Reminder: HP / Palm’s webOS ‘Think Beyond’ event is tomorrow (update: the countdown is on!)

To say we’re expecting big things from HP and Palm at tomorrow’s webOS “Think Beyond” event would be a huge understatement: not only has the company strongly hinted at a family of new mobile products, it’s even playfully called us out for leaking the Topaz tablet as seen in the invite above, and released a very intriguing teaser video.

Update: Palm’s website has been taken over by a countdown and the teaser video, and “Think Ahead” has been added as a tagline — perhaps hinting at a tease of future products? We’ll find out soon enough.

Of course, we’ll be there live to cover it all when the event starts at 10:00AM PST — and you’ll find our liveblog at this link at the following local times:

07:00AM – Hawaii
10:00AM – Pacific
11:00AM – Mountain
12:00PM – Central
01:00PM – Eastern
06:00PM – London
07:00PM – Paris
09:00PM – Moscow
11:30PM – Mumbai
03:00AM – Tokyo (February 10th)
05:00AM – Sydney (February 10th)

See you then!

Reminder: HP / Palm’s webOS ‘Think Beyond’ event is tomorrow (update: the countdown is on!) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 08 Feb 2011 19:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Every Trackpad Should Look as Good as HP’s Invisible Wonders [Computers]

HP’s new g6 budget notebook line is wholly unremarkable—almost. The econo-laptops have one thing going for them, but it’s pretty stellar—a completely seamless, invisible trackpad. Our only question is, why is this awesome feature stuck in cheap-o land? More »

Why WebOS Hasn’t Lived Up to Its Potential — Yet

When Palm first unveiled webOS in 2009, the new platform was supposed to be the next mobile messiah.

With its sexy user interface, a developer-friendly backend and a host of new features like multitasking and contact Synergy, everyone was certain webOS would be the platform to rejuvenate the once-prominent PDA pioneer company.

Of course, webOS has shaped up to be less of a Jesus than an L. Ron Hubbard, as the platform’s following never rose above cult status.

As of November 2010, Palm’s market share of U.S. mobile platforms weighed in at a paltry 3.9 percent, according to a comScore report. Sales of the Palm Pre — the flagship device on which webOS was first shipped — were lackluster, with numbers never breaking the 1 million mark in the first three months of the phone’s release. Weigh that against the iPhone 3GS, which launched two weeks after the Pre. One million of Apple’s handsets were sold in the first three days after release.

Palm loyalists are praying for a comeback, and may see it at the upcoming invite-only event at Hewlett-Packard’s San Francisco offices Feb. 9.

“The hope is that HP/Palm will be releasing some new smartphone handsets as well as tablets,” says developer Justin Niessner in an interview with Wired.com. “If they fail to deliver, I know quite a few people — including myself — that will be switching to a different mobile OS.”

So what happened? Why did webOS seem so promising and then fall flat on its face?

The Good

The mobile landscape hasn’t always looked so grim for Palm’s platform.

“WebOS introduced a sound development metaphor which had the potential to attract developers,” IDC software analyst Al Hilwa told Wired.com in an interview. “It has a smooth and fluid interface, with good bones like multitasking and a wealth of features, making it a fairly easy platform to develop for.”

Apps for the webOS platform are written primarily in JavaScript and HTML, programming languages used by developers to code for the web. So if you’re already a web developer — and after the early days of the dot-com boom who isn’t? — developing apps for webOS is relatively easy.

“Lots of people who wouldn’t have otherwise created apps flocked to to webOS,” developer Roy Sutton, who runs app development tutorial site webos101.com, told Wired.com in an interview. “They could come in and port over a portion of an existing web app to webOS in a matter of hours.”

Alternatively, developing for Apple’s mobile operating system requires learning its tool chain. That means learning Cocoa Touch, Apple’s proprietary API for building iOS apps.

Another big draw for the developer crowd: “developer mode.” After entering the Konami code while on the Pre’s main idle launch screen, the phone becomes startlingly easy to hack.

“Users can install anything from patches that change core functionality of webOS,” says developer Justin Niessner, “to replacement kernels that enable a user to overclock their WebOS device.”

Additionally, you can access and load “Homebrew” apps, or those still in beta from other developers, onto the Pre. While the Homebrew repertoire consists of a paltry 500+ beta apps, it’s the kind of access that appeals to the hacker sensibility.

Palm Pre users didn’t have to deal with some of the setbacks that Android OS enthusiasts ran into with platform expansion across multiple hardware manufacturers. With Google’s push to update the OS an average of twice yearly since debut, version fragmentation issues have plagued both developers and consumers.

The Bad

Indeed, Palm had attracted lots of positive attention from the tech press at large after the Consumer Electronics Show announcement. While many doted over the sleek look of the new hardware, others (like Wired.com) wagered that webOS would be Palm’s “secret sauce,” the kicker that would set the Pre apart from other 2009 smartphone debuts.

‘It took us six months to see a product. In Silicon Valley time, that’s an eternity.’

But with every advantage webOS had in the veritable mobile platform buffet available to consumers, there were just as many setbacks (if not quite a few more).

“The platform had such tremendous hype and momentum after it was announced at CES 2009,” says Sutton. “But it took us six months to see a product. In Silicon Valley time, that’s an eternity.” The Pre was all but considered vaporware by the time its June 6 launch date came around, only to have its thunder immediately stolen by the iPhone 3GS, which launched shortly thereafter to much consumer ado.

As for the phone itself, some found the Pre’s design lacking. “Palm definitely could have done themselves a favor by releasing some hardware with more modern design cues,” Niessner says. “The screen was smaller than other comparable smart phones on the market. And the slide-out QWERTY keyboard was also very difficult to use.”

Even if you loved the design of the hardware, “The life cycle of the Pre and even the Pre Plus [eventual successor to the Pre] was short,” says developer Peter Ma. ” It couldn’t catch up with the number of iPhones and Android devices coming out after it.”

HTC’s Nexus One, for instance, has a 1-GHz Snapdragon processor (compared to the Pre’s 500 MHz), 512 MB of RAM (to the Pre’s 256 MB) and a 5-megapixel camera (to the Pre’s 3 megapixels) — it’s close to twice the phone that the Pre is. “While the perceived speed of the Palm Pre was acceptable,” Niessner says, “the numbers certainly didn’t do the hardware any favors.”


The HP TouchSmart Computer Designed After a Scorpion’s Tail [Design]

Crafting a new computer is tough. Everyone loves touch—fingers are winning interfaces. But pawing an upright monitor is physically tiring. So? HP’s design team cleverly brought the monitor down to you. And we’ve got their concept sketches. More »

Hong Kong gadget flea market: a blast from the past

If you’ve seen our Hong Kong feature from awhile back, then you would’ve already heard about my favorite gadget hangout Sham Shui Po. By chance, my post-flight stroll in said district yesterday coincided with Apliu Street’s Chinese New Year flea market, which featured many vintage items like jade figurines, paintings, jewelry, video tapes, vinyl records, etc. Naturally, what really caught my attention were the old gadgets that were literally piled up along the street, and from just HK$30 (US$3.85), you could easily pick up an old classic such as a Sony Clié, an HP iPaq, a WonderSwan Color, an original GameBoy, a MiniDisc player, or even a proper old school laptop or camera. Hell, some guy even had a couple of Nintendo Micro VS Systems (Donkey Kong Hockey and Boxing)!

The catch? Well, there was obviously no warranty for these old timers, plus the broken screens or the lack of compatible batteries for some meant that most were more suitable as collectibles. Regardless, we took a $6 gamble with a Sony Clié PEG-NR70 Palm PDA with docking station and boom! It works! Well, except for the battery that only lasts for an hour, but I’ll figure something out.

Hong Kong gadget flea market: a blast from the past originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Feb 2011 20:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HP/Palm Tease webOS Announcement

hp webos tease.jpg

Is it a tablet? Is it a smartphone? HP is convinced that it’s a game-changer. In the meantime, it’s not much more than an a dark eight second video showing off the corners of some device webOS  that will be unveiled during the company’s press event next week.
HP is really pushing this “Think Beyond” thing. There’s the aforementioned sub-10 second video of not really much at all, the company’s attempt to push the #thinkbeyond ad campaign,  this groaner of a video, and this “countdown clock.” Yeesh.
All eight seconds of video after the jump.

Palm ‘Think Beyond’ teaser shows off glimpses of… something (updated with longer video)

HP and Palm aren’t being shy about hyping up next week’s big webOS event, and they’re following up on that nod to our leak and CEO Leo Apotheker’s comments with this “Think Beyond” teaser video. As is undoubtedly intended, we can’t make much of the product from these brief glimpses of tapered curves, elegant switchgear, and what appears to be a charging connector — but we’d like to think it’s a tablet, because we are fundamentally very hopeful people. In any case, we’ll see what Palm has in store for us next week — and whether it can live up to all this buildup.

Update: We were just sent a longer version of the video, which we’ve swapped in above — it shows a rear-facing camera and what’s either a microphone or speaker grille. And is it just us, or is this thing looking pretty chubtastic or what? Original Palm video after the break. [Thanks, Raphael]

Continue reading Palm ‘Think Beyond’ teaser shows off glimpses of… something (updated with longer video)

Palm ‘Think Beyond’ teaser shows off glimpses of… something (updated with longer video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Feb 2011 17:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceOfficial HP Palm blog  | Email this | Comments

HP unleashes Digital Sketch and Pocket Whiteboard, becomes the new teacher’s pet

Nope, that’s not the rumored HP / Palm WebOS educational tablet we’ve heard about, but it’s a wireless tablet alright. That up there is HP’s new Digital Sketch, and it’s actually meant solely for the classroom — it wirelessly connects to a laptop or desktop allowing teachers to control lesson plans or draw diagrams while they’re walking around the room making sure no one’s passing notes. The pad itself, which will be available in March, works with HP’s Sketchbook Windows software and is said to last for over 25 hours on a charge. But that’s not all HP wants to put in schools. It’s also got a new Pocket Whiteboard up its educational sleeve. It’s a lot like other digital whiteboards in that it can turn almost any surface into a canvas, but it’s apparently much more portable than the others out there, so teachers can easily move it from class to class. It will come with a three-button stylus and connect to any laptop or desktop via USB.

So, what’s the deal with all the education-friendly tools? They’re all part of HP’s new Digital Learning Suite and push to start providing really comprehensive tech tools for K through 12 classrooms. The company’s nothing but serious about providing an array of products, and beyond the two previously mentioned, HP’s also releasing new laptop carts, a Thin Client, and presentation stand for laptops. Hey, we get it, the children are our future, and we’ve got to teach them well — but don’t blame us HP, for just wanting to see the tablets of our future next week. Full press release and a low-resolution picture of the whiteboard after the break.

Continue reading HP unleashes Digital Sketch and Pocket Whiteboard, becomes the new teacher’s pet

HP unleashes Digital Sketch and Pocket Whiteboard, becomes the new teacher’s pet originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Feb 2011 07:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dell, Gigabyte and MSI pull products in wake of Sandy Bridge chipset flaw, HP faces delays (update)

Every time we write about Intel’s flawed Sandy Bridge chipset and the need for it to be physically replaced, the financial costs go up. First Intel projected a $300 million hit to its bottom line, then it set aside $700 million to cover repairs and replacements, and now it’s estimating a round $1 billion loss in “missed sales and higher costs.” Those missed sales will be coming directly from guys like MSI and Gigabyte, two of the major motherboard makers, who have stopped selling their Sandy Bridge-compatible models until Intel delivers untainted stock, and also Dell, who has nixed availability of its Alienware M17x R3 gaming laptop. CNET did spot that HP and Dell were still selling laptops with the offending chipset in them yesterday, but we imagine both will get their online stores straightened out in due course. For its part, HP says it’s pushing back a business notebook announcement due to this news, much like NEC has had to do. Moral of the story? Don’t let faulty chips out of the oven.

Update: Dell says the M17x R3 is just the tip of the iceberg here: “This affects four currently-available Dell products, the XPS 8300, the Vostro 460, the Alienware M17x R.3 and the Alienware Aurora R.3, as well as several other planned products including XPS 17 with 3D. We’re committed to addressing this with customers who have already purchased one of the four products and will provide further details on this as it becomes available.”

[Thanks, geller]

Dell, Gigabyte and MSI pull products in wake of Sandy Bridge chipset flaw, HP faces delays (update) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Feb 2011 04:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceAlienware, PC & Tech Authority, BusinessWeek  | Email this | Comments

Dell, Gigabyte and MSI pull products in wake of Sandy Bridge chipset flaw, HP faces delays

Every time we write about Intel’s flawed Sandy Bridge chipset and the need for it to be physically replaced, the financial costs go up. First Intel projected a $300 million hit to its bottom line, then it set aside $700 million to cover repairs and replacements, and now it’s estimating a round $1 billion loss in “missed sales and higher costs.” Those missed sales will be coming directly from guys like MSI and Gigabyte, two of the major motherboard makers, who have stopped selling their Sandy Bridge-compatible models until Intel delivers untainted stock, and also Dell, who has nixed availability of its Alienware M17x R.3 gaming laptop. CNET did spot that HP and Dell were still selling laptops with the offending chipset in them yesterday, but we imagine both will get their online stores straightened out in due course. For its part, HP says it’s pushing back a business notebook announcement due to this news, much like NEC has had to do. Moral of the story? Don’t let faulty chips out of the oven.

[Thanks, geller]

Dell, Gigabyte and MSI pull products in wake of Sandy Bridge chipset flaw, HP faces delays originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Feb 2011 04:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceAlienware, PC & Tech Authority, BusinessWeek  | Email this | Comments