PB Extreme Screen Shots

Phonebook Extreme

Screen Shots

This is the Main Screen, which appears very much like many Phonebooks, except for the overall style, which borrows heavily from the appearance of the MP3 Player in many of the upper-end iDEN models. One big difference is the green bar at the bottom which displays the current phone number. If there are multiple numbers for the selected entry, you'll see arrows at either end of the green bar and you can scroll through the entries with the left and right cursor keys.

Here's an example of the details for a single contact. You get to this screen by choosing a contact from the Main screen and pressing the OK button. Note that multiple numbers can have the same icon, whereas Motorola forces you to use a different icon for each number. Also note the text fields, which in this case include a note "Bob's Friend" and a postal address. You can have up to 4 text fields per contact.

Here's what you would see if you selected the address in the above screen and pressed the OK button. Note the Windows-like appearance of the popup dialog, as well as the controls found on that dialog. All of Phonebook Extreme is written using this consistent and familiar style.

Here's another dialog, this time for editing a phone number. Note the second editbox. This allows you to assign a text name to the specific number. This is really useful when your contact contains a lot of indistinguishable numbers whose purpose wouldn't be obvious by looking at them. These names appear in place of the phone number on the green bar at the bottom of the Main Screen. The Calls Are Free checkbox is part of the Smart Call Timer feature that you'll further down the page.

There are many ways to search for information, but the screen shot to the right demonstrates the Full Text Search mode. With this feature you can search for any string of characters within the contact, including partial phone numbers, pieces of postal addresses, or any part of the name. You can search all of those fields simultaneously, or you can limit the search to a specific field.

Complex functionality is supported through Windows-like menus. In this example we see another unique feature of the program, in which you can archive your phonebook data to your home computer directly over the air. You can later recover data archived on your PC if you ever have to replace your phone or reinstall Java applications.

The Call Log fixes a number of serious weakness of the native Motorola log. Whereas the native log stores only ONE entry per contact or unassigned number, PB Extreme stores from 5 to 20 call details per contact or unassigned number. Whereas the native log stores only the last 20 items, PB Extreme stores the last 50 contacts or unassigned numbers (with up to 20 details each). The call time displayed is when the call BEGAN, not when when it ENDED (which is what Motorola tells you).

The Smart Call Timer in PB Extreme knows the difference between daytime, evening, and weekend minutes, plus it supports both per-minute and per-second billing. It knows what calls are free and what calls are billable and thus it gives you an accurate picture of your usage. You tell it when your billing period begins and it automatically archives the minutes for the previous month and clears the timers in preparation for the new month.

In conjunction with a mini-server operating on your PC you can perform Reverse Lookups on any phone number in your log, any phone number in your contacts, or any phone number you hand-enter. The results of a Reverse Lookup can be added directly to an existing contact as a postal address item, or you can create a brand new contact that will automatically be populated with the name, phone number, and address found by the lookup.

Here's the results of a reverse lookup on the phone number 905-272-4800. It belongs to a Canadian Tire store in Mississauga. Note that one of the softkeys is labeled Copy. By pressing this button the address would automatically be copied to the contact I already had setup for the store. If I'd hand-entered the number and it was unassociated with any existing contacts, the softkey would have been labeled Create.

Here's another Calls Log feature. With this you can generate a chronological list of all call details stored in the log. You can filter the list to display just Daytime minutes, just Evening minutes, just Weekend minutes, a combination Evening & Weekend minutes, or all call details. You can use this list to compare against the details in your monthly statement.

Here's an example the Theme List with a different color set selected. You can create as many Color Themes as you like, and you can share you themes with other users of Phonebook Extreme.

This is how the main list for the Theme Editor looks. There are over 40 different colors you can modify, each controlling a different aspect of the display in Phonebook Extreme.

This is the dialog that allows you to edit an individual color in a Theme. You can adjust color using the RGB model (red, green, blue), or the HSB model (hue, saturation, brightness). The bar across the tops gives you a live sample the color as you adjust it.

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