TamsPalm – the Palm OS / web OS Blog

Microsoft Austria has just gotten in touch with us for some further information about the WIndows 7 upgrade program. First of all, it starts on the 26th of this month.

From that time onward, Austrians who buy their PC at a participating retailer will be able to obtain an equivalent version of Windows 7 after its release. In particular, the following transformations will be possible:

• Vista Home Premium
• Vista Business
• Vista Ultimate

to corresponding version of Windows 7. System Builder licenses will get the same treatment – so people who get their PC with an SBC license (decoupled OEM licenses, are very popular in Austria) will also get their upgrade free of charge.

The offer will be free except for processing fees, which are said to be different from manufacturer to manufacturer. The Offer will run to the 31st January of 2010.

Palm OS handhelds never ever supported flash, and are unlikely to get Flash support now. However, other handsets might just be in luck – the slide below is from an Adobe keynote:

As of now, nobody knows which devices will be affected – but things nevertheless could get very interesting soon…

The full slide deck can be had here:
http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/invrelations/09q2analyst/

Content agregators like AvantGo date back to a time when mobile data traffic was unaffordable – back then, the only way to read newspapers on your handheld in an affordable way was to download them via your desktop PC and sync them over. Fortunately, data has become a lot cheaper…and this trend has now claimed its first victim.

AvantGo’s mother company has just posted the image below to the official AvantGo web site – the intentions should be clear:

While this move will hit users without a data plan hard, most of us should IMHO switch over to RSS feeds. RSS feeds are available from most news services (including this one), and tend to offer the same thing which AvantGo has offered. A variety of such programs are available – hit the TamsShop to find free and paid ones…and don’t forget to use the discount code CRAZYSUNDAY to get 20% off your paid app of choice…

Even though I usually don’t post press releases verbatim, the latest announcement from the Brazilian ISV HandCase (famous for their utterly weird press releases) struck my interest:

Handcase presents the first 60 applications for webOS

The software will be offered as a service and the web 2.0 style. “We know that we are offering something that in size, mobility and targeting has not yet been offered. We also know that it will be a nice challenge, to offer this software globally, as mobile services, but we are prepared. After all, our extensive portfolio is proof that we can. ” Ricardo Garay says CEO Handcase.

Of the 100 applications promised the Handcase presents the first 60. Page created to provide the software, it is recommended to compare the screens of products for PalmOS, so it is easy to see how they are. www.handycase.com/eng/webh.htm

The software will be offered as a subscription. Users will have the resources available as skins, encrypted security, option to mount their own mobile social networks and more. Carriers can offer unique customized versions. Users will have options to access wi-fi for free, or be signed by your carrier.

Recalling that, for those who already have or buy the version for PalmOS, version webOS is free. Garay explains. More the Handcase advance even began working with MotionApps to the compatibility of their products, with the classic, the PalmOS emulator for WebOS. Adds Ricardo Garay.

The Handcase time, will detail in the exclusive website, the beta versions of each of the first software 60, when then officially communicate the launch.

Apparently the boys at HandCase’s have decided to copy the early iPhone development approach of using rich web pages for content delivery. This allows them to keep their business logic on the server, thereby eliminating most (if not all) piracy risks.

As of now, none of the applications has been released – let’s stay tuned to see how it all works out!

Being the first news service to break a story is not always healthy – the folks at Mark/Space did not include an URL into their press release.

Fortunately, TamsPalm readers sniffed the product’s web site out in a jiffy:

As it looks now, the battered company could very well be on its way to restore itself to its former glory: the product could very well become an absolute must-have for webOS device owners all over the world.

Further information can be had here:
http://markspace.com/products/pre/mac/palm-pre-sync-overview.html

GamePro, one of Germany’s largest video game magazines, reports the following (translated by yours truly):

Germany plans to introduce a law which prohibits the production, manufacturing and/or sale of games which are based on detailed simulation of killing of humans or humanoids.

Even though the law has not yet been ratified, its ratification is somewhat likely given the current political climate in Germany: the recent Paintball law failed due to intense lobbying, and left the government in a void and forced to act.

Obviously, raising a public stink is a very good idea – the articles below should give you food for thought:
In defence of first person shooters
We’re all paintballers now…

Vista haters will be happy to read the lines below, which hit us via Xinhuanet:

… confirmed that Windows 7, the next version of its operating system, will hit stores on Oct. 22, in time for the holiday shopping season,
…
Microsoft said it plans to offer a guarantee program that would offer a free upgrade to Windows 7 for people who purchase computers installed with Windows Vista close to the launching date of Oct. 22, The Seattle Times newspaper reported on its website.
…

Even though I haven’t had any hands-on time with Windows 7 as of this writing, other Tamoggemon employees have had this pleasure and have described the operating system as “amazingly fast compared to Vista, and more featurerich than XP”…

News services all over the world recently went bonkers about a tweet from an account called officethemovie – the guy stated the following:

# June 2009 will be an important month for Zune lovers.12:52 PM May 11th from web

Unfortunately, it all was a scam by an iPhone developer who was pissed about his applications being pirated. Once again: this was a hoax and should be ignored!

Here are a few statements from other Twitter users which should help prove my point:

MicroSoft Austria has just informed me that the release candidate of Windows 7 has just been uploaded to MSDN/TechNet. This means that all who are subscribed to either of the two services can now download it.

According to Microsoft, this release candidate has already reached a stability level where companies can start evaluating it – whatever that may mean…

P.S. Just in case anyone cares: Release Candidate is Microsoft-Speak for feature complete and decently stable..

Unfortunately, the CPU of my MSI Wind U100 is not as fast as the one found in desktop systems…which has made keeping multiple tabs open in FireFox a major chore due to the browser’s weak JavaScript engine. However, this has changed significantly in the latest publicly-released betas: this post is written with beta 2 of FireFox 3.1, which works flawlessly and is very very fast.

The boys have just released yet another beta, which is said to improve the following:

Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 is based on the Gecko 1.9.1 rendering platform, which has been under development for the past 9 months. Firefox 3.1 is an incremental release on the previous version with significant changes to improve web compatibility, performance, and ease of use:

* This beta is now available in 64 languages – get your local version.
* Improved the new Private Browsing Mode.
* Improvements to web worker thread support.
* Improved performance and stability with the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine.
* New native JSON support.
* Improvements to the Gecko layout engine, including speculative parsing for faster content rendering.
* Support for new web technologies such as the video and audio elements, the W3C Geolocation API, JavaScript query selectors, CSS 2.1 and 3 properties, SVG transforms and offline applications.

Further information can be had here:
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/3.1b3/releasenotes/

P. Douglas Reeder sent word in about a new application called SelectCam Buddha Machine. It is a port of a recently-hyped web app which allows users to play ambient music.

Of course, this app is not truly free – even though it costs nothing to use, the name SelectCam is a hint to an excellent (albeit paid) video recorder for Palm OS.

I have never enjoyed too much of a success at Handango’s – as I didn’t have the time to close my account there so far, I still get their newsletter every now and then.

The latest one contained the following highly interesting tidbit:

Top Devices for December
1. BlackBerry Bold 9000
2. HTC Touch Pro
3. BlackBerry Storm 9500
4. Samsung Omnia i900
5. Verison BlackBerry Storm 9530
6. BlackBerry Curve 8330
7. AT&T Tilt
8. Nokia E7
9. HTC Touch HD
10.BlackBerry 8830 World Edition

When it comes to taking the tally, RIM manages to commandeer a 50% share. Windows Mobile devices capture 40%, the Nokia E71 is the only S60 device in the top ten. Palm OS and Windows Mobile Smartphone devices are not in the list anymore.

P.S. Just in case anyone of you wonders about where the iPhone stands…Handango does not distribute iPhone content and thus doesn’t have any figures about it…

Microsoft originally intended to give away a new beta of Windows 7 to the attendants of its PDC conference – unfortunately, the file is said to have leaked out into BitTorrent networks according to DownloadSquad.

ZDNet’s Adrian Kingsley-Hughes has taken the beta for a spin, and was pretty happy overall. His main point of grief was the newly-arranged Task bar, which he considers overloaded and difficult to use.

He generally was happy with the performance and stability of this early beta (!!!) – hit the link above for a few images!

Opera has just released a small update to its recently-released Java browser known as Opera Mini 4.2. Version 4.2.13337 is now live, and addresses a few bugs specific to the Nokia 5800 XPressMusic.

Treo users can thus ignore the update – no need to do anything unless you own an XPressMusic 5800…