Review: Volume DA

Originally published 7 Mar 2006

Summary

Desk Accessories, are useful bits of code that allow me to quickly do something with few keystrokes. Most of these software bits are no longer widely available, due to progress in the Palm interface, but I still find some of them extremely helpful.

Volume DA, by Koichi Terada, is a quick volume control with a timed resume function.

Overview

Software: Volume DA
Platform: Palm
Current Version: Palm: 1.0.3

Why Did I Download/Buy This?

One thing that irks me is to be in a public space and hear someone’s phone/PDA/pager go off. I always turn my devices off. My problem lies in remembering to turn them on again. Days can go by before I check my cell phone, and I have missed appointments because the alarm on my Palm was off. This DA allows me to adjust the volume settings on my PDA, and to also set a resume - when it will go back to “normal”.

How I Use This?

I find this most useful in situations where I need to turn off my electronic devices (concerts, church, etc) quickly, and also don’t want to have to remember to turn my PDA on again. Before I downloaded this DA, I would manually have to go through the process of finding the system screen, going to preferences, then volume. And the worst part is I would never remember to turn it back on; I would only find out when days later I would turn on my PDA to find that an alarm for an appointment had gone off, but I hadn’t heard it, and consequently missed the appointment.

With this DA and the DA Launcher, I can reach the volume control in two pen strokes. Then I can turn it all off and set it to turn on again after a pre-set time.