aClock - a completed time/clock solution
 
aClock has been selected as PalmGear's "Top 50 Downloads".
 
  What Customers Say...
 


Average User Rating: on both PalmGear and Handango
I tested many of the different world clocks available for the Palm and this is my favorite by far. As the description shows there are so many different views and little add ons.
Some world clocks may offer fancier looking pictures as backgrounds, but none are as useful as this entire combination. I have no doubt that this excellent program will continue to improve, though the developer has thought of just about every feature one might want.
Wayne Chen

"aClock is a fantastic product as shown by the frequency of feature updates. The developers are without peer when it comes to lightning quick response time to user queries and suggestions. Don't waste your time and money on other pieces of software that allow you to program just a couple of international cities; aClock allows more than 20 city settings. Coupled with aTimer, aStopWatch, aSundial and aDSTKeeper, A0Soft Inc are a highly competent and professional company that offer an excellent suite of applications."
Dale Kerr

"This program was great as a standalone, but the plugins he has developed mostly for free make it a brillant program. The new sundial plugin is really great and it is very nice to be able to store the plugins on my SD card. This is a real bsargain at $10!!"
Bill Quinlan

"I have installed your programs aClock, aSundial and aStop Watch.. and I think they are wonderful. Keep the good work.I like to download and try all the new programs that I can find and I believe these two programs are the best one in their category. They are user friendly, beautiful and informative."
Fuad Rayess

"It has a lot of power given the very large selection cities. I like the exchange of home cities which automatically adjusts the system time and the times of all our cities in the list."
Columbia, MD

"This aClock is very useful & incredible.I love it. Now without somebody help I can checking the whole world or region time. Especially can avoid sleeping time if I want to contact overseas.Thanks a million. Good job."
Alan JH Tsai

"I have been using this program for a while and found the software very useful. I frequently travel and make conference calls globally, this software is clean and simple. It doesn't have the bells and whistles of other software, but it does allow me to schedule calls and see if some other part of the world is awake! Great piece of software and I look forward to further enchnacements!"
Eric Shen

and more...
 
 
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  Features
 

     
    Click here to purchase aClock now for only US$10.0 Unregistered user can also have a 15-day to try out all functions.
     
  • Built-in 1170+ cities' UTC and DST information.
  • Shows 23 cities' time on your Palm. You can also set some cities as blank if you don't want to see so many cities.
  • Changes time at different time zones without affecting Palm's system time.
  • If you are traveling to a different city, the "As Home City" function enables you to change Palm's system clock based on your destination.
  • Powerful date calculator functions. It enables you to calculates the duration between two dates and adds or subtracts days to or from a given date.
  • City name, UTC(Coordinated Universal Time), coordinate and DST all are customizable. You can also add new cities or delete any existing cities to or from the world city database.
  • Supports DST (Daylight Saving Time) automatically and has flexible DST settings to make any possible DST rule, as defined by your country.
  • Shows the Internet time and the current time to the second on the main screen.
  • Enables you to add notes for each world city.
  • Sort world cities by the city name or UTC in ascending or descending order.
  • Shows the latitude and longitude information for each world city.
  • Enables you to change the time with the graffiti input or page up/down key easily.
  • Supports Palm 5-way navigator.
  • Supports Hi-Res (320x320).
  • Tightly integrated with aAlarm and aDSTKeeper.
  • The intelligent quick-find technology enables you to pick a city from the aClock built-in city list easily and quickly.
  • With the provided 203 countries database, you can also choose a city through a country.
  • aClock supports many plug-in tools. E.g. aTimer (a countdown timer program), aStopWatch (a stopwatch program), aSundial (a state-of-the-art analog clock), aTimeMap (shows world city times on the world map).
  • Enables you to store plug-in tools on the memory expansion (SD) card.
  • Last but not least, gray-level is supported for your B&W Palm and color is also supported by aClock.
 
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  Supported OSs
 
  • OS v3.2.x (Palm VII)
  • OS v3.5.x (Palm IIIc, Vx, m10X)
  • OS v4.x (Palm m500, m505, m515)
  • OS v5.x
  • or later
 
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  How to purchase and register
 
aClock is shareware. Only US$12.00 to register. You can purchase aClock from the following resale sites.
 


Pay me securely with your Visa, MasterCard, Discover, or American Express card through PayPal!

Buy it through PayPal

PayPal is an Internet service which allows you to make the following major credit card payments electronically.

All of our registrations are now handled through the above sites. They maintain a secure server to accept credit cards for all registrations, as well as taking telephone orders if you just don't trust the current state of electronic commerce.

Registering your aClock software gets you the benefit of automatic e-mail notification whenever one of the programs you registered is updated, and automatic e-mail notification whenever we release a completely new product!

Note: Our products are shareware software with a free trial period. You do NOT need to order the software to try it out. Only order the software when you are satisfied it will meet your needs as there are no refunds available once you receive your registration code. You will be requested for HotSync user name for registration.

aClock v4.0 or later is not a free upgrade version for the users that the registration code starts with WD-. We offer a special upgrade option for you to upgrade the old aClock registration code to the latest version. Click here for details.
 
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  User's Manual
 

aClock

 

Setup the home city and how to change display city
aClock provides three modes, View, Edit and Delta, for you to see the date/time of world cities in different views. Before using the program, you first have to setup your home city and then setup world cities that you want to see. For how to setup the home city and how to choose a city from the built-in cities list, please see the diagram below.

Besides tapping the [V], [E] or [D] button for changing modes, aClock also enables you to cycle modes by pressing the Palm application button (hard button). The default setting of this function is disabled. To enable this function, please change the setting from the Preferences form. To cycle pages, aClock also enables you to do that by pressing the Palm application button (hard button). Please refer to the Preferences section for how to change these settings.

Please note that, aClock won't change the system clock if you change the home city directly. If you would like aClock to change the system clock when you change the home city, please use the "As Home" menu function. For details, please refer to the Use selected city as home city section.

If you also installed aAlarm or aDSTKeeper, their home city setting will also be updated when you change the home city in aClock. The "Date & Time" panel has been added into Palm's Pref since Palm OS 4.0, the time zone information will also be maintained in this panel. To change the home city, the time zone information of this panel will also be updated. Please note that, this function will only be enabled if you have installed the wcCntyDB.pdb file.

aClock also provides a function to classify world cities by country if wcCntyDB.pdb is installed on your Palm. You can learn how to choose a city more easily via this function from the following diagram.

aClock will show the city name in RED if the local time zone of this city is earlier than the current home city, and shows the city name in BLUE if the local time zone of this city is later than the current home time. Please note that this function can only be supported by color enabled Palm machines (e.g. IIIc or m505).

The Internet Time
The Internet Time is a "new" way to tell time, invented and marketed by the Swiss watch company Swatch. The current Internet Time is the same all over the World (no time zones or daylight saving time adjustments). The Internet Time is based on a new Meridian (as opposed to the Greenwich Meridian). This new Meridian goes through Swatch's office in Biel, Switzerland and is called the BMT Meridian.

Instead of dividing the virtual and real day into 24 hours and 60 minutes per hour, the Internet Time system divides the day into 1000 ".beats". Each .beat is 1 minute and 26.4 seconds.

Palm 5-way navigator
Palm 5-way navigator is a newly added feature for Tungsten T/W model. aClock already supports this for you to operate some functions without using the stylus.
  • If no city is selected,
    • [Select]: to select the first city.
    • [Left]: to select the last city.
    • [Right]: to select the first city.
    • hold [Select]: to close aClock and then return to the Application Launcher.
  • If any city is selected,
    • [Select]: to unselect the current selected city.
    • [Left]: to move the selection to the previous city. If the selection reaches the first city, it will change to the previous page and then select the last city.
    • [Right]: to move the selection to the next city. If the selection reaches the last city, it will change to the next page and then select the first city.
    • [Up]: to move the selected city up for changing the city sequence.
    • [Down]: to move the selected city down for changing the city sequence.
    • hold [Select]: to close aClock and then return to the Application Launcher.

Change the city sequence
If you want to move the selected city up or down for changing the city sequence, you can tap the menu item of City->Move Up or City->Move Down. Instead of using the menu, you can also press the Page Up or Page Down hard button for changing the sequence.

Change the system clock when DST begins or ends
aClock tracks each world city DST period and shows the correct information for you, but aClock is unable to automatically adjust the system clock if the home city DST begins or ends. If you want to do that, you can install our other product, aDSTKeeper (aDSTKeeper is freeware and can be downloaded from http://www.a0soft.com/). aDSTKeeper is designed to automatically adjust the Palm system clock when DST begins or ends.

 

Change the time format (12-hour <-> 24-hour)
By default, aClock shows the date and time according to the format that is defined in the Palm system. If you want to change the display format of dates and times, you can change it from the Formats preferences screen that can be invoked by tapping on the Prefs icon. For your convenience, aClock also enables you to temporarily change the time display format by directly tapping the time column of the home city in View mode.

Edit Mode
Sometimes, you may want to make an appointment or a conference call with coworkers that are working all over the world. In this case, you can use aClock's Edit mode to set the meeting time that you want to call without affecting the system time. For example, you would like to have a conference call at 11:30 am, 1/5 Taipei time with your coworkers who are working in San Francisco and Tokyo. Before you send the meeting notice e-mail, you first need to know the corresponding San Francisco and Tokyo local time. To avoid changing the system time to 11:30 am, 1/5, you can change the Taipei time to 11:30 am, 1/5 with the Edit mode function as shown below.


Now, you know that the meeting time for your coworker in San Francisco is 7:30 pm, Thursday, 1/4 and the time for your coworker in Tokyo is 12:30 PM, Friday, 1/5. Of course, you can also set the time from Tokyo's time zone. Last but not least, this Edit mode is also DST enabled.

Set time with the graffiti input or page up/down keys
The Palm system default Select Time form only enables you to change the time by tapping the spin box. Sometimes it is a little cumbersome to set a time in this way. aClock enables you to change the time not only by tapping the spin box but also the graffiti input or page up/down keys.

Delta mode
If you want to know the world cities delta time from the home time, aClock's Delta mode is exactly what you want. To switch to this mode, just tap the D button on the top-right of the aClock main window as shown below.


Show UTC time

If you want to show the UTC time, aClock also enables you to do that by directly tapping on the time column of the home city in Delta mode.

Current UTC = Standard UTC + (DST saving time).

 

aClock plug-in tools

We developed some plug-in tools for aClock. Listed here are supported plug-in tools

  • aTimer - a countdown timer program.
  • aStopWatch - a stopwatch program
  • aSundial - a state-of-the-art analog clock.
  • aTimeMap - show world city times on the world map.

Most of the plug-in tools are freeware. You can download them from http://www.a0soft.com.You can invoke these plug-in tools from aClock as shown below.

If you switch to the other application from aClock while the plug-in tool is running , aClock will remember the last invoked plug-in tool. That means if you tap the aClock icon, aClock will automatically invoke the last running plug-in tool for you. For saving the main memory, you can also store plug-in tools on the memory expansion (SD) card. Once you have installed the plug-in tools in the main memory, you can then use a file management tool like FileZ (http://www.nosleep.net/) to move the plug-in tools main programs from the main memory into /PALM/Programs/A0Soft directory.

Select a city and set it as blank
If you only want to keep track of 5 world cities, because showing 12 cities may distract you, you can set useless cities as blank to help you track world city times clearly. You can also use this function to separate different city groups. To undo the blank, you can execute this function again. For how to use this function, please see the following diagram.

Use selected city as home city
When you are traveling a lot, and need to keep changing your system time settings for different airports and cities. And it's necessary to change your system time to make sure your alarms and appointments for that particular location work. It would be easier if a tool could change the system time based on your destination. aClock's "As Home" function is designed for this purpose. For example, if you are traveling to New York from Taipei and would like to set alarms and appointments based on the New York local time instead of the Taipei time, you can select New York city first, and then execute the "As Home" function to set New York as the home city and Palm's system time will also be changed to the current time of New York as shown below.

After you changed the home city, you can set your alarms or appointments based on New York time.

If you also installed aAlarm or aDSTKeeper, their home city settings will also be updated, too. The "Date & Time" panel has been added into Palm's Pref since Palm OS 4.0, the time zone information will also be maintained in this panel. To use aClock's "As Home" function, the time zone information of this panel will also be updated, too. Please note that, this function will only be enabled if you have installed the wcCntyDB.pdb file.

Edit Note
If you want to keep the city related information, e.g.. country code, area code, international code and currency exchange rate, with the city, you now can achieve that via aClock' Edit Note function. To add notes for a city, you have to select a city, and then tap the "Edit Note..." menu or the note icon. aClock will display a form for you to add notes for the selected city. Currently, the maximum note size is 1024 characters.

Sort cities

The sort function enables you to sort current display world cities by the city Name, UTC or current Time in either ascending or descending order.

For the blank cities, you have three options to decide how to handle them. The "sort it too" option will sort the blank cities as well. The "put it at the top" option will put all blank cities at the top of display cities list. And, the "put it at the bottom" option will put blank cities at the end of display cities list.

If some cities are on DST and some are not, the sort by time function enables you to sort cities by actual time. The sort by UTC function is to sort cities by the standard UTC information. The sorting result won't be affected by DST being on or off.

City details information
The Details... function shows detailled information about the current selected city.

Date Calculator
You can invoke the date calculator by tap on the Options -> Date Calc menu command.

There are two functions provided by the date calculator, Date Difference and Move Date. The first one function enable you to calculate the duration between two dates and the second function enables you to add or subtract days to or from a given date.

The following diagram shows you how to use the Date Difference function to calculate the duration between Jan. 1, 2000 and now. You can use the Show: field to change the display format.

If you'd like to know which day it is in 600 days, the Move Date function is designed for this purpose. If you'd like to know the date 600 days before, you can tap on the "+" to subtract the date.

Because Palm's system limitation, the minimum date is 12:00am, Jan. 1, 1904 and the maximum date is 11:59pm, Dec. 31, 2031.

 

Export date/time to Memo Pad
If you want to export current displaying date and time of world cities to Memo Pad, you can tap on the City->Send to Memo menu command.

 

Edit aClock's city database
Although aClock has many built-in world cities, you may still want to modify the city information. For example, changing city name to the local language, changing DST information if the country changes the DST rule, adding a new city that aClock didn't list, deleting existing cities for saving the system memory,..., etc. Editting the city database can be done via aClock with the provided "Edit City DB..." function. Once you have finished the editing, you can then tap the "Close" menu to return to the aClock main window.

Modify city
To modify a city's information, you have to first select the city you want to modify and then tap the "Modify..." menu. With this function, you can modify the city name, UTC information and DST information. Please see the diagram below for details.

Add/Clone/Delete city to city database
To add a new city into the world city database, aClock will ask you to enter the new city name first. If the new city doesn't exist within the current city database, then aClock will add this new city into the database and the default settings of this city will be UTC +0:00 with no DST information. If you want to modify the current settings of this city, you can follow the steps listed in the section above to modify it.

If you would like to clone a new city based on an existent city, you can use the "Clone..." function to do that. Please refer to the diagram below for details.

The new cities added by the user will also be saved in the wcUserCityDB.pdb database. Whenever you upgrade the world city datbase, wcCityDB.pdb, to the newer version, aClock will automatically add cities into wcCityDB.pdb according to wcUserCityDB.pdb, so cities added by the user will always be maintained. Please note that, the wcUserCityDB.pdb file will also be deleted if you delete aClock from Palm. So, please install the new version of aClock over the the old when you do an upgrade.

To delete a city from the database, you have to select the city that you want to delete and then tap the "Delete..." menu. Please note that once you have confirmed the deletion, the city will be permanently deleted from the database and it cannot be undone.

Preferences
aClock enables you to customize default settings of aClock via the Preferences form. For the detail of this form, please see the diagram below.

Set the system clock
aClock enables you to set the Palm system clock via aDSTKeeper (aDSTKeeper is freeware and it can be downloaded from http://www.a0soft.com/) or the Preferences application.

If you have already installed aAlarm, you can also directly invoke aAlarm through the "aAlarm..." menu command.

Set either B&W or gray-level mode
For non-color Palm users, aClock enables you to set either B&W or gray-level mode. Turning on the gray-level mode enables aClock to display more colors. If the default contrast of Palm is too low, please increase the contrast to use the gray-level mode. You can switch this mode on or off by the Gray Level option box that can be found from the Options->About... command.
 
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  To install aClock
 
  1. Start the Palm Install Tool application in your Palm directory or folder.
  2. Choose the correct User Name.
  3. Choose the aClock.prc, wcCityDB.pdb and wcCntyDB.pdb files that accompanies the downloaded ZIP file.
  4. HotSync.

aClock is ready to go. Tap on the Applications button on your Palm and then tap on the icon.

If you are upgrading aClock, simply install the new version over the old. All your preferences and registration information will be maintained. You do not need to reenter your registration code. Please note that, aClock v4.0 is not a free upgrade version for users that the registration code starts with "WD-". Upgrading to aClock v4.0 or a later version, please also upgrade your aAlarm to v4.0, aDSTKeeper to v4.0, and aSundial to v2.0.

If you have encountered some problems on upgrading aClock, I suggest you then delete the old aClock from Palm and then follow the above steps to re-install aClock. To delete aClock from Palm, all aClock preferences and related settings will also be deleted too, so you have to keep your world cities settings and registration codes, if you have them, before deleting.

For some Palm models, you may also need to use the "Soft Reset" function to reset your Palm after HotSync has completed to make sure the installed program works.

aClock.prc: aClock main program file.

wcCityDB.pdb: world cities database. aClock 3.x wcCityDB.pdb file format is different with aClock 2.x version. If you are an upgraded user, please remember to install this file. Installing this file will overwrite the cities that you modified or the newly added cities via the "Edit City dB" function, please save these settings before upgrading. This file will be used by aClock, aAlarm and aDSTKeeper. If you already installed aAlarm or aDSTKeeper, then this file should already be installed on Palm. Installing this file to your Palm will overwrite the existing world cities information.

wcCntyDB.pdb: is a countries database and is optional. Installing this database if you want to show the country information while choosing a world city. This file will be used by aClock, aAlarm and aDSTKeeper. If you already installed aAlarm or aDSTKeeper, then this file should already be installed on Palm. Installing this file to your Palm will overwrite the existing countries information.
 
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  Removing aClock
 

If you find that you no longer need aClock (or are trying to conserve memory), removing it from your Palm is quite simple. From the Applications launcher :

  1. Tap the Menu icon
  2. Go to the App menu and choose Delete
  3. Select the aClock and tap 'Delete...'
  4. At this point you will be asked to confirm your request
  5. To do so, tap 'Yes'. To return to the application launcher tap 'Done' and confirm that the aClock application no longer appears.

PS: To delete aClock from Palm, both wcCityDB.pdb and wcCntyDB.pdb files will also be deleted.
 
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  Release Note
 
  • 4.92 - released on Apr. 21, 2008 Download
    • newly updated city and country databases.
    • added more cities. supported 1996 world cities.
  • 4.91 - released on Sep. 12, 2007
    • newly updated city and country databases.
    • added more cities. supported 1992 world cities.
  • 4.9 - released on Jan. 10, 2007
    • the newest 2007 DST for world cities.
    • fixed some minor bugs.
  • 4.8 - released on Aug. 27, 2006
    • newly updated city and country databases.
    • added more cities. supported 1360 world cities.
  • 4.7 - released on Jan. 19, 2006
    • newly updated city and country databases.
    • added more cities. supported 1212 world cities.
  • 4.6 - released on Jul. 26, 2005
    • Enabled Treo 600/650 users to use the 5-way keys to navigate the menu.
    • Supported PalmOne 5-way keys (Tungsten/Zire/Treo).
    • newly updated city and country databases.
  • 4.5 - released on Mar. 15, 2005
    • newly updated city and country databases.
  • 4.4 - released on Nov. 15, 2004
    • newly updated city and country databases.
    • added more cities. supported 1196 world cities.
  • 4.3 - released on Sep. 1, 2004
    • exports date/time information of world cities to Memo Pad.
    • calculates the duration between two dates.
    • add or subtract days to or from a given date.
  • 4.2 - released on June 1, 2004
    • newly updated city and country databases.
    • added more cities. support 1178 world cities.
    • fixed the clone city function didn't copy all information problem.
  • 4.1 - released on May 1, 2004
    • enables you to put plug-in tools on on multiple memory cards. e.g. UX50.
    • enhanced icons for hi-res/hi-res+ devices.
  • 4.0 - released on Dec. 1, 2003
    • enable user to change ledger color.
    • options for show/hide the Internet time and current seconds.
    • build in coordinate(latitude/longitude) information for each world city.
    • shows coordinate in Details form.
    • enables you to modify coordinate.
    • not only show standard UTC but also current UTC.
    • up to date city/country database.
    • support OS v3.2 or later.
    • support aTimeMap plug-in tool.
    • a wizard for user to set up home city for the first time.
    • fixed Internet time displaying error.
  • 3.62 - released on Oct. 1, 2003
    • show Internet time.
    • show current second number.
    • show UTC instead of GMT
  • 3.61 - released on Sep. 1, 2003
    • new updated city and country database.
    • added more cities. supported 1110 world cities.
  • 3.6 - released on July 1, 2003
    • enables you to store plug-in tools on memory expansion card.
    • new designed application icons.
    • supports Hi-Res (320x320).
    • if city name contains special language character, some functio