TamsPalm – the Palm OS / web OS Blog

When it comes to tablets, most users think that they are mostly used for entertainment purposes. According to a consulting company called SyBase, this is untrue – the real reason is productivity applications.

The key quote reads as follows:

The role of new tablet devices such as the iPad has been a subject of great debate recently, and while the study shows that entertainment activities such as watching video and playing games are some of the tasks for which consumers might choose an iPad over a smartphone, work-related activities unexpectedly ranked at the top:
With the imminent introduction of the Apple iPad, more than half of smartphone users polled claimed that they are most likely to use a new tablet device like the iPad to conduct work (52.3%).
Surprisingly, the idea of using an iPad or tablet device for work garnered the most interest from smartphone users, while watching movies and television programs, and playing games placed a close second and third respectively (48.2% and 35.4%).
Three-quarters of smartphone users surveyed believe that smartphones and forthcoming devices like the iPad make people more productive at work, with one-third of those feeling that the productivity impact is significant.

Further information via the URL below:
http://www.sybase.com/detail?id=1069007&contentOnly=true

Big acquisitions do happen in mobile – but they usually take place between hardware manufacturers. Don’t ask me why and how the folks at HandMark’s managed to buy up Astraware two years ago – but the company is now solo again.

A press release has just gone out. It states the following:

KANSAS CITY, MO and LONDON, UK – January 27, 2010 – Handmark®, the world’s leading developer and distributor of mobile applications and services, today announced it has spun off its mobile games studio, Astraware, as the company streamlines its business to focus on other strategic areas of mobile development and support.

Astraware returns to the management of Howard Tomlinson and David Oakley, two of the original founders, and will remain a Handmark preferred partner. Handmark will continue to support Astraware on a variety of distribution and promotional opportunities.

“We saw a great opportunity to join forces with Astraware to help create and extend a collection of fun, well-designed mobile games titles to a new audience, and we did just that,” said Paul Reddick, Handmark CEO. “I still see a great opportunity for their team to continue proving their leadership as a major player in mobile games and we will continue to work alongside them.”

…

The financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.

P.S. I asked them about specifics of the deal at a tradeshow two years ago – and got a really really pissed off HandMark manager on my back…

Pareto’s law is one of the few “natural laws” which every reader of the Tamoggemon Content network should be familiar with – it says that 80% of every effort is caused by 20% of the beneficients. For example, 80% of the Coke bottles consumed in an OEBB ClubLounge are claimed by yours truly, his wife and a few other frequent travelers (20% of total population – 2) who abuse the system .

Onto more serious things: a recent Wall Street Journal report quoted AT&T’s CEO as follows:

With about 3% of smart-phone customers driving 40% of data traffic, AT&T is considering incentives to keep those subscribers from hampering the experience for everyone else, he said. “You can rest assured that we’re very sure we can address it in a way that’s consistent with net-neutrality and FCC regulations.”

So much for Pareto…

The folks at Gartner’s are not too popular among many mobile computing and Unix heads – they are said to be Microsoft-biased to a large extent. Nevertheless, they sometimes have interesting bits of research…such as the one below.

They have just released a top-ten list containing the top fields where consumer application growth will take place in 2010. It reads as follows:

1. Money Transfer
2. Location-based services
3. Mobile search
4. Mobile browsing
5. Mobile health monitoring
6. Mobile payment
7. NFC
8. Mobile Advertising
9. Mobile IM
10. Mobile Music

While the keywords themselves are not too meaningful, having them in your pitch can definitely be heklful when going for venture capital. Further information can be had at the URL above…

A big thank-you to Resco’s Jan Slodicka for the tip!

Most of you will know Infinity Softworks for its variety of calculators for mobile devices – its PowerOne Graph has helped more than one Austrian student cheat in various exams. Elia Freedman, the CEO of the company, has recently posted a short article on webOS to his blog. It starts off as follows:

…

First, let me say that I like what Palm is doing with the Pre from a developer perspective except one major flaw. A year ago I wrote a post on the recipe for beating Apple and highlighted three things that the company needed to do. Palm has nailed two of the three:

1. Build a beautiful, touchscreen device.
2. Make it synchronize with web-based applications.
3. Focus on offline use of web-based applications.

Palm is flubbing #3.

…

Elia then goes on to give a pretty detailed picture of what he thinks to be wrong in webOS – hit the link below for the full scoop:
http://eliainsider.com/2009/08/16/palm-pre-fastfigures-and-powerone/

I have no idea why handset designers keep playing around with their handset’s keyboards…the latest victim is a device designed by Samsung for Verizon (who will peddle it as Alias2):

The image above hits us via PhoneArena, with Engadget Mobile claiming that the keys are “identified” via an underlying E-Ink display.

As of now, no tests have been performed to determine the usability of this new input method. While I personally fear that the usability will be bad due to sub-par materials (this is said to be a cheap handset), I dare to say that this is the first keyboard idea which has impressed me.

Future devices using this technology could allow customers to dynamically adapt the keyboard layout of their devices, for example by replacing unpopular special characters with others he needs more often (I’d love to ditch some weird chars on my XPERIA’s keyboard for < and >, for example).

What do you think?

Palm  has recently released some fresh information of the Mojo SDK and development of webOS applications:

The first chapter of the official resource for programming the new webOS platform, “Palm webOS: Developing Applications in JavaScript Using the Palm Mojo Framework” is now available. The book is written by Palm Vice President and Software Chief Technology Officer Mitch Allen along with members of the webOS development team and is being edited and distributed by O’Reilly Media.
O’Reilly is also hosting a webinar with Mitch Allen on February 25 at 10 a.m. PT to offer developers a preview of the webOS operating system and development environment, followed by a Q&A session. A link to register for the webinar will be available here on Monday February 16th.

[Link added by editor]

The book is currently nine pages long, and provide new insights and screenshots of webOS and what development on this platform will be like! Among the information given is information about the notification area, how Cards — the webOS method of displaying what applications are active and what they are up to — are handled and displayed. even some small snippets of UI code are given:

Typically, you would declare the widget within a scene’s view file, then direct Mojo to instantiate the widget during the corresponding scene assistant setup method using the scene controller’s setupWidget method:

// Setup toggle widget and an observer for when it is changed.
// this.toggle attributes for the toggle widget, specifying the 'value'
// property to be set to the toggle's boolean value
// this.togglemodel model for toggle; includes 'value' property, and sets
// 'disabled' to false meaning the toggle is selectable
//
// togglePressed Event handler for any changes to 'value' property

this.controller.setupWidget(‘my-toggle’,
this.toggle = { property : ‘value’ },
this.toggleModel = { value : true, disabled : false });

this.controller.listen(‘my-toggle’, Mojo.Event.propertyChange,
this.togglePressed.bindAsEventListener(this));

Development Tools

The Palm Developer Tools (PDT) are installed from the SDK and include targets for Linux, Windows (XP/Vista) and Mac OS X. The tools enable you to create a new Palm project using sample code and framework defaults, search reference documentation, debug your app in the weOS emulator or an attached Palm device, and publish an application. Chapter 2 includes more details about the tools in Palm’s SDK and third-party tools, but you’ll find a brief summary in Table 1-1

The introductory chapter of the webOS programming guide can be found here.

What do you think about these new revelations on the webOS front?