A few months ago, Palm started a “hot app” competition which offered cash prices to the most-downloaded applications.
The company has just announced the winners of the “hot apps” challenge.
Find the full list here:
http://developer.palm.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2098
We have reported about HP’s adding of Palm devices to its cell phone store some time ago.
The company has now “sweetened the deal” a bit by adding a 50$ gift card for HP products to all Palm cell phones sold via its web shop:
Find out more via the URL below:
http://www.cellstores.com/mobile/?r=hp
Dear Readers,
given that today is a somewhat slow news day, and given that our new design and rotating background system is now around for some time, I felt like asking you all to give us feedback.
First of all, a big thanks to all the readers who sent in complaints and praise for the new layout and the image choice. We have read each and every email with great pleasure.
From a performance standpoint, the difference between “Backgrounds” and “no Backgrounds” is minimal. This means that site performance will not be affected much (outside of peak times) irregardless of whether we enable the background images or not.
Editorial effort, also, is minimal. The images have already been shot for reporting purposes, and are essentially being recycled here.
Thus, the question is: do you like the idea?
Sound off in the comments or via a twitter message to the user tamhanna. There is no need to register!!
In Germany, a developer called MetaView has almost godlike celebrity value in the Palm community – and indeed, some of his applications have turned out to be extremely impressive.
One of the reasons why he really is pretty cool is that he also runs a blog where he shares interesting code snippets on a more or less regular basis. His latest victim is file handling:
Have you ever tried the menu item “Default Apps” (German: Standardanwendungen) in the App Launcher’s menu? Then you know that apps can register for certain file/mime types. But how to do it isn’t documented yet. According to this forums thread one might expect to get some documentations about it rather soon. Until then, Jay Canuck and the WebOSInternals-Team both using some luna-send commands to perform the file type registration for their applications: Internalz and Preware. Translating this luna-sends into proper service calls was easy and looks like this:
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Hit the link below to find out more:
http://metaviewsoft.de/wordpress/?p=443
In the last few years, the emergence of bluetooth and TCP/IP connectivity has made cross-plattform gaming on mobile devices possible. However, very few game houses have released cross-plattform games so far.
The above-mentioned Rahul Sood now shares an anecdote which could explain the situation:
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There was a project that got killed at Microsoft. This project was designed to allow console gamers and PC gamers to interact and battle over a connected environment. Personally I wish it would have stayed the course. I’ve heard from reliable sources that during the development they brought together the best console gamers to play mediocre PC gamers at the same game… and guess what happened? They pitted console gamers with their “console” controller, against PC gamers with their keyboard and mouse.
The console players got destroyed every time. So much so that it would be embarrassing to the XBOX team in general had Microsoft launched this initiative.
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This obviously has huge implications on cross-platform (or even cross-device) multiplayer gaming – what do you think?
The main difference between Verizon’s and Sprint’s Palm Pixi is that the latter lacks WiFi. Given that the two devices are very similar otherwise, a radio board swap sounds like a possible idea.
An individual called gitit20 has now uploaded the video below to YouTube – it shows the process:
Strangely, the memory chip is on the radio board, and is socketed rather than soldered to the board. This could be done in an attempt to simplify repairs without data loss…take a look above to learn more about the hardware of these two devices!
Ever since HP bought Palm, a lot of individuals wondered themselves what would become of the famous – Windows-Mobile-powered – iPaq line.
CNBC now reports the following:
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Instead, HP Executive Vice President Todd Bradley told me that the PC giant will exclusively use its webOS software, which it got when it closed its Palm acquisition three weeks ago. Not that Microsoft is completely striking out with HP—Bradley also said definitively for the first time that HP will build a tablet computer based on Microsoft’s Windows 7.
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Not much more to add here – goodnight, iPaq…
One of the biggest and most-recurring questions is the question about smartphone market share: what is a smartphone, and how many of them are sold.
Mobile Business Briefing now reports the following:
Smartphones made up 19 percent of total worldwide handset volumes during the quarter, up from 15 percent a year earlier. … Nokia managed to capture a 40 percent market share, which Strategy Analytics said was due to the Finnish vendor’s “competitive pricing, a huge retail presence and heavy promotion of its portfolio of cost-competitive Symbian models …
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Meanwhile, the firm described BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion’s (RIM)’s 40 percent annual growth rate as “relatively sluggish” due to fierce competition … Apple was deemed to have had a mixed second quarter. “Apple’s iPhone shipments, revenues and profitability continued to outperform, but public criticism of the company is mounting,” …
Given that these figures are world-wide numbers, I am not sure how much longer this growth can be sustained…
HP’s purchase of Palm sent a very clear signal to the world that the company was no longer happy with the mobile policy of its long-term partner Microsoft. Nevertheless, the Slate already was announced – and one never, ever pisses off Microsoft.
Engadget now reports the following:
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… speaking at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference, HP Personal Systems Group VP Todd Bradley just said that the Slate will be “more customer-specific than broadly deployed,” and that it would launch the Microsoft-based tablet “for the enterprise” in the fall.
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For me, this sounds like a typical deal to keep Microsoft happy – let’s see whether we’ll see any more tablets from the boys and whether the device will actually become available…
Palm once was a poster child for firmware updates – even the humbler Palm III could be upgraded to OS4. During the OS5 time, upgrades were rare – now that we are on webOS turf, Palm has reminded itself of its old competencies.
Engadget reports the following:
HP’s Jon Rubinstein — formerly of Palm CEO fame, of course — just mentioned in an interview with Fortune that webOS 2.0 is on track for “later this year.”
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As of this writing, developers have not yet been provided beta versions – stay tuned for further info as we get it.
P.S: /me actively hopes for Qt support. Anyone else?
One of the most interesting chapters in the recent history of mobile computing has come to an end – Google has just discontinued the Nexus One:
I have not come here to praise the Nexus One, but I have not come here to bury it either – instead, I wanted to offer you one simple message (which also explains why Microsoft hasn’t created a prototype device of its own for Windows Phone 7):
An OS vendor may NEVER EVER compete directly with its hardware partners…
Not much to add here…
Verizon is one of the few carriers who deploy a navigation software of their own – in Europe, most carriers have reverted to Google or Nokia Maps for quite some time.
Big red would not be big red if it wouldn’t protect its own application somehow – in the case of their Pre Plus, the machine has been given a slightly wonky GPS implementation which throws most webOS apps off the track.
Fortunately, a fix is in the works over at PreCentral’s:
The app is very simple: once the GPS is initially woken up (most reliably by launching the VZ Navigator app to its splash screen), GPS Fix periodically polls the GPS for a current location fix, based on a user-set schedule (from 5 minutes on up), and keeps it awake. In my initial testing, the app does what I was hoping it would do: allow apps like Minimap and Navit (which do not read the stored GPS location as do others like Google Maps and YP Mobile, and therefore need current fixes to work), as well as the built-in GPS test (found by dialing ##GPS# on the keypad) to continue to function without having to relaunch VZ Navigator. There are also some nice little features (optional notifications and a manual GPS Fix button), with more coming as James continues to work on the app (in its fourth iteration since last night).
So, hit the URL above – and let us know how it goes…
Long-term followers of this blog will probably still recall that we went on a little holiday a few months ago as yours truly was presenting at the Confidence Conference in Krakow.
Given the recent emergence of a program which managed to bypass the iTunes App Store, I was reminded about uploading the video of the talk for your enjoyment. The relevant section starts around 28:30 or so:
Thanks to Martin Derm for bugging me into uploading the video!
Aceeca’s PDA32 is a modular device in a fashion similar to high-end notebooks – you can omit modules you don’t need in order to keep cost down. The question which arises in this case is: can I add modules to this Palm OS device after purchase?
I asked Aceeca’s CEO Alex Topschij, who replied with the following:
No the add-ons are not modular. We would possibly consider a low cost exchange system if a users requirements changed. They give us their old unit we give them a replacement and charge them a small premium on top of the normal additional cost. That is just a thought of the top of my head it is something we would need to think about a bit more.
What do you think about the concept?
