I first came across
TreoAlarm [link]
about a year ago when searching for free softwares for my Treo
600. Since that time, I've upgraded to a Treo650 and TreoAlarm
is no longer a freeware product. Nonetheless, it still a product
I use daily.
In a nutshell, TreoAlarm, is a combination of an alarm clock and
weather updates. Its truly a useful tool for daily use, however,
in my experience its benefits really came through when travelling.
For day to day usage, TreoAlarm is a convenience tool. Once setup
for your locale, its main screen shows you the time and local
weather conditions. There's an "Update" button to force
it to connect and retrieve updated weather information immediately.
There's also an "Alarms" button that allows you to configure
the alarms. This is where TreoAlarm gets set apart from other
Treo/Palm Alarm applications. It supports up to 8 different alarms,
each of which can be enabled or disabled by clicking in its respective
box. In my case, I have 4 alarms programmed: one for my daily
work week, one for the weekend (I like to sleep in a few hours
on the weekend), another for my every Wednesday morning meeting
(requires I get up an hour earlier than normal), and a last one
that I only use for special circumstances.
Each alarm has its own preferences and allows you to have it sync
the weather, sync network time, or do neither. For those of you
that turn off wireless mode while sleeping, it can also turn on
the wireless mode for you.
As with all alarm softwares, the proof is simply in whether or
not it works at the right time. I can say that for the better
part of six months, TreoAlarm has awakened me and provided me
updated weather information without fail.
For those of us that like to snooze a bit more than we should,
its advanced options also let you disable the snooze button. :)
For the weather, TreoAlarm supports zip codes, city/states, or
NWS codes as well as the option to retrieve weather info from
the US Natl Weather Service, Canadian Weather Office, or Yahoo!
Weather.
One of the most convenient items found its way into recent releases.
I recently had to travel to 8 different cities in 3 different
states. In each one, I updated TreoAlarm for the city/state to
get updated weather information while there. On the main screen
of TreoAlarm is a dropdown arrow showing the recent places I had
checked the weather for. So now, should I need to return to any
of these places, I just choose it in the dropdown and click on
"Update".
TreoAlarm is definitely on my recommended list. Its presently
at version 0.99d with a 1.0 release expected anytime (though with
current functionality, I see no reason to wait for the 1.0 version).
TreoAlarm costs $12.95 (as of right now) and can be downloaded
directly from your Treo (no need to sync it over) from here.
Their website doesn't render too well on Blazer, but is at least
viewable. For Treo650 users, you can download additional HiRes
fonts here
[.zip file], which can be directly installed from the Treo if
you have a .zip file software such as HandZipperLite.
As the TreoAlarm website states, its been downloaded over 11,000
times. Being one of those 11,000 downloaders myself, I definitely
recommend TreoAlarm.
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