Treo Side Button

So, on the personal geek side of my life, I decided to take the plunge a few weeks ago, and upgrade my verizon phone to the Treo 650, which I’ve wanted since I’ve been a verizon subscriber, but they didn’t have it yet when I became a subscriber. So after watching my LG phone get worse and worse (it had a problem where the internal screen would just stop displaying) — I decided to get the Treo, retail price be damned.

I like the Treo a fair amount. I’m not very happy with the verizon bluetooth limitations, but I’ll save that post for later.

What’s been annoying me though is that the side button is virtually useless.

Palm Side Button

If you want to use the camera at all on the thing (not that I really use it, but it’s fun to place with now and again) — the 5-way navigator button doesn’t really cut it as a shutter release. Ideally, I’d like to use the side button, but there’s no built-in tool to remap buttons like that.

Thankfully, I found sharkbtn (and I think Butler by hobbyist software can do this too). Sharkbtn is free, (well, donations accepted, but I’m not really sure I want to pay $8-$10 for a utility that I only use to map a single button) — and it works great. I’ll make up for the donation thing by buying the Sharkmsg app at some point — or something else the kid writes.