Hasta La Gadget!

We’re doing our darnedest not to be recklessly optimistic here, but after weeks and weeks of nothing, a few new somethings have sauntered into Palm’s App Catalog. If you’ll recall, we actually heard earlier this month that said catalog was destined to get some serious additions in the near future, and we’re hoping that the surfacing of these two is a sign of things to come. Announced this morning over on Palm’s official blog, OpenTable and Fliq Bookmarks are now available to download on the Pre. The former allows hungry owners to secure themselves a spot at a nearby eatery, while the latter works with The Missing Sync for Palm Pre to transfer Safari bookmarks from your desktop (Mac for now, PC coming soon) to the Pre. Sure, it’s not like these two are the killer apps we’ve been longing for, but at this point, any progress is great progress.

Filed under: Cellphones, Software

Palm’s webOS gets a couple more apps — are the floodgates opening? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Jul 2009 03:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You should be refilling that popcorn bucket right about now. While we thought the next round of the Pre / iTunes syncing fiasco would probably be something simple like Apple releasing another quick patch, Palm has stepped it up a notch by complaining to the USB Implementers Forum over what it sees is “improper use of the Vendor ID number” by the gang at Cupertino. What the company means is that when an ID is applied for, a form is signed that states:

“Unauthorized use of assigned or unassigned USB Vendor ID Numbers and associated Product ID Numbers are strictly prohibited.”

The implication here is that Palm believes Apple is violating this stature by disallowing certain Vendor IDs — namely, Palm’s — from using iTunes. So how’d Palm manage to “fix” that syncing hole Apple managed to fill? From the looks of it, by misrepresenting its own Vendor ID, so that the Pre now shows up as a iPod / mass storage device made by Apple (ID 0x05ac) as opposed to one by Palm (ID 0x083) — hence the complaint. Of course, lying about your own ID would seem to break with the aforementioned rule, too, so what we’re left here is some muddled grey area and Palm apparently being okay with fudging some data to correct what it sees is an injustice. If anyone’s curious, DVD Jon points out that the root USB Node is still identified as “Pre,” so we very likely could see another round of these shenanigans in the not-too-distant future.

Finally, now’s as good of a time as any to take a look at some of the peripheral casualties from this war of attrition. In an essay on his personal site that’s been circulating the interwebs, Marc Deslauriers outlines the pangs he and the Linux community have felt over the years trying to use iPods on the open source platform, surmising that Apple is intentionally and repeatedly seeking ways to block non-iTunes programs from syncing in any way with its devices. This story is far from over, and as ugly as it looks now, it’s probably only gonna get worse.

[Via Digg and Pre Central]

Read – Marc Deslauriers, “Goodbye Apple”
Read – Palm’s lodges complaint with USB IF
Read – USB Vendor ID application
Read – Palm Pre USB hack confirmed

Filed under: Cellphones, Software

Palm complains about Apple to USB governing body, while Pre / iTunes sync “fix” is explained originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Jul 2009 17:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Some healthy escalation in the Palm vs. Apple iTunes scuffle: Though Apple tried to block the Pre from syncing with iTunes, Palm has struck back with WebOS update 1.1, which un-breaks Pre-iTunes coupling and adds some great new features.

There are a ton of minor fixes to the Pre, which you can read about in the changelog below. The big standout is re-enabled iTunes compatibility. As Palm says in their blog, “That’s right — you once again can have seamless access to your music, photos and videos from the current version of iTunes (8.2.1).” How they managed to hold back from adding in “…Bitches!” at the end of that, we’ll never know. But there are a bunch of other sweet new features, especially “person reminders,” which let you set individual reminders for each person in your contact list (imagine a buddy calls, and a message pops up, reminding you to, say, congratulate him—or, if you’re like me, to ask him to pay you back the money he owes you). So cool! [Palm]

Update: Confirmed.

Version information

* Version: webOS 1.1.0
* Release date: 23 July 2009
* Configuration: Sprint 1.7

New applications
NFL Mobile Live from Sprint

* Watch or listen to live NFL games right on your phone.

Feature changes to existing applications
Calendar

* For Calendar accounts you create on your phone, the default reminder intervals are 15 minutes for timed events and one day for all-day events. A few notes:
o This change applies only if software version 1.1 was on your phone when you bought it, or if you did a partial or full erase on your phone and signed in to your Palm profile again after updating to version 1.1. If you simply update your phone to software version 1.1, the default reminder intervals in Calendar do not change.
o This change applies only to Calendar events you create on your phone, not to events that are synchronized to your phone from an online account.

Camera

* The Photos application opens more quickly when launched from the camera.

Clock

* Enhanced support for time zones in Clock.
* When you set an alarm in Clock, an alarm icon appears in the notification area at the bottom of the screen. Tap the icon to display alarm details. Alarm details include the following:
o If the alarm is set for the current day, the alarm time appears.
o If the alarm is set for tomorrow, the alarm time and “Tomorrow” appear.
o If the alarm is set for any day other than today or tomorrow, the day of the alarm appears.

Contacts

* Friends added and deleted in Facebook on the web are now correctly added and deleted in the Facebook account in Contacts on the phone.
* As soon as you create or makes changes to a Google contact on the phone, the phone begins a sync to reflect those changes in Google on the web.

Email

* When you set up an Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) email account, you can enter the mail server name as an IP address.
* Support for self-signed certificates with multiple common names has been added.
* When you reply to an email in HTML format using an EAS account, the formatting of the sender’s original message is now retained in the reply.
* Palm’s EAS implementation now supports several Exchange ActiveSync Policies, including the following:
o PIN/Password Required. IT administrators can ensure a password is assigned to the phone. Administrators can also specify the minimum length of the password.
o Inactivity timeout. IT administrators can ensure that an inactive phone goes into a locked state after a certain time period. You cannot set a higher timeout interval for your phone, but you can set a shorter interval.
o Remote Wipe. IT Administrators can remotely erase all data on a phone from their Exchange console. IT administrators can also have the device wipe itself if an incorrect password is entered more than a specified number of times.

Messaging

* You can enter emoticons in new text, multimedia, and instant messages. Emoticons also display in incoming messages.
* If you set the phone to use a 24-hour time format, the message times shown in a conversation appear in 24-hour time.
* If you go into an IM account’s preferences, all the options are available even if you are signed in to the account. You can tap Remove Account to delete the account, enter a new password to update the password, or tap Sign In to sign in with your updated password. Previously, you needed to sign out of the account before you could use these preferences.
* When you delete an IM account, a message now appears asking you to confirm that you want to delete the account.

Phone

* When multiple missed call notifications are displayed on the dashboard, the time of the most recent missed call is shown.
* When you slide the ringer switch off, a bell icon with a slash is displayed. Previously, the icon was a speaker with a slash.
* In Phone Preferences, the Show Contact Matches preference is now turned on by default. When typing on the keyboard in the phone app, the phone automatically displays both the numbers being entered and any contact matches for the characters entered.

System

* Improved functionality of person reminders. A person reminder is a notification that you create in a contact entry. The notification appears when you have a call or exchange an email, text, multimedia, or IM message with a contact.
* Resolves an issue preventing media sync from working with latest version of iTunes (8.2.1).
* When you enter a search term in Card view or the Launcher to perform a universal search, if you select the Wikipedia web search option, results are shown in the Wikipedia Mobile site instead of the Desktop site.

Web

* You can now use symbols from the symbols table (Sym Sym key icon + key) when you enter text into a web page dialog box.
* If you have a page open at a certain zoom level, leave the page, and use the onscreen Back Web Back button button or the back gesture to return to the page, the zoom level is restored right away.
* A new gesture is now available that works the same as the onscreen Forward Web Forward button button. To move forward through open web pages, make a short swipe left to right in the gesture area.
* When using the Wikipedia drop-down search feature in the address bar, results are shown in the Wikipedia Mobile site instead of the Desktop site.
* When you tap a link, the link appears highlighted to indicate it has been activated, even if it takes a moment for the linked page to open.

YouTube

* After you enter search text, you can tap the Search Search icon icon to perform a search. You still have the option of pressing Enter Enter key to perform the search.

I love the Palm Pre. I’ve had it for just over a month, and it’s probably the best phone I’ve ever owned. But there are some nagging shortcomings and idiosyncrasies I think they could theoretically fix easily, by software.

Want to ditch this gallery format and see everything on one page? Click here.

Advanced Synergy Account Sync Features
Synergy is an undoubtedly cool feature. What isn’t so cool are all the garbage contacts that end up on your phone as a result of syncing Gmail, Facebook and AIM. There has to be a way to filter out contacts via grouping. And there’s no reason why I shouldn’t be able to manually delete contacts.

Cut/Copy/Paste
Merely including Cut/Copy/Paste isn’t good enough, Palm. And your implementation on the Pre is laughable (especially compared to the iPhone). As if requiring a keyboard macro to highlight text wasn’t ridiculous enough, highlighting text on this phone isn’t the easiest thing in the world. And I also want to be able to Cut and Copy any text I want—not just the stuff in text entry fields.

How about a long press next to the desired text to activate the copy mode, and more responsive highlighting as I drag my finger (is that too much to ask?). However, I do like the feature where you hold your finger on the gesture area, then hit x, c or v to execute the cut/copy/paste, even if an on screen element would be easier.

Customizable Sounds
This isn’t really THAT big of a deal, but some people like to customize their phones to the nines. I’m sure Palm kept system sounds on lockdown for UX purposes, but is it really that big of a deal? Some people just want to hear the Dragonzord flute jingle everytime they get a text.

Gmail
Palm’s Gmail app is pretty good for the most part, but confusing navigation elements (like only being able to get back to the inbox/main screen via gesture bar), the lack of threaded emails and the inability to search through your mail leaves it spinning its wheels second rate gmail client—much like the iPhone’s mail app. Also, support for hosted Gmail accounts would be nice as well. It’s not that hard. And speaking of search, that brings me to my next point…

Universal Search
The framework for Universal Search is fine—start typing from the home screen, and contacts, apps and Google results begin to populate—but what about the contents of text messages/chat transcripts/emails, media files and even bookmarked sites? Also, an option to search Facebook would also be amazing. Just putting that out there.

Messaging
I’m glad I can connect to AIM, Gtalk and SMS and manage them all from the same screen. That said, there are times I want to be able to log out of just one service and not all of them. Palm seems to think otherwise and its annoying. Support for other services, like MSN and Facebook chat, would also be cool. But I wouldn’t call them essential quite yet.

Hardware Access for Apps
The Mojo SDK is disappointing to say the least. Yes, the initial apps are impressive for using little more than web standards, but they still can’t compete with native ones that have hardware access (for the time being at least).

Facebook App
Using Facebook in the WebOS browser sucks. End of story. I want a standalone app. With camera access. Will not accept anything less.

In-Browser PDF Handling
Palm has a handy dandy PDF reader included with WebOS that lets you read the files. But you know what happens when you click a PDF link in a browser? Nothing. It won’t even download the file onto your Phone. It just says it can’t open it. If it’s too much to switch over to the PDF app from the browser, downloading the file should at least be an option.

On-Screen Cursor and Text Entry Fields One of the few features of WebOS that’s downright unpolished is the handling of text entry fields. Using the screen tap or the up arrow key+drag to move the cursor around a chunk of text isn’t terrible, but it just feels like it could be better. I’m sure Apple has all sorts of patents out on that magnifying glass feature, but Palm has to be able to think of something similar.

Secondly, if you tap on a text entry field, it neither launches into a subscreen, nor zooms in one bit. If you’re zoomed out, and then tap on an entry field, you have to manually zoom in. There are worse things a mobile OS could screw up, but it’s the little things done right that also make an OS great.

GPS Toggling From the Home Screen
Do any smartphone power users leave their GPS on all the time? I’m guessing no. That’s why Palm needs to make it quicker and easier to turn GPS on/off. Having to go into Launcher, then over to Location Services utility, then toggling it off requires way more thought/navigation than necessary. Why not just have a GPS on/off on the homescreen menu where you deal with wi-fi and Bluetooth?

Center Button
I respect the simple functionality of the center button. It pops you in and out of apps quickly. But I feel like it can do more. It would have seemed more intuitive to have that turn on/wake the phone from sleep instead of adding another, superfluous button on the top right corner. Also, I’d rather use that as my camera shutter button than having a chunk of my screen covered up while taking pictures.

Photo Uploads
Photo uploading is totally downplayed on this phone. Limited to just uploading a photo at a time to a service at a time, when you do upload photos, you can’t tag or add captions for any of them using the Pre. Oh, and there’s no Flickr support—just Facebook and Photobucket. SERIOUS?!

Music Player
I’m not expecting the Pre’s music and media UI to be the second coming of the iPod by any means (and as it stands now, it actually comes pretty close) But having the option to scrub through a track is something that’s extremely basic, and convenient when you’re listening to a mix or podcast that’s in a single MP3. Having something to display track progress/overall time would be nice too.

Downloads From Browser
Having the ability to download selected files to a save folder is not so much something that Palm dropped the ball on, so much as it would be nice to have. MP3s currently stream, but you can’t save them. Images can only be saved when they’re attached to email. If music, pics and documents could be dispatched to an appropriate spot on the phone, Palm would have another plus over the iPhone. And if they threw video into that list, they’d make me swoon.

Amazon Store
WebOS only lets you download MP3s when you’re connected via wi-fi. Read that again. It’s absolutely ridiculous and should be fixed ASAP.

USB Connectivity
The USB handling on the Pre goes beyond inconvenient/annoying/unpolished and is just flat out bad. When you plug your Pre into a computer or any other device that lets you access its sync/mass storage mode, the cellular radio shuts down and the rest of the phone becomes inaccessible. I don’t know of any other smartphone (let alone cellphone) that does this and barring some highly technical excuse, it’s unforgivable.

Let me use my phone while syncing/transferring data. It’d also be nice if the phone had the ability to properly interface with car stereo’s via USB, but that’s of lesser concern.

Better Integrated Twitter
Tweed is a decent enough Twitter client, but having OS-level Twitter integration would be ideal. As it stands now, Tweed’s notifications are laggy at best and broken at worst, only popping up while the app is running (sometimes hours late). And there’s no sort of TwitPic functionality, which just seems silly. Surely you can do better, Palm.

Video Recording
Palm has vaguely insinuated video recording is coming in the future. Great. I’m sure they want to get their software and battery optimization right before dropping video recording on the general public, but at the very least, how about an update guys?

On-Screen Keyboard
The hardware keyboard really isn’t bad by any means. It’s not the most spacious keyboard in the world, but I have no major problems with it. That said, there are times you want to enter some text quickly without having to slide open the keyboard.

For example, while typing in a URL in landscape mode. How about an onscreen keyboard to use while the keyboard is hidden. And knowing that there’s limited real estate to work with in portrait mode, I’d even be up for one that only pops up landscape style.

Non-iTunes MP3 Playlist Support
Now that Apple hit the kill switch on the Pre’s ability to sync with iTunes, it’s time for Palm to start thinking of advanced options in a more general manner. One of these is supporting playlists across the board—not just from iTunes.

LED Flashlight
A simple app that would allow the led flash on back to be used as a light would be a nice little utility. Eh, eh?

Launcher
The whole vertical+horizontal scrolling of Launcher is something of a UI design fail. Palm should scrap the vertical scrolling and just create more screens that users can flick through. Palm should know they don’t have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to every single aspect of WebOS.

More than a month after the launch of the Palm Pre, Palm has opened up its webOS Software Developers Kit (SDK) called Mojo to all developers. The move could spark off a flurry of new applications on the Pre app store that seemed to be losing steam after the device’s release.

The SDK can be downloaded from a new developer portal, Palm webOSdev at developer.palm.com. Any developer can access the SDK, its associated documentation and new Mojo forums, said Palm.

“Palm been very methodical about how we roll out the program,” said Michael Abbott, senior vice president, application software and services at Palm at the MobileBeat 2009 conference in San Francisco Thursday. “We we are being very deliberate about scaling it.”

Palm’s move should help quell criticism that the Pre has been lagging behind its peers because of the paucity of apps in the Pre’s app store known as the App Catalog. The Catalog  started with about 18 apps at launch and grew to 30 apps two weeks later.

Experts blamed the lack of widespread availability of the Pre SDK for the slow start. Palm had an early access program that allowed only a few chosen developers to create apps for the phone.

Meanwhile, Apple’s app store, which has become the industry standard, has more than 50,000 apps and 1 billion app downloads.

But Palm seems pleased with its progress. More than 1.8 million apps have been downloaded from the App Catalog since Palm Pre was released about six weeks ago, said the company. The App Catalog submission process will be opened to all developers starting fall, it said.

See Also:

• Palm Pre Scores a Modest Hit, Despite Problems
• 6 Reasons Why the Palm Pre Is Special
• Palm Unveils Its Long-Awaited Smartphone, the Pre
• Palm Pre Review
• Palm Pre App Catalog Makes a Slow Start

Photo: Pre Catalog (rhastings/Flickr)