2010 December » TamsPalm - the Palm OS / web OS Blog

Rubinstein joins Amazon board

Dec 192010

After HP’s takeover of Palm, various employees left the Orange house for greener pastures. Jon Rubinstein stayed on ship so far…

BloomBerg now reports the following:

Amazon.com Inc., the largest online retailer, appointed Hewlett-Packard Co.’s Jon Rubinstein to its board, adding expertise in mobile devices as it expands sales of the Kindle electronic book reader.

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Rubinstein, who worked under Steve Jobs at Apple Inc., joins Amazon as it expands retailing services for mobile phones and transforms the Kindle into a multibillion-dollar business.

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As of this writing, it is not known what this organizational “change” will bring. Rubinstein could leave Palm for Amazon (as HP doesn’t need him anymore), or could intensify the cooperation between the two houses (as HP needs a content provider)…

Fossil plans “external screen watch” for phones

WristPDA 7 Responses »

Dec 172010

Even though our lab WristPDA has long died (dead battery), it is still fondly remembered at funerals, opera houses and other places of no-phone dullness.

Robert Scoble now got wind of the concept pictured below:
new wristpda Fossil plans external screen watch for phones

This 200$ device would act as a second screen to your phone, displaying all kinds of data like incoming email, etc. The difference to the WristPDA is short and sweet: it contains no intelligence of its own…

Why teenagers buy phones

Miscellaneous No Responses »

Dec 172010

Teenagers are an important market for cellphones – having them use your products can make sense.

Nielsen has now performed an evaluation of this user demographic. A very interesting chart is the one below – it shows how teenagers choose their phones:
price mobile youth Why teenagers buy phones

More data can be found via Nielsen at the URL below:
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/a-global-view-of-cellphones-and-youth/

HP trademarks Gyst, Myte and Veer

Palm News 2 Responses »

Dec 162010

In the past, Palm has often filed for trademarks which became devices in the end – except for the Veld, most of the leaks we saw turned into real devices sooner or later.

The company has now registered three new trademarks:

Gyst
Myte
Veer

As of this writing, not much more is known on these devices. However, a keyboard-less smartphone has been rumored a lot in the past – so stay tuned for further info as we get it…

Female gamers take over

Miscellaneous No Responses »

Dec 162010

Alison Barclay from AstraWare has been talking about the role of mature female gamers for a very long time – so far, the stereotype gamer was a teenage male or a freak like yours truly.

Tomi Ahonen now shares the following image via Twitter:
female gamers Female gamers take over

What do you think?

France to introduce online ad tax

Miscellaneous 2 Responses »

Dec 152010

Governments are creative when it comes to finding new ways to fill their coffers – after all, establishing a new tax is less work than cleaning up inefficiencies. Reports of a Google tax have been all over the media in January – and have just surfaced once again.

sify.com now reports that the plans are coming closer to fruition:

France will introduce its so-called ‘Google tax’ on online advertisements Jan 1, parliament decided on Tuesday.

The tax on companies based in France would be amount to one per cent of the net amount spent on online advertising.

…

As of this writing, not much more is known…

LG dual core phone benchmarked

Hardware News No Responses »

Dec 142010

As of this writing, phone manufacturers have been mum in regards to their dual core plans. However, official and leakage policy are two things – LG has now reacted to Samsung’s tremendous successes with the Galaxy S.

The video below has just hit YouTube – it shows the dual core LG Star outperforming a Galaxy S by more than 100%:

Of course, it is clear that Samsung will also deploy a dual core processor sooner than later – looks like developers will be able to access even more CPU power for their apps in the near future…

3966 apps in Palm Germany’s App Catalog

Palm News No Responses »

Dec 142010

Localization has always been a bit of a hairy topic – a few years ago, commonsense knowledge was that bit simply didn’t pay off. The advent of local manufacturer stores changed the balance of power somehow.

The German webOS blog now shares the following:
german webos apps 3966 apps in Palm Germanys App Catalog

Keep one thing in mind: Palm’s distribution settings are more complex than the ones used by other manufacturers. Localizing apps increases reach significantly – given that translators are cheap, why not take a stab…

Austrian device sales – December 2010

Editorials, Hardware News No Responses »

Dec 142010

Long-term followers of this news network know that we have a few staple data sources – Austrian retailers tend not to be among them. Nevertheless, the data provided by Austrian retailer Niedermeyer was too interesting to pass by – by December 8th, the most popular phones looked as following:

Samsung Galaxy S
SE X8
HTC Wildfire
Nokia C7
Samsung Wave S8500
Nokia X6
SE Vivaz
SE Vivaz Pro
Nokia C6
Nokia 5230 Navigator

The most important thing shown by this rank is the immense success of the new “battle of material” strategy employed by Samsung Austria. In short, it can best be explained as following: f### over Nokia, no matter what it costs!

Austria has recently seen Samsung devices being thrown into the masses by both governmental (A1, Galaxy S) and private(Hutchison, Wave, Wave2) carriers via heavily-advertised exclusivity deals. Samsung Austria furthermore has a highly trained team of people focused on “business”, and nothing but. They might not be as sympathetic as Nokia’s folks – but outperform them in terms of negotiation efficiency.

If you add in that Samsung can afford to make a loss on phones as it has other businesses like PCs and construction, a clear picture arises: Nokia is in trouble and will IMHO have a hard time retaking the top spot (s) in Austria without sacrificing margins significantly.

What do you think?

P.S. Walk on an Austrian road, and you see Samsung ads – Nokia ads are few and in between. Furthermore, Nokia’s attempts at negotiating exclusivities have been described as lacking by various carrier insiders…

Open Source Press & Tamoggemon release book on Symbian programming

TamsPalm internal No Responses »

Dec 142010

Symbian is not the simplest of operating systems. Getting started with it is made complex due to the weak documentation – while academically correct, it overburdens beginners with loads of useless background information.

As always, it is up to Tamoggemon to save the day. Tam Hanna, CEO and founder, has seen the insides and outsides of Symbian while creating various well-liked applications for the operating system. This knowledge is now available on flat pieces of dead trees.
Open Source Press & Tamoggemon release book on Symbian programming

The book, which has been published by the German Open Source Press, takes C++ programmers and transforms them into lean and mean Symbian coding machines. Written in Tam Hanna’s usual witty style, the book covers all platforms from lowly S60v3 to the cutting-edge Symbian^3.

In addition, readers get introduced to a variety of supporting topics like distribution, the Ovi Store, Symbian Signed and even game programming. Of course, there’s no academic junk in all of that – just like Tamoggemon apps, the book hits the bull’s eye of the topics.

It takes a single look at the author – do you envision a man who looks so crazy having the stomach to bear useless fluff?
Open Source Press & Tamoggemon release book on Symbian programming

Effective immediately, the 200 page book can be purchased at Amazon Germany or in bookstores all over Germany, Austria and Switzerland for a price of about 30€.

[Giveaway] The Golden Comment – with Krusell

Giveaways No Responses »

Dec 132010

Dear Readers,
exciting times lay ahead for the Tamoggemon Content Network. First of all, a full-time news editor will be watching over the news shortly in order to keep you all in the loop. In addition, we plan to make life on these sites more fun by giving you free stuff. Yes, you have read right – free stuff, for doing essentially nothing.

For this week, we will be giving away a surprise prize donated by our friends at Krusell’s. While we cannot disclose what you will get, rest assured that you will like it (assuming that you have a mobile phone supported by their cases).

Winning is easy! All you need to do is leave an useful comment or news tip at any of our web properties. At the end of the week, we will determine an individual who will celebrate with our little prize.

With best regards
Tam Hanna

P.S. We are still looking at things to give away. Tell us what you would like to win (books, cases, software, etc) – maybe we will be able to work something out for you…

Mobile domains – which are popular?

Uncategorized No Responses »

Dec 122010

Some years ago, debate raged whether a special domain extension was needed for mobile web sites or not. .mobi came, and the world didn’t stop turning – but did it manage to catch up?

Smashing Magazine now did a little analysis of domains used, and found out that .mobi is not nearly as popular as one may think:
mobile domains Mobile domains which are popular?

Find out more on mobile web design via the URL below:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/12/02/a-study-of-trends-in-mobile-design/

RUMOR: webOS 2.0 available to early access members

Palm News No Responses »

Dec 122010

webOS 2.0 has been on and off the press for quite some time – unfortunately, it was not made available to developers so far.

A Tweet on the official Palm Developer account now states the following:
webos 2 out RUMOR: webOS 2.0 available to early access members

Even though I have nothing to do with the webOS part of the company, I do not see any other possible moves (except for free hardware, which is unlikely) for Palm. Releasing webOS 2.0 without giving developers an opportunity to test it would be suicide – so why not get a little goodwill out of the process?

Janam, Motorola settle lawsuit

Palm News 3 Responses »

Dec 102010

Even though the mobile patent struggles tend to be Microsoft vs Apple vs World, Palm OS device maker Janam has found itself a “test target” for Motorola.

The (otherwise failed) company recently launched a lawsuit against Janam. Mobile Business Briefing now reports a settlement:

Motorola Solutions and its Symbol Technologies subsidiary settled a lawsuit with rugged device maker Janam Technologies, which had alleged patent infringements related to mobile computing technologies. Janam has licensed Motorola’s patents

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As of this writing, not much is known on the exact terms of the settlement. However, stay tuned – we’ll be in touch if we know more.