Treo KeyGuard Picture Application from Toysoft
Click any image in this article to enlarge it.
PicKeyGuard is a neat little utility from Toysoft that enhances your Treo’s useful (but somewhat boring) KeyGuard. Now you can display one or more of your favorite pictures each time the KeyGuard feature is enabled.
The default KeyGuard displays a message telling you to press the Center button before you can use your Treo, thus preventing you from accidentally turning on your device. If you don’t press the Center button within a few seconds your Treo will turn off.
Behind the keyguard, you generally see the last application you were using or the application launched by the button that you pressed to turn on your Treo. It is functional, but not very interesting. PicKeyGuard allows you to specify a directory on your SD card containing one or more of your favorite pictures, and it will randomly display one of these pictures each time the KeyGuard feature is activated.
PicKeyGuard also gives you control over how the pictures are displayed. The “Standard” display (shown above) displays the default “Press Center button to unlock” message as well as your picture.
The “3/4 Screen” display (shown below) allows you to customize the message that is displayed as well as the text, text color, font, and background color.
The “Full Screen” display will fill the entire screen with your picture and overlay the text on the image as shown below.
In the above “Full Screen” examples the image is zoomed in on a part of the picture because I took these pictures at 1280×1024 resolution. The picKeyGuard user guide recommends you use pictures taken at 640×480 resolution for best results.
While playing around with the different settings I did run into a couple of minor issues related to the display of images. One time, the “Press Center button to unlock” message did not display in the Standard display mode, and another time the date/time display was slightly truncated at the bottom of the image. These were minor issues that I’m sure will be addressed in a future update and didn’t occur once I changed the settings.
Conclusion
If you use the KeyGuard feature on your Treo and you enjoy seeing your favorite pictures during the day, then you will probably find the inexpensive picKeyGuard a fun addition to your Treo.
Pros
- An inexpensive way to enhance the KeyGuard feature and view your favorite pictures each time you turn on your Treo.
- Supports Treo 600/650/700p/680
Cons
- If you add more pictures to your “picture folder” they won’t be displayed until you launch picKeyGuard so it can refresh its database of pictures. It would be nice if this happened automatically.
Tested using Treo 700p.
Related Links
Filed under: Software reviews
Loading ...
The whole idea behind the keyguard is to shut off the screen in case it got turned on in the case or in your pocket. Given that, this program seems to serve an odd purpose: display a picture that no one will see. Am I missing something?
With all due respect to the programmer …. I see no reason why anybody should ever want to use this software. When keylock goes on, you want the screen to go off. When you push button after keylock kicked in, then you want to immediately start using your treo, so who cares what is on the screen .. it will go away as soon as you press the center key.
Seems like an ego trip for somebody who just wants to show pictures. Why not write another useless program to show your pictures while you are on a phone call? Better yet, how about writing a screensaver program that shows random pictures? (<– sarcasm)
monkeydog:
If keyguard is accidentally activated then you will usually never see it. But this also means that you will also see it (and your pictures if you are using picKeyGuard) every time you intentionally turn your Treo on. You will only see the picture for a second or two, but that might be enough to put a smile on your face.
dlethe:
I think the low price of picKeyGuard reflects it’s usefullness. It isn’t terribly useful, but it also isn’t very expensive. But for some people, seeing a picture of their children, spouse, best friends or good times every time they turn on their Treo might be motivating or enjoyable and worth a couple of dollars.