We (the SP and PPC Mag bloggers) have been asked to give an accounting of our favorite apps and services this month. Hmm, so many great services and programs to pick from these days...hard to know where to start? I stopped counting at around 50, which is at least how many I have installed on my iPAQ hx2495 at present. That does not include the countless utilities, skins, and programs I have on storage card media. I still play games like DeathDrive and ipaqman, which require a more, ahem...manual install method (thanks to Werner--I never would have known about them!). My older 3955 has even more stuff crammed onto it. Sometimes, for kicks I go back through the old storage cards looking for interesting stuff. Here are some of my personal picks that seem to have stood the test of time (i.e. I'm still using them after several months or years), and some I use on an almost daily basis.

Favorite Remote Controller: My Mobiler (www.mymobiler.com). The other RC apps out there are great, but you probably don't need all the extra features or the price. You simply want to control your device on the network (or via A/S), snap a screen shot or ten, even slide your desktop mouse pointer over to it, right? Then this is the right RC app for you. Oh yeah, it's also free.

Favorite online mobile blog service: Bloglines (www.bloglines.com).
A blog-service juggaurnaut. Let bloglines manage your feeds, and never miss another breaking story. The mobile version works great in PIE--You can clip out items of interest to share with others, or re-post them in your own Bloglines blog. There's nothing to download to your phone/device. Use IE on your desktop to set up an account, configure your feeds (Bloglines supports import/export of OPML), and set flags for them to be available in the mobile version. Navigate there in PIE on your device or your favorite mobile browser, and stay updated without waiting/worrying about pesky downloads and managing space. If you click a link in your mobile feed, Bloglines employs Skweezer technology to optimize and compress site content.

Favorite on-line chat service: Meebo (www.meebo.com). I cannot get any WM-based mobile browsers to work well with this excellent universal chat service, and have tried Mozilla, Opera Mini, and PIE. Still, if you want to bring all your chat clients together (Yahoo, AIM, Google Talk, ICQ, Jabber) via a web-service, this one is great for your desktop. They even have a feature to allow you to add a chat widget on your web-site so that guests can contact you (through meebo). I've asked the developers if/when a WM compatible version might come out, and they are looking into it, but feel things may not improve until PIE gets a lift in the next WM version. When visiting the site, Minimo mostly crashes, Opera Mini worked somewhat, but as you can see from the screenshot above, still needs some work. I couldn't get the interface to do much beyond that point. The meebo site works fine with iPhone's Safari browser of course...darn iPhone! :P

Favorite E-Book Reader/s: Palm eReader (http://www.ebookmall.com/palm-reader.htm). Simple, elegant book reader with free and pro versions. Not a web-service, but good to have if you want to read .PRC e-books on your device without a lot of fuss. I find it's a little easier on the eyes, and has a few more handy features than MS Reader. My other favorite e-book reader program is Mobipocket (http://mobipocket.com).

Favorite mobile site/service and generator: winksite (www.winksite.com). Discovered this great on-line tool a long time ago, and it's still out there. Winksite is a very simple way to start a new mobile site complete with blog, chat, forums and video, or to provide a version of your content suited to the small screen. You can easily set up a mobilized version of your Blogger blog, for example.

Favorite online weather service: PAW-PDA Animated Weather (www.ssec.wisc.edu/data/paw/). Learned about this on PPC Thoughts way back, posted on it myself many times, and still feel it's the weather geek's choice for mobilized chart animation and data monitoring in the CONUS (Continental U.S.), this great service provides a bevy of useful weather maps, stats, bulletins, and more. Now provides a widget for "PAW"ing your own web site (adds a google PAW thumbnail display), along with animated surface weather fronts and pressure centers. Mucho cool!

Favorite Apps of All Time!!
These are some of my all-time favs ever! To find out more or where they might be located today, simply enter the names in your favorite search engine.

1. Flux Challenge: I still love this amazing 3-D pod racing game.
2. SPB Pocket Plus, Mobile Shell, and SPB Backup: SPB makes only the best software, and these make your device so much better that it ain't even funny. Or maybe it is...
3. VITO Sound Explorer, Audio Player, and Voice2Go: record mp3s, play them back, and command your device with your own recorded voice--all easy to set up and use.
4. VXUtil: freeware t-shooting toolkit du jour of the early and dark PPC networking days. Still works great!
5. Wisbar: I never liked the standard WM UI (until WM6). Before iPhone, Wisbar was the coolest looking thing on the block (still is in my book).
6. UI Tweaker: Change every darn thing on your device, on your device (meaning you don't have to tweak a bunch of stuff in a skin creation application and transfer it).
7. StyleTap: If you just want to straight-up run Palm apps on Windows Mobile, check out StyleTap...