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Posts Tagged ‘palm pre’

A WebOS port of the popular GB/CGA emulator is pretty rocking’, even though it only runs at 90% speed on a good day. The hackers who figured all this out will get it back up to speed shortly but don’t expect to download this at the Apps Market or whatever Palm is calling it

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Mario Kart (and more) for your Palm Pre

With its new geolocation API, Twitter has the potential to delve into the realm of messages that are relevant based on location. But right now, most geotagged tweets are simply regular tweets that are being tagged with location, and really don’t have much specifically to do with it. Enter BlockChalk, a new service built around the idea of leaving simple messages directly tied to a specific location.

The service, created by Stephen Hood, the former product team lead for Delicious, and Dave Baggeroer of Stanford’s Institute of Design, works because they keep it simple. You load up the application on your mobile device, it locates you, and you leave a message. This can be whatever you want: A note about a good cafe, a tip of something in the neighborhood to watch out for, a request to borrow something that someone else may have in the neighborhood, etc. When other people also using the app come upon the area that you’ve pinned your “Chalk” (their word for message) to, they’ll see it on their screen in a stream of Chalks.

And you can do a bit more with these Chalks. With the service’s new iPhone app, if you use the syntax “[here],” BlockChalk will put in your exact location. You can also attach a link to a location on a map by inserting an actual address in those same brackets. If you don’t do either of these, BlockChalk will hide your exact location, and keep your message pinned to the general area instead.

Once you drill down to a specific Chalk, you can choose to “Chalkback” (respond publicly to a message), “Reply Privately” (respond just to the user who left the Chalk), “Bury,” or “Share,” the chalk.

While I noted the service’s new iPhone app (which you can find in the App Store here as a free download), it’s already available on a number of other platforms thanks to some more advanced web technology. For example, you can use it on Android phones (or the mobile web of the iPhone, for that matter) because the web-based version of BlockChalk uses HTML5 to access location through the browser, Hood tells us. Obviously, that’s a vital part of the app. There is also a webOS BlockChalk app already that will work on the Palm Pre or Pixi. Hood notes that they are currently working on native apps for Android and BlackBerry as we speak.

Thanks to this mobile web usage, BlockChalk is already available in some 93 countries, 6751 cities and 10910 neighborhoods. And while the obvious integration with Twitter’s new location feature is pretty loose right now, Hood tells us that in the next release, it will be much tighter.

The company is in the process of raising a seed round of funding. And while obviously they’ve declined to say how much they’re looking to raise, we hear Hood’s old Delicious counterpart Joshua Schachter is interested. That shouldn’t be surprising given his recent location-based investments.

Learn more in the video below:

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

If you’re addicted to Techmeme, like we are, you’re probably addicted to reading it on your mobile phone too. The problem is that the experience hasn’t been great. There was a mobile version of the site, called Mini-Techmeme, but no one seemed to know about it. More importantly, it didn’t give the full Techmeme experience because it didn’t include discussion items. Today, Techmeme has launched a new version of its site optimized for smart phones.

If you visit the regular Techmeme site now on devices like an iPhone, a Palm Pre, or the new Verizon Droid, you’ll see a site optimized for touchscreen phones. The site include three main tabs, “Top, ” More,” and “New.” These represent the three key areas of Techmeme’s main site. This tabbed navigation allows you to easily jump through the sections. Each section contains the main headlines and a right pointing arrow which you click on to see the discussion items.

As you’d expect, clicking on any headline opens that story (in a new browser window). Thumbnail pictures are also pulled in for main headlines. And there’s a ‘back’ button to make navigation easy.

Even if you don’t have an officially supported device, anyone can access the new site by visiting techmeme.com/m/. But why not do a native application, such as an iPhone app? “We might make a native app in the future, but with Android phones multiplying and capable browsers appearing on so many devices, it just made sense to start with something with broader support,” founder Gabe Rivera tells us.

Just yesterday, Techmeme announced that it had doubled it staff to 6 people.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Velcome, darling! Look what we have for you! Sergey Brin wearing VFF KSOs, CrunchGear’s favorite - as Greg calls them - “crazy monkey shoes.” He wore them to the ChromeOS event and Michael took a few candid shots of him. I’m personally a VFF convert and I’m very impressed that Sergey is willing to walk around in these.

Embiggen after the jump.

With the Holiday Season nearly upon us, we at TechCrunch thought it would behoove us to share with everyone a definitive list of the best smartphones currently available (or launching shortly), so as to help with any possible purchasing decisions which may occur in the upcoming months.

In making our decisions, we looked at these phones from the standpoint of the consumer. Thus, developer struggles, business security, and other such problems were not taken into account. Instead, functionality, price, and the overall usefulness of various smartphones made up the criteria which we adhered to during our reviews. These phones can be found on a multitude of carriers, operating systems, and continents.

Feel free to comment below on the merits of this list of the best smart phones currently available.

iPhone 3GS

You know you’re on top when phone manufacturers are constantly struggling to produce an “iPhone killer”. The iPhone 3GS boasts a massive App Store (with nearly 100,000 apps now), the largest developer base, and is simply put, the best phone on the market.

Status: Launched June 19th, 2009 on ATT
Screen: 3.5-inch 480 x 320-pixel resolution at 163 ppi widescreen Multi-Touch display
Dimensions: 115.5 x 62.1 x 12.3 mm; 135 grams
Camera: 3 megapixels w/ AutoFocus, No flash
Battery: 1150 mAh Li-Ion
Standby Time: 300 hours
Talk Time: Up to 12 hours on 2G; Up to 5 hours on 3G
Processor: Samsung S5PC100; 600 MHz
Internal/External Memory: 16GB or 32GB
Extras: 3.5mm Headset jack, accelerometer, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS enabled
Operating System: iPhone OS
Price: $199 for 16 GB; $299 for 32GB

Motorola Droid

If any phone is going to challenge the iPhone’s supremacy, it will be the Verizon Droid. The Droid is on a superior network than the iPhone, and will be running Android 2.0 which has a much improved user interface over previous versions of Android.

Status: Rumored to be announced October 28th; Verizon Wireless.
Screen: 3.7-inch/480

I’m here in San Francisco for a meeting Palm has called to give its newest employees, Ben Galbraith and Dion Almaer, who both came over from Mozilla, a chance to talk a bit about the state of the webOS platform.

The two, along with Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein and some other executives spoke at length about the hardware, the platform, and the plan going forward. The message was pretty clear: Web development is the future, and openness is the way. They also made a few big announcements.

The first is that they’re allowing developers to fully distribute their apps via the web. What this means is that developers can simply submit their apps to Palm, and Palm will return to them a URL that they can then blog, tweet, do whatever they want to share it. When a person then clicks on that URL they can easily install the app, bypassing any kind of store. And while Palm is providing the URL, it is not going to be reviewing the apps in any way — a clear dig at Apple’s approval process.

Palm did note that they will still offer their App Catalog (their app store) for developers who want that too. Presumably, any app developer who wants to charge for their app will still have to go through the store. And for those developers, Palm will charge $50 for the apps to go into the Catalog.

The next announcement is that Palm is waiving the $99 yearly fee it normally charges to developers to make webOS apps if those apps are going to be open source. Galbraith and Almaer with their Mozilla backgrounds are big proponents of open source, as are many that were in the audience tonight, so this move drew cheers.

On top of that, Palm is opening up all of its analytical data to any developer who wants to access it. Again, this is different from Apple which keeps much of the analytical data for itself, and shares little.

And finally, in an effort to spur development for the platform, Palm announced that it is giving to every developer in the audience a free Pre, and its new wireless charger. On top of these, everyone will get a month free of Sprint service to use the device and tinker with developing for it. “Just hack on it,” Galbraith said.

So now Palm has had its “Oprah moment,” just as Google did a few months ago at Google I/O where they gave a G2 to everyone in the audience. That was a much bigger audience, but the gesture is still a good one from Palm. Here’s the takeaway from tonight: Galbraith and Almaer are the new sheriffs in town and they want to open things up an get you developing for webOS.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

When your smartphone drops from $249 to $79 over a summer , you have to wonder what’s going on. Two rumors are circulating this AM, one that Palm is laying off folks , perhaps in the Windows Mobile team

Original post:
Pre faltering, Palm laying off employees? – UPDATES

Yesterday the Internet was abuzz with an offer from Sprint that involved a $100 service credit if you port-in a number and buy a Palm Pre. It was a fair deal but Sprint quickly pulled the offer and now explained what happened

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Sprint drops the price of the Palm Pre, explains the $100 credit offer yesterday

Hmmm, where have I seen this ad before? It looks a lot different than the weird Palm ad spots shown here in the States, so that’s not it.

More: 
This Bell Palm Pre ad looks familiar…

Well, despite the fact that the wireless charging system for the Palm Pre is popular and functional, the analysts at Strategy Analytics say that it’s pointless. Come again? Yeah, those analysts, always eager to put out their opinion, say that Palm’s technology is falling way short of where it could be

Original post: 
Analysts say wireless charging is pointless without super capacitors