Other upcoming updates and new apps

[James Traynor <james@xxxxxxx>]

Along with the new Switchboard and Outlook updates, there are some other
updates and new apps waiting for release. Hopefully I should get most of
them out in the next week.

xAP Desktop 1
Time to desktop out of beta! The scripting has been extended to include
even more functions. Tray balloon support and an improved image downloader.

xAP Ping 3
A massive update on the existing ping. Now part of the xAP intranet,
Ping can monitor devices by pinging, TCP checks for services like
smtp,ssh,pop3 etc and HTTP checks by downloading a webpage either
directly or through a proxy. All results are sent over xAP and displayed
clearly on a web page. It can also take an image of your site/building
and overlay the results of the test. So instead of getting long tables
of devices and results you can use a site plan or photo and see things
in a very simple way.

xAP Intranet OCX
Intranet apps link together sharing RSS feeds and providing links to
each other. For the user this is all automatic and works in a very
simple building block fashion. For the developer thing are more
complicated as the app needs both a xAP system and a webserver. The
Intranet OCX makes developing intranet apps very simple, about 12 lines
of code is all thats needed for a full app! It's just as easy to make
complicated apps with it too, xAP Ping 3 is an example of this.

xAP Touchscreen
Touchscreen can be thought of as an alternative to xAP Desktop but
instead of small floating windows with in a desktop it is designed for
full screen and touch screen use. It's centrally managed with all
display loading and control done from a central app and it also uses
virtually the same templates as xAP Desktop so you can load up Desktop
display with only minor changes. Below are a few  screen shots to give
you an example of what it looks like:
http://www.mi4.biz/images/xap/ts/tsping.jpg
http://www.mi4.biz/images/xap/ts/TSCAM1jpg.jpg
http://www.mi4.biz/images/xap/ts/osc.jpg
Touchscreen is designed to run on limited hardware. It does run on a
Fujitsu p510 and cheap pentium POS touchscreen units, pretty much
anything with win98+. In addition to the displays you have seen with
Desktop, Touchscreen can have embedded web pages and large on screen
keyboards (osc.jpg) and the whole thing is designed for navigation by
touch, not fiddly mouse clicks!

The HomeSeer plugin and xAP TV also have new versions on the way with
many new features

So as you can see things here are not at all quiet, in fact it's rather
busy!

James