Archive for the ‘Palm Pre’ Category

The Palm Summer Tour made a special stop today at Palm HQ. The crew of Smart-car driving, lip balm- and t-shirt-dispensing Palm emissaries shared stories of the enthusiastic responses they've gotten at pit stops around the country with the Palm team in Sunnyvale (which was definitely living up to its name today).

Most fun stop so far for the Summer Touristas? New Orleans, hands down. Place with the best Palm fans? No contest: Comic-Con in San Diego, where none other than Darth Vader (or at least a dead ringer for the Darthster) whipped his Palm phone out of his pocket (or wherever it is that Dark Lords of the Sith pocket their smartphones) with an excited thumbs up.

Jon Zilber

My idea of summer fun? Catching up on a good book, letting my inner muse free herself with some sketching, cooking up a tasty BBQ, or maybe just gazing at the night sky. Here’s how my Palm Pre helps with all of the above -- with free webOS apps.

Plop yourself in a shaded hammock for some summer reading. pReader software works with popular eBook formats. For content, point your phone's browser to The Gutenberg Project (m.gutenberg.org), a huge library of free classics. Or find out if your public library has an eBook lending program for current favorites in Mobipocket or eReader format. pReader software works seamlessly with the DRM on both.

If art is more your thing, try some sketching with Paintr Lite. The Featured Gallery of other users' artwork is amazing. For an entertaining challenge, try your hand at roll-a-doodle.

Never turn up at a backyard BBQ empty-handed again. What's For Dinner Lite frees you from the drudgery of printed cookbooks. It lets you search multiple recipe websites at once, and automatically creates a shopping list with one tap, remembering your chosen recipes in a convenient list. Or you can just use Yelp or GoodFood to find a great take-out place nearby.

Turn a gorgeous summer night into science class. Teach kids (or big people) about lunar cycles using Moon Info, or introduce them to meteorology using the weather maps in AccuWeather. Wear them out before bedtime by having them jump up and down to simulate earthquakes with Seismograph (tip: set preferences for a low amplitude).

Bonnie L., Customer Support

My idea of summer fun? Catching up on a good book, letting my inner muse free herself with some sketching, cooking up a tasty BBQ, or maybe just gazing at the night sky. Here’s how my Palm Pre helps with all of the above -- with free webOS apps.

Plop yourself in a shaded hammock for some summer reading. pReader software works with popular eBook formats. For content, point your phone's browser to The Gutenberg Project (m.gutenberg.org), a huge library of free classics. Or find out if your public library has an eBook lending program for current favorites in Mobipocket or eReader format. pReader software works seamlessly with the DRM on both.

If art is more your thing, try some sketching with Paintr Lite. The Featured Gallery of other users' artwork is amazing. For an entertaining challenge, try your hand at roll-a-doodle.

Never turn up at a backyard BBQ empty-handed again. What's For Dinner Lite frees you from the drudgery of printed cookbooks. It lets you search multiple recipe websites at once, and automatically creates a shopping list with one tap, remembering your chosen recipes in a convenient list. Or you can just use Yelp or GoodFood to find a great take-out place nearby.

Turn a gorgeous summer night into science class. Teach kids (or big people) about lunar cycles using Moon Info, or introduce them to meteorology using the weather maps in AccuWeather. Wear them out before bedtime by having them jump up and down to simulate earthquakes with Seismograph (tip: set preferences for a low amplitude).

Bonnie L., Customer Support

My idea of summer fun? Catching up on a good book, letting my inner muse free herself with some sketching, cooking up a tasty BBQ, or maybe just gazing at the night sky. Here’s how my Palm Pre helps with all of the above -- with free webOS apps.

Plop yourself in a shaded hammock for some summer reading. pReader software works with popular eBook formats. For content, point your phone's browser to The Gutenberg Project (m.gutenberg.org), a huge library of free classics. Or find out if your public library has an eBook lending program for current favorites in Mobipocket or eReader format. pReader software works seamlessly with the DRM on both.

If art is more your thing, try some sketching with Paintr Lite. The Featured Gallery of other users' artwork is amazing. For an entertaining challenge, try your hand at roll-a-doodle.

Never turn up at a backyard BBQ empty-handed again. What's For Dinner Lite frees you from the drudgery of printed cookbooks. It lets you search multiple recipe websites at once, and automatically creates a shopping list with one tap, remembering your chosen recipes in a convenient list. Or you can just use Yelp or GoodFood to find a great take-out place nearby.

Turn a gorgeous summer night into science class. Teach kids (or big people) about lunar cycles using Moon Info, or introduce them to meteorology using the weather maps in AccuWeather. Wear them out before bedtime by having them jump up and down to simulate earthquakes with Seismograph (tip: set preferences for a low amplitude).

Bonnie L., Customer Support

Thanks to everyone who took part in the first of our Summer of Palm Cases Giveaway. To enter, readers had to let us know what Palm Pre case (or Palm Pixi case) from the everythingpre Store they would like to win. We conducted a random drawing and our winner is Josh who selected the Body Glove Side Case for the Palm Pre. Congratulations! Stay tuned, we’ll be starting up the next contest today.

Still feeling abandoned, webOS users? Take heart, as the good folks over at THQ Wireless are working hard with that recently released PDK in order to port a number of its titles over to Pre and Pixi users. We aren't being clued in just yet as to what games are undergoing the all important conversion process, but a tweet from the company's official account has made it abundantly clear that it has "a number of [its] games in development for webOS." We'd caution you against hoping for Star Wars: Trench Run and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, but we're fully aware that it's too late for that.

THQ Wireless has 'a number of games' coming to webOS originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Thu, 29 Jul 2010 15:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Still feeling abandoned, webOS users? Take heart, as the good folks over at THQ Wireless are working hard with that recently released PDK in order to port a number of its titles over to Pre and Pixi users. We aren't being clued in just yet as to what games are undergoing the all important conversion process, but a tweet from the company's official account has made it abundantly clear that it has "a number of [its] games in development for webOS." We'd caution you against hoping for Star Wars: Trench Run and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, but we're fully aware that it's too late for that.

THQ Wireless has 'a number of games' coming to webOS originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Thu, 29 Jul 2010 15:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hot off the presses: Check out the latest edition of Palm’s Featured Apps app. There are some new categories like “Card Games” and ”Food and Dining,” and some hot new titles in the “Travel” category.

And speaking of hot apps, congratulations to all the winners of Palm’s $1 million “Hot Apps” contest. See the complete list here.

Paul A., Palm PR

Palm has updated their Facebook for Palm webOS app to 1.2.30 beta. It’s not available in the App Catalog, but you can hit up this link to have it sent to your phone. The release includes:

• Support for selectable news feeds
• Toggling feed comments on/off
• Clearing multiple notifications at once and many other enhancements

Still in beta, so expect a few surprises. Otherwise, give it a go and let us know how it works for you.

via Palm on Facebook

Good news for those of you considering the Palm Pre Plus on AT&T. TFTS lets us know that AT&T is now offering the Palm Pre Plus for just $99 after a $50 instant discount. It’s currently out of stock, so it’s not clear why they would be dropping the price. For those of you looking for attractive no-committment pricing, you can score the Palm Pre Plus for just $299. For more information, check out AT&T Wireless online.

One of the things customers love about webOS is how easy it is to use. Sometimes even easier than they realize:

“How do I set up speed dials for my favorite contacts?”
Open the contact, pull down the menu and select “Set Speed Dial.” Tap the phone number you’d like to assign to a letter or number. Scroll through the resulting list and tap on an available entry (used letters and numbers will appear darker).

“I do a universal search and find Location Services, but why don’t I see it when I go into the launcher and scroll down?”
The launcher actually has three “pages” -- not just the one you see when you tap the launcher icon in the Quick Launch bar. To get to the other pages, simply bring up the launcher and swipe your finger left to get to the next page. At the bottom right (and left, depending on which page you’re on), there’s a little “tick” mark that tells you how many pages in that direction you can swipe.

“How can I put other icons at the bottom of the screen where the Phone, Contacts, etc. are?”
The four default icons on the Quick Launch bar (Phone, Contacts, Email, and Calendar) can be easily changed. Bring up the launcher and then press and hold the icon on the launch bar that you want to remove until you see a highlight around it, and then drag it onto the launcher page where you’d like it to be. Then, press and hold the icon you want to appear on the Quick Launch bar and drag it to the location where you’d like it to be.

“Wave bar… what’s that?”
You can run the applications on your Quick Launch quickly and easily from any screen. Just swipe up from the gesture area into the screen, holding your finger on the screen until you see the wave bar. Then slide your finger one way or the other to highlight the application you want to launch.

“Is there an easier way to pull down menus than tapping directly on the button?”
The menu (in any application!) can also be activated by swiping down over it. Simple!

You’ll find other helpful tips and tricks in our Tips and Tricks for webOS Knowledge Base article.

Calvin P., Customer Support

Todd Bradley, HP’s Executive Vice President, told CNBC that HP will use webOS exclusively in all future smartphones. There was some question as to whether HP would release a Windows Phone 7 device, but that’s not happening according to Bradley. HP is all in with webOS on the smartphone front. Not so much when it comes to tablets. Speaking at yesterday’s Forturne Brainstorm Tech conference, Bradley confirmed that a Windows based Slate tablet would ship later this year. There are plans for a webOS powered tablet, but no additional information was made available.

Sounds like HP is focused on that family of webOS devices.

CNBC via Palm on Twitter

HP’s Todd Bradley and Palm’s Jon Rubinstein took the stage at Fortune Magazine’s Brainstorm tech conference. As one would expect, the focus was on HP’s plans for the future of webOS. Bradley indicated the company’s thinking post-acquisition has been, “how do we proliferate webOS of a family of devices“. HP has plans to release a Windows based slate this fall.  They do have plans to bring webOS to printers, slates and of course smartphones. No dates or confirmation of new hardware was announced although Jon Rubinstein confirmed that Palm has “a great roadmap in place“.

Rubinstein also indicated that webOS 2.0 is coming later this year. When questioned about whether a webOS slate would include support for Flash, Rubinstein indicated Palm is working with Adobe and testing Flash with webOS.

The event also had it’s Oprah moment, with Todd Bradley informing the crowd they would all receive a free AT&T Palm Pre Plus with 90 days of free service.

Congratulations go out to Steve in Illinois, the winner of our ZAGG Invisible Shield Giveaway. Thanks to everyone who joined our Palm webOS forums and took part in the contest. If you didn’t win, there are still plenty of chances to win a case of your choice in our Summer of Palm Cases Giveaway. Giveaway #1 is underway.

Some fantastic news dropped today in the webOS world. RovioMobile, the developer of the infamous iPhone game Angry Birds today tweeted this little nugget of joy which has brought a wave of excitement across the community:-

“For all you Palm WebOS fans out there: If enough people want it, we’ll make it. http://tinyurl.com/AngryBirdsforPalm“

Yes people, this means that this great game could very well be soon making its way to our fantastic platform! Not a fan of Angry Birds?  Well, don’t be too underwhelmed. The scale of this notorious game, if ported of course, will almost certainly open the eyes of many, many top developers that have yet to either notice webOS or take it seriously. Which means a very strong potential for more fantastic apps being ported to our loving Pre’s and Pixi’s. Morever this will be sure to highlight the simplicity of Palm’s PDK and how easy it is for developers to port their existing apps to webOS. Perhaps developers are even unaware that it is now free to develop for our beloved platform, with Palm scrapping the $50 app submission fee back in June, and also dropping their $99 developer sign-up fee for a limited time only!

So what are you waiting for? Go and sign up your interest on Rovio Mobile’s website right here!

In a recent trademark filing, HP is looking to trademark PALMPAD. The categorization is generic, but we know what’s at play here.

Computers, computer hardware, computer software, computer peripherals, portable computers, handheld and mobile computers, PDAs, electronic notepads, mobile digital electronic devices

HP has suspended their Android tablet, there’s no word on the status of Windows 7 Slate, so perhaps it’s all hands on deck for a webOS tablet. Securing the trademark PALMPAD is no guarantee that HP will actually release a product named the PalmPad. HP is likely securing a number of name in the event they decide to go to market with a product called the PalmPad.

We still don’t put much into the original HP Hurricane rumors, but it would be surprising if HP weren’t working on a webOS based tablet. After all, they did purchase Palm for webOS and they are doubling down.

What would you call the mythical webOS powered tablet? Sound off in the comments.

myHPmini via PreCentral

Weather. That ever changing thing that we just can’t help but check up on, whether it be on the web, our phones or indeed just old school looking out of the window. Of course, we’re talking mobile here, and webOS has a plethora of weather apps available and I thought I’d run through each weather app I have on my phone, in a sort of combined overview of their feature and give you some pros/cons and which I like the most. So on with the show…

Weather Window by Hidden World Hut

This is one of my personal favourite weather apps. The app itself will show your current temp, highs lows, a quick three day forecast, all just basic ‘quick glance’ information. The beauty in this app lies in the periodically changing background. Within the settings you can choose from a number of different categorised themes, and at the interval you select the app to update the weather, it will update your phone’s background according to the weather. I really love this feature, and for me the theme that stands out particularly is the ‘tree’ theme, it’s just cool to see it changing throughout the day.  Weather Window also has a notification/dashboard bar that pops up when the weather updates, which you can just leave minimized in the tray and a quick tap will remind you of the current weather conditions.

Download: Free & Paid $2.99 | £2.49

Also check out their website for more cool pics!

Weather Dashboard by Super Giga Mega

This is just literally as it says on the tin, weather in your dashboard. There is no real app to open here (only to configure settings etc.) However, with this app, the information in the dashboard is a little more thorough than that of Weather Window’s. First and foremost it’ll give you the current weather conditions, tap on the dashboard notification once and it’ll display the outlook for the day, tap again and it’ll show tomorrow’s outlook, tap once more and it’ll display a ‘quick access’ refresh icon along with a preference icon, which will load the card up. It’s a simple yet effective app, and gives you what you need to know for the next couple of days, easily and efficiently. The full paid version will give you access to an auto rotating dashboard, more frequent refresh times and the ability to lock on to your location using GPS.

Simple Weather by Leetcom

One of my personal favourites at the moment. The application itself will give you pretty basic information, but over a 5 day period which is better than some of the other apps that only display 3 days. Usual preference options apply here, location, refresh frequency etc and you can also choose a custom background for the app. The best thing about this little app though is the periodically changing icon upon a refresh, which’ll display the appropriate icon (rain cloud, sun) for the current conditions, with the temperature also right next to it. Also within the preference options you get to choose between two different icon sets, which is a nice touch. This app is great for putting in your quick launch bar so you can quickly see it, especially when initiating the quick launch ‘wave’ bar by dragging up slowly from the gesture area from within any app. Another great thing about this app, as you can see from the screenshots, when you leave the app in card view it’ll just display the temperature in a large font for ease of viewing. Nice touch.

If I were to nit-pick about this app, I would say that the text for my location overlaps the weather conditions, so some UI elements that need to be brushed up on here.

Download: Paid $1 | 79p

aniWeather by forwebOS.com

This app brings a different dynamic to the fray. This app’s main goal is eye-candy and it’s great to leave the card open so it acts as a widget type effect. Of course, you’ve probably guessed that this app has animation. Basically it means you’ll get to see moving clouds, rain droplets, snow etc which is all pretty cool and snazzy.  As with Simple Weather, it’ll give you a five day forecast, and all the usual settings. You can also select to imprint a clock on the app, presumably if you wanted to use the app open solidly  in full screen.  Occasionally I do get a bit of lag with this app’s animations, but I don’t believe it is anything to do with the app,  just generally flakiness with stuff going on in the phone’s background. I do really like this app, in the ‘most visually pleasing” awards it wins first prize, the devs really have done a great job on this. And for free, what more could you ask?

Download: Free

Weather Now by monkeydog

Another app mainly based around the updating dashboard/notification pop up, which in this case displays a nice amount of information; weather icon, your location, conditions and the time it was updated. One complaint about this app is that even if I have the frequency set to three hours, the notifications seem to come through a lot more frequently. Still, if all you want is information popping up in your dashboard every so often, then this app is worth checking out. Available only through Preware or PreCentral.net’s homebrew app gallery

Download: Free

WeatherIcon by abesapps

This is another very cool app that periodically updates the icon, so it’s great to keep in your quick launch for easy access. The app itself also shows a good four days weather forecast so you can prepare for what’s coming. I think the icon on this looks great, maybe just pipped by the icon of Simple Weather, but that is just personal preference as I prefer a more realistic icon, but this app does give you a lot more detail within.  All the usual preference options you’re familiar with are included, you can lock on to your location with GPS and there is also an option which allows the app to ‘auto-locate’ you which is pretty cool.  All in all, a great app and moreover it is free, so for those who like the idea of an ‘live’ icon based weather app will do well to check this one out!

Download: Free

The Weather Channel by The Weather Channel

This app is definitely a more serious weather app. The Rolls Royce of weather apps if you will. Now it may not be the most pleasant on the eye, but the information contained within is very thorough and it is the only weather app that offers a 10 day weather forecast. It also offers a ‘current’ and ‘hourly’ forecast for your day, so for those looking for something a bit more accurate than a days forecast, then this is the app for you. Even further, it gives you information on ’severe weather’, ’storm watch’ and ‘tropical’ so especially good for those that live in those type of affected areas.  If you were to only have two weather apps on your phone, you should definitely make this your back-up for main information, and another one for eye-candy. This app is free which is a superb touch, but it does come with ad banners, which I guess you can forgive considering they are giving the app to you for nothing. A definite download in my book.

Download: Free

To conclude

It’s pretty hard for me to pick one winner from these are all great and some are very different from other, but if I had to choose I would personally narrow it down to my top three, in no particular order:-

• Weather Window
• Simple Weather
• The Weather Channel

I think with these three apps, your weather needs should be pretty much catered for. I know there are more out there, so if you’ve got a suggestion of another one or want to give your opinion on your favourite weather app, then please feel free to leave a comment in the box below!

That man unixpsycho is at it again, and this time has released his latest in ‘bleeding edge’ overclocking kernels, cranking the Pre up to a staggering 1.2GHz. Code named ‘SR71 Blackbird’, this new kernel also supports a new CPU temperature monitoring code, so if the CPU reaches 55°C the kernel will automatically scale down the speed of your device to 500MHz. At present, this latest experimental kernel only supports the ’screenstate’ governor, meaning when the screen is off it’ll scale to the set minimum and with the screen on it’ll scale to the set maximum.

As with all testing/experimental/bleeding edge kernels, this is NOT for the faint hearted and should not be used on a device that you depend on on a daily basis, just in case something goes wrong and you require the use of a PC to doctor. Even more so with this particular kernel; this really is pushing the extreme limits of the OMAP 3430 chipset, and as this is in a very alpha stage of testing at the moment I would recommend that if you are new to over-clocking, to wait until this has been tested out by those brave enough. As unixpsycho says “DO NOT INSTALL THIS IF YOU LIKE YOUR PHONE!!! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!’. So if you’re sitting comfortably, and accept the warnings given, then buckle up and prepare for some serious speed!

nb I strongly recommend you read and re-read the forum topic on the below link to understand what you are getting in to before you attempt installing this.

Source:  SR71 Blackbird | PreCentral.net | Forums

By now, you’ve undoubtedly heard about the problem Apple has been having with the so-called death grip. Steve Wozniak, one of the original founders of Apple, said he was able to duplicate the problem. His solution, carry a Verizon Palm Pre Plus as a backup.

If you can afford it, carry a second Verizon phone for backup. Another option is to carry a Verizon mifi and rely on Skype on your iPhone. I have used this mifi technique to rescue my own, and others’, iPhones on occasion. If you buy a Verizon Palm Pre, you get free mifi on it so that is possible the best ‘compromise’ solution, to carry a Verizon Palm Pre along with your AT&T iPhone 4.

Today’s Apple press conference surrounding Antennagate saw none other than Steve Jobs offering up a compliment to Palm.

“And we’re pretty good at making software, we showed that in the iPod… other people are good at it too, like Palm, but we brought great software to the smartphone space.”

There you have it Palmaniacs. See, Apple’s not so bad.

via MobileCrunch and Engadget