1a Coming soon: Opera Mini 5Opera’s recent announcement of an “upcoming product which would change the mobile web browsing experience has caused quite some dust.

Opera has now clarified what we will be looking at:


Before the weekend a teaser on www.opera.com/next appeared. It was claiming that “The next generation in mobile browsing” is coming very soon. The product is Opera Mini 5 and a beta is coming very, very soon. Good times, good times…

As of this writing, nothing is known about specific features (tab support??) – stay tuned for further info as we get it!

It looks like somebody at O’Reilly’s has been reading TamsPalm – their book has just popped up again in my wife’s account, although we have not repurchased it.

Looking at the Table of Contents reveals another possible reason. New appendices have been written:
book again OReilly updates webOS book again   Rough Cuts users get another stab

Either way: you can currently download your ebook once again. Get it ASAP, and save it somewhere safe…

The usually well-informed website BrightHand has just posted the following:


Journalists have been invited to an event which will feature the “UK launch of the ‘iPhone killer’ Palm Pre”.

A Launch? Maybe
The invitation seems to be saying that this smartphone will be released tomorrow, but that’s not guaranteed

Even though O2 has confirmed to be the exclusive carrier for the Pre some time ago, not much information has been available on ship dates (last rumor from august put the release on Oct 31st). Let’s see how it all plays out…

Mitch Allen, Palm’s Software CTO, has recently held a webcast called webOS application basics.

O’Reilly has now made a recording available – the full video is embedded below:

We have advertised O’Reillys webOS book quite a bit in the past – unfortunately, it looks like the free press they got was undeserved.
Screen013 OReilly to webOS book purchasers: f### off

My wife just received the following email from the company (or, should I say, shack):

Dear Doris Maria,

This is notification that Palm webOS, 1st Edition is no longer accessible to you online as part of the Rough Cuts service.

If you would like to continue reading Palm webOS, 1st Edition online, you will have to access it through a standard Safari Books Online subscription.

Thank you for using the Rough Cuts service. Please check back to see what new titles have been added.

Regards,
The Customer Service Team
Safari Books Online

This means that she is no longer able to re-download her already purchased and paid content. Lovely – this kind of customer service is what entices more and more people to buy and use e-books…

Charlie Rose, a famous US “talkshow” moderator, recently sat down with Dan Hesse from Sprint. As usual, the Pre was a topic – here are the most interesting quotes.

First of all, it looks like Sprint wasn’t too interested in taking on Apple:

“It was really kind of Palm’s decision to take on Apple. And Palm has had long standing relationship with Sprint.”

And apparently wasn’t so for good reason:

“(Pre is) doing well. But you’ve got to almost put the iPhone, to be fair, in a separate category. The Apple brand and that device has done so well. It’s like comparing someone to Michael Jordan.”

Nevertheless, Pre sales seem to keep Sprint happy – which means that the boys at Palm’s will have a steady stream of income for the forseeable future…

i0 iTunes 9 re breaks Pre media syncOh, the joy – the latest version of iTunes breaks the Palm Pre’s media sync once again.

UK-based news service Mirror reports the following:

It was to be expected, but the release of iTunes 9 has brought an end to the Palm Pre’s syncing skills. The release of iTunes 8.2.1 had originally killed off the Pre’s ability to hook up with the software, but a Palm update had brought it back to life.

As we have already covered the reasons for this cat-and-mouse play in the past, there’s not much to add here – expect a firmware update to fix it in the near future…

pre google voice Palm releases new webOS appsPalm has just announced the next batch of webOS apps – while the Google Voice client has been covered all over the news, other apps hit the road along with it:

- AccuRadio (from AccuRadio), offering streaming radio for the U.S. and Canada
- Local Concerts (iLike), giving you personalizILike Concertsed concert updates from your favorite artists
- Simple Bible (Jev Vandegrift), providing the full text of the Bible with a range of ebook features
- Currency Converter (Janni Kovacs), simplifying those inevitable “duh” moments when making international transactions
- 420 Wallpaper (A Minor Label), with a selection of artwork to give your Palm Pre a new look
- Forbes (Forbes), for essential business news
- A trio of new games: Video Poker (bytesequencing.com), Checkers (Keen Studios), and Lights Out (Vasudeva Damarasingu).

The folks at Palm’s always understood one thing: if the media is pissed, get them happy. Do whatever it takes, but keep them happy.

NANplayer’s rejection brought Palm a large amount of media outrage….which is why their developer head Chuq van Rospach has stated the following in a post to PreThinking:

While we can’t accept NaNPlayer into the App Catalog right now, we are not rejecting it, and we are happy for it to continue life as a homebrew application until we get to the point where we can release public, supportable APIs for the functionality that it requires.

Thanks for your passion, and we can’t wait to enable even more fantastic creative applications via an expanded set of public APIs.

From my personal point of view, there’s little to add here – let’s see how it all plays out!

In the US and Europe, SMS usage is declining – why pay a carrier top cash if you can send an email (which can contain more text) for less? In India, smartphones seem to be less common…which is why the local carrier TaTa DoCoMo has introduced per-character pricing.

Sindh Today reports the following:

launched a short messaging service (SMS), called Diet-SMS, which enables customers to pay on a per-character basis.

“The cost of any Diet-SMS will be only one paise per character used, thereby providing complete value to customers,” Tata Docomo said in a statement.

Sounds like an interesting idea to me – especially if you keep in mind that SMS transmission is a waste byproduct of the GSM standard ;) .

TamsPalm covered NANplayer some time ago – unfortunately, it looks like the product will never make it into the App Catalog. The developer has just stated the following:

Palm stated that they don’t support music file indexing and consequently won’t admit the app into the App Catalog. It doesn’t seem to matter that the app is works just fine on the Pre and that it is substantially better than their pathetic stock music player in terms of features and performance. I guess you should stick to iPhone or other platforms if you want a decent music player on your phone.

I won’t spite the user community just because of Palm’s decision. I will release NaNplayer to the Homebrew gallery once it is done. However, this will still leave most Pre users to get by with a music player that doesn’t even let them create a playlist. However, I will slow the pace of development considerably. I can’t continue to dedicate so much time to developing an app that may never be released to the majority of webOS users. In all likelihood, I will not develop any more webOS apps in the future.

If you’d like to see NaNplayer in the App Catalog, let Palm know.

I honestly have to admit that there’s little to add here – Palm always was pretty good at pissing off its customers…

Luc le Blanc, long-term TamsPalm reader and developer of a cave exploration software called Auriga Topo, has just received the email pictured below from Palm:
palm pixi promo Palm sends out promotional email for Pixi

The full email can be seen here:
http://www.palm.com/us/emails/pixi/intro.html

Engadget managed to catch the change log below on Sprint’s version history page for the Pre – as it has since been removed, linking to the support site will not do you much good:
webos 1.2 features Sprint leaks out webOS 1.2 change log

Stay tuned for further info as we get it…

Don’t ask me what the folks at Palm’s were smoking when they decided to call the device commonly known as Eos Pixi – the folks at Engadget’s got their hands on a pre-production model, and ended up pretty impressed:

All in all, we walked away impressed by the Pixi, but a little bummed that Palm has chosen to bring another webOS device to Sprint. Here’s hoping that this proliferation means the Pre will be finding its way to other carriers soon — part of Palm’s strength right now is that it’s not locked into a long term Apple / AT&T situation, and it would be a shame not to take full advantage of that. Still, it’s always nice to see a quality handset joining the smartphone ranks, and if this pans out to be as cheap as we think it should be, Palm could find themselves making a lot of new friends… Centro style.

Hit the link below for further info and a hands-on video:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/09/the-palm-pixi-is-official-headed-to-sprint-this-holiday-season/

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