InformationWeek reports that social network giant MySpace was on the scene today, with CEO Chris de Wolf stating at a keynote that "MySpace is betting that its mobile version will gain traction and generate a lot of revenue". Their mobile user base has grown by a whopping 400% since last year, with now 20 million users accessing the site through a cellphone or smartphone. Earlier this week, a new version of MySpace mobile was confirmed as coming to Palm's webOS. (02/20)
PC Mag reports Opera Software was on hand today at the MWC, and when asked about porting their browser to the Pre, CEO Jon Tetzchner said "we'll see", and said he would write a version of Opera Mini for "any platform that gets any significant usage". (02/18)
CNN also reported today that Palm CEO Ed Colligan said at the MWC that all Web developers would be in a position to build applications for the Pre. And from more than 10 million web developers worldwide, Palm will leverage a community of 30,000 developers who worked on the previous PalmOS platform. "We have made it a priority for the new system to be as easy as possible to develop for", he states.
He goes on to say he's more focused on quality, rather than quantity of applications, and the application store will let them choose the best ones to offer on the new device. The Pre will ship by the end of Q2, and will also be available in Europe, in which negotiations were were already underway. (02/18)
Eariler, the official Pre Video posted by Palm featureed an accordian-style collapsing feature that shows free time and helps to display the full day, as well as seamless integration between appointments and contacts, google and sharing. Appointments can be viewed through multiple calendars, or individually, with time slots from other calendars greyed out for reference.
Precommunity has details about various aspects of the Pre that they learned during their 1-on-1 brieifings with Palm at MWC. First off, the Synergy feature brings together information from many sources such as Gmail, Google Calendar, MS Exchange accounts into a single interface.
Synergy: In their time with the Pre, they learned how easy it would be to keep your life in order. Below are the most important points:
- The reverse method of entering a single calendar entry into multiple schedules at the same time, is not possible yet. This would be useful for events such as a team meeting, where you may want to put it on your calendar and a shared Google calendar at the same time. Palm has considered this but are prioritizing on streamlining the GUI at this point.
- You cannot change the color coding of the different calendars; apparently this was too complicated to manage so Palm scrapped the idea.
- Two way sync is only available with clients that support it (such as Exchange or Google Calendar)
- When out of network range, the Pre will cache schedules and data locally, based on prioritization of what "might" be important. These are synchromized once you're back in the cloud.
Google Maps: On the show floor next was the Google Maps app, which also showed a high level of functionality. Below are the main points from the demo:
- The HTML5 webapp version of Google Maps is perfect for the Pre because it supports all the Pre's multitouch navigation, as well as the regular search, zoom, and other functionality.
- The same engine is also used in the Android and iPhone browsers, so technically developers can code a single app to run the same on any device.
- For app functionality and offline records, it uitilizes HTML5's AppCache, GeoLocation and Database standards.
- An offline-capable version of GMail was also demonstrated, which can be opened when in airplane mode. It brings features from the iPhone such as floating menus and labelling support
Web Browser: Hands-on time with the web browser also showed more about its features, dubbed by Palm as "the full web experience".
- A bookmarks page appears when you start the browser, represented by thumbnails
- Load times were good, and interface features included pinch zooming and double-tap zooming
- The "share" feature adds a hyperlink or thumbnail image to a new e-mail, ready to send
- An "add to launcher" feature puts a link to the webpage in the Pre's launcher bar. You can do the same for contacts or apps for easy access.
Full walkthrough: PreCommunity has posted a 26 minute live-demo walkthrough of the Palm Pre from MWC09. The video is "one of the most complete demonstrations of the Pre that we've seen to date".
It shows app-to-app transitions, calendar, contacts, synergy linking from MS Exchange, GMail, social networks, browsers and more.
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