2011 October » TamsPalm - the Palm OS / web OS Blog

HP’s Todd Bradley refutes webOS killing rumors

Oct 312011

The rumor mill was churning crazy that after retaining the PC business, HP was going to kill webOS. But Todd Bradley refutes the claim.

He stamps these as “unfounded rumors”. According to Engadget

He went on to say that "accolades for the operating system are broadly known" and that the company is focusing on how to "effectively utilize that phenomenal software."

While Meg Whitman is all for webOS, rumor has it that there would be a tight lipped stance towards anything concerning webOS, at least for some time.

Apparently Meg is not dumb like Leo Apotheker (whom I like to call Aerys Targeryan, the mad king) to understand that there has been no ROI on webOS yet, and apparently a big sum was spent to set up the webOS division and on the R&D. This amount would be a blot on the balance sheets if the whole webOS thing is flushed down the toilet.

We will keep you updated, not on rumors, but on rumors that make some sense. That is what our network is all about Winking smile .

Stay tuned…!!!

Bluetooth SIG introduces Bluetooth Smart Marks

News No Responses »

Oct 302011

Well, the Bluetooth SIG has decided to extend it’s branding by introducing two new Brand extensions – Smart Ready and Smart.

These would be applicable on devices and sensors running the Bluetooth v4.0 radio.

According to the press release

BLUETOOTH SIG EXTENDS BLUETOOTH BRAND, INTRODUCES BLUETOOTH SMART MARKS

Market and Use Case Expansion Create Need to Denote Compatible Bluetooth v4.0 Devices

KIRKLAND, WA – Oct. 24, 2011 – The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) announced two new brand extensions to its globally recognized logo today in an effort to create consumer awareness around compatibility for new devices implementing Bluetooth v4.0 – the Bluetooth Smart Ready trademark and the Bluetooth Smart trademark. Bluetooth Smart Ready devices are phones, tablets, PCs and TVs that sit at the center of a consumer’s connected world and implement a Bluetooth v4.0 dual mode radio. Bluetooth Smart devices are sensor-type devices like heart-rate monitors or pedometers that run on button-cell batteries and were built to collect a specific piece of information. Bluetooth Smart devices include only a single-mode low energy Bluetooth v4.0 radio.

Bluetooth Smart Ready devices can connect to the billions of Bluetooth devices already in use today and also to new Bluetooth Smart devices just starting to enter the market. Bluetooth Smart devices, due to their revolutionary low power consumption, will only connect with products denoted with the Bluetooth Smart Ready mark, plus those designated specifically by product manufacturers.

“Here’s the truth of the matter: Bluetooth Smart and Smart Ready devices will revolutionize the way we collect, share and use information,” said Michael Foley, Ph.D., executive director of the Bluetooth SIG. “In order to ensure consumers know what these extraordinary devices have to offer, we created the Bluetooth Smart and Smart Ready marks. These new logos will help consumers manage compatibility, and encourage manufacturers to build their best Bluetooth devices yet.“

A recent In-Stat report forecasts Bluetooth device shipments will exceed two billion in 2013 alone, fueled largely by the rapid introduction of Bluetooth Smart devices across many different industry segments.

“Consumers can look at new Bluetooth Smart Ready devices the same way they would a 3D ready TV – having the TV is just the first part of the puzzle, you need glasses and content in order to really experience 3D,” said Suke Jawanda, CMO of the Bluetooth SIG. “Once consumers have a Smart Ready device, like the new iPhone 4S, they can continue connecting to existing Bluetooth devices and are also ready to experience the new world of Bluetooth Smart peripheral devices that will carry the Bluetooth smart logo.”

Get ready for the next level…!!!

Windows Phone 7 is a bad messaging platform

Software News 2 Responses »

Oct 302011

When it comes to web analytics, it sometimes gives us extremely interesting insights – users tend to stop visiting web services if they have an app to access the service.

Data from Opera’s ad division AdMarvel now contains the following gems:

Windows Phone users are more likely to visit email and communications sites compared to users of other platforms.
Are Android users more educated than users of the other platforms? Maybe, as they are the biggest group in the Education category. Education includes the websites for universities and general education.
Android users are the least likely to visit social media websites using their browser.

Not much to add here – except that I never opened my webmail with a Symbian or Android phone…

The case for piracy–why copyright owners are their own worst enemy

Uncategorized No Responses »

Oct 282011

We all have indulged in piracy of some kind or the other at some point in our lives. And to tell that we haven’t is to make a fool of ourselves.

A nice piece of read regarding this is at http://www.abc.net.au, where the author questions the direction copyright has traversed since inception.

Nowadays, copyright barely resembles what it was originally designed for i.e. to protect both parties: inventors and content creators on the one side and the public on the other. Corporate America and government compliance have written out public interests in many instances.

and

One of the main reasons we all have anti-piracy slogans embedded in our brains is because the music industry chose to try and protect its existing market and revenue streams at all costs and marginalise and vilify those who didn’t want to conform to the harsh new rules being set.

The article can be read here

Samsung confirmed as number one smartphone manufacturer

Metrics Maid No Responses »

Oct 282011

Sammy, aka Samsung, has been able to pull out the rabbit out of the hat. After burying Nokia under a pile of dirt, it has toppled Apple from the numero uno spot of smartphone manufacturers.

According to the research firm Strategy Analytics,

Samsung shipped 28 million smartphones in Q3 for a 24 percent market share, ahead of both Apple (17.1 million, 15 percent) and Nokia (16.8 million, 14 percent). Total global smartphone shipments grew 44 percent annually to reach a record 117 million. However, that growth is almost half that of a year ago, when smartphone growth during Q3 2010 was recorded at 78 percent.

Neil Mawston, Director at Strategy Analytics said

Apple’s global smartphone growth rate slowed to just 21 percent annually in Q3 2011, its lowest level for two years.

We believe Apple’s growth during the third quarter was affected by consumers and operators awaiting the launch of the new iPhone 4S in the fourth quarter, volatile economic conditions in several key countries, and tougher competition from Samsung’s popular Galaxy S2 model.

It is, however, interesting to know that despite of getting it’s butt whipped by other players, Nokia is still the undisputed king of phones.

The top three overall spots belong to Nokia (106.6 million, 27% market share), Samsung (88 million, 23%) and LG (21.1 million, 5.4%).

Since the unveiling of Windows Phones, let us see what the “quarters” have up in their sleeves for Nokia.

HP not to won’t spin off PC division, likely to survive many more years

News 2 Responses »

Oct 282011

When Apotheker was playing Aerys II Targaryen, he made (as expected from Aerys) a decision to chop off the HP empire into fragments, aka spinning off it’s PC division.

Luckily, the Board of directors woke up on time and showed him the door and appointed Meg Whitman as the woman in charge in his stead. The lady after analyzing Apotheker’s strategy quoted

It’s clear after our analysis that keeping PSG within HP is right for customers and partners, right for shareholders, and right for employees.

The Press Release quotes

HP to Keep PC Division

Continued combination of HP and its Personal Systems Group expected to deliver greater customer and shareholder value

PALO ALTO, Calif., Oct. 27, 2011

HP today announced that it has completed its evaluation of strategic alternatives for its Personal Systems Group (PSG) and has decided the unit will remain part of the company.

“HP objectively evaluated the strategic, financial and operational impact of spinning off PSG. It’s clear after our analysis that keeping PSG within HP is right for customers and partners, right for shareholders, and right for employees,” said Meg Whitman, HP president and chief executive officer. “HP is committed to PSG, and together we are stronger.”

The strategic review involved subject matter experts from across the businesses and functions. The data-driven evaluation revealed the depth of the integration that has occurred across key operations such as supply chain, IT and procurement. It also detailed the significant extent to which PSG contributes to HP’s solutions portfolio and overall brand value. Finally, it also showed that the cost to recreate these in a standalone company outweighed any benefits of separation.

The outcome of this exercise reaffirms HP’s model and the value for its customers and shareholders. PSG is a key component of HP’s strategy to deliver higher value, lasting relationships with consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and enterprise customers. The HP board of directors is confident that PSG can drive profitable growth as part of the larger entity and accelerate solutions from other parts of HP’s business.

PSG has a history of innovation and technological leadership as well as an established record of industry-leading profitability. It is the No. 1 manufacturer of personal computers in the world with revenues totaling $40.7 billion for fiscal year 2010.

“As part of HP, PSG will continue to give customers and partners the advantages of product innovation and global scale across the industry’s broadest portfolio of PCs, workstations and more,” said Todd Bradley, executive vice president, Personal Systems Group, HP. “We intend to make the leading PC business in the world even better.”

More information is available at www.hp.com/investor/PSG-Decision.

Richard Kerris leaves HP, Joins Nokia

News No Responses »

Oct 282011

Richard Kerris, the man responsible to glue HP and developers together (read as Vice president, Worldwide Developer Relations for webOS) has left HP to pursue other interests (read as a job opportunity at Nokia).

HP quotes

Richard Kerris, vice president, Worldwide Developer Relations for webOS, has decided to leave HP to pursue an opportunity outside of the company, effective immediately. We are grateful for his service and contributions he has made to HP and the webOS community.

Nine months was the time that Kerris spent with HP. The jump from the burning platform was inevitable, but no wise man jumps from one burning platform to another.

Marco Argenti, Nokia SVP of Developer and Marketplace, tweets

Great people are what makes the difference, always. I’m excited to welcome Richard Kerris in my team as Global Head of Developer Relations.

Bang…!!! The job description remains the same at Nokia, although more challenging, as Nokia is hell bent on pissing off it’s developers (Nokia World Hackathon…hint…hint).

Welcome to the jungle Kerris, is all we have to say…!!

Meet yours truly at DroidCon Amsterdam – Google TV, Qt on Android

TamsPalm internal No Responses »

Oct 272011

This is yet another alert for all true Tam Hanna fans – if you want to see yours truly chuck cubes of chocolate in real time, you have to book a trip to DroidCon Amsterdam right now.

The reason for this is short and sweet. I will hold the following two talks for your entertainment and enlightenment at this Android event:

Qt for Android and Google TV (extended session)
Website: www.tamoggemon.com
Session language: English

“The platform Qt has recently been ported to Android by a group of individuals, and is currently in the process of being improved. The benefit of Qt is – short and sweet – that it can not only be used on Android, but also runs on Symbian, MeeGo and various desktop OSses. This session will look at Qt from a beginner’s point of view, showing what Qt is and how to use it.

Increasingly thin margins put large pressure on TV manufacturers, who seek to maximize revenue by generating income via app sales – long after the TV set was sold. Google TV is one of the up and coming platforms in this field. Come here to learn about it and its position relative to its competitors.”

Find out more via the URL below:
http://droidcon.nl/

Meazura MEZ1000 EOL – time to say goodbye

Palm News Comments Off

Oct 272011

Long gone are the days of Palm OS in the consumer marketplace – if you see a classic Palm device on the street today, it is almost a necessity to chat with its owner.

Nevertheless, OS4 has soldiered on in the embedded area thanks to Aceeca’s MEZ1000 RDA; better known as “that huge blue thing”. Its powerful and versatile MZIO slot made adding all kinds of hardware easy; the low price made it affordable.

Unfortunately, the end is near for the last OS4 device as its outdated components can no longer be producred. Aceeca has just informed us about it as per following:

John McCarthy has passed away

News No Responses »

Oct 252011

The last thing we wish to do here at Tamoggemon news network is to publish obituaries. But unfortunately we sometimes have too.

This month is not a good month for the tech world. After losing Steve Jobs and Dennis Ritchie, we regret to announce that the pioneer in Artificial Intelligence (AI), John McCarthy has passed away at age 84.

Sanford confirmed this via a tweet.

McCarthy, who was talking of Artificial Intelligence way back in 1955, was a mathematical prodigy. During the Dartmouth Conference of 1956, McCarthy established the field of Artificial Intelligence, together with Marvin Minsky, Claude Shannon, and Nathan Rochester.

McCarthy also created the LISP programming language, timesharing mechanism for computers and circumscription method of non-monotonic reasoning.

Had it not been for McCarthy, there would be no games today. We pay our respects to the champion of AI and the foundation stone of modern games.

PS:


(will-be 'john-mccarthy (modifier 'missed 'dearly))

Thank you pjscott for above code.

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Aceeca gives Meazura MEZ1000 the End of Life notice

News No Responses »

Oct 252011

Aceeca, the firm that has held on tight to the legacy PDAs in the modern times, has decided to phase out the Meazura MEZ1000. The reason is the obvious difficulty to obtain components.

According to Aceeca,

After a production life of almost 10 years, the MEZ1000 is nearing the point where its days are numbered. The fast pace at which technology moves has contributed to our need to ‘end of life’ (EOL) the MEZ1000, as it is proving more and more difficult to source some of the major components needed to continue production.

Of course, this is not to say that we are stopping immediately, as we want to support you, our valuable customers and not leave you in the lurch as we phase out the MEZ1000 and phase in our new MEZ1500 which replaces the MEZ1000.

As the MEZ is still in demand, Aceeca has decided to “upgrade” the MEZ1000 to MEZ1500.

The MEZ1500 is now available and offers both Garnet and WinCE operating systems, with various Linux options along with Android coming in future months.

The MEZ1500 includes a number of new features that extend the functionality found in the MEZ1000. Importantly it will allow you to easily transport your applications from the MEZ1000 and ensure minimal inconvenience and costs.

From the outside the MEZ1500 is nearly identical to the MEZ1000, although the first thing you will notice is the higher resolution color LCD at 240 x 320 pixels, compared to the MEZ1000 at 160 x 160 pixels. In the tradition of the MEZ1000, the internal MZIO™ expansion bus continues to be a major feature of the MEZ1500 allowing the easy transition of existing customer modules designed for the MEZ1000.

MEZ1500 Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support for Windows CE is essentially complete and we will begin field trials next week.

Over the next month we will be looking to source critical EOL components for the MEZ1000 so that we can extend our MEZ1000 offering for as long as you require. As you can imagine, when doing this it is difficult to determine how much is enough, for our final stock levels. Therefore we would appreciate your feedback on your potential orders over the next six months, so that we can factor this in. Keep in mind that the stock we make for general sale will be on a “first come first served basis”.

If for any reason you cannot use the MEZ1500 as a replacement and absolutely must have the MEZ1000 then we can look at purchasing sufficient EOL components so as to allow us to manufacture devices for you for several years. This will require a US$96.00 deposit per unit which will allow us to purchase the components and store them for you. In the event that you do not use them we will do our best to sell them to other customers or return them to you for disposal as you see fit. Upon payment of the deposit the components will become your property and we will store them for you.

If you want to purchase the MEZ 1000 or the MEZ1500, you can contact Aceeca.

PSA: Samsung unifies TV developer site, announces planned outage

Software News No Responses »

Oct 222011

Samsung has been extraordinarily hard at work at making life easier for its developers – many of its services have already been unified with a single sign-on.

So far, SamsungDForum, their smart TV site, was not part of this scheme. This is now set to change.

The official announcement reads as following (emphasis added by yours truly):

We are greatly pleased to announce that the Samsung D Forum Website will be renewed on Oct 27th to enhance the website’s accessibility and usability for our developers.

Our goal is to make our SDF web site as easy to use for all our users as possible, so we are working diligently on processing all of the site renewals.

Our newly-renewed forums allow developers from all over the world to communicate and share their ideas and development experience with each other.

Also we offer newly updated SDK and technical documents to enable developers to easily create applications for SAMSUNG SmartTV Platform.

Furthermore, our renewed and redesigned guide enables you to easily understand and implement the SAMSUNG SmartTV Application.

Due to the website renewal and change in the *)Samsung Account policy, you may not sign in to our web site with your existing account.

When you try to sign in with your existing account, you may be asked to switch your account now or later.

If you want to switch now, you will be sked to update your basic and additional information.

Once you complete filling out all those information and proceed in email verification process, then our ‘Switching’ process is complete.

We recommend updating your information and completing the ‘Switching’ process as soon as possible.

Our site will be down for maintenance from Oct 26th at 10:00 AM to Oct 27th 10:00 AM (KST).

Samsung D Forum will continue to improve the web site contents and design to make our site more user-friendly.

Just so that none of you finds himself without the relevant documents in a stressful time…

Samsung currently the biggest phone maker

Hardware News No Responses »

Oct 222011

Samsung’s growth (especially at the expense of Nokia) has been tremendous – in Austria, the “shared maximal damage” policy against the Finnish manufacturer has worked out extraordinarily well.

Mobile World Live now reports the following:

Samsung is set to report smartphone shipments of well over 20 million when it reports Q3 numbers next week, a tally that will establish it as the world’s largest smartphone vendor – at least until Apple can begin to count sales of its new iPhone 4S.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the 20 million figure would top Apple’s latest quarterly iPhone sales of 17.1 million and Nokia’s 16.8 million smartphones for Q3. The Apple quarter ended 24 September, prior to the launch of iPhone 4S, and sales were down from the previous quarter suggesting many were waiting to buy the new model.

Not much to add here…

Update time–webOS updated to 3.0.4

News 2 Responses »

Oct 192011

The already dead webOS is officially on life support. According to the Palm Blog

A new over-the-air update for HP Touchpad is now available. (For details about how over-the-air updates work, click here.)

Some of the new functionality you’ll find in the new update include:

A new Camera app for photos and video

The ability to pair non-webOS phones to your Touchpad, so you can answer calls on your Touchpad. Pairing with non-webOS Bluetooth keyboards has also been streamlined.

Support for OGG Vorbis music files

Online/offline messaging status support.

In addition to new features, you’ll also experience better performance, user interface improvements, and other enhancements such as support for accelerometer events in Adobe Flash Player, and more robust Skype video calling.

The complete changelog can be found here. This update is a sigh of relief to all those buyers who spent their hard earned money (including the lucky ones who got their Touchpads for $100) and bought a device that was killed days later.

Older Entries

TamsPalm – the Palm OS / web OS Blog

HP’s Todd Bradley refutes webOS killing rumors

Bluetooth SIG introduces Bluetooth Smart Marks

Windows Phone 7 is a bad messaging platform

The case for piracy–why copyright owners are their own worst enemy

Samsung confirmed as number one smartphone manufacturer

HP not to won’t spin off PC division, likely to survive many more years

Richard Kerris leaves HP, Joins Nokia

Meet yours truly at DroidCon Amsterdam – Google TV, Qt on Android

Meazura MEZ1000 EOL – time to say goodbye

John McCarthy has passed away

Aceeca gives Meazura MEZ1000 the End of Life notice

PSA: Samsung unifies TV developer site, announces planned outage

Samsung currently the biggest phone maker

Update time–webOS updated to 3.0.4

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