September 2nd, 2010

A Pre Owner's Take On webOS 2.0

Now that it’s clear that webOS 2.0 is happening I’m very happy inside. As a Pre owner I had my ups and downs with this phone. Hardware is not so great (however quite resistant to damage), the processor is sluggish, the memory is not enough to open more than a few cards at the same time. I also have constant problems with the headphone jack being stuck in headphone mode making me to make calls by… → Read More

August 6th, 2010

If HP Really Wants To Be Apple, Here's Their Shot. What About Rubinstein?

Let me start off by saying that I don’t think this is going to happen. And a number of people I’ve spoken with today don’t think this is going to happen. But it’s something interesting to think about and discuss nonetheless. Following HP CEO Mark Hurd’s resignation today, what if the Board were to appoint former Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein to be their new leader?

Again, it seems a bit far-fetched… → Read More

July 30th, 2010

Emulate the HP 12c On Your Palm Pre

If you’ve never taken an accounting class, you won’t understand why the HP 12c is so important. It’s basically the go to financial calculator for everyone who has ever touched a 1099. → Read More

April 28th, 2010

Let's welcome Palm to the land of the living dead

I’ve been bearish on Palm as a standalone platform since they launched last May and today the sadness-tinged chickens have come home to roost: Palm is now part of HP and, like the iPaq before it, the Pre and Pixi will slowly be subsumed into the company’s line-up. In fact, I couldn’t be happier for Palm. A recent perusal of HP’s line-up including their new Envy line of… → Read More

April 23rd, 2010

Palm Post: Another Exec Set To Take Off

Palm has seen better days. Following the departure of senior vice president of software, Michael Abbott (who landed at Twitter), the company has been offering packages to try and keep other executives around. That may not be working so well. Caitlin Spaan, Palm’s vice president of carrier marketing will be leaving the company shortly as well, we’ve learned.

This was likely not an easy decision to… → Read More

April 20th, 2010

WebOS vulnerability found, patched by Palm in latest release

What to make of this WebOS exploit? It was discovered by the Intrepidus Group security firm, and it has to do with the way the operating system handles SMS messages. Basically, WebOS doesn’t perform a common security check on incoming SMS messages, meaning that any craftily formed SMS can essentially take out the entire phone. → Read More

March 3rd, 2010

Maybe it's horrible customer service that's hobbling Palm?

Dwight “The Houston Tiger” Silverman, like so many tech dudes, likes the Palm Pre and Pixi and, in a way, doesn’t understand why Palm is on the rocks. However, he got an email from a reader who described her Verizon experience as sub-par at best. It began poorly: My original salesperson, upon hearing me say I was there for the Palm Pre, immediately mentioned that they were… → Read More

February 18th, 2010

T-Mobile getting some Palm webOS lovin'?

Palm’s webOS is certainly one of the more polished operating systems out there; the others being the iPhone OS and Android. It’s clean, simple to use and attractive. However, it was available only on Sprint’s network for the longest time until recently when it arrived at Verizon on the Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus. Now it looks like another carrier will be picking up the new… → Read More

January 31st, 2010

Mario Kart (and more) for your Palm Pre

A WebOS port of the popular GB/CGA emulator is pretty rocking’, even though it only runs at 90% speed on a good day. The hackers who figured all this out will get it back up to speed shortly but don’t expect to download this at the Apps Market or whatever Palm is calling it. This is pure homebrew. Click through for Zelda. → Read More

January 29th, 2010

Brightkite Expands Product Line-up With Mobile Apps For Nokia, Palm Phones

Popular location-based social network Brightkite has simultaneously released mobile apps for some Nokia as well as Palm smartphones.

The release of the apps follows earlier launches of Android, BlackBerry and iPhone applications. → Read More

January 16th, 2010

Pluses Pre and Pixi priced

If you’re in the market for a WebOS Plus device then they’ll cost you $150 for the Pre and $100 for the Pixi whenever Verizon launches them. → Read More

January 9th, 2010

iPhone Beats Droid, Nexus One And Droid Eris In Touchscreen Performance

To be honest, I don’t really care which is the better smartphone (or super-duper phone): the iPhone 3GS, the Motorola Droid, HTC’s Droid Eris, Google’s Nexus One, Nokia’s N900 or the Palm Pre.

It’s just great to witness this seemingly never-ending advancements in mobile technology, both on a hardware and software level, and to see increased competition drive innovation at such rapid pace. Just… → Read More

January 8th, 2010

BlockChalk Is Location-Based Sidewalk Chalk For Your Mobile Device

With its new geolocation API, Twitter has the potential to delve into the realm of messages that are relevant based on location. But right now, most geotagged tweets are simply regular tweets that are being tagged with location, and really don’t have much specifically to do with it. Enter BlockChalk, a new service built around the idea of leaving simple messages directly tied to a specific… → Read More

November 19th, 2009

With New Staff In Place, Techmeme Polishes Its Mobile Experience

If you’re addicted to Techmeme, like we are, you’re probably addicted to reading it on your mobile phone too. The problem is that the experience hasn’t been great. There was a mobile version of the site, called Mini-Techmeme, but no one seemed to know about it. More importantly, it didn’t give the full Techmeme experience because it didn’t include discussion items. Today, Techmeme has launched a… → Read More

November 18th, 2009

Android Creep: Gmail Chat Starts Showing Which Contacts Use Android Phones

Google is powerful. We all know this, and live with it. But that brings up some interesting concerns when they break into new businesses — will they use that power to give them an unfair advantage? With great power comes great responsibility, and all that. Today brings a totally innocuous example, but it’s still interesting.

A new feature in Gmail Labs allows you to change your contacts’… → Read More

October 27th, 2009

Consumer Review: The Best Smartphones On The Market

With the Holiday Season nearly upon us, we at TechCrunch thought it would behoove us to share with everyone a definitive list of the best smartphones currently available (or launching shortly), so as to help with any possible purchasing decisions which may occur in the upcoming months.

In making our decisions, we looked at these phones from the standpoint of the consumer. Thus, developer→ Read More

October 9th, 2009

Sride to unrock: Chinese Palm Pre clones attack

When your country can’t have a Palm Pre you might as well make your own. This is a “half-iPhone, half-Blackberry” device with slide out keyboard running the Ophone OS. The phone includes a slide-to-unlock feature along with analog TV and FM radio playback and “Java Application.” → Read More

October 6th, 2009

Palm's Full Monty

Easily the quote of the night at Palm’s Developer gathering in San Francisco came from Katie Mitic, Palm’s senior vice president of product marketing. “We want to leave it all out there. You know, ‘The Full Monty‘,” she emphatically said when noting that Palm’s goal was to be more open.

Anyone who has seen the 1997 British film of the same name will realize that such an act would certainly be… → Read More

October 5th, 2009

Palm: Free Apps For The Web, Free Development For Open Source, And Free Phones!

I’m here in San Francisco for a meeting Palm has called to give its newest employees, Ben Galbraith and Dion Almaer, who both came over from Mozilla, a chance to talk a bit about the state of the webOS platform.

The two, along with Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein and some other executives spoke at length about the hardware, the platform, and the plan going forward. The message was pretty clear: Web… → Read More

September 30th, 2009

Pre faltering, Palm laying off employees? – UPDATES

When your smartphone drops from $299 ($199 with contract) to $79 over a summer, you have to wonder what’s going on. Two rumors are circulating this AM, one that Palm is laying off folks, perhaps in the Windows Mobile team.

UPDATE from Palm: “We are not laying people off. As we continue our transformation we are better aligning our staff with our business objectives.”

The estimated sales for the… → Read More

September 27th, 2009

Walmart is now selling the Palm Pre for only $79

So ya think that the Pre is still overpriced at $100 from Amazon, eh? Well, if you’re willing to buy the Pre at Walmart and deal with mail-in rebates, you can snag one for only $79.99. → Read More

September 27th, 2009

Walmart is now selling the Palm Pre for only $79

So ya think that the Pre is still overpriced at $100 from Amazon, eh? Well, if you’re willing to buy the Pre at Walmart and deal with mail-in rebates, you can snag one for only $79.99. → Read More

September 25th, 2009

Palm Pre on Amazon for only $100

Amazon has been known to offer cell phones at cut-rate prices. Just the other day, all AT&T phones except for ones that start with the letter “i” were a penny on Amazon. But today, you can save $50 off the retail price and snag a Palm Pre for only one bill. → Read More

September 25th, 2009

Shutup, Internet: The Palm Pre will be available on Verizon Wireless

How many hours ago did it “break” that the Palm Pre wasn’t going to be available on Verizon Wireless? Yeah, well, now word on the street is that, forget everything you read last night, because there’s no way in hell the Palm Pre won’t be available for Verizon Wireless. Or, to remove the double-negative: yes, the Palm Pre will, indeed, be available on Verizon Wireless, most likely this winter. → Read More

September 25th, 2009

Palm Pre on Amazon for only $100

Amazon has been known to offer cell phones at cut rate prices. Just the other day, all AT&T phones expect for ones that start with the letter “i” werea penny on Amazon. But today, you can save $50 off the retail price and snag a Palm Pre for only one bill. → Read More

September 24th, 2009

Palm Pre coming to UK, Ireland, and Germany

The Palm Pre is coming to Germany on October 13 and will pop up on October 16 in UK and Ireland. The UK model will cost 96.89 pounds for the 75 and 600 minute plans and will be free for the 44 and 73 pound plans (1,200 and 3,000 consecutively). Other countries should be just about the same. Click through for the UK release. → Read More

September 9th, 2009

In other news, we got to see the Palm Pixi today. It's not too bad (but, really, no Wi-Fi?)

You get the feeling that Palm had something to hide today. On the surface that makes no sense, considering it officially announced the Pixi, the company’s second webOS-based phone, this morning. (The company’s first webOS phone, the Pre, launched to much fanfare last May, owing to an almost Bill Goldberg winning streak-like level of hype.) But as you’re already aware, Apple had an announcement or… → Read More

September 9th, 2009

Apple Strikes Back: iTunes 9 does NOT sync with the Pre

Looks like the never-ending “sync war” between Apple and Palm continues to rage on. According to numerous PreCentral forum contributors, iTunes 9 does NOT sync with their beloved Pres. What now, Palm? → Read More

September 9th, 2009

Sprint drops the price of the Palm Pre, explains the $100 credit offer yesterday

Yesterday the Internet was abuzz with an offer from Sprint that involved a $100 service credit if you port-in a number and buy a Palm Pre. It was a fair deal but Sprint quickly pulled the offer and now explained what happened. → Read More

September 8th, 2009

Sprint offers up a $100 credit with a new Palm Pre activation

There have been a few rumors about Sprint cutting the price of the Palm Pre the last few days. Those might still work out, but until then there is this deal. There is a lot of fine print with the offer, but if you’ve been eyeing a Palm Pre, you should definitely see if you qualify. → Read More