Hi All -

We've just posted a new version (v0.6) of our FREE gWhiz product. There's too much info to put in one post, so I'll just describe the update to our popular gCalc! calculator here. Screenshots are below.

First of all, you can download the latest OTA gWhiz from our mobile website (m.gwhizmobile.com). If you'd rather download the cod/alx, you can do that from our main desktop gWhiz website (www.gwhizmobile.com). Note that the install will also include gFlash+ and gRef. More about them in a later posting.

Anyways, here's some of the new features in gCalc! :
1) Graph-on-demand. gCalc can be used as a graphing calculator or just for plain old number crunching. This latest version of gCalc only shows the graph if a graphing expression (e.g. y=foo(x)) is submitted.
2) Number conversions - Now you can use gCalc for all kinds of numeric conversions, temperature, weights, lengths, etc - you can even load your own!
3) Email expression history. Did you ever do a bunch of expressions on a calculator and wish you could save it? Well, now you can email your work to yourself or whoever you think needs to see it. (disclaimer: *cough*, gWhiz LLC. does not encourage emailing your calculations to people you don't know).
4) Incremental Expressions. Just typing in the operator and value and submitting will operate on the last computed number.
5) Fast startup - no more waiting for our logo to go away
6) "Classic" screen mode For those offended by the color blue

If you have any questions or comments about gCalc or gWhiz, please email us at . Your continued support is appreciated! Thanks!!!!

Downloading it now. Screenshots make it look interesting. Been looking for a decent calculator for the BB Curve for a while.

First complaint, I can't figure out any way to quit the calculator. The calculator is still open if I return to the BB home screen. There is no "close" option in the menu of the calculator

Hi - thanks for trying out the calculator.

Clicking the backbutton twice will quit the calculator. The first click will go to our info screen (which we used to show prior to displaying the calculator. we moved it after we recognized people don't want to wait to get started). The second click will go back to the BB home screen.

Nice, thanks - playing with it now. I think it might be better to allow people to only download one of the apps, rather than all of them. I really only wanted to gCalc and not the other, so I would opt for having a smaller memory footprint on my device.

(it's also confusing when you go to download if you don't understand that 'gWhiz' gives you the whole suite of stuff)

My $0.02.

PS: can we turn off the background graphics in gRef? This might be useful, but I dislike eye candy screens...

Ya I am a little disappointed to find all these other things (like gflash, gref) installed on my blackberry when I only intended to install gcalc. Seems a bit shady and misleading.

While I'm not a fan of bundled software when I only want one program, it was stated in the post that those two were a package deal along with the calculator.

Certainly no misleading or misrepresentation was intended. As I said originally, there was too much info to try and put into one post.

I'll edit my original post to highlight the fact that the other two apps (which are quite useful btw) are also installed with gcalc.

Non taken, at least not from me - I'm just as guilty of not reading as closely as I should (hey, I'm an engineer - we don't read docs ). I'll still stand by my preference of having the ability to only install one app that I want, and not be "forced" into the whole suite. Just an opinion.

As another mentioned above, there should be a Menu -> Exit (or Close) added, it's non-standard UI to not include an Exit/Close option on the menu of any program on a BlackBerry. Even the ones that continually run in the background have this as an option, it's just how things are done.

Also, can we disable the application's use of internet while running the program? As soon as you launch it it starts connecting and doing whatever, which can be a) annoying, and b) expensive for people on a pay-per-use data plan...

More $0.02 intended as constructive.

Hi Rivviepop -

Thanks very much for your honest, constructive feedback.

We deliver gcalc, gref, and gflash together because they are an integrated suite. Data sets that you create with one can be shared with the others. So, for example, a set of conversion formulas can appear in your reference as well as available directly from the gCalc's conversion menu. (Currently the integration there is somewhat manual but will be tightened up over the next couple of releases). Still, your feedback, and the feedback of others, will be closely considered as we move the product suite forward.

For those people uncomfortable with downloading our entire package, I'm happy to announce that you can now download gCalc (and gFlash/gRef) individually from our website.

Thanks. I much prefer downloading them individually

Skicson:

Well, I finally decided to ignore your "tracking" aspects. I downloaded the Calc and the Ref apps.

My quick comments on the Calc - you have too many Menu Items starting with the letter "S" so that you need to either scroll to the menu item or Press S a number of times. I was trying to get HELP and I had to Press S, rather than "H" for help. Letter S has StartZoom, ShowGraph, ShowHelp, ShowModern, StartGraphExpress, Shortcuts.

Otherwise, I think the calc is probably too much for me. I did try the conversion and got some kind of error. Finally, got it working.

Just a quickie response.

FF2: Thanks for taking the time to give us feedback. It's definitely appreciated.