Hasta La Gadget!

Palm’s webOS has never been a platform to stir the interest of the casual gamer. While there are many advantages to being built around HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, those tools don’t excite game developers who need direct access to advanced graphics hardware to render animations smoothly. Unfortunately, as described by Craig A. Hunter, a self proclaimed “pretty dedicated iPhone developer” who’s been poking around the WebOS SDK, Palm does not provide the environment to develop serious games or the kind of sophisticated apps users now expect from their handhelds. Chief among his concerns is lack of OpenGL access despite the hardware supporting it. Palm also limits devs to a 4Hz sampling of raw accelerometer data, far short of the 20Hz minimum required for games utilizing tilt control. In his summation:

With such amazing software capabilities flourishing on the iPhone, Palm can’t afford to wait a year while they make the transition from web apps to native apps in their SDK. Palm might have had a chance against the 2007 Apple SDK, but not the 2009 version. Not even close. With this limitation, webOS will not be taken seriously by consumers who place importance on games or sophisticated third party apps.

Of course Palm, now with its deep Apple roots isn’t blind to the issue. In fact, the kids at PreCentral have uncovered a Palm job listing from June 29th seeking Game Frameworks Engineers who will “design, implement, debug, and optimize frameworks for game development.” So while the beta release of the webOS SDK might be limited, we’ll key on the word beta for now. Remember, Super Monkey Ball wasn’t built in a day — it took a bit more than 365 of them before being offered after the launch of the original iPhone.

Read — Craig A. Hunter
Read — Palm game engineer listing

Filed under: Gaming, Handhelds, Software

webOS SDK bemoaned by iPhone developer as Palm seeks game API engineers originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Jul 2009 05:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Success! For all you developers hankering to get in on the webOS and Pre action (or at least see the action), your wishes have come true. Today Palm announced on its corporate blog that it would be making the Mojo SDK beta and accompanying documentation available to anyone who is interested… effective immediately. Furthermore, the company says it will begin taking submissions for new applications in the fall — so if you’re planning on getting something in, it’s time to start cranking. For those of you haven’t already torrented the previously available leak of the kit (or just want some real docs), this news should be music to your ears… er, eyes. Well what are you waiting for? Get downloading!

Read – Palm blog post
Read – Palm’s developer site

Filed under: Cellphones

Palm makes Mojo SDK beta and docs publicly available, officially opens developer floodgates originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Jul 2009 10:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Confirming the theory that one day soon everything will have an app store of some kind, Verizon has launched its Widget Bazaar for FiOS TV, dedicated to bringing new interactive experiences to FiOS TV subscribers, starting with Facebook, Twitter, and ESPN Fantasy Football. Don’t expect to tap out 140 character missives via remote for now, at launch viewers can only view tweets, not post them or log in to their own accounts, although updating Facebook status and personalized ESPN Fantasy Football info is available. Verizon has promised to publish its SDK to enable “open development” (limited to a select group of developers of course) which should bring many free & for-pay apps to join the current (free) offerings by year-end. Also made official is the addition of searching and viewing video from blip.tv, Dailymotion and Veoh, plus the long awaited ability to stream personal videos from a connected PC, available free of charge to Home Media DVR customers. No word yet on what codecs the updated Home Media Manager software will support for transcoding to MPEG-2 and streaming to the set-top box so keep those MKVs holstered for now and check a few screens of the apps in action in our gallery or a quick video walkthrough embedded after the break.

Update: Verizon let us know it will support FLV, WMV, MPEG-1, AVI, MPG, PM4/M4V, 3GP/3G2

Continue reading Verizon gives FiOS TV some app store, social media flavor

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment, Internet

Verizon gives FiOS TV some app store, social media flavor originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 15 Jul 2009 09:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A day earlier than expected, Microsoft has launched its third edition of Silverlight and its SDK. As Ars Technica notes, some of the bigger improvements on the user side are GPU hardware acceleration and new codec support including H.264, AAC, and MPEG-4. If you’re looking to give it a spin, there’s a Smooth Streaming demo available that, as the name suggests, does a pretty good job of streaming HD video with little stutter, even when skipping around. If you’ve got Firefox 2, Internet Explorer 6, Safari 3 or anything fresher, hit up the read link to get the update.

[Via Ars Technica]

Read – Download Page
Read – Smooth Streaming demo

Filed under: Internet, Software

Silverlight 3 out of beta, joins forces with your GPU for HD streaming originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Jul 2009 21:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Palm has done its darnedest to keep the riffraff away from webOS development while it finishes up its Mojo SDK for webOS development, but the floodgates have finally opened with an opportune leak of Mojo to Torrent-vill. Naturally, Palm will still be locking out unapproved developers from releasing their creations to the App Catalog for the time being, but this should hopefully give the everyman a chance to hone apps in anticipation of a day of approval — and should really beef up the homebrew community in the meantime. The other good news is that Palm is actually adding developers to its “early access program” at a fairly rapid pace, announcing that it doubled its membership this week, and plans to double it again next week. It’s all coming together.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Palm’s Mojo SDK beta for webOS leaks into the wild originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 27 Jun 2009 11:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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