WOW! Let me say it again... WOW! Thanks for all the feedback!
Yea I surprised even myself with that.
The market for PDA-based remote control seems to be quite a bit smaller than we had thought when we began development over 2 years ago.
I would think this would grow over time too though. Also I would think that additional features integrated into it would expand the market.
Any thoughts on two way communication (set top boxes etc)
Long story short: I just can't see competing in the Palm space right now. I am not satisfied with our efforts on the PPC yet, so I am hesitant to port Total Remote to any other platform. Some time after the release of v3.0/v3.1 I will take a very hard look at the market and decide what our Total Remote future might be. Of course, I may be overly critical of Total Remote; bear in mind I know EVERY SINGLE THING WRONG WITH IT, and you don't. It kind of colors my view and makes it hard for me to appreciate all the work we have done to date. ;)
I would say your being hard on yourself.
I'm pretty sure there is no way a text-based markup language could possibly handle the IR, but I have always wanted a GUI-less "engine" that could be called by other programs, and that would work extremely well with ANY programming language.
Sure why wouldn't something like below work? remember I don't know much at all about IR. The info below is not real obviously I am also sure it is not formed as it should be by someone like you. But I am fairly confident that it can be described well with xml.
User defined name here 36 300 50 50/ 0000000111110000 Pulse 000000000111110100
Remember xml doesn't actually "DO" anything it just describes something. Now any transformation of the data for representation is possible rather easily on pretty much any platform through many applications. Anybody could use any xml enabled platform to present the data (flash, adobe svg, xsl, xhtml, vb etc....)
Your core would I guess be an api that was xml aware and when called execute the function described by the xml and probably return some xml.
This means you just write the api for each platform rather than using another file format, redesigning the interface etc..
Tell it to my "superiors". "They" think I'm a time-wasting idiot for doing this. I come from a "information only helps" perspective, and some of "them" live by a policy of never telling the customer anything beyond what comes in the product manual. Classic case of engineers versus suit dweebs.
I am well familar with this
I did not perceive any insult, and I am grateful that you are so interested that you would take the time to articulate your thoughts. The more vocal users like you make it better for the hundreds who read all this but don't take the time to post. It's like a letter to your Congressman; I consider one Total Remote user who posts comments likely represents 100 that didn't post any comments. Your words carry weigh with me!
Glad you think that way.
While I have yet to be notified officially, I have been advised that Griffin has no intention of creating our own, due to some ill-defined bugaboo the suit dweebs perceive. Hijacking the PDA forum here is about the best I could do. :/ It is just unfortunate that there does not seem to be a way for users to share skins and device files, since that had originally been a core part of our master plan.
As I said I would be willing to design it but can't justify hosting it. (would need to be asp platform).
Again thanks for your time, responsiveness and patience.
BTW anybody in particular to contact or just something through your site thanking them for having the good sense to hire someone like you.