Best Software 2008 is drawing near: enter & nominate decent XDA-Devs tools!

[Menneisyys]

Guys and gals,

This year’s Smartphone and Pocket PC Magazine Best Software Awards ( http://www.pocketpcmag.com/awards/ ) is getting near. I, being the Nominations Manager for the Awards, would like to invite you ALL to participate in it, regardless of whether you’re a developer or “just” a user of them.

If you’re a developer, it’d be REALLY great if you could enter the apps you’ve written in the Smartphone & PPCMag Encyclopedia ( http://www.pocketpcmag.com/_enc/cat....&name=Software ; you can add new entries there too). It’s free and, then, in addition to your having your app listed in the list, it’ll be far easier for me to nominate it for the Awards if I deem it worthy enough. In the last two years, I spent DAYS of chasing down developers of top (freeware) titles like Qmail and Pocket GBA in order to being able to nominate them. I would prefer NOT having to waste so much time at contacting developers this year and asking them to enter their titles in the Encyclopedia – I have better and more productive things to do.

Being listed in the Encyclopedia, your stuff will also get far more exposure outside XDA-Devs and other “geek” sites as well.

Just like with last year, don’t think a free app can’t compete with commercial stuff out there. For example, VITO CopyPaste, Opera Mini, fring, Emu42, Google Maps Mobile, Orb, Qmail, My Mobiler, Mobipocket Reader, PHM Plus!, FuseSP etc. were all finalists, GB-SOFT Tweak, CastCE, Emu48, ScummVM, LogMeIn (Free), most of masterall’s emulators etc. were winners. Top-notch freeware titles like Dotfred’s PIM Backup or TaskMgr or Vijay555’s VJFullscreenTSC were also nominated (albeit didn’t win / become a finalist because of the very strong competition in the same category).

If you’re “just” a user of these apps, you’re also VERY strongly asked to nominate your favorites, should they not already be nominated. As a rule of thumb, all of the last year’s nominated titles are automatically re-nominated, unless there’re radical changes – for example, new titles – in the given category necessitating the un-nomination of the (comparatively) weakest titles OR the given title hasn’t been discontinued in the meantime. You can see the list of these apps – that is, the 2007 nominees / finalists / winners – at http://www.pocketpcmag.com/awards/ca...7_newquery.asp .

I don’t want to leave any decent, new utility I may have overlooked not nominated. With the current rate new apps and tools are released here at XDA-Devs, I just can’t keep up with all the new versions / releases, no matter how hard I try. (And I have a LOT of other things to do – for example, I’m working on a Digital TV and CDMA Bible, concentrating on a lot of EE stuff and also preparing a major speech at a W3C conference on mobile Web browsers, leaving me little time testing all the new XDA-Devs-originating stuff.)

(Also see http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=300200 for my 2007 announcement – it’s a bit outdated tough.)

Remarks / comments / recommendations are welcome!

[dumpydooby]

Awesome. I'm excited about this. These awards always help me find new/interesting titles to toy with.

Apart from what's on your list already, and in terms of eloquence and overall usefulness, I love the PocketCM Keyboard, and I use it all the time. In terms of functionality, I like that new Internet Connection Sharing Control (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=377047) program. It's still in development, but the idea of it is great: finally an all-in-one utility for handling all of the various Internet sharing configurations. As far as I know, it's also the first program to let a user use their phone as a wifi adapter.

[l3v5y]

I personally think that Schaps Advanced Config is the most usefull program for what I do, but I'm not entirely sure what kind of programs are within the scopes of this...

[lepsyfou]

+1 l3v5y

[l3v5y]

And for the best suite of programs, A_Cs S2 series win every time although they're not the most innovative programs in that they are just trying to copy the iPhone....

[Hal Goldstein]

Hi Everyone,

I need to add a few points to Werner's (Menneisyys) post. (I am the owner of Smartphone and Pocket PC magazine and in charge of the awards).

First, as you might have guessed, the quality of our category structure and to a large extent the nominees is directly due to Werner's incredible efforts.

I asked Werner to get started ASAP, and his response naturally was to post here. However, as you will see we aren't as ready as we might be.

At www.PocketPCmag.com are in the middle of a conversion of data from our current rich but hodgepodge of a site, mostly written in ASP. We are moving to a cleaner, more uniform look using the Drupal Content Management System.

Because of timing, we decided to do the awards and leave the encyclopedia of software and accesssories in our current (ASP) system for now. Then probably when nominations are frozen in July we'll switch over.

However, we REALLY need to update the input form for vendors.
It looks like we'll have to do that in ASP. We are juggling a lot, and we can't commit to updating the form until at the latest, May 1.

So, the ideal from Werner and my side, would be to at least make sure your products are in the db now. Then everyone can update their information as soon as I give the OK here.

THANKS and good luck.

[xxza]

A_C's s2u2, s2p, s2v

[marshj05]

Originally Posted by xxza A_C's s2u2, s2p, s2v

Totally Agree

[atomxdaii]

Originally Posted by marshj05 Totally Agree

Nothing comes near.

[Menneisyys]

Thanks guys for the feedback.

I've (being the author of several networking & hacking-related tutorials & hacks) already played a bit with CSC but still haven't had the time to test it in all possible configurations / on all my WinMo devices. Will definitely post a detailed review / evaluation on it and also nominate it for this year's Awards. (Preparing for a W3C speech, in addition to preparing my next Bibles, takes a LOT of time and work so I can't really test new software right now...)

BTW, at the General forum, there's a Dev Awards thread ( http://forum.xda-developers.com/show....php?p=2100268 ); I'm thinking of in some way combining it with the Smartphone Mag awards structure before May.

BTW 2, speaking of last year's nominees and categories, feel free to comment on them too - what other titles would you see nominated? I prefer open discussions like this to PPCMag's (closed) user nomination system because a lot of people can chime in the discussion, making the nomination process as democratic as possible. (While, of course, I reserve the right to have the final word in nomination ).