Selected Links to Free Software for Palm (October 2003)

This page contains freeware programs for PalmOS which I personally like and use. They tend to be compact rather than imposing. The emphasis is on board games, including three programs that I have created (Go81, AtariGo, and Game of Lives). Some programs are no longer supported or easily available so I decided to mirror them here.

Applications:

Abacus (download)
Earlier version of a spreadsheet program Addition4palm. Requires MathLib (see below).

Astro Info (download)
Astronomical ephemeris/almanac.

BigClock (download)
Clock with alarms, worldtimes, timer etc.

CSpotRun (download)
Reader for documents in the Pilot DOC format. You can convert text files with makedocjreditor.

Earth & Sun (download)
Shows the sun illuminated area of the earth on a zoomable world map.

Game Timer (download)
Chess clock.

Music (download)
Works for tuning and as a metronome. Very small.

RiseSet (download)
Computes when the Sun rises. Can also be used as a compass.

Board Games:

Abologna (download)
Abalone is a new game where pieces try to push each other out of the board. Voted Game of the Decade by Cannes International Games Festival.

AtariGo (download)
Capture-game variant of Go (see below).

Backgammon (download)
An ancient Persian game played with board, pieces and dice.

Checkers (download)
Checkers (or Draughts) is an ancient game from Egypt. You can capture opponent pieces by jumping over them. The first Checkers-playing computer program was written already in 1952.

Game of Lives (download)
A two player variant of the famous Game of Life, which is a cellular automat and thus actually a zero-player-game.

Go81 (download)
Go (or Weiqi or Baduk) is an ancient game from China. It is the national game of Japan and becoming increasingly popular around the world. Black and white players try to gather more territory than the opponent by placing stones on the board. Stones are never moved around the board but they are removed when completely surrounded. Go is played on 19x19 board but this program plays only on 13x13 and 9x9 practise boards.

Pente (download)
Pente (or Ni-nuki) is a variant of five-in-a-row (or Go-moku). The game can be won either by capturing enough pieces or by placing five pieces in a row.

PilotGOne (download)
For viewing, recording and editing Go records. Download a joseki library and problems.

PilOth (download)
Othello (or Reversi) is an old and popular game originating probably from China. Opponent discs between your old discs and your current move are flipped to your colour.

PocketChess (download)
A Chess program with a clear black-and-white board and a fairly strong opponent. Earlier version of PocketChess(tm) Deluxe.

Renju (download)
The game of five-in-a-row or Go-moku. (But not actually Renju which is a variant used by Japanese professionals.) The first player will always win in Go-moku if he plays optimally, but the game is still interesting for non-optimal players like regular people and this program.

Puzzle Games:

Sudoku (download)
Sudoku is a popular logic game in newspapers. Every row, column and box should contain each of the numbers 1-9 once. This program has a nice user interface, a problem solver, and a problem generator.

BoxMan (download) and Sokoban (download)
Sokoban ("warehouse man" in Japanese) is a popular logic game invented by Hiroyuki Imabayashi in 1982. The sokoban needs to push crates into their stores but he can push only one at a time and he cannot pull.

Pilot Mines (download)
Minesweeper clone.

Action Games:

Noiz (download)
Avoid all incoming shots. Control with stylus. Small.

SFCave (download)
Fly in a cave without hitting the walls. Control with just one button. Small.

System:

EasyCalc
Scientific calculator. Requires MathLib (see below).

FileZ (download)
Filemanager.

Launcher III (download)
Replaces "Applications" as the application launcher. An earlier version of the Launcher X.

MathLib (download)
A shared library required by programs such as EasyCalc and Abacus.

X-Master (download)
Hack manager required for using hacks (see below).

Hacks:

Alert Hack (download)
Sets intuitive colors to all alerts.

ClockPop (download)
Clock will appear when you press and hold the datebook button.

VirtualKB (download)
Enhanced and customisable keyboard.

Links:

FreewarePalm
Large collection of free software.

Bray Palm OS Page
A good starting point for developing your own Palm programs using C/C++.

This page was written by Tapani Raiko. Send comments to Tapani.Raiko(a)hut.fi