Like you say Venkatesh, this is a common challenge for software developers, and all I can say is that you must use your creativitiy in finding ways to solve this. I think this issue should remain "undocumented". If there existed one standardised way to implement this, it would too easily be cracked by someone, and it would ruin the prospects of making an decent earning for all of our work.
To provide some kind of assistance, I think perhaps your suggestion #2 could be elaborated on in a more creative way. Think lateral. If you are desperate you can contact me off list. On the other hand, I personally think there is no way to fully protect oneself against users doing what they can to get software for free. What we do in our applications is to price is so reasonable that we remove most of the incentives to crack it, make it easy to buy and activate (instantly through our website), offer regular updates (which includes the app itself so its a hassle to tamper with it), and lastly, try to make apps which meet the users specific needs in such a way that they actally choose to pay to support its further development. Good luck, Kristian -- For information on using the Palm Developer Forums, or to unsubscribe, please see http://www.palmos.com/dev/support/forums/
