Author: Derek Kessler

While Gameloft and EA are busy churning out fancy PDK games, the folks at Self Aware Games are working within the confines of the Mojo SDK to make fun and interesting games. On webOS they’ve already released Word Ace and Card Ace: Texas Hold ‘Em, and recently the App Catalog welcomed a third member of the Ace family: Blackjack.

Card Ace: Blackjack leverages the fun online competition that is the signature of the Ace-series of games. With one account you can also play in Word Ace and Texas Hold ‘Em, with your winnings, stats, and friends carrying over between the games. And you’re not limited to playing against just webOS users – the Ace family of games is also available in the iPhone App Store and Word Ace even launched on Facebook late last year. Blackjack on your phone is fun, but playing against (and taunting) other players makes it that much better. Card Ace: Blackjack is available now for free from the App Catalog.

The PalmCast trio is spread to the wind this week. Dieter’s out in Barcelona covering MWC, and when it’s PalmCast time it’ll be 2 in the morning tomorrow there. Keith somehow managed to cut his cable line, which leaves him without internets – imagine how bad the lag will be when we do a PalmCast without internets. That leaves Derek, who actually is both having of the intertubes and will be around at the time of the PalmCast (mostly because he is without a social life). But Derek’s not going to do the PalmCast all by himself – that would be a disservice to you, our loyal listeners. So there will be no PalmCast tonight, and hopefully we’ll be able to bring it all back in full force next week when we’re all in the same time zone (and have our tubes reconnected).

In the meantime, if you’re itching for some hot gooey PalmCast goodness, you can always take a blast from the past and check out one of our previously recorded PalmCasts. Sometimes it’s funnier knowing how it’s all going to end.

And no, I’m not doing a SockCast.

While the Palm beta feeds are good for getting your beta apps out for testing, sometimes you want to put it out, but only to testers you have picked. Until today you’d have to manually distribute the IPKG to your testers, and for every update that can get a bit tiring. Palm hears ya, and they’ve added an option to the beta app submission process that will make it easier to have a closed beta. Now developers can choose to not check off the “Include this app in Feeds” box and thus not have their app appear in the beta feeds in Preware and in browsers like PreCentral’s own App Gallery. Instead, the developer gets the URL they would have gotten anyway, and they can send that out to their testers directly – and every time you upload and update to the app your testers will be able to download it from the App Catalog.

Verizon’s Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus ad campaign isn’t directed just at television watchers. We’ve received the above ad, slotting into an “alternative weekly newspaper” (think New York’s Village Voice or San Francisco’s Guardian). The demographic for this paper: 21-34 urban singles. With the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus receiving the bulk of Big Red’s advertising attention right now we wouldn’t be surprised to see some very good numbers from Palm when the quarter ends.

Thanks to anonymous tipster!

Or, “Why we didn’t see webOS 1.4 yesterday as was rumored.”

With multiple carrier partners, Palm’s update schedule for webOS has a tendency to leak out, especially from Sprint. Rarely has the leaked date lined up with the actual release, but before now that hasn’t been a huge deal. We’re writing this to address the consternation in the comments and forums over the fact that the webOS 1.4 update was not pushed out on the 15th as had been leaked.

Updates to webOS are a multi-step process between Palm, developers, and carriers. We’ll break down how it all works after the break.

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Some days come with light app drops of maybe a dozen combined updated and new apps. Other days come with a few dozen. Then there was yesterday. Apparently aiming to assuage anguished users over the lack of a webOS 1.4 update yesterday, Palm’s App Catalog team (a different group within Palm), pushed out a combined seventy seven new and updated apps, vaulting the total count to within twenty two of 1500 apps. It’s a lot of apps, and as such it’s a long list, so as you’ve probably figured out by now, it’s waiting after the break.

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It’s the highest grossing movie of all time and a groundbreaking cinematic experience (seriously, the only 3D this blogger has enjoyed), but Avatar has most been limited to the silver screen. Sure, there’s a console game and an Avatar game for the iPhone, oh, wait, Gameloft has brought James Cameron’s Avatar to webOS. Rock on, blue dudes.

Avatar is the latest PDK-enabled 3D game, and it promises to be one of the more impressive. Not only do you get to dive deep into the world of Pandora, you get to make the same choices made in the film: save the Na’vi or work with your fellow humans. Or are they your fellow humans? The lines get predictably blurry. But this isn’t just any-old scripted role-playing game – you get to fight against the Na’vi, humans, giant beastly things with nasty big pointed teeth. Oh, and did we mention that you get to fly? How cool is that?

James Cameron’s Avatar is available now in the App Catalog for $6.99.

It’s a question we’ve been pondering for a while, and with much more intensity in recent days: does Google care about Palm webOS? It is something we have to wonder about, with Google Maps on webOS lagging greatly behind its iPhone and Android counterparts, webOS being at first excluded from the Buzz party and then only invited inside the lobby, and the general lack of effort Google seems to be publicly exerting in getting their products to work to their full potential on webOS.

It all came to a head last week, with Google making a change to the way Google Voice works that ended up breaking webOS Google Voice clients, such as the popular gDial Pro. Nathan, the developer of gDial, learned that the change was not a move to break compatibility with unofficial Voice clients like gDial, but a natural progression of the development of the Google Voice system. In fact, Google has no problems with such unofficial clients and is pretty much willing to turn a blind eye to them so long as they aren’t acting in nefarious ways. Unfortunately, that blind eye doesn’t come with any support.

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Forget moms, let’s talk software! With Valentine’s Day in the past, Verizon has now turned their attention and considerable marketing muscle to advertising the Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus they way they’re meant to be advertised: as feature-packed smartphones. In 30 seconds time Big Red manages to cover more than Palm managed in their entire series of launch commercials.

Oh, and they’re showing of Buy One, Get One Free too. If there was any need of clarification, this ad should clear things up for both staff and customers: the Pixi Plus is available as a BOGO offer when you buy a Pre Plus or a Pixi Plus, not just the latter. Verizon’s BOGO promotions have proven a boon for both the BlackBerry Curve and the HTC Droid Eris, hopefully we’ll be able to say the same for the Pixi Plus.

Thanks to Matt and Adam for the tips!

Normally we’re used to weekends being an app-free affair. But apparently the folks at Palm decided that late Sunday night was the perfect time to push out new apps. And so, here we are, recapping the newness in the App Catalog from yesterday, and I’ve got to say that Laminar Research really has a lot of different X-Plane flight simulators under their belts. I keep on wanting to jump in, but every time I feel like it there seems to be a new X-Plane in the App Catalog. You know what? I’m totally cool with that. More awesome 3D games, especially impressive physics-based flight simulators, are always cool by me. Check it all out after the break.

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Ah, the cell phone. How did we ever pull off on-the-fly scheming in random places without it? That’s a question Cameron Tucker (Eric Stonestreet) of Modern Family should be asking. More importantly, he needs to tell us what app he used on his Palm Pre to find the number for the local Great Shakes.

Separately, Detective Mac Taylor (Gary Sinese) is still sporting his Pre around New York City crime scenes. The CSI:NY sleuth always seems to be in some manner of hot water with the mayor’s office, this time getting all fussy over delaying a race in Manhattan (as if the traffic wasn’t bad enough already). At least he’s still using the stock Messaging app, though I am surprised that the number isn’t already in his phone. The NYPD uses Exchange, right? Shot after the break.

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In the AdMob mobile internet traffic report from the 3rd quarter of 2009, Palm’s two operating systems were lumped together in the “not that significant” category. With 2009 behind us, the last quarter has shown growth in webOS traffic [pdf] (and decline in Palm OS) significant enough that the operating system now gets a color all to itself. While the iPhone still dominates internet traffic reports pretty much everywhere but Africa and Asia (both owned by Symbian), webOS uptake has been significant enough to warrant note in both the North American and Western Europe smartphone OS share breakdowns. Palm even logs a spot in the top worldwide manufacturers list, grabbing a depressing 1.0% of the global share of requests.

What’s more fun, however, is how the Pre itself stacks up against the competition. In North America, Palm’s little smartphone accounted for 2.9% of AdMob ad requests from smartphones in the last quarter of 2009, while in Western Europe the Pre clocked in at 0.9%. While those numbers are low, they are placing the Pre as the #8 smartphone in North America and #7 in Western Europe.

As before, Palm devices account for a large share of the traffic on Sprint’s network, though that share has been halved since the last quarter. Don’t panic, it’s not a defection away from Palm, but more of an explosion of traffic from new smartphones (such as the Samsung Moment) on Sprint’s network that has driven down Palm’s share.

And as always, it is worth noting that AdMob’s mobile advertising business flourished on the iPhone and that their statistics are based entirely upon requests for their ads. While AdMob is indeed the dominate mobile ad distributor, they are geared heavily towards iPhone advertisement and thus their numbers show a substantial skew towards iPhone traffic. That said, their numbers are good for quarter-to-quarter comparisons.

[via: TamsPalm]

Not that long after the Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus launched on Verizon here in the states, the folks over at WinFuture.de have uncovered certifications for the handset in Europe. TÜV Rheinland, a German firm that handles wireless certifications in Europe, had in its hands a product from Palm that may ring some bells: the P101EWW. Otherwise known as the Palm Pre Plus. According to TÜV Rheinland’s certification page, the P101EWW (or in GSM parlance, the P101UNA), cleared their standards back on 12 November, 2009. As WinFuture noted, O2 recently reduced the price of the Palm Pre on their network. Whether this is a move to clear stock in anticipation of the arrival of the Pre Plus on their network, to attract more customers before the newer phone arrives on a competitor’s network (FYI, O2 does not operate in France where SFR will be getting the Pre), or simply a natural progression of dropping technology costs and slackened demand is unclear.

Mobile World Congress will be getting underway tomorrow in Barcelona and Adobe’s going to be on hand to show off the latest version of Flash 10.1. Not only will the new Flash be shown running on Android and webOS devices, but if we’re reading Adobe’s words correctly, attendees to MWC will actually be able to try it out for themselves. Our own Dieter Bohn is headed to Barcelona to partake in the craziness that is the Mobile World Congress, hopefully he’ll be able to get a hands-on with this newness. If not, we’ll should be able to all get our hands on webOS Flash soon enough anyway.

Thanks to akitayo in our forums for the tip!

While half of the world’s eyeballs were glue to television sets last night to watch the opening ceremony of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, the folks down the coast in Sunnyvale didn’t take a break and pushed out more apps into the Palm App Catalog. As usual, the day’s app drop consisted of several new apps as well as even more updates. The new apps have brought the app count to 1445, just barely teetering on the edge of 1500. Of course, if you factor in the apps available from PreCentral, WebOS Internals, and the Palm Beta and Web Distribution feeds, we’re actually teetering on the edge of 2000. Fun eh? Well, we’ve got the usual list after the break, but it only covers the App Catalog apps, as this is “New in the App Catalog.” It makes sense to us…

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As I’ve often recommended for my friends sporting Windows-running machines, rebooting every day or so is good for the soul. Well, it’s good for the stability of the operating system, and the same can be said for webOS. With limited memory available, especially on the Pixi models and the non-Plus Pre, apps with memory leaks can very quickly overwhelm the device and make it all slow and sluggish. If you can manage to go for several days without being forced to reset, you may notice that it just keeps getting slower and slower.

While the solution to that is to trigger a reset of Luna (the layer of webOS with which users interact), wouldn’t it be nice if that could happen in a more automated fashion? Thankfully, homebrew developer zinge has come to our rescue with the Reboot Scheduler app. It’s pretty straightforward: you set a time every day for the phone to completely restart (I picked 3:00 am so it won’t happen when I might be using the phone). This is a complete shutdown/restart, so everything starts all fresh and chipper when the phone is finished rebooting. And if you happen to be using the phone when a reboot is scheduled to happen, you’ll get a notification pop-up letting you know that a reboot will happen in 15 seconds. From there you can dismiss the reboot and delay it to happen the next day.

While NBC may have a monopoly on Olympics coverage on the teletube, the internet is a free-for-all when it comes to news. The folks at Yahoo! know that we want Olympics news on the go, so they’ve put together a slick mobile portal for their 2010 Winter Olympic Games news. And just in time, as the games kick off tonight with what’s sure to be an extravaganza of an opening ceremony (thanks for setting the bar ridiculously high, China).

Even if you’re up in Vancouver you might find this useful. The site wraps news, galleries, and the medal count all into a neat little package along with coverage from blogs and sports experts. And it’s not just for American sports fans – Yahoo! is bringing Olympic-level news to 13 countries, including Australia, Canada (naturally), France, Germany, and India. Check it out at http://m.yahoo.com/olympics

[via: PreCentral sister site Crackberry.com]

We’ve heard rumblings of it in tweets from various folks at Palm and Google, but now the word is out in sweet delicious table form: Buzz support is indeed “coming soon” for webOS. And that seems to be the only thing that’s coming soon for webOS, but that’s better than the nothing we were getting before. There are no indications if we’ll ever get a Buzz layer in Google Maps, Buzz for place pages (that doesn’t hurt too much, as we need our version of Maps to fully support place pages before we can get Buzz support in those pages), and a few other niceties. In fact, looking at the list of things that are not coming soon for webOS, it shows that there needs to be some work on Palm’s end (voice shortcuts, anyone?) before Google can get abuzzin’.

Thanks to Robert for the tip!

While Twitter was designed from the ground up for mobility, the world’s largest social network – Facebook – was not. Even so, with various incarnations of mobile sites and an ever-expanding portfolio of mobile apps, Facebook’s mobile membership has grown by leaps and bounds. So much so that Facebook has passed the 100 million monthly mobile users mark. [via: MobileSyrup] While the majority of Facebookers still use the social network through their desktop machines, more and more are leveraging the power of their smartphones to access Facebook on the go.

With that in mind, we though we’d take a moment to highlight the Facebook options available to webOS users. There are more than a few choices out there, so we’ve got the list waiting for you after the break.

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