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Posts Tagged ‘webos’

Good news, Palm fans! If you’ve taken a break from jamming on the “Update” button, it’s time to go tap it one last time: the rollout of webOS 1.4 has just begun. The catch: it seems that it’s only for Sprint handsets right now, with the Verizon Pre Plus and Pixi Plus still reporting that 1.3 is the latest release.

We knew it was coming in February thanks to Palm’s announcement at CES — and thanks to the rumor mill, we were all lead to believe it was coming a few weeks ago. All false starts and false hopes aside, it’s available now. We’re seeing reports (thanks Twitter!) that it just has gone live on Sprint handsets.

Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>

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.

Not content with the Android Market website (and with good reason), a couple of Frenchmen last year built AndroLib to provide a decent online experience for people looking to browse available Android apps.

As long as Google doesn’t improve the Android Market site (or release a proper desktop app à la iTunes), AndroLib is basically the best website to browse Android apps, period.

Now the team that built AndroLib is attempting to do the same for the Palm webOS applications store, with a new site called HouseOfPalm.

The design is similar to AndroLib, as is its goal: to provide a place where people can discover new apps for Palm webOS online, easily and rapidly. You can browse all apps by category or get notified about all new apps by RSS. HouseOfPalm also boasts ratings, details about the app (including version number, size, etc.), screenshots and more – far more than the official Palm webOS app store website has to offer.

Unlike AndroLib, HouseOfPalm doesn’t boast any stats or charts (yet), but a quick glance reveals that there are about 50 pages with 20 applications, meaning the total catalog on HouseOfPalm boasts around 1,000 applications and games. For comparison, AndroLib pegs the number of Android apps at around 22,200 and Apple’s App Store has well over 100,000 applications to offer.

If you’re carrying around a recent Palm device with webOS, be sure to bookmark this one.

Update: Palm Pre community site PreCentral last week launched a webOS App Gallery destination.

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

It’s a new day at Palm. The Pixi, Palm’s Treo-esque addition to the WebOS line-up, is getting new commercials without Miss Crazy Face and her magical Pre. Instead, you get hot people taking pictures of each other and having fun.

This is the kind of commercial that I call the McCafe (or Devin’s lifestyle in Seattle) - excited people doing something exciting. It’s a big departure from Palm and a points to a move towards the mainstream.

Video after the jump.

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

While it was reported in late May by the Guardian that O2 had all but locked up the Palm Pre, the UK rag is once again claiming that O2 will be the exclusive carrier for the webOS device. Earlier rumors that Palm would announce a carrier next week seem to be holding water according to this report by the Guardian

Here is the original:
O2 confirmed as Palm Pre carrier in the UK, again

“You know the beautiful thing: June 29, 2009, is the two- year anniversary of the first shipment of the iPhone,” Elevation Partners (which owns a huge portion of Palm) co-founder Roger McNamee told Bloomberg in March. “Not one of those people will still be using an iPhone a month later.”

We’re 5 days away from that milestone. Anyone want to take that bet still?

It’s been 18 days since the launch of the Palm Pre, and the device has already passed an important milestone: 1 million app downloads, according to mobile analytics firm Medialets. That’s impressive for a store with only 30 or so applications. While Apple surpassed 10 million downloads in its first weekend following the App Store launch in 2007, it had over 500 applications at launch, and already had a few million devices (the original iPhone) with which people could download from.

The big problem for Palm is that is set itself up to be compared to the iPhone with comments like the one above and its feature set. And now it has a huge mountain to climb to get anywhere near it. While the Pre may have seen a million app downloads after 18 days, Apple’s newest device, the iPhone 3GS, sold a million hardware units in just three days after its launch last week. Analysts estimate Pre sales to be about 150,000 so far. All told, there are well over 20 million iPhones now out there (probably closer to 25 million), and when you throw in iPod touches (which also access the App Store), there are over 40 million units.

And Palm isn’t making things any easier on itself. During this critical time after launch where new apps are vital, there are only 30 because the webOS SDK still isn’t open to all developers. Palm recently gave an update saying that developers should by the “end of this summer”, but even when they get it, it will likely be another few months before a wide range of apps start coming out. That means it will be the Fall or Winter before there are a ton of apps for the Pre — and that’s assuming developers jump on board.

Meanwhile, all indications are that Apple’s new iPhone 3.0 SDK is kicking app development into an even higher level on that platform. The App Store is currently backlogged with app approvals, and just about every developer I’ve talked to, has something in the pipeline very shortly.

Oh yeah, and Apple just launched a version of the iPhone that is $99, which everyone seems to be forgetting. The sales numbers on that should be interesting.

That’s not to say Palm cannot be successful with the Pre and more specifically, its webOS, it can. It’s a great device, and a great platform. And the mobile arena, and specifically smartphones, are exploding in popularity right now. There is certainly more than enough room for a number of devices and a range of platforms. But Palm still has some very serious question marks on the business side of things, and they’re basically betting the farm on the Pre. It has another webOS device that may or may not come in the next few months, but even if it does, if the apps aren’t there, it could be facing a less than stellar entrance. And that’s the kind of performance Palm needs right now, stellar.

On the other hand, McNamee’s comment might technically be true. All those people who bought the original iPhone may not be using one a month from now — they might be using the iPhone 3GS, instead. Let’s revisit this on July 29, shall we?

[photo: flickr/kowitz]

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Remember the Palm Foleo ? The little netbook that could(n’t) ? Apparently Palm’s resurrecting it as a webOS device with a Gobi 3G chipset, ARM CPU, and 8-10 hours of battery life, according to an analyst with Global Equities Research

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Analyst claims Palm planning to bring Foleo back as webOS device

As more and more people are getting their hands on the Pre, it looks like a few more developers have been given access to the webOS SDK emulator. Well, it’s either that or someone who has had access for a while got a little antsy and finally caved to leaking a ton of emulator screenshots. Read the rest of this entry > >

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14 brand new Palm Pre webOS emulator screenshots leak out