Poor Microsoft. You generously welcome a Startup Weekend on your campus, where all manner of geeks and techies code their hearts out for 54 hours straight, you throw in the BizSpark program to encourage them to use your tools, and what do you get in return? Learn That Name, voted best app in show and designed for use on Apple’s iPhone and Palm’s Pre. Gee thanks! On the bright side, we congratulate Microsoft for allowing people to write for their platform(s) of choice — and hey, it’s not like Redmond has been lacking in innovation lately, right? Video demo of the name memorizing game / app is after the break.
We know you just can’t wait to get typing on the Pre’s lush touchscreen, and the folks at WebOS Internals must feel the same way as they’ve been hard at work making their on-screen keyboard a functional reality. Installation has been made a breeze thanks to the Preware app, and usability seems to have improved markedly since the pre-alpha version, but a few kinks remain that need to be ironed out. Still, if you’re willing to put up with some buggy behavior and the potential for your Pre to melt into a puddle of fiery lava, then slide past the break to get educated on the how, what and where to download.
With the latest installment of Bell’s “Meet my Palm Pre” series, paid spokesman Bradley here has basically guaranteed himself that he’ll be visited by elderly American roller girls with bad attitudes and a taste for justice. Some of the gruesome highlights:
“Unlike our neighbors to the south, Canadians are an active people.” “Coupe de Kill is kinda scary. I should probably get out of here before she goes on Twitter.” “According to Wikipedia, this game was first played in 1299. And, uh, I think some of these people were maybe there.”
Nabbing a contract with a carrier pushing into nine-figure subscriber count territory would go a long way toward helping any manufacturer’s woes, so it’s reasonable to believe that Palm would be shopping its latest wares around the streets of Hong Kong and Beijng where China’s big three carriers are headquartered. Intriguingly, the Financial Times has just casually mentioned in a somewhat-unrelated piece that “China Telecom is planning to offer the Palm to its subscribers,” a perfect fit considering that rival Unicom is poised to launch the iPhone and Telecom runs CDMA with nascent EV-DO coverage in the works. The Pre already knows a thing or two about CDMA networks from its Sprint and Bell launches, of course, so they’ve already got that base covered — beyond that brief FT mention, though, we’ve got nothing, so it’s hard to say when this might be hitting retail.
Holy moly. We thought Sprint’s ad explicitly targeting iPhone customers was a desperate move. But Canadian carrier Bell’s TV commercial for the Pre wins first place for the nipping-at-Apple’s-heels contest. It looks so much like Apple’s iPhone TV ads that you’ll think it’s a joke. Nope, it’s real, and after you’re done laughing it’s actually kind of sad.
Far from being creepy this time around, the latest Palm Pre ad — this one specifically for Bell’s Canadian customer base — is familiar. Very familiar. Plain white backdrop? Check. Peppy male narrator? Check. Hip, upbeat music? Check. Mysterious hands showing off mobile apps and other smartphone capabilities? Check. Side-by-side comparison videos after the break. Hey, at least this one isn’t gonna creep you out.
Update: Looks like someone read our minds and spliced the commercial with Orba Squara’s infamous “Perfect Timing” found in the iPhone ads. Video’s after the break.
Each day I get a little bit sadder that Billy Mays is no longer with us. Good thing there are so many spokeassholes vying for position in the marketing pantheon.
UPDATE: Looks like there was a late entry to our list of current top spokesassholes: Miss Julia Allison has just signed a yearlong deal to peddle Sony’s wares. About time that her attention-whoring went global! [Sony Insider via Gawker]
Some of us were near tears when T-Mobile decided to drop Zeta-Jones as their official spokesasshole, but the good news is that she’s back. The bad news is that as soon as we heard her nerve-grinding accent, we remembered that those were tears of joy.
It was difficult to deem Sir Richard Branson as a spokesasshole. He is such a nice man and only wants innovative technology to reach those from “all walks of life”—assuming that they make $40 million annually, of course.
Lisa, Lauren, and Giampaolo are the biggest spokesassholes in the Laptop Hunters commercials. Lisa shatters eardrums with her exclamation of “WhaaaaAAAAaat?!?!”, Lauren followed the ads up with claims that they were unscripted, and Giampaolo is just plain smarmy.
Maybe one day he’ll button up the shirt and put on some sunglasses that don’t look like they’re his girlfriend’s. I hope he didn’t quit his day job (waiter? male prostitute?) when he landed this gig, because it won’t last long.
Verizon Probably Only Merged With Alltel To Get Rid of Chad
Verizon and Alltel may have merged, but we’ve still seen Chad’s picture looming around Alltel’s website. With his spiky blonde hair, laid back walk, and inability to take a hint, he’s a true menagerie of what this gallery represents.
Zune Spokesasshole Wes Moss nearly broke our douche point scale. If you can stand watching this Zune spot, after those Laptop Hunter ads, you’ll see why.
Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine are two ridiculously wealthy guys who decide, in their spare time, to become even more wealthy by peddling some overpriced headphones. Even if you ignore the fact that they’re distributed by Monster, and even if you admit that the headphones aren’t that bad—there’s no way the duo can’t escape the spokesasshole brand.
It’s not much of a secret that some of us here are Apple fans, but not even that stopped us from pronouncing Apple’s “I’m a Mac” guy and his smug attitude and thinly veiled disdain for PC as spokesasshole material.
Tamara Hope in the Return of the Stoner Commercials
The Palm Pre commercials started off terribly and only got worse until we stepped in with a remix. Though since it seems that Palm was really giving a nod to Ellen Feiss of Mac Switcher fame with these creepy “What is she on and where can I get some?” commercials, we’ll only rate actress Tamara Hope as half a spokesasshole.
We can forgive Michael Bay for not sharing video footage of Megan Fox washing his car, since he at least had her show a bit of skin in Transformers 2. What we can’t forgive him for his display of spokesassholery in this pitch for Verizon FiOS. By the fifth “AWESOME!” things turn from funny to “Please walk into the next exploding building, Michael.”
You’ve got to hand it to Kutcher. The man with a million Twitter sheep has risen from underwear model to annoying spokesasshole and GI Jane toy-boy. Though we can’t help but see Kelso every time he’s fumbling around on screen.
Palm Pre’s app store is moving forward, slowly but steadily. Palm has started accepting applications from developers who wish to charge for their apps in its app store.
Palm’s App Catalog e-commerce beta program will begin in mid-September and the full program will be launched in fall. So far, all the apps in the Pre app store have been free.
Palm launched the Pre June 6 on exclusively on Sprint’s wireless network. But its app store known as the App Catalog got off to a slow start. About a week after the device’s launch, the store has just 30 apps.
Palm said the low number of apps initially were because it had been offering its Software Developers Kit (SDK) called Mojo only to a few select developers. On July 16, the company made its Mojo SDK available to all.
Now with the App Catalog e-commerce beta program, Palm has taken the next step towards having a complete app store. Developers will receive 70 percent of the revenue from their apps, with Palm collecting the rest 30 percent. The split is similar to what Apple charges for iPhone apps. Pre users will be able to purchase apps using Visa and MasterCard credit cards, said Palm.
Love the Pre? Love code? Love money? Well it’s your lucky day. Palm has just announced that it will begin accepting applications for developers interested in producing for-pay apps for the webOS App Catalog. The company says that requests taken now will make devs eligible for inclusion in the mid-September launch of its e-commerce program. Just like Apple and Google, Palm will be splitting profits of paid apps with developers 70 / 30 (the devs get 70 percent, don’t worry), and go figure — credit cards will be accepted. Of course we’re pumped about paying $.99 for a to-do app someday soon, but we’re hoping this will also herald in a new age of steady releases for the Catalog, which is still looking frighteningly bare to us. Hey, that’s what homebrew is for, right? Full PR after the break.
Studies just released by RBC Capital and ChangeWave Research polled iPhone 3GS and Palm Pre owners on their respective levels of satisfaction with their devices — then compared them. In the studies, 200 iPhone 3GS users and 40 Palm Pre owners were polled. Overall, 99 percent of owners of Apple’s phone proclaimed themselves to be “satisfied,” while 82 percent of that number declared they were “very satisfied.” The poll of Pre owners showed that 87 percent are “satisfied,” and 45 percent of those owners describe themselves as “very satisfied.” Interestingly, the 42 percent of “very satisfied” customers are the highest score ever attained by a Palm device, and it’s a number that’s only ever been bested by RIM and Apple. When asked about their respective reasons for buying their devices, Palm Pre owners listed the touchscreen interface, ability to multitask, and ease of use in the top three, while iPhone users cite its touchscreen, ease of use and faster web browsing as its biggest draws. So what about drawbacks? iPhone users (a whopping 55 percent of them, in fact) say that AT&T’s network is their main gripe with the device, while Pre owners list short battery life and lack of third party apps as the devices biggest drawbacks. All in all, a pretty good showing for both — though the microscopic sample size (especially for the Palm Pre) makes us wonder about the validity of the findings a bit.
Read – Apple’s iPhone 3GS has 99 percent satisfaction rate Read – iPhone vs. Palm Pre: Satisfaction bakeoff
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Palm Pre’s app store is moving forward, slowly but steadily. Palm has started accepting applications from developers who wish to charge for their apps in its app store.
