BlackBerry® PlayBook™

[Longcove]

Hi: Until the last OS update the Stellarium astronomy program worked quite well. Now it freezes. Tried the Stellarium site and they say that the Stellarium for Playbook has nothing to do with them, therefore no support.

A search on Blackberry Apps now doesn't produce any results.

Does anyone know what is going on?

Thanks.

Donald

[Krypto]

Hi Donald,

Take a look at the following thread as it may help answer your question:

http://supportforums.blackberry.com/t5/BlackBerry-PlayBook/Stellarium/td-p/1963991

Unfortunately it seems that the app was not directly associated with the Stellarium open source project, and as the developer does not seem to have provided updates, there is nothing that can be done but try a different alternative (e.g. What's Up). I know that likely isn't the answer you wanted, but at least the info there should help figure out what happened.

[Longcove]

Hi Krypto: Thanks for response. I see on the Stellarium site that Ontario Inc appears to be the 'vendor' and, as you say, Stellarium has nothing to do with it. But Ontario Inc appeears to be Blackberry, or perhaps just a Blackberry vendor. Regardless, I'm becomong tired of this crapshoot when trying to use the PB. It never really was ready for prime time. Misplaced faith on my part. I had a bunch of problems with my email after the OS "upgrade." Had to set the security to SSL and my university doesn't even use SSL. Then I found that the Acrobat reader supplied with the PB doesn't do bookmarks. Where were their brains when they developed this. Sigh.

Another rant and I swore that I must try to keep calm when trying to use the PB

Thanks.

Donald

[Krypto]

It's too bad about Stellarium, and unfortunately, in this case, the developer has caused a negative reaction because they've chosen not to upgrade the app and keep it available.

But as a heads up, my sister found a couple of really good PDF readers on App World including one called qPDF. Try that. She's a university student as well and wanted something with more functionality and she says it's really helped for her versus the native Adobe Reader.

[Longcove · Accepted solution]

Hi: I had searched for better pdf readers and failed. But I was told to have a closer look at qPDF and I found that it works well. In fact with practice it works very well for you can use text reflow to view the document full screen then flip back to the bookmark column.

This was one of the good days with the PB

Thanks

Donald

[jcameron]

might not be the answer, but have you tried Whats Up! very good app i use i most nights (when there's good viewing) and it does work fine with 2.1 and i think (but may be completely wrong) as it's a native app and not a port it didn't even need an update for 2.1

[Longcove]

Thank for this I will give it a try. In my efforts to find a solution I found that it is available for Windows 32 & 64. It is a lot better moreso now that the PB version has quit.

Thanks.

Donald

[jcameron]

absolutely stellarium on the pc is an excelent product (and free too !!) but i don't like lugging a lappy back and forth so i use my pb + whats up! for the most part - but sometimes i have to refer to stellarium for nebula and things..

first thing to do after installing stellarium on the pc is download all the catalogues then have a good browse - some nice images (a bit like google sky) only not as cr.. i mean..  better 

[MauriceRice]

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jcameron wrote:

absolutely stellarium on the pc is an excelent product (and free too !!) but i don't like lugging a lappy back and forth so i use my pb + whats up! for the most part - but sometimes i have to refer to stellarium for nebula and things..

first thing to do after installing stellarium on the pc is download all the catalogues then have a good browse - some nice images (a bit like google sky) only not as cr.. i mean..  better 

---

Hi. I'm the author of What's up. Just wanted you to know that the app includes both the Messier objercts and the Caldwell objects. You need to enable them on the settings settings page in order to view them on the screen. The app also features a powerful search tool built with the serious researcher in mind. Once you enable deep space objects, you can search for items of interest using the search tool. If you are interested in just nebulas, for example, then you can search for the text "nebula" and all objects with matching criteria will be listed.

By design, the app only has basic information about celestial objects, but once you select an object on the screen, a link to the Wikipedia article is provided in the info box on the left side of the screen. The link works very well via either wifi or the bridge and provides much more comprehensive info about the objects that was provided in the Stellarium port..

Like you, I am disappointed in the apparent inability of Stellarium's author to support his product. It gives a bad name to all serious PB developers whose only aim is to make PB and BB10 as good as it can be.

[jcameron]

hi Maurice

nice app btw - i really do find it useful, besides the browser it's by far my most used app, except if you count freecell , any chance you can improve the compass? it's the only thing that doesn't seem to work right for me.. i realise it's not the best gyro in the device but i think your on the right track with it, i mean it's just a case of eliminating erronous samples, i was thinking maybe a manual hint would help.. as i know (and most users will also) that north is rougthly polaris way so that could help it calibrate better if you could take a hint from a user , also how about a pc version?

but on topic i notice that he replied to users of the crackberry forums http://forums.crackberry.com/playbook-apps-games-f243/stellarium-729838/#post7660548 in October "There is backward incompatibility issue in the latest OS update. RIM and I working on resolving it. I'm sorry for inconvenience." .. and that the app has since been removed by RIM, it's possible then that were being too hard on the guy, maybe he's busy at uni/work/whatever..