NS Basic/Palm Programming 2000 Contest Results!

This was by far the most popular contest we've had. We were surprised by the number of entries, especially since NS Basic/Palm is such a new product. We were also surprised at what people did: they're doing much more ambitious things than we imagined. The apps all looked very professional: they were indistinguishable from apps that would have taken months in CodeWarrior.

Congratulations to both the winners and the runners up. They made the selection a difficult decision.

Have a look at the entries below. They encompass a wide range of things to do, and showcase some interesting techniques. Nearly all are downloadable: some authors have even included their source code for you to look at. You don't need to have NS Basic/Palm to try some of these out: download the app, plus the NS Basic/Palm Runtime.

Apps are listed with the winning entry first: all other entries are in random order.

We apologize if not all the links in this document still work - a lot happens on the net with documents this old!

Business

This was easily the toughest category. The entries were all a high level. This was not a surprise, as most are commercial apps written by professional programmers.

	MedRules by Kent Willyard, MD. *WINNER* "MedRules is a simple application designed to bring evidence-based data to the bedside by providing the physician with useful clinical prediction rules taken from the medical literature. The first version of the program was developed less than one day after I installed NS BASIC. I have found NS BASIC/Palm to be an incredibly easy to use and powerful development tool, and recommend it highly." - Kent. A complete description of the program is available at: http://pbrain.hypermart.net/medrules.html The judges all agreed: the program is comprehensive, with 17 separate test forms, each with its own form and calculation. It's clean and easy to use. Download.
	Leadership Demo by Thomas Chabra and Jessica Figueiredo, Empowering Technologies How would you like to be a better leader? Here's an interactive tutorial that will help you learn the skills. Empowering Technologies. among other things, develops PDA based training tools. Great presentation and use of graphics. Very clean presentation.
	Folstein Mini-Mental State Exam by Griffin Cupsid The "Mini-Mental" is used by physicians to assess the cognitive performance of patients with neurologic and psychiatric disorders. Structured data collection tools like the "Mini-Mental" are becoming essential to physicians as they are required to produce ever greater amounts documentation by insurance companies and the government. Palm devices put these tools at the physician's finger-tips. Download.
	Handycards by J. Michael Frangiskakis Test yourself with flash cards on your Windows CE handheld computer or your PalmOS device. This application is backed up by a web site with over 30 sets of questions, many designed for physicians and medical students. Download.
	Payphone Call Rates by Doug Kruse This program is currently being used by the tariff enforcement division of the California Public Utilities Commission, PSP Enforcement. It was first ported, then expanded from a desktop version of PCR written by Doug in Visual Basic. It draws on information in in 26 separate Palm databases (probably a record in itself) to do its calculations.

Games

Here people had some fun. They showed some interesting techniques that show off some of the power of NS Basic/Palm.

	Wyzprog by Don Hinds *WINNER* "Magik is a not a game. To many people it may be, but since it can work, it's dangerous to see it as a 'game'. Entertainment, in the very broadest sense maybe, but not a game." - Don. This is a reference guide to all things magik-al, with tons of reference information and great graphic design. Need to know the hex character for finding lost treasure? It's here! Download.
	NS Draw by Clayton Crooks This little program demonstrates how to draw circles and squares. It's accompanied by a tutorial (coming soon) on how to program NS Basic/Palm at www.wirelessDevNet.com Download.
	Quizzer by Andreas Schueepp "I wrote this Quizzer application for my Daughter with NSBasic... and it was realy fun for me to do this with NSBasic !!" - Andreas. This is a nice little program which makes great use of icons to simplify the layouts, as well as a database of questions. Quizzer also includes routines showing you how to convert a desktop file into a database of questions to use on the Palm. Putting a plug for NS Basic/Palm into his sample questions didn't hurt his score. Download Source.
	Spiro by Robert Robbins This is a simple program that displays Spirograph patterns on the screen. Download Source

Other

These category has some handy little programs. Each shows something different that can be done on a Palm device using NS Basic/Palm.

	Take-A-Memo by Jeff Debrosse *WINNER* Here's some code that shows how to "safely" write to the memopad in a keyed manner as well as non-keyed. It has some date/time formatting code as well. Jeff was the first to hack out how to access the built in Memo file from NS Basic/Palm programs.Download Source.
	Calendar & Date Calculator by Chris Christian A perpetual calendar and date calculator for Palm OS. Want to find out what day of the week your birthday is on, in the year that the Federation has first contact with the Klingons? Check the calendar for 2218! Download Source.
	Metric Conversion by David Orriss, Jr. This program does conversions from metric to imperial measure. It's an essential app to have on your Palm. Download.
	State Quarters by Patrick Shea This application tracks your collection of US State Commemorative Quarters. It's a good example of a simple database. "I put [State Quarters] on the Palm Gear HQ shareware site... The application has been downloaded 400 times in the last few days and gotten two 5 star reviews! Thanks for making such a great product!" - Mike Download.