No Skype For Palm Pre Yet

Palm's Pre smartphone has received generally positive reviews since its June 6 launch, but one complaint is that its application store lags behind the competition. It's unclear how quickly developers will embrace the webOS platform, and the VoIP-calling company Skype said it will be taking a wait-and-see approach.

Skype has been trying to expand its presence beyond the desktop for years and has developed applications for Windows Mobile-, Android-, and Java-powered phones. The recently released version for the iPhone and iPod Touch rocketed up the most-downloaded list of the App Store as well.

"If someone has a cell phone, we want them to be able to use Skype on it," a Skype spokesperson told GigaOM. "As things are evolving quickly in this space, we will continue to keep our eye on Palm's Pre and webOS platform, which seems to be getting good traction in its first weekend. But we have nothing to announce at this time."

Palm's App Catalog is hoping to replicate the success Apple has had with its App Store, which has seen more than a billion downloads in less than a year. Palm may be facing a chicken-and-egg situation, though, as developers will flock to platforms with large audiences, but audiences like platforms with lots of applications.

To alleviate some of these problems, Palm has made it easy for content creators to make software for webOS using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and other standard Web technologies. Palm said this means Web developers can quickly make programs for the Pre, even if they don't have experience in the mobile app space.

[Originally Posted at informationweek.com]

The Missing Sync for Palm Pre arrives

Less than a week after the Palm Pre landed in thousands of eager palms nationwide, the first local desktop synchronization solutions are coming. Perennial saver-of-Mac-Users Mark/Space has released the first beta of The Missing Sync for Palm Pre (with a PC version on the way). The Missing Sync creates a new Synergy profile for Calendar and Contacts and will sync with iCal and Address Book, or Microsoft Entourage if you so desire. The Missing Sync will also make it easy to sync music (via iTunes), photos, documents, movies, and more. It also comes with a Safari component that will send your bookmarks to a new bookmarks app on the Pre (which will then launch the links in Web).



The Missing Sync for Palm Pre also comes with proximity sync of your Synergy information over your Wi-Fi network, meaning you never have to think about syncing with your computer - it just does it. For a limited time, The Missing Sync will be available as a free beta application and can be found in the App Catalog on your Palm Pre, and the desktop component is up on Mark/Space.com. When The Missing Sync for Palm Pre comes out of beta, it will be available for $39.95.

[Originally Posted at precentral.net]

First Palm Pre homebrew app arrives

What was that, 4 days? The Palm Pre only went on sale in America on Saturday, but already one Pre owner has hacked into WebOS and made his own Pre app. Read on to see how it’s done!

Last night, a rom of the WebOS Palm Pre operating system leaked out online, and Palm Pre fanatics familiar with coding were all over it in an instant. So much so, that by this morning, the first homebrew Palm Pre app had been made, a simple screen that pops up with the message “Hello World!”.

The current workaround involves editing another Palm Pre app already on the phone (The hacker in question wisely chose to scrap the Nascar application), and hilariously, part of the process to hack the Palm Pre and start tinkering with the apps involves tapping in the legendary Konami cheat code (Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A) in order to enter developer mode.

It’s one small step for man, one giant leap for Palm Pre owners, as Palm has yet to release its WebOS SDK for all third parties. Expect plenty more ingenious hacks on the way for the Palm Pre before the App Catalog hits.

[Originally Posted at mirror.co.uk]

That Huge Facebook Set for Palm Pre? The Commercial is Now Released!

Remember that HUGE Facebook set that was built and leaked a while back and was speculated for the Palm Pre? Well it is officially out and it the Palm Pre/Facebook commercial touting the Palm Pre as the phone for use with Facebook. The ad features celebrity Joann Gikas singing with her band.

[Originally Posted at prethinking.com]

Palm Pre firmware 1.0.2, Sudoku, alarm clock

Thanks to Darth Pooh on our forums for the awesome tip: the Palm Pre’s firmware has been updated from version 1.0.1 to 1.0.2. Number changes like that indicate that it’s a maintenance release of some sort to improve stability, speed, and whatnot on the device, and as Pooh noted, the Pre is running notably faster than it did back at CES, though there is still some lag.

But wait, there’s more! Darth Pooh got the chance to check out a new Sudoku application, noting that it was “somewhat playable,” but not up to par with what we’d expect from companies like professional game developer Astraware. He also caught sight of ‘another Twitter program,’ so rest assured all ye Tweeters, your options will be many.

Buyrihn, also in our forums, got some of his own hands on time with the Pre. When he got it, the manager had something like 10-15 applications running at the time and claimed that they caused little lag. Pooh meanwhile has discovered that, as one would expect, running processor intensive applications like Pandora or playing music will cause a slowdown in application launches, but once they're up they run just fine.

Oh, and buyrihn also caught a picture of something that we know many of you have been clamoring for: a third-party an alarm clock application (pictured in blurry cam vision up top). The app supports multiple and repeating alarms and can display both an analog or HTC-style digital clock. Like Palm said, they decided to leave alarm clocks up to third parties and the third parties delivered.

Correction: We have confirmed that the Clock application is actually the work of Palm, not a third party. Sorry for any confusion there.

[Originally posted at precentral.net]

Runway and Instant Items Apps coming to Pre

Mentioned last month in an article in Redmond Developer News was an application for the Palm Pre that we hadn’t seen before: Runway. Greg Stevenson, the developer of Runway, hadn’t planned on releasing any details of the application (or even acknowledging its existence) until the Pre was out, but the article threw a slight kind in his plans. So, he’s launched a new website to explain what Runway, and its companion application Instant Items, will do.

Runway is described on the website as a time and project management application. The article mentioned that Runway will be able to bring more online calendars to the Pre, but as Stevenson says on his website, “if Runway is just another time management application, then the Pre is just another mobile device.” And we all know that it’s more than just a phone and web browser.

Also coming from Stevenson is Instant Items, a phone-operation streamlining application. Apart from being able to access your contacts to dial numbers, it can also add items to your calendar and to-do lists. The website claims that it can do this “all in an extremely quick manner using a fraction of the keystrokes of traditional methods.”

Interesting, eh? Even working within the boundaries of the currently limited Mojo SDK, developers are coming up with some interesting application concepts.

[Originally posted at precentral.net]

Pre Originally Sported Resistive Touch Screen?

Fortune Magazine has an article up trying to make the case for a storied history of rivalry, hatred, and bitterness between Apple and Palm. Reading through the timeline of this (somewhat trumped-up) soap opera, we were waiting for the part where Ed Colligan gets amnesia and Jonathan Ive kidnaps Palm's lead designer when we came upon a little nugget about Jon Rubenstein, who left Apple, spent some time in Mexico, then rode in on a white horse to save Palm -- so the story goes. Anyhow, get this:

Rubinstein started, in his words, "hanging out" with Palm people in late June. He didn't like what he saw. The hardware for the Pre needed to be scrapped and rebooted. For one thing, prototypes were using old "resistive" touchscreen technology that responds to a user physically pushing the screen, not the newer "capacitive" technology manipulated by the electricity in the user's body. Rubinstein tossed out the old phone's hardware and built a new one in about 15 months. "We were basically running a marathon and doing a heart transplant in the middle of it," says Rubinstein.

A resistive touchscreen is the kind that you see on PalmOS Treos and Centros and Windows Mobile phones -- the kind that usually requires a stylus for any sort of accurate touch interaction. Let's just say that if the Pre had launched with a resistive touch screen we would be slinging the word "Catastrophe" around a bit.

Our pal Rene Ritchie at TiPb reported on the day the Pre was announced that during Rubenstein's time at Apple he pressed to get a physical keyboard on the iPhone and was denied. If he truly did lead a complete redesign of the Palm Pre, then it sounds like he has gotten his wish.

[Originally posted at precentral.net]

Gmail and Facebook Users: Time to Resign Yourself to Extra Contacts

We know the Palm Pre and webOS will pull contacts from three sources at launch: Google, Facebook, and Exchange. Actually, it should handle multiple Google and Exchange accounts -- hooray! All while automatically merging dupicate contacts into a single card and keeping your sync sources "siloed" so they don't infest each other with their data. Truly, Synergy is a wonderful system. Except for one little thing...

As a long-time Google Contacts user, I have a piece of news that's difficult to impart: get ready for your contacts list to get unnecessarily big. I've been using Google EAS mobile sync for multiple devices now and I can tell you: Google is aggressive at adding contact emails to you list. Even if you cull it regularly, it becomes messy.

It gets a bit more complicated with the Pre, as we're discovering in our forums. Turns out that the webOS syncs All Contacts instead of "My Contacts," meaning all those extra "suggested contacts" are included in your sync. Sure, you can delete them, but it's still messy.

Add in the fact that you can't delete Facebook contacts or choose which ones you want to sync to the Pre and you're looking at a pretty messy contacts list. Sure - you'll have few to no duplicates and that helps, but you're also going to have your great aunt Suzie who just joined Facebook last week and let's be honest: you'll never call her.

Of course, if you're just an Exchange user you likely won't run into these sorts of hassles, congratulations.

For the rest of you Google and Facebook users, however, I have a small piece of advice: Use Universal Search to find contacts and don't let the ballooning size of your Contact's list get to you. I've basically given up on having a contacts list of only the people I think I want in there. After years of therapy, I've come to accept that there are dozens (approaching hundreds) of people in my contacts that I'll never call, email, or IM.

All of which is why type-to-find/Universal Search is an essential feature for smartphones. Use Universal Search instead of scrolling through your contacts. Use Universal Search and just let those extras sit in there, they're not huritng you, are they? Use Universal Search and it'll be ok, I promise.

[Originally posted at precentral.net]

Examining Universal Search, finding companies and Twitter

So, Mr. InvisibleMan over at PalmPreForums.org is have way to much fun with his illegitimately-obtained Palm Pre emulator. And we’re fine with that, because as long as he’s having fun with it, we’re learning more about the Pre without actually having any to, you know, use. And the videos just keep coming. This time he’s hit up the much-touted Universal Search feature of webOS and discovered a few interesting things.



Twitter has been added to Universal Search, or at least that’s what the big Twitter button in the Universal Search window is telling me. Also, while we know that you can start off searching for an application or contact and can move on to a web search. But when you have an application or contact that matches what you’re searching for (say, I have President Obama’s contact info in my phone and want to see his Wikipedia page), all I have to do is hit the “Find…” bar and it will forcibly give me the web search options (Google, Google Maps, Wikipedia, and now Twitter).

Since it appears that the contacts application does not have the ability to categorize your contacts, we’re going to be in need of a way to narrow things down. If you have company information added into your contacts (President, United States of America for my Obama contact) you can search for that company and get all contacts that match that company. Carrying over from the old Palm OS Contacts application is the ability to search by initials - first name followed by last name (typing “boba” will bring up Barack Obama and Barry Obando).

Lastly, we get a look at how search works in other applications. In Memos searching will dig through the content of your notes, and in Messaging it will search by contact name. Unfortunately, these search capabilities are not integrated into the from-the-launcher Universal Search, but chances are if you’re doing a search, you will at least know in which application you intend to look.

See rest of InvisibleMan's Videos here

[Originally posted at precentral.net]

Palm Pre Emulator Up on Video

The InvisibleMan of PalmPreForum.org has posted up a series of videos of the Palm Pre Emulator. Almost all the videos are here ,It is going to work exactly as it will on the Pre, ex. the emulator doesn't support multitouch while the Pre itself does. Still and all, if you're looking to get your weekend Palm Pre video fix on, this is a good place to start.

See more videos inside

Palm Pre: Browser




Palm Pre:Tasks



Palm Pre: Messaging



Palm Pre: Palm Profile and Backup



Palm Pre: Conference Call



Palm Pre: A Few Small Features



Palm Pre: Memos



Palm Pre: Copy & Paste



Palm Pre: Q&A Session 1



Palm Pre: Organizing your icons



Palm Pre: Google Maps



[Thanks precentral.net]

Email while on a call on the Pre? Sure!

Palm Goon has again come up with two new posts mentioning Email while on a call on Pre and Meet your Contacts on the Pre .Enjoy Reading!!!

Meet “Google Maps” on the Pre

It’s no secret that there will be a Google Maps app on the Pre but the question is, is it any good? Yes! As good as the iPhone’s? Maybe better. (Certainly faster) The same functionality is there, the app just seems to respond a little better, snappier on the Pre. Given that I didn’t build it, I can’t tell you why that is… but I can show you how it works.

Launch the app and it should default to map view but a quick tap on the “Menu” button will allow you to switch over to satellite view. Wondering what that blue dot is on the map? That’s the phone’s location obtained from the GPS. All I had to do to obtain that was click on the button right next to the “Menu” button down at the bottom right.

[Originally posted at palmgoon.com]

SlingPlayer coming to Pre "at or near launch"?

webOS' web technology-based app architecture seems to become less and less of an issue by the day; most of our fears were allayed the moment we saw Classic break cover, and this is another strong sign that the Pre's going to be able to handle just about any multimedia-rich stuff we throw at it. A Sprint-sourced page out of a Pre slide deck entitled "The Pre Application Story" lists a series of "showcase apps" that the carrier thinks (or, at the very least, optimistically hopes) will be available around the time of the phone's launch, and the most interesting thing on here has to be a listing for Sling Media -- you know, those cats making Slingboxes and SlingPlayer builds. Beyond that, we don't have anything -- it could be 3G or WiFi-only (though the fact that this is on a Sprint slide gives us hope that they'll leave EV-DO enabled), it could launch next month or next year, and for all we know, it only works with boxes that aren't even out yet. It'll be kind of cool to see this app running as a card on the Pre's interface, won't it?

[Originally posted at Engadget.com]

Things You Might Not Know About The Pre

Consider this a PSA (Public Service Announcement). I was just sitting here and thinking myself, “There are some small, yet important facts that not everyone knows about the Palm Pre. I must rectify this wrong!” Or something to that effect. Like what, you ask? I’m so glad you did, because I was going to tell you anyway.

Continue Reading full Story here

Meet the Web Browser on the Pre

Again palmgoon has posted another good post this time about the web browser enjoy reading it here.

Meet the “Tasks” app on the Pre

Someone was asking earlier to see how the Tasks app worked on the Pre since it hadn’t been shown before and I am nothing if not accommodating. ;) Below is a brief overview of what you can expect. Enjoy!

Continue Reading full Story here

Palm Pre Memo App

In the style of our “Meet the ‘Tasks’ app on the Pre” story, Palmgoom figured they’d also introduce you to its sibling, the Memos app. It’s just as useful and intuitive as the “Tasks” but simply serves a different purpose. Have a look.

Read the complete article at palmgoon.com

Palm confirms no visual voicemail on Pre

Ah, Twitter, how did we communicate with our favorite corporations before you came about? Mr. Yuhnke has taken advantage of Palm’s relative openness over Twitter and posed the question to Palm: does the Pre come with visual voicemail? Palm’s response is of course pro-Pre, pointing out the wonders of Synergy, but in the end the answer is indeed no. Of course, it is entirely possible that somebody could write an app that will enable visual voicemail on the Pre, but don’t expect to see it on June 6th.

[Originally posted at precentral.net]

Maxim on the Pre: the future is awesome

In the June 2009 issue of Maxim Magazine, nestled amongst articles on the ridiculously attractive Moon Bloodgood, Megan Fox, and Katie Cassidy readers will find a page on technology - this month with a whole page devoted to the Palm Pre. While Maxim didn’t have any new info on the Pre to share with us, they, like just about everybody else, were psyched by the device as well, but in their own special way...



“Unless the girls you’re into get turned on by your holster-festooned belt, carrying two phones sucks. But slinging to cellies has been a necessary way to keep your personal and professional lives in check. Until the Pre, that is. Palm’s new smartphone merges a BlackBerry-ish ease of typing with the “holy ****, that’s cool” factor of the iPhone and promises to reduce the number of extraneous bulges in your pants to just one. Its OS seamlessly merges all your digital calendars and contacts, your personal and corporate exchange e-mail, even Facebook - while eliminating duplicate entries.

And the Pre has the ability to run more than one application at a time, something even the almighty iPhone still can’t handle. Basically this means you can be listening to Internet radio and be playing Bejeweled while you use the slide-out QWERTY keyboard to send emails to your boss about how you’re stuck in traffic but will be in soon. Man, the future is awesome.”

Maxim also threw together a humorous chart tracking how you use your phone’s speed-dial, check it after the break.

The June 2009 issue of Maxim Magazine is on shelves now. Enjoy.

[Originally posted at precentral.net]

A Peek at Palm Pre's NASCAR App

I'm personally not a huge fan of NASCAR, but If by chance you're reading this and you're a fan NASCAR, Sprint got some Screen Shots of the NASCAR app that will be running on the Palm Pre.



NASCAR Sprint Cup Mobile:

* Live Speed TV broadcast of the All-Star Race
* Exclusive streaming audio of the Drivers' Meeting
* Mobile application user votes count double toward the All-Star Race Fan Vote
* Live in-ear audio and radio broadcast
* Real-time stats
* No additional charges with any data plan

[Originally posted at prethinking.com]