Deepsky Astronomy Software Newsletter
You are receiving this email because you are a past user of my Deepsky software. I wanted to update you on a couple things we have been doing.
In this issue of Deepsky News:
Product Activation No Longer Used in Deepsky
Service Pack 2a for version 2006.01.01 available
Deepsky Website Changes
Deepsky AstroCard Edition
Deepsky Yahoo Groups Back on line
WM5 Workaround - Sort of - for Pocket Deepsky 2
Have you upgraded lately ?
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Product Activation No Longer Required - Effective in Service Pack 2a for version 2006.01.01 of Deepsky, product activation is no longer required. We found that product activation while useful in fighting piracy caused additional support issues and was expensive to maintain. We therefore have removed it. If you are a user of version 2006.01.01, you can download SP2a from our website to remove activation from the software.
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Deepsky Astronomy Software Service Pack 2a is available on our website at
http://www.deepskysoftware.net/masterdownload.htm This service pack includes a couple fixes and removes product activation from our software.
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Deepsky Website Changes - Our full downloadable software (eval and purchased) has been discontinued. There are several reasons for this including :
1) To protect against software piracy now that product activation has been discontinued
2) I am scaling back some of my operation so that I can spend more time with family. Deepsky is a one man show and takes a considerable amount of time to maintain. As a result, several of my products including the download version, printed manual, and image CD's have been discontinued.
I am still actively working on my Deepsky software so you can expect to continue to see new features added to the software.
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Watch for it ! - Bob Kepple, author of AstroCards and Coauthor of "The Night Sky Observer's Guide" and myself have joined forces to integrate an electronic version of AstroCards into Deepsky. Bob introduced the product at this years Texas Star Party and will also have copies available at Riverside this year. For more information on this exciting new Deepsky version, visit Bob's website at
http://www201.pair.com/resource/astr...Cards/toc.html
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Deepsky Yahoo Groups - Back by popular demand, I have created a new yahoo group for Deepsky software. If you would like to join the group, visit
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/deepskysoftware/
In addition to the yahoo group, we also encourage you to visit our online forums at
http://www.deepskysoftware.net/forum
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WM5 Workaround - Sort of - for Pocket Deepsky 2
Thanks to a user I was able to get Pocket Deepsky running on a WM5 device. There are issues however so anyone should proceed at their own risk.
To get pocket deepsky to work on a WM5 device you must do the following:
1) Use activesync to make a backup of your device in case things go wrong.
2) Download the eVB runtime from Microsoft at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/mobility/w...loads/evb.aspx Note that this download says it is for Windows 2003 mobile, however it seems to work on WM5.
3) Copy the downloaded file onto your device and stick it in MAIN MEMORY on your device.
4) Find the file on your device and click it to install the eVB runtime. Make sure you install it into your main memory and not a storage card.
5) Once installed, install Pocket Deepsky. You can install Pocket Deepsky onto a storage card.
6) Soft Reboot your device
7) Run Pocket Deepsky
LIMITATIONS
Technically, WM5 does not support Pocket Access databases, which Pocket Deepsky uses, however everything still seems to work. However you cannot apparently use activesync to copy observing plans down to your device. Although the device will read the existing pocket access databases already on it, you cant take a MDB file and convert it to CDB.
Also, while Pocket Deepsky appears to work ok, I have noticed that in some cases Pocket Deepsky will stop working and unload itself.
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Upgrade Today and Save!
Have you upgraded lately? The current version of Deepsky Astronomy Software is version 2006.01.01 SP2a. I am pleased to announce that any prior user no matter how far back they originally purchased Deepsky, are eligible to upgrade to our latest CD or DVD version. The upgrade versions are full versions of our software and do not require any activation or password to use. If you are interested, visit
http://www.deepskysoftware.net/buyit.htm
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Thanks
Steven S. Tuma
Deepsky Astronomy Software
1425 Greenwich Ln.
Janesville, WI 53545
Contact: Steven S. Tuma (608) 752-8366
Website:
http://www.deepskysoftware.net
Email:
stuma@deepskysoftware.net
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Copyright © 1996-2006, Steven S Tuma. All rights reserved.