VentureBeat: “Who will save what’s left of Palm from HP’s bumbling? It could be Amazon, as the online retailing giant is in serious negotiations to snap up Palm from HP, VentureBeat has learned.”
That would be awesome beyond belief. It’s obvious based on their moves with the Kindle Fire Amazon doesn’t want to be beholden to an OS vendor. This could be a great move for them and the entire webOS loving world.
Oh please, oh please, oh please, click buy!
webOS Developer Blog: “There comes a time in a Linux-loving geek’s life when he or she needs a new challenge. Making desktop apps isn’t hacking it anymore and building yet-another-website seems passe. If you want to jump into the world of mobile, here are a few reasons why HP webOS is the platform for you.”
This platform is especially friendly to web oriented developers; HTML, CSS, etc. Guys like me, well, we’re left standing around wondering what the heck a div is and why you should use it. I guess I should learn how all this markup stuff works and just go with the flow.
Someday.
Scobleizer: “What is it? The smallest little phone I’ve ever seen. It’s like a large pebble in your hand. Smooth and really nice to hold.”
One would hope they have more to offer than a small phone, right? What about the competitor to the iPhone and the plethora of Android devices?
Guess we’ll find out today, noon Pacific.
Darn, the Pre 2 looks pretty darned amazing.
After having lunch with my brother and sister-in-law this afternoon we decided to go to the Verizon store and look for a Palm Pixi, I haven’t seen one yet and wasn’t convinced the screen was as small as my brother claimed. So we head into the store and my brother guides me through the store, showing me his favorite phones, and why he likes them. Then we get some help and find they don’t have a Palm Pixi, but they have the Pre+, so the guy helping us gets one out of the back and let’s me check it out. It’s actually a really nice device, but, I digress…
The iPod Touch 3G
Something my brother said while he was talking to the salesman really got me thinking. He said “You know what would be perfect, an iPod Touch with 3G, and no phone.” When I heard that I thought to myself “That’s a screwy idea.” Wait, no wait, that’s NOT such a screwy idea. Think about this for a couple of minutes. What if you could have an iPhone/iPod Touch with 3G and no phone and have a cheap flip phone for all your voice communication, on the same phone number? That would be awesome. Why? Well here’s the thing. The iPhone sucks battery, and face it, most of the time you don’t use it for talking. It’s mostly about e-mail, texting, Twitter, and Facebook isn’t it? Yes, that’s what I thought. Here’s my brothers, and my, logic. One of the best cell phones I ever had was a cheap “free” Samsung flip phone. No bells and whistles, just a simple voice phone. The thing worked. The sound quality was great and the best thing about it? I had to charge it about once a week.
That’s just crazy talk
Yeah, well, maybe it is. I’ll give you that, but in my brain it makes sense, especially if I can have them both on the same number. Allow voice and text on the cheap phone and use the iPod Touch 3G for all your social adventures, and texting of course. The big advantage is battery life, and from my experience, a better pure phone. This may not be the case for most folks. It would seem that most people text way more that they actually talk, but for me it works.
Then again maybe Apple can just get to work on a battery that’ll last a week on a charge, even under heavy use.
ars technica: “In January of 2009, shares of Palm traded at a little over $3 as everyone awaited details of the once-mighty smartphone maker’s plans to save itself from certain death. In the wake of the Pre’s successful unveiling later that month at CES, Palm’s stock price more than doubled, and optimism about the Pre’s prospects eventually drove shares to a high of over $17 in October of last year. But as of this past Friday’s earnings report, sales are way below Palm’s and Wall Street’s expectations, the company has little cash left on hand, and shares of PALM have dropped all the way back down to $4. There’s a growing consensus—as expressed by the market—that there are only two possible futures for Palm: acquisition, or insolvency.” – Darn. I’ve always been a Palm fan. I had a Handspring Visor and used it for years, and I’ve even written, and contributed to, applications that run on the original Palm platform. The new Pre, and more specifically WebOS, are beautifully designed. In fact I’d put them firmly in second place to the iPhone. I would hope they won’t go away, but I’m not sure who would be interested in acquiring them at this point. A few months back I’d have said Microsoft was the perfect place for Palm but with the introduction of Windows Phone 7 (what a horrible name) I think Microsoft is now in a fairly decent position to be a good number three or four in the market. About a year ago I considered moving to Sprint for my cell service and the Pre was a natural choice, hard to beat unlimited use for $70.00 a month, the same plan on AT&T, with an iPhone, would run $119.00.
Anywho, I hope Palm can manage to stick around. They’re now offering the Pre at Verizon, which is a very popular carrier, and Verizon still doesn’t have the iPhone of course. Once the iPhone hits these other carriers it could be game over.