My Review of SplashWallet (Part4)

Well its finally here. It's been a long time coming and I thought I would have this review done for late last week. However, my son Caleb who is two had a fever seizure on Thursday because of his ear infection. He spent much of the day in the children's hospital. He's doing better now, but over the weekend my youngest Levi caught the croup. So for the last few days, we have been quite busy with him. To be honest, I haven't used my lifedrive a whole lot this past week. Sometimes things must be put on hold to take care of that which really matters. We all are almost over our colds and croup and maybe in the next few days my family will be back to normal! I'm just really thankful that nothing is worse than what it is. So that is the rest of the story for those of you who may have been wondering where this review was.

My Review of SplashPhoto

We have finally reached Part 4 of my review on SplashWallet (sorry for the delay in this coming out). We have already looked at SplashID, SplashMoney, and SplashShopper. If you haven’t checked out those reviews, be sure to do so. SplashPhoto happens to be the one app that I had on my PDA for quite sometime. I would use this app to display my vacation pictures and such for friends and family. It always impressed people that I didn’t pull out a thick envelope of pictures, but rather use my handheld to show off my vacation pics. So, I’m quite excited about this review and I can saw right from the start that SplashPhoto is my favorite Palm photo manager!

SplashPhoto Desktop

The SplashPhoto Desktop app makes added pictures to your handheld easy and helps keep them organized. To add a picture to SplashPhoto Desktop, you begin by clicking on the add button. After you select your picture, a window pops up and you are presented with several tweaks for the picture and how it is organized. I can name the picture (which doesn’t affect the file name of the original), decide where I want to save it, internal memory, Lifedrive, or SD card, choose its category/album, and add notes to give more details about the picture. You also have several options to change the effects of the picture such as cropping (you can make the picture fit your screen or crop a portion of the picture), contrast, brightness, and rotation. All of these options are available as you add in the picture or pictures.

If you do add multiple pictures, you can scroll through each picture adding in details and tweaking the picture for your handheld. However, one thing I have disliked about adding multiple pictures is that you if you accidentally click on finish and you haven’t made all the changes to your pictures, the pictures are added in and to make changes you have to find them and do so one at a time. I think I would like to see a warning popup, so that if I get clicky with my mouse, I won’t go mad!  However, SplashPhoto does include the option to change the default preferences when you add pictures in. This does help out if you do not want to be detailed with your photos.

Other sweet features of SplashPhoto Desktop include four picture views: list- displays the name, category, and size of image in a list, detail- displays thumbnail, name, category, location, dimensions, size, and notes, thumbnail- displays large thumbnails and the picture’s name, and gallery- displays small thumbnails only. You may also select which columns you would like to see in the list. There is also a shortcut placed into the Palm Desktop for quick access to SplashPhoto. If you have pictures that you need to keep private (such as company prototypes), Splash Desktop allows you to mark pictures as private and secure them with a password to keep them from prying eyes.

I feel that SplashPhoto Desktop does a great job organizing your pictures for my handheld device. It is simple and yet it provides the needed tools to make your pictures look great on your handheld. All of the SplashWallet program’s desktops are a huge convenience when you are entering data or pictures.

SplashPhoto Viewer on the Palm

As with the other SplashWallet apps, the SplashPhoto Viewer is just like SplashPhoto Desktop. You have access to all the same features except for the cropping, brightness, and contrast. The SplashPhoto Viewer can capture images using the built in camera on devices like the Treo, P900 and Zire 72. Unfortunately, I do not have one of these devices to test this feature so I can’t so how well it works. I was able to read images on memory cards taken directly from my digital camera and that worked out quite well. I could also pan or zoom (2-8x) in on these pictures, but some of the pictures would not allow me to zoom 100% because there was not enough memory available to do so.
With the SplashPhoto viewer, you can send pictures via infrared, Bluetooth, SMS, or email. I would imagine that having these features on a Treo would be quite convenient. It worked just fine for me sending my picture via email with Versamail. SplashPhoto also supports Snappermail.

I feel the best feature on SplashPhoto Viewer is the slideshow. The slideshow feature allows you to view your images with transitions and background music (compatible with PocketTunes 3.0 or later installed, AeroPlayer 5.0 or later installed, or a Zire 72). The transitions that are available are Cut, Dissolve, Wipe, Push, or Random. Just for fun, I set a slideshow up on my Lifedrive and my wife’s Z22 and ran the shows. The slideshow on my Lifedrive was impressive especially with the different transitions and music. On my wife’s Z22, it was done well, too. The transitions worked well on the Z22. Now when I want to show off my vacation pictures or whatever, I can really show them off! The music options are simple. You can select all, shuffle all, or a single track. There is an option to control the volume of the background music, too. In just a minute or two, you could have a professional looking slideshow with music to show off your photos on your handheld device.

Overall

As I said in the beginning SplashPhoto is an app I have used for a quite a while and it just keeps getting better. I really like the features of the slideshow and the ability to integrate with built-in cameras like the Treo or Zire 72 is awesome (if only I had a Treo). I have tried other photo programs for my Palm devices, but have always come back to SplashPhoto for its simplicity and its features. The one thing I would like to see change is when adding multiple pictures a warning when clicking on finish to make sure you made changes to all the pictures that you wanted to. Otherwise, this app works great. As part of the SplashWallet suite, SplashPhoto is the best Photo Manager for Palm devices that I have found. Its feature packed and can turn any handheld into a mobile digital picture frame! SplashWallet Suite sells for $59.95 and gives you the best of the most needed organizational software for your device!

Joshua Burdick – Associate Writer (Buffalo, NY, USA)