Tams Palm

We’ve heard rumors of a webOS tablet for some time – so far, no release date was available.

Engadget now claims the following:

…we’re now hearing from several trusted sources that it’ll be calendar Q1 2011. We’re told Personal Systems Group VP Todd Bradley mentioned the date during an all-hands employee meeting yesterday, and that the project is indeed known internally as “Hurricane.

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As of this writing, not much more is known – stay tuned for further info as we get it!

Even though I had no major issues with Handango during my tenure at a large Palm OS house, the reputation of neither PalmGear nor Handango is excessively good. When the two entities combined, many expected a Murphy’s Law-type effect(Moron + Moron = 2 Moron). And indeed, Murphy was right.

A few developer colleagues of mine have now been given statements similar to the one below:

Handango has advised us that Handango’s unaudited accounting records indicate that Handango may have owed you as much as $ 416.70 on February 15, 2010. Our preliminary review of these records indicate that some of these amounts have been outstanding for several years. While we have begun the process of verifying these records, posting payments and credits, identifying offsets, counterclaims and other deductions and determining whether certain payment obligations have lapsed, we have not yet completed that process. Because our review covers several years of invoices, checks, electronic payments and other data, we do not expect to complete this process for some time.

To expedite payment to you and to avoid the costs associated with a comprehensive review of all of Handango’s records relating to these liabilities, PocketGear is offering to pay you $ 41.67 in full and complete satisfaction of all amounts that PocketGear or Handango may owe you for goods and services provided or sold prior to February 15, 2010.

Even though I fully agree that this is not the “fine English way of doing business”, it IMHO shows more tragedy than evilness on the side of the distributor in question.

After all, it would have been highly improbable that any developer would ever have found out about the difference. Let’s be 100% honest here: had Handango pocketed the cash silently, this article wouldn’t be written.

Don’t ask me what is going on here – but a payment processor having unaudited records dating back years definitely is a disturbing sign…

Given that its a somewhat slow news day, staff changes at Palm’s parent company make for welcome bits of content to keep the news site spinning .

HP’s CEO Mark Hurd has just stepped down. CNet News reports the following email, which was sent to all employees:

This is to advise you that Mark Hurd, chairman and CEO of HP, has resigned from the company effective immediately. Mark’s resignation was submitted at the request of the company’s board of directors as a result of inappropriate behavior in which he engaged that violated HP’s Standards of Business Conduct and undermined his ability to continue to lead the company.

At the request of the board, I have agreed to serve as interim CEO until a new, permanent CEO is hired. During this time I also will continue to perform my duties as CFO. The board has formed a committee to undertake a search for a new CEO, and candidates from inside the company as well as outside the company will be considered. I have informed the board, however, that I do not wish to be considered for the role of permanent CEO, and I have removed myself from being a candidate for that position.

While this news is unexpected, HP remains in an exceptionally strong position both financially and in the marketplace. It is essential, however, that we remain focused and continue to achieve–if not exceed–our operational and financial objectives.

Because there is likely to be considerable media coverage of this announcement during the next few days, I wanted to be the first to share the facts with you.

Mark’s resignation followed an internal investigation into a claim of sexual harassment asserted against Mark and HP by a woman who is former contractor to HP. The investigation was conducted by outside counsel in conjunction with HP’s general counsel’s office and was overseen by the board. Based on the investigation it was determined that the former contractor’s claim of sexual harassment was not supported by the facts.

The investigation did reveal, however, that Mark had engaged in other inappropriate conduct. Specifically, based on the facts that were gathered it was found that Mark had failed to disclose a close personal relationship he had with the contractor that constituted a conflict of interest, failed to maintain accurate expense reports, and misused company assets. Each of these constituted a violation of HP’s Standards of Business Conduct (PDF), and together they demonstrated a profound lack of judgment that significantly undermined Mark’s credibility and his ability to effectively lead HP.

As we regularly remind all employees, each of us is expected to adhere strictly to the Standards of Business Conduct in all of our business dealings and relationships. This expectation applies with even greater force to HP’s CEO and other senior executives who, given their positions, must set the highest standard for professional and personal conduct. The investigation that was conducted revealed that Mark had failed to meet this standard.

We recognize that this change of leadership is unexpected news. We also know that HP’s success in recent years is due to the collective efforts and hard work of more than 300,000 talented employees who have formulated far-reaching strategies and achieved our objectives better than anyone else in the industry.

On Monday morning we will conduct an all-employee Webcast to discuss this matter further and answer your questions. To join the Webcast please click on this link.

In closing, I would like to thank each of you for your contributions to HP and to ask that in the weeks and months to come we do everything to ensure that HP’s future, like its past, is one of innovation, operational excellence, and the delivery of world-class products and services.

All the best.

Cathie

Not much to add here…

When it comes to app stores, every big platform now has one. However, individual developers tend to have a hard time “comparing”, as the usually tend to focus on one or two stores and thus end up with “slanted” numbers.

Market research house ABI Research now provides the following chart:

Unfortunately, the company also predicts falling revenues to to the increasing availability of free or ad-funded substitutes for must-have apps.

Do you folks agree?

Call it strange, call it weird, call it whatever – but it looks like HP’s printers are on the way to becoming “workstations” of their own.

Mobile Business Briefing now reports the following:

Hewlett-Packard (HP) has outlined plans to use its recently-acquired webOS platform to power a whole range of devices beyond smartphones, including printers. “This isn’t strictly focused on the tablet,” Shane Robison, HP’s chief strategy and technology officer, told Reuters this week. “We’re going to have printers, even some printers that have detachable, smaller slate devices on them.”

As of this writing, not much more is known – stay tuned for further info as we get it!

When it comes to analyzing device usage scenarios, market research firms can provide extremely valuable insights to analysts and the media in general.

Nielsen, which is one of the largest research firms in the world, has just shared the following figures:

Looking at the mobile “clock” shows that good keyboards are worthwhile and important – find out more via the URL below:
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/ …

Samsung’s OLED production division has been in the news a lot over the last few weeks – its supply shortages have motivated HTC to ditch its AMOLED technology. Pantech, number 3 vendor in Korea, now follows suite.

Korea Herald reports the following:

Pantech, Korea’s No. 3 handset maker, will not use AM-OLED displays in its new smartphones to be launched in the first half of next year because of a shortage of the component, an executive told The Korea Herald.

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He said Samsung Mobile Display, the sole supplier of AM-OLEDs, is not even able to keep up with demand from Samsung Electronics, its parent company, because of limited capacity, combined with surging demand

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Given that the latest batch of AMOLED displays has an uneven pixel pitch (making them not ideal for business applications), I don’t see too much an issue with this.

P.S. Keep in mind that all kinds of OLED displays failed to play out a significant advantage against high-quality LCD displays in our testing…

Image: Samsung Wave, with AMOLED display

First of all, a big apology for our delay in reviewing the Aceeca PDA32 – we were forced to halt the review due to overload, but will continue it shortly.

In the mean time, the tidbit below from Aceeca could be interesting for the PDA32 faithful:

… the PDA32 currently supports 64Mbytes of RAM (although capable of 128Mbytes of RAM and might be loaded in the near future). As I said before ~38Mbytes is available as the storage heap (the place where apps are stored), the rest if for the system and apps to use. This is thus the number I think you are looking for.

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Our model has 64MB fitted – stay tuned for further info as we get it!

Given that I use a netbook whenever I travel (fits everywhere, weighs nothing), investing a bit of time and effort into simplifying things can pay out big time. My latest optimization involved changing the web browser from Firefox to Opera…and I can but recommend you all to make the switch.

My MSI Wind U100 netbook is more CPU- than RAM-constrained (I have 1500MB); which means that a web browser’s CPU consumption is the key deciding factor when it comes to system performance.

For me, Opera has performed significantly better than Firefox. Lags when scrolling are now non-existent, even when in power save mode and on the most complex pages!

Unfortunately, this luxury of speed comes with a significant price: memory usage. Irregardless of operating configuration, I have found Opera to consume about four times the memory of Firefox…finding 600MB of RAM assigned to Opera is something I have seen quite often.

As these devices tend to be too limited to run two complex applications at the same time, however, this is less of a problem than one may initially assume. For me, the best netbook browser thus is Opera.

Of course, all those of you who use a 2GB development machine with a dual or quad core CPU are better advised with Firefox, as it will leave more RAM free for other tasks…

Feedback, anyone?

If a device sells badly, manufacturers try to create “special editions” to stimulate sales.

Palm’s m505 was one of the worst Palm handhelds ever – and Oliver W Leibenguth now managed to get his hands onto the critter below:

He relays the following story:

Back in 2001, the MMS communication AG ordered 100 m505 in a 24carat gold plated case. Units sold for like 1500 Euros a piece.

Not much to add here…except that Oliver’s blog is totally worth following if for the pictures alone…

We have covered HP’s tablet project with Microsoft a lot in the past – now that the Slate is out as a “limited business device” to keep Microsoft’s face, it’s time to move on for the Redmond-based company.

The Chinese news portal Shanzai.com now reports the following:

News today has surfaced that Microsoft and tablet manufacturer Hanvon are poised to make sweet music together, creating new tablet designs for business users. This is the first signs that Microsoft are re-thinking their tablet strategy in a bid to take on Apple and Google for a piece of the tablet market.

Today’s announcement basically describes an alliance of sorts between one of China’s most mature x86 tablet manufacturers and the world’s leading x86 software developer. Zhang Xuejun, president of Hanvon, has indicated that for them, the tablet is very much a business tool as opposed to an entertainment or content consumption device. He goes on to mention how business users will demand a Windows OS on their tablets and hopes that this alliance will bring plentiful dividends in the future.

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As of this writing, not much more is known – stay tuned for further info as we get it.

When it comes to finding out which devices are actually liked by users, the data provided by the Swedish case manufacturer Krusell can be extremely valuable. The reason for that is that their main sales vectors are not the online business, but rather stores frequented by – um – less geeky people.

For July 2010, the sales stats look as following:

1. (1) Apple iPhone 4
2. (2) Nokia 3720 Classic
3. (-) Apple iPad
4. (-) HTC HD2
5. (7) Nokia E52
6. (-) HTC Wildfire
7. (6) Samsung S8500 Wave
8. (3) HTC Desire
9. (9) Nokia 6700 Classic
10. (4) Apple iPhone 3G

Apple iPhone 4 and iPad are both among Top 3 on Krusell’s Top 10 list for July. –Our top seller list have since the start only had traditional mobile phones and PDA’s participating, but we live in a fast moving industry and it’s great to see iPad rushing in on a third place, says Ulf Sandberg, CEO at Krusell. It’s definitely a sign of a new product segment entering our business. The feat made by iPad is even more impressive in the light that it’s still only a limited number of markets where the device is released.

Not much to add here…

Palm has learned a lot about how to treat third-party developers – the exchange of many foul fruits, the new and mobile-experienced parents and the constant pressure from Apple have done a lot for the company.

This is best seen in the following statement from HP’s CTO, which hits us via PreCentral:

We also support the homebrew guys. You hear about all the guys hacking phones and unlocking the phones, we actually encourage that. You can go out to PreCentral or any of the sites that support the Palm homebrew guys. they’ll tell you how to unlock your phone and how you can download the homebrew sites. The homebrew guys have just done some phenomenal work from the standpoint of really unlocking the true power of webOS.

Unfortunately, not all is good:

Inside of HP with the 47,000 engineers I issued a challenge [...] for the HP engineers to go create apps, consumer apps [...] I stopped counting at 750 apps and my mailbox has totally exploded.

No (sane) third-party developer wants to compete against the OS or device vendor. Motivating insiders to create webOS apps is a very bad idea and makes the platform a lot less interesting.

This effect has appeared multiple times in the past; and even if HP plays perfectly fair, the bad taste from past (Microsoft) cases remains in the mouths of third party developers.

Palm IMHO should take an example from Samsung – a company which is based in Korea and thus knows extremely well about “formal rules of engagement”. They have been financing, wining and dining third party developers all over Europe for the last months – but have not offered a single direct contract to any of them.

For Samsung, the effect is exactly the same (they get apps). However, third parties who are not privy to the winery don’t tend to hear about it – and don’t feel miffed in the process…

A few months ago, Palm started a “hot app” competition which offered cash prices to the most-downloaded applications.

The company has just announced the winners of the “hot apps” challenge.

Find the full list here:
http://developer.palm.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2098

We have reported about HP’s adding of Palm devices to its cell phone store some time ago.

The company has now “sweetened the deal” a bit by adding a 50$ gift card for HP products to all Palm cell phones sold via its web shop:

Find out more via the URL below:
http://www.cellstores.com/mobile/?r=hp

Dear Readers,
given that today is a somewhat slow news day, and given that our new design and rotating background system is now around for some time, I felt like asking you all to give us feedback.

First of all, a big thanks to all the readers who sent in complaints and praise for the new layout and the image choice. We have read each and every email with great pleasure.

From a performance standpoint, the difference between “Backgrounds” and “no Backgrounds” is minimal. This means that site performance will not be affected much (outside of peak times) irregardless of whether we enable the background images or not.

Editorial effort, also, is minimal. The images have already been shot for reporting purposes, and are essentially being recycled here.

Thus, the question is: do you like the idea?

Sound off in the comments or via a twitter message to the user tamhanna. There is no need to register!!

In Germany, a developer called MetaView has almost godlike celebrity value in the Palm community – and indeed, some of his applications have turned out to be extremely impressive.

One of the reasons why he really is pretty cool is that he also runs a blog where he shares interesting code snippets on a more or less regular basis. His latest victim is file handling:

Have you ever tried the menu item “Default Apps” (German: Standardanwendungen) in the App Launcher’s menu? Then you know that apps can register for certain file/mime types. But how to do it isn’t documented yet. According to this forums thread one might expect to get some documentations about it rather soon. Until then, Jay Canuck and the WebOSInternals-Team both using some luna-send commands to perform the file type registration for their applications: Internalz and Preware. Translating this luna-sends into proper service calls was easy and looks like this:

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Hit the link below to find out more:
http://metaviewsoft.de/wordpress/?p=443

In the last few years, the emergence of bluetooth and TCP/IP connectivity has made cross-plattform gaming on mobile devices possible. However, very few game houses have released cross-plattform games so far.

The above-mentioned Rahul Sood now shares an anecdote which could explain the situation:

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There was a project that got killed at Microsoft. This project was designed to allow console gamers and PC gamers to interact and battle over a connected environment. Personally I wish it would have stayed the course. I’ve heard from reliable sources that during the development they brought together the best console gamers to play mediocre PC gamers at the same game… and guess what happened? They pitted console gamers with their “console” controller, against PC gamers with their keyboard and mouse.

The console players got destroyed every time. So much so that it would be embarrassing to the XBOX team in general had Microsoft launched this initiative.

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This obviously has huge implications on cross-platform (or even cross-device) multiplayer gaming – what do you think?

The main difference between Verizon’s and Sprint’s Palm Pixi is that the latter lacks WiFi. Given that the two devices are very similar otherwise, a radio board swap sounds like a possible idea.

An individual called gitit20 has now uploaded the video below to YouTube – it shows the process:

Strangely, the memory chip is on the radio board, and is socketed rather than soldered to the board. This could be done in an attempt to simplify repairs without data loss…take a look above to learn more about the hardware of these two devices!

Ever since HP bought Palm, a lot of individuals wondered themselves what would become of the famous – Windows-Mobile-powered – iPaq line.

CNBC now reports the following:

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Instead, HP Executive Vice President Todd Bradley told me that the PC giant will exclusively use its webOS software, which it got when it closed its Palm acquisition three weeks ago. Not that Microsoft is completely striking out with HP—Bradley also said definitively for the first time that HP will build a tablet computer based on Microsoft’s Windows 7.

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Not much more to add here – goodnight, iPaq…