Author: Derek Kessler

Today we pass 1100 apps, and today we also get easy access to Palm’s new open web distribution feed with the App Catalog release of AppScoop, an on-device app that is set up for on-device browsing of the new unfiltered feed. Right now there’s not a lot in there, but then again there wasn’t a lot in the App Catalog when it first launched either. But enough of that, there’s also plenty of new stuff in the official App Catalog, including more backgrounds, cheat codes, yet another Twitter client, and plenty of updates. Hit it all up after the break down below.

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Got a Palm Pixi but still need to run some old school Palm OS apps? Right now, there’s no way to go about it while your Pre-toting friends can fire up Classic and get the action going. Never fear, for MotionApps hears your pain and is in the process of cooking up a version of Classic that will work on the Pixi and even make use of the device’s smaller screen.

Currently, Classic on the Pre shows up with a classic Palm OS D-pad and device buttons meant to emulate the physical controls on the older PDAs and Treo smartphones. These controls are dropped below the 320×320 Palm OS screen, using the remaining 160 pixels on the Pre’s screen. The Pixi, however, has a shorter display and only 80 extra pixels below the Palm OS screen, which means that any controls would have to be squished. Or they could be done webOS-style for maximum space utilization, as MotionApps posted on their Facebook page. It’s a pretty darned slick solution to what could have been a nasty problem.

[via: Palm Infocenter]

While the ranks of Palm are filling with more and more former Apple folk, with CEO Jon Rubinstein at the top, investment firm Elevation Partners is also busy picking up Apple people. While Elevation Partners isn’t in direct control of Palm, they do own 1/3 of the company and have invested a few hundred million dollars into Palm. Adding to Elevation’s board is former Apple chief software engineer Avie Tevanian. While at Apple, Tevanian was the head of Mac OS X development. Despite his pedigree, we aren’t expecting too much from Tevanian as far as Palm is concerned, as when he comes to Elevation he’ll be a managing director in charge of seeking out new investment opportunities for the firm.

[via: CNET]

Well, as it turns out, CES really wipes one out. So we may have missed that there were some new apps over the weekend, but through the magic of the internet we’re still going to bring it all back to you. With all sorts of hot new games in play, not to mention PreCentral’s sweet new webOS App Gallery, there’s plenty of awesome app action awaiting you in the obligatory list form after the break.

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The night is well underway in Europe, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t get a webOS update. As it would turn out, mere weeks after hitting Palm Pre and Pixi phones in the United States and Canada, Pre owners on O2 in Europe can now pull down their latest webOS updated in the form of webOS 1.3.5.2. What’s different about this version from webOS 1.3.5.1 in the United States is currently an unknown, we’re waiting for the changelog to land right now. In the meantime, welcome to the land of space for apps, Europe!

UPDATE: We have a changelog after the break for you, but what’s important may not be in there. According to German-language tech site Heise Mobil, Palm has baked and enabled bluetooth tethering into webOS 1.3.5.2. Users in our forum have tested this out and wonder of wonders, it works.

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As any business customer will tell you, Sprint’s unlimited Mobile to Mobile on their Everything Data plan is great until you have to call the office. Sprint seems to have recognized this and quietly (so quiet we’re just now hearing about it) last month added Mobile to Office to their business plans.

What Mobile to Office does is creates an unlimited calls conduit between your Sprint business phone and one landline business phone of your choice. That’s in addition to the unlimited Mobile to Mobile that already comes on Sprint’s Business Everything Data plans. With this addition Sprint callers can stop using up their Anytime Minutes for calls back to the office.

(If you’re thinking a Google Voice number would be the right choice for your ‘office line,’ we like the way you think. Let us know how that works out for you!)

If you’ve got a Sprint Business Everything Data plan (Mobile to Office isn’t available for consumer/family versions), the easiest way to specify a landline for your Mobile to Office calling is to call Sprint’s customer service. With all the perks that Sprint gives to customers at such a low price, it still is surprising just how badly they keep hemorrhaging customers.

Thanks to carteratzion for the tip!

If there’s one company that is the bane of advertisers, TiVo would be it. Their “timeshifting” devices (i.e. DVRs) have enabled consumers not only to watch TV later, but to skip commercials and get to what they really want to watch. And while most consumers may not own a TiVo, they can get a similar DVR through their cable/satellite provider. As it would turn out, TiVo is also interested in how people skip commercials and keeps track of stuff like that. They decided to compare last years smartphone companies ads, pitting Research in Motions’s BlackBerry line against Palm (Apple’s not just a smartphone company, so despite their excellent commercials they don’t count here).

What’s interesting is that despite the fact that BlackBerry ads were both more plentiful and better positioned in a block of ads (first being better), Palm’s ads were skipped over less often. Palm’s ads that were in the “first pod position” were actually skipped 20% less than similarly-placed BlackBerry ads. Palm’s ads also were skipped less overall in households with incomes over $150,000.

The ads that Palm ran were also notably shorter than RIM’s, with 97% of the Palm ads running for just 15 seconds. The shorter ads logged 30% less fast-forwarding than 30-second ads. On the flipside, 26% of BlackBerry ads ran for a full minute, and those only suffered 4% more skipping than the 30-second versions.

Most of those Palm ads were creepy lady commercials, so it’s hard to say whether people were fascinated by the product or by the commercials themselves. Either way, it has a tiny part of us wondering if maybe we burned the witch too soon, so to speak.

With Palm’s new ad campaign under way and the devices soon to spread to other US networks, it should be interesting to see this comparison again next year.

So yesterday might have been a big day at CES 2010 for Palm. We got the Palm Pre Plus and the Pixi Plus, and they’re going to be exclusive to Verizon. We got the Pre headed to SFR in France. We got Flash, a webOS App Gallery on PreCentral, video recording, and webOS 1.4. But what’s exciting, and what we get right now, is new apps. And those new apps come with 3D gaming, ala the iPhone. In fact, Palm’s new Plug-in Development Kit allows developers to make C and C++ apps that will work beautifully on webOS. As such, developers like EA, Gameloft, and Glu are here and showing off what that delicious hardware is really capable of. Curious what games are available? Well, while you’re waiting for the App Catalog to load, we recommend you hope right past the break and catch a glimpse for yourself of our daily list.

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You’ve read the liveblog, you’ve commented on all the articles, but there’s just something to be said for having been there to watch it all happen. Sadly, we don’t have a time machine big enough to fit all of you, so this will have to do. This, being a the full video of Palm’s presentation today at CES. Revel in the awesomeness that is all of this packed into less than an hour:

• Pre coming to SFR in France
• PreCentral webOS App Gallery brings the App Catalog to your browser
• Palm reveals open web distribution of webOS apps
  
• Video recording coming to webOS
• Flash 10.1 coming soon to a Palm near you
• Palm brings the games with native development
• Palm makes the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus official, Verizon only, and with tethering
• webOS 1.4 coming in February with built-in Flash, video, etc
• Palm CES 2010 Presentation Gallery
• Hands-On with the Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus!

One of the complaints we’ve heard often from Pre and Pixi owners is that the only way to browse the App Catalog is on their devices. Today we’re pleased to announce that those complaints can be set to the side, as we at PreCentral have partnered with the good folks at Palm to bring you the PreCentral webOS App Gallery.

Palm has been gracious enough to provide us with a free and open feed to the App Catalog, and that just makes them pretty much awesome. We’ve taken that feed and converted it into something that you can easily browse on your desktop machine, as well as in the webOS web browser. Right now you can check out the latest updates, search for apps, browse the various categories, and check out screenshots. This is in beta from both ourselves and Palm, so don’t be surprised to see more exciting additions in the days and weeks ahead (once we recover from the excitement that is CES). [Note from Dieter: Very beta, we’re working on improvements, thanks to everybody who has sent in suggestions!]

Want to check it out? Of course you do. Just point your browser to http://www.precentral.net/app-gallery

Ready for an update? webOS 1.4 is coming in February, and its bringing along a lot of goodies. First you can expect to have Flash 10.1 built-in, though the beta should be available soon from the App Catalog. Second, there’s video recording. Third, there’s the standard upgrade deal of better battery life, faster performance, and all that jazz. But Flash and video recording? That’s big.

In what comes as little surprise by now, at CES Palm has officially announced the Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus smartphones. The two devices are marginal upgrades over their predecessors, with the Pre Plus having double the memory of the original Pre (16 GB vs. 8 GB) and losing the center button, while the Pixi Plus gains Wi-Fi over its Sprint counterpart and coming in multiple colors.

Both devices are exclusive to Verizon and will be launching on January 25th, pricing unknown at this time. They will come with a new app called Mobile Hotspot, otherwise known as  mobile Wi-Fi hotspot tethering. The Wi-Fi hotspot functionality can support up to five connected devices at a time. At this time, it doesn’t appear that the Mobile Hotspot app will be making its way to webOS devices on other networks.

Pricing for the Pre Plus, Pixi Plus, and service on Verizon was not announced.

UPDATE: Press release after the break.

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Just demoed live on stage alongside video and native gaming and unicorns was a quick glimpse of Flash 10.1 working in the webOS browser. The demo was just of the trailer for Avatar, but what was truly impressive that this happened with several other cards open, including the video uploader and one of the fancy new games. The Flash beta will be available in the App Catalog “soon.”

Recently updated to version 1.1.0, Self Aware Games’ popular games Word Ace and Card Ace: Hold ‘Em now both come packaged with the ability to buy gifts for other players. In this first roll-out players can purchase drinks, ranging from a simple cup of coffee to the ridiculously extravagant diamond martini. Of course, those are all good for opponents that you like, but what of those you can’t stand? Seeing as these are Self Aware apps, the sense of humor remains intact with the option to send your sworn enemy a bottle of poison.

Word Ace and Card Ace have both also gained the ability to rate players with thumbs ups and thumbs downs. Clearly giving a thumb up is a good thing and will publicly reflect well on players, but a lot of thumbs down will garner the attention of the staff. And as developer Seppo Helava said, players that get their attention “won’t like what happens.” [insert evil laughter here]

And that’s not all. Since the games were released both Card Aces and Word Ace have been free to use. While you can buy chips and now gifts in game, if you so desire you can show the love with an in-game donation.

While both we and Palm are gearing up for today’s CES presentation, the folks that run the App Catalog aren’t taking a break. In fact, yesterday they released more than a dozen new apps, bringing the App Catalog total to 1023. We hope we’ll see plenty of impressive stuff at CES, stuff that will very quickly drive up that number, but in the meantime we’ve got your daily App Catalog summary, and it’s waiting for you after the break.

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Investment firm Elevation Partners has invested some $460 million into this little company called Palm. Today, that investment has gained around 54% for the firm, and at one time had nearly tripled in value (though has since dropped considerably). So with a gain of around $250 million on the table, now would seem like a good time to take some profits, eh?

Not so, Elevation co-founder Fred Anderson said to Bloomberg, “We haven’t taken money off the table because we see a huge market opportunity here. This is a marathon.”

Given the number of changes that Elevation’s partners have instituted in Palm, from installing Jon Rubinstein as Chairman (and he guided us to the bright land of webOS) to eventually moving him in place as CEO once Ed Colligan retired. Anderson himself even serves on Palm’s board. But what future does Elevation Partners see in Palm? It’s not a takeover, as that potential does not factor into their business model (though it does factor into Palm’s stock price, and thus the value of Elevation’s investment).

What Elevation Partners sees in Palm is expansion, and we expect to see plenty of that later today at CES. At the very least, Palm will announce their partnership with Verizon, and they may even talk some about AT&T and some international carriers. Most of us here will agree that the Pre and Pixi are excellent devices, but whether or not Sprint is excellent service is another question entirely. Expanding Palm’s distribution channels, and eventually the product line, will be the key to growing Elevation Partner’s investment. And that truly is a long-term strategy.

Over at Phone Arena they’ve got their hands on a what most definitely looks to be a specifications sheet for the Palm Pre Plus and the Palm Pixi Plus. Anybody hoping for big time upgrades over their Sprint counterparts best turn away now, as it seems the following is the gist of the upgrades:

• Palm Pre Plus: 16 GB storage
• Palm Pixi Plus: Add Wi-Fi

Both phones appear on a Verizon-logoed sheet, so take that for what you will. Either way, we expect this to be at least part of what we will see tomorrow at CES. The question we have to ask is, are such upgrades worthy of a “Plus” moniker?

Derek and Keith talk up the news while Dieter gets prepped for CES. We’ve got Verizon and Doom and updates, oh my!

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• Listen to it here with the player above

Thanks to everybody for writing and calling in!

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We may have gotten a hint or two of what Palm will be announcing tomorrow, but we get the feeling that new carriers aren’t all that we’ll be seeing. With that in mind, our very own Dieter has made the trek out to Las Vegas (which oddly is warmer than Florida right now) to drop in on the unsuspecting Consumer Electronics Show 2010.

It’s all going down at 2 PM Eastern (11 AM Pacific), and we’ll be giving you some hot live blogging action to get the news to you as it breaks. So tune back here tomorrow and as soon as we know what’s happening, you’ll know.

If there are two things that really don’t mix, it’s electronics and moisture. The problem is that water is electrically conductive and getting gadgetry wet can lead to water creating circuits where there ought not be circuits, thus frying the phone. Saving a phone that’s fallen into a puddle, pool, aquarium, or other aquatic malady is a matter of fast action and a bit of luck.

First and foremost, get it out of the water and remove the battery. Do not even think about turning it on to see if its okay, just yank the battery and dry off what you can. After that, take your phone and battery and stick them in a sealed bag filled with rice or, if you can find some, silica gel. Leave the bag someplace warm (not hot), like a sunny windowsill, for several hours. As the bag is heated, any moisture on/in the phone will evaporate and be absorbed by the rice. Once dried, clean whatever contacts you can reach on the phone and battery with a q-tip and distilled water and put it back together. With any luck, your phone will be ready to go.

Pre owner and Lifehacker reader Dietrich (not our own Dieter Bohn) recently had to run through this exercise with his own Pre after dropping it in a puddle:

“For the last 2 days it has been a monsoon in my city. Today, during a rushed last minute shopping spree, I dropped my phone in a puddle. I didn’t realize I had dropped it until I got back to my car 30 minutes later.

“I remembered articles on Lifehacker about what to do so I immediately popped the battery out and dried the phone. When I got home I put my Palm Pre in a bag of rice for 10 hours. Adding insult to injury, I forgot to take the phone battery out of my pocket and put it through the washing machine. 10 hours later I’m typing this on my Pre. Good job Palm on making an excellent phone.”

So there you have it: dry it out quickly and thoroughly, and hopefully all will be well. Of course, we offer no guarantees that this will work, but we’ve seen it happen enough (even to ourselves) to know that it’s worth a shot.