyncs, and daMemoPad to view memos in a floating pop-up window.

Well, after leaving my Clié for the Tungsten E, I thought hacks and DAs were past history. Not so! Over the weekend I came across a new version of Yamada Tatsushi's DA Launcher 5.5.0 for Palm OS 5: and it that works like a charm! :-)

It is different than the old launcher I used to use, in that it places a new icon in the control bar — the bar which pops up at the base of the screen via the stroke from lower left to upper right corner of the Graffiti area. You just click the blue DALauncher icon there, and the DA listing pops up... click a DA and bingo, it's DA time. Best of all, this DA Launcher and DAs are all free! can't beat that.

For even more DAs to explore, check out the Cute & Funky DAs Website or the DA section at PalmGear.com.

March 22, 2004 1:54 PM | Palm | add to del.icio.us