Eponyms – now out for WebOS
Eponyms is a project by Andrew Yee, and most medical users should be familiar with this application which gives you access to “common and obscure medical eponyms (e.g., Rovsing’s sign, Virchow’s node) with descriptions” in your handheld. It was first available for PalmOS (we’ve blogged about it quite a number of times here) and then later became available in the other major mobile platforms including iPhone, Blackberry and Windows mobile (I even found an Android version not linked from Andrew’s website so I don’t know if it is “officially” sanctioned”). Anyway Andrew has been very gracious in providing us with the database in order to produce a WebOS version. It took a while and a bit of discussion in the PreCentral forums but finally we did it. Now we present to you, Eponyms for WebOS!:
The application has a database of over 1700 eponyms which are selectable by the scrolling list. It supports the usual WebOS style of filtering the list by typing on your keyboard and the list will start limiting the display to what you type. There is also a Random Eponym button if you are feeling lucky (thanks to acidhax in Precentral who helped with the coding for this). For each eponym, there is also a button which gives you an option to search other sites for the eponym (whonamedit.com and wikipedia) and more information e.g. about the person behind the eponym and historical aspects. Although I am way past the examination stage, I still find it fun to browse through the application and read about the weird and rare eponyms! The application was written entirely in Ares, Palm’s browser based WebOS development tool. Eponyms for WebOS is freeware and you can install it from:
1) Preware (if you have it installed in your device) or PreCentral Homebrew Repository
2) The Official Palm Catalog
The Preware version will usually contain any earlier beta builds or updates which will be submitted to the Palm Catalog when bugs are ironed out. If you wish to contribute comments or ideas, you are welcome to join the Eponyms discussion in the Precentral forums.
Acknowledgements:
- Andrew Yee for the database and permission for the WebOS port
- the PreCentral community for encouragement and programming tips
- Pascal Pfiffner for consenting to the use of the application icon (which is the same as the iPhone version)
- Palm for providing us with such an easy development tool in Ares
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About the author, Alan: Alan Teh is a Malaysian Physician who specialises in Hematology-Oncology & Stem cell Transplantation. He has been using Palm PDAs since 1997 and is absolutely reliant on them. His current PDA is a Palm Pre and is a strong advocate of the webOS platform, Palm's latest operating system. Caught the blogging bug in 2004 and has been addicted ever since… |
Looks nice. Though I didn’t see the random eponym button. Of course these days you can google the eponym that you think you know but it is more educational when you can look them up in this format. Glad webOs is still getting attention in medical apps.
Thanks. The random eponym button is in version 1.8.0 which is now out on the official App Catalogue – if you hit the Update you should be able to get it.