Advent Calendar for webOS

Software News No Responses »
Nov 282010

Consider it a recurring theme: the moment the end of November looms, thousands of Germans set out to purchase a so-called Advent calendar.

This totally useless and nonrecycleable thing consists of 24 little boxes which each contain a tiny teeny little bit of garbage. From the 1st of December onwards, a door is opened everyday – and on the 24th, the thing hits the bin.

At Tamoggemon’s, we believe both in sick humor and recyclability. We thus set out to create Funny Advent Calendar for webOS – which can best be described as a digital version of the abovementioned gadget for your webOS smartphone or tablet.

Given that current webOS devices cannot print garbage, we instead decided to treat our users to all kinds of sick jokes. Open the app when you’re really pissed about your fellow co-humans – it’ll most definitely give you a good laugh.

The application can be downloaded for free from the App Catalog. Click here.

ICON

Posted by Simon Pfundstein at 8:32 pm

Palm webOS has security holes

Palm News No Responses »
Nov 272010

In a move which probably won’t surprise anyone who hasn’t spent the last year under a rock, a security researcher has just found weaknesses in a mobile operating system.

This time, the affected platform is webOS. darkREADING reports the following:

…

Meanwhile, HP has fixed the “Contacts” application issue as of the WebOS 2.0 beta, but the researchers have found a mix of other bugs, including ones of the floating-point overflow, denial-of-service, and cross-site scripting variety, in the new beta version of the smartphone platform.

…

Even though it may be somewhat embarrassing for Palm to be in the news over that matter, let me offer consolidation: give it a few weeks, and another OS will be in the headlights…

Posted by Tam Hanna, Site Founder at 4:06 am

Distimo on App Stores – November 2010

Software News 2 Responses »
Nov 262010

Last month, the folks from Distimo’s have provided us with interesting data on application stores. It looks like they hold up to their promise of monthly updates – the next report has just hit our inbox.

First of all, we get a look at the average pricing of applications across the various stores. One can clearly see that Microsoft’s plans to keep Windows Phone 7 a “premium brand” have failed when it comes to app pricing:
avgprice Distimo on App Stores November 2010

Next up is the usual list of “best sellers”. The top apps for the iPhone look as following:
blackberry iphone Distimo on App Stores November 2010 iphone paid Distimo on App Stores November 2010

On the iPad, the table looks different:
ipad free Distimo on App Stores November 2010 ipad paid Distimo on App Stores November 2010

Windows Phone 7 has the following toplist:
wp7 free Distimo on App Stores November 2010 wp7 paid Distimo on App Stores November 2010

Which can be compared to the more app-heavy toplist for Windows Mobile:
wm free Distimo on App Stores November 2010 wm paid Distimo on App Stores November 2010

Next up is the Ovi Store:
ovi free Distimo on App Stores November 2010 ovi paid Distimo on App Stores November 2010

And Palm’s webOS store:
palm free Distimo on App Stores November 2010 palm paid Distimo on App Stores November 2010

Finally, a look at the BlackBerry:
blackberry free Distimo on App Stores November 2010 blackberry paid Distimo on App Stores November 2010

Hit the URL above for further info…

Posted by Tam Hanna, Site Founder at 9:24 pm

Generation Y on Phone usage

Miscellaneous No Responses »
Nov 262010

Traditionally, the folks at Operas have provided device usage data in their monthly “State of the mobile Web” report. They recently switched focus to include demographic and socioeconomic information – the latest report looks at the way mobile phones are used by 18-to-27-year-olds.

For me, the most interesting chart was the one which looked at usage of phones in public transport. The lesson to learn here is short and sweet: optimize your application for short and bursty usage:
public transport Generation Y on Phone usage

Find out more via the URL below:
http://www.opera.com/smw/2010/10/

Posted by Tam Hanna, Site Founder at 2:50 pm

Janam prolongs Garnet OS license

Palm News 2 Responses »
Nov 252010

After Palm gave up on Garnet OS, the operating system has been held in the news by Aceeca. Janam, a company made up of former Symbol employees, as not stated much in the last months.

A statement by Janam now reads as following:

Janam Technologies LLC, a leading provider of rugged mobile computers that scan barcodes and communicate wirelessly, today announced the extension of its licensing agreement with ACCESS Systems Americas, Inc., the company formerly known as PalmSource that licenses Garnet OS (first released as Palm OS version 5). The amended agreement, which extends the original agreement by five years, enables Janam to continue to develop and sell its XP Series line of Garnet OS-based rugged mobile computers through 2017.

…

Even though the Aceeca PDA32 has superior hardware, its shipment issues have cost the manufacturer a lot of reputation – let’s see how it will all play out in the near future…

Posted by Tam Hanna, Site Founder at 5:18 pm

Government vs phones and DSLR’s

Funny Stuff No Responses »
Nov 252010

Governmental stupidity has given us more than one entry for our funny stuff category – the latest tidbits are below:

No DSLRs in Kuwait
Don’t ask me what problems the Kuwaiti Government has with DSLR’s – but the Kuwaiti Times reports that Kuwaiti individuals are no longer allowed to own professional-grade cameras:

The Ministry of Information, Ministry of Social Affairs and Ministry of Finance have put the ban in place. Start burying your DSLRs in the backyard once the Ministry of Interior join the club.

No phones for single women in India
The Times of India brings us a similarly smart move from rural India:

A village panchayat here has banned the use of mobile phones by unmarried girls, a move they feel would prevent them from eloping with their lovers.

Given the lack of popular physical action against government officials, I dare to accept bets on the fact that it won’t take long until we’ll have two more hilarious cases of governmental stupidity…

P.S. If you are affected, accept our compassion.

Posted by Tam Hanna, Site Founder at 6:26 am

Analyst: webOS tablet could drop March 2011

Palm News No Responses »
Nov 252010

Rumors of a webOS-equipped tablet have been out for ages – it has all but been confirmed in the past.

A Stiefel Nicolaus analyst called Doug Reid now posted a table of upcoming tablet releases. One of the entries in the table stated that a 10″ PalmPad would drop in March 2011 and will cost about 500USD.

Not much to add here – let’s see when the unit hits the road…

Posted by Tam Hanna, Site Founder at 2:46 am

OS market shares in Asia – 2010

Miscellaneous No Responses »
Nov 242010

Long-term followers of this blog already know /me’s approach to statistics and market research – post everything which is interesting, and pull a weighted average to get a “true state”.

Eldar Murtazin now shares the chart below – it shows the smartphone OS trends in Asia:
Android overtakes Symbian in the Asia Region 1 OS market shares in Asia 2010

Given that Symbian missed the Shanzai train, it is not surprising to see Android take over – let’s see how the situation will look in Europe…

Posted by Tam Hanna, Site Founder at 7:50 am

enyo to bring improved UI scalability

Development, Palm News No Responses »
Nov 232010

So far, Palm kept scaling efforts to developers at a minimum – the displays of the Pre and the Pixi had the same width, and just differed in terms of height.

Given that Palm will soon launch a tablet, the boys have decided to expand webOS with a new framework called enyo. It basically is Qt Layouts, albeit on steroids.

The video below explains the concept, and is a must-watch for every webOS developer:

Not much to add here…

Posted by Tam Hanna, Site Founder at 4:46 am

Samsung Galaxy Tab – demographic reflections

Editorials No Responses »
Nov 232010

galaxy tab vs treo Samsung Galaxy Tab demographic reflectionsOne of the core questions which arose in our consulting practice in regards to the Galaxy Tab was short and sweet: who will buy the thing! As our contacts at Samsung’s didn’t yield much, here’s a bit of personal reflection on the thing until the official review drops.

As devices have become smaller and smaller, the paradigma of small is beautiful has been etched into our brains. However, this is not true for all usage scenarios: for web sites and reading stuff, Mr. Mika’s paradigm (big is beautiful) could very well be true.

It is these two jobs where the Galaxy Tab excels. The additional smartphone features like voice calls and a camera are implemented as well – but one can feel that they are not the intended use cases.

Making phonecalls with the huge brick will likely make you look funny – and the only interesting part of the (horribly noisy) camera is its social media integration. In fact, this is amusing…as the large screen of the tab would have allowed high-quality pictures to shine.

I see the Galaxy Tab as the forefather of a new generation of devices, which will act as a “secondary phone” in a fashion not dissimilar to what the Palm Foleo wanted to be.

The current incarnation of the tablet will see usage in all scenarios where the added bulk of a laptop is prohibitive – if you romp around aircraft or building sites all day, toting sketches on a tablet saves you both weight and scrolling…

Posted by DORKOH at 1:35 am

AMD Brazos – more power for your netbook

Miscellaneous No Responses »
Nov 222010

So far, the CPU performance of netbooks was severely limited – while the Atom is strong enough to keep yours truly updating web sites and doing some coding, more processing power is always nice.

AMD has now created a new platform for these small devices. It has a slightly stronger CPU compared to a dual Atom:
brazos 1 AMD Brazos more power for your netbook

Single thread performance is significantly better:
brazos 2 AMD Brazos more power for your netbook

The real fun lies in the GPU,. which is significantly stronger than the one found in current mobile systems:
brazos 3 AMD Brazos more power for your netbook

Find more benchmarks at the URL below:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4023/the-brazos- …

Posted by Tam Hanna, Site Founder at 2:43 am

Aceeca working on Garnet OS tablet

Palm News 8 Responses »
Nov 212010

The folks at Aceeca’s do an excellent job at serving the Palm OS faithful – their recently-reviewed PDA32 is one of the nicest classic PDA’s sold currently.

Alex Topschij, the CEO of Aceeca, now posted the following to the Aceeca forums:

Hi Luc,
We are working on the design of a rugged tablet device and trying to finalize the specs. The problem with Garnet is that it does not support higher resolutions than 320 x 480 and our engineers to need to investigate how much work will be required to do it.
Cheers
Alex.

Given that the PDA32 still isn’t available in all configurations, I fear that the company could spread its resources out too thin – without proper configurations of the PDA32 for sale, the boys could find themselves cash-strapped sooner than later as sales of the original MEZ1000 stop…

Posted by Tam Hanna, Site Founder at 1:33 am

Use 3TB hard disks with Windows XP

Uncategorized No Responses »
Nov 192010

Using hard disks with a capacity of more than 3TB is difficult with Windows XP – the operating system does not support the GPT addressing scheme needed.

Paragon Software has now created an application called GPT Loader, which fixes the issue. It does not allow you to boot, but lets you access the data stored on such a disk.

As an introductory event, Paragon currently gives away free copies of the app. Find out more about the program via the URL below:
http://www.paragon-software.com/technologies/components/gpt-loader/index.html

Posted by Tam Hanna, Site Founder at 6:09 am

Palm Pre 2 now for sale from HP

Palm News 4 Responses »
Nov 192010

HP’s iPaqs were sold online only for ages due to lack of carrier interest – given their targeting at business houses, the strategy actually worked out pretty well.

The Palm Pre 2 now follows the same lines:
palm pre 2 price Palm Pre 2 now for sale from HP

P.S. Developers can get a neat 200$ rebate via this URL…

Posted by Tam Hanna, Site Founder at 12:05 am
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