It could be anything.
I’ll be fine with it — as long as it’s not Hello Kitty-related.
February 16, 2009
The Palm Pre: Soon To Be Flashier!
Palm Latest Mobile Industry Leader to Join Open Screen Project
BARCELONA, Spain — Feb. 16, 2009 — At the GSMA Mobile World Congress, Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced Palm is joining the Open Screen Project – a broad industry initiative dedicated to enabling standalone applications and full web browsing across televisions, desktops and mobile devices taking advantage of Adobe Flash Platform capabilities. The work of the Open Screen Project will help deliver Adobe® Flash® Player for smartphones on the new Palm® webOS™ platform. The unique capabilities of the web-centric Palm webOS, combined with Flash Player, will enable webOS device users to benefit from the huge amount of Flash based web content for a richer, more complete Internet experience.
“We’re excited that our customers will benefit from the creativity and broad range of Flash content and applications created by the millions of designers and developers using Adobe’s popular tools and technologies,” said Pam Deziel, vice president, software product management, Palm, Inc.
“As an industry innovator Palm will be an important contributor to the Open Screen Project,” said Michele Turner, vice president for Product Marketing, Flash Platform Business Unit at Adobe. “We’re aiming to bring a rich, Flash technology-enabled browsing experience to Palm’s impressive web browser.”
Led by Adobe, the Open Screen Project includes industry leaders working together to provide a consistent runtime environment and user experience across mobile phones, desktops, and other consumer electronics devices. The initiative addresses the challenges of web browsing on a broad range of devices, and removes the barriers to publishing content and applications seamlessly across screens. For more information, visit www.openscreenproject.org.
Flash Player for smartphones is expected to be available to handset manufacturers at the end of 2009.
It’s already been all over the Internet, with both ambiguous and contradictory time frames for it being on the Palm Pre.
But I had to note it here to complete the link of prior posts:
Mysteries Of The Palm Pre — January 22
I Get Cranky At Adobe — January 28
What If The iPhone Is Flash-Capable? — January 31
iPhone Now Does Veoh! Will The Palm Pre? — February 3
Adobe Flash For Smartphones News Soon? — February 10
Of course, there’s always a spoilsport to try to ruin any party (usually that would be me, but not this time):
Sorry, iPhone owners. But Pre owners will be able to swap out batteries — and we’ll be happy to do that too! Or maybe Seidio will do a Palm Pre version of their fat Centro battery. Choices, choices!
Choice is good. So is Flash.
As They Say: Timing Is Everything
The latest Palm Pre release date rumor is now May 10th or thereafter.
I want to see the Palm Pre released a few weeks before those iPhone contracts expire. That will give us Palm Pre True Believers a chance to get ours without having to mingle on long lines with the iPhone refugees.
The Endless Trial Of Elisabeth
I thought it would be just the one tweet, back on February 6th.
But no.
On February 10th, these popped up:
And today, it’s gotten worse:
That guy is getting himself in sooooo much trouble!
Facebook Lays An Egg
The Internet is in a Red Alert uproar today over changes to the Facebook Terms of Service.
Basically, Facebook is saying to everyone, You upload it, we pWn it!!
Revised TOS Gives Facebook Perpetual Rights to User Content
Google allowed old boilerplate to survive vetting of its End-User License Agreement during the initial release of its Chrome browser. That raised a storm of protest and Google soon clarified the situation and rescinded the boilerplate.
On Facebook’s part, this looks like a deliberate mass theft.
This is not good for the Palm Pre, which has Facebook as a major partner. Facebook is integrated into Synergy from the very beginning. What good will that do if everyone abandons Facebook in disgust?
Some people on Twitter have stated that their own accounts have little more than game scores and such, so why worry? I think that’s dangerously shortsighted. Pioneers in television, for example, wound up selling the rights to their works for pennies, never thinking there would be a perpetual repeat market or secondary home video (VHS, DVD) market. And now there are television repeats on the Internet itself! Who can say what stuff considered trivial today will be valuable twenty years from now?
Personal note: I have a Facebook account. I rarely check in. I’m not a Facebook fan.
Update: Mona parses out the value of “trivia” in her post, Facebook Change of Policy: Why You Should Care
Second Update: Facebook says it’s all a misunderstanding. Having faced onerous contracts in my life, let me tell you that the only thing that matters is what’s in writing and what a lawyer can do with that. Facebook needs to go back and make it even clearer. Right now, it reads like a license to steal.
Developing For Palm webOS: Free Book Chapter
There’s no direct link to the post itself, but right now it’s the top post at the Palm Developer Network blog.
What’s most interesting is this confirmation of rumor and revelation:
The core OS is based on a version of the Linux 2.6 kernel with the standard driver architecture managed by udev, with a proprietary boot loader. It supports an ext3 filesystem for the internal (private) file partitions and fat32 for the media file partition, which can be externally mounted via USB for transferring media files to and from the device.
So there are two file partitions? For some reason, that makes me itchy. It brings back visions of classic PalmOS — especially the flavor on my LifeDrive, where, surprise!, there are two file partitions. The apps can reside in any partition, but media (.jpg, .mp3, .avi) can only reside in certain ones.
And the kernel of Linux 2.6? According to the Linux Kernel Archives, 2.6.28.5 is the latest stable release. So, it seems the heart of the Pre is in the modern era.
Then there’s this bit:
The media server is based upon gstreamer and includes support for numerous audio and video codecs, all mainstream image formats, and supports image capture through the built-in camera. Video and audio capture is not supported in the initial webOS products, but is inherently supported by the architecture. Video and audio playback supports both file and stream-based playback.
Bold emphasis added by me.
The author of this book is Palm’s own Vice President and Software Chief Technology Officer, which makes me wonder if the claim that “video and audio capture is not supported in the initial webOS products” is rather slanted and should actually be, “video and audio capture is not supplied by Palm itself in the initial webOS products.” Given that the hardware is capable of both, I see no reason why a third-party couldn’t supply them, unless doing so would rely on low-level APIs Palm isn’t (yet) willing to distribute. Let’s remember that the iPhone out-of-the-box can’t do video recording, but that didn’t stop a developer from providing a hack.
Finally, let’s chew on these:
Palm webOS is designed to run on a variety of hardware with different screen sizes, resolutions and orientations, with or without keyboards and works best with a touchpanel though doesn’t require one.
Different resolutions? In what way is that meant? Are all stable screen elements — such as icons and UI gadgetry — based on dynamically-rescalable outline graphics and not bitmaps?
And this:
Because the user interface and application model are built around a web browser, the range of suitable hardware platforms is quite wide, requiring only a CPU, some memory, a wireless data connection, a display, and a means for interacting with the UI and entering text.
Bold emphasis added by me.
That’s confusing. It makes it sound as if everything is running in a browser. Is it?
It’s way too early to tell — at least for a non-coder eejit like me — if we’re going to see any confirmation of the architectural speculations David Beers made, quoted in a previous post: The Heart (And Tentacles) Of The Pre?
Even in the first chapter, it’s clear this book isn’t intended to be Palm Pre Development for Dummies. It presupposes some prior knowledge, such as that of both DOM and MVC. I’m sure those already in the know will find it very helpful.
