I don’t have a lot of disposable income, and I definitely wont enter into a two year contract to have the latest and greatest Windows Mobile device. So coming from a pure Windows Mobile background, well maybe not so pure, I have flashed my Axim up to WM 6.1, a couple of times to try out some of the cooked ROMs from certain developer sites. Hey I’m definitely one of those try before you buy sorts of guys.

So recently I, well some people I know wouldn’t think so, upgraded to my first Windows Professional  Mobile phone. I was fascinated by the Tytn II/Tilt/Kaiser upon it’s release, and picked one up on Ebay, used, for a price I could afford. Unlocked, of course, and the first thing I did was update the ROM. To my chagrin, HTC’s customised today screen, not the way I want my device of any kind set up. It just doesn’t offer me the versatility, or application access I’m used to. Being a long time WinMo user I have a repository of favourite applications, and a way of configuring them, that suits my needs, and of course I replicated this on the Tilt. What if though, some of the HTC plugins could serve me, and I could save some system memory by not running them on my preferred today screen setup.

In steps a tiny application called Second Today, oh, did I mention it’s free?

Second Today, an application from an independent developer, Chi-Tai Dang, is a clever way to extend your today screen.

As you can see in the screenshots above, second today emulates the native windows mobile today settings, which adds ease and familiarity. You don’t really have to configure much more than what plug-ins you want to use to be up and running with Second Today, lets have a look at the results.

On the left, my today screen setup, SPB Mobile Shell, with Pocket Informant 8, SPB Backup, Weather plug-in, SPB Pocket Plus and messaging plug-in. I find that gives  me access to all of the things I need to be effective and mobile on a daily basis. I hope everyone gets the irony here, of the way I set up Second Today, with the HTC plug in that I want to consign to the scrap heap, for the example here. One great thing to note is that you can reuse plug-ins, by that I mean you can run the same one on your normal Today, and Second Today, with no apparent conflict. Another feature of note, even though I have Pocket Plus installed, which adds it’s famous “real close button” to windows mobile, Second Today, disables that function, so when you hit the OK button in the top right corner, it minimises so it’s easily accessible.

The rest of the settings are really straight forward

You can change the look, of the Second Today screen, although I couldn’t get the Big TrayIcons to work, so here’s what this feature is intended to look like.

So except for a couple of little glitches, Second Today is a really useful utility, that won’t cost you much in RAM on your device, definitely won’t put you out of pocket, and just may extend the usability of your WinMo device without a large learning curve.

Go to Chi-Tai’s site to download the Cab and try this out for yourself.

I also want to add a thank you, for a great gift to the wider community

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