CSS/HTML/JavaScript: What’s Possible?

Not being a coder of any sort, nor really a techie of any sort, I still wonder just how Palm’s webOS gambit will work out.

So I keep my eye out for things that illustrate the promise of webOS.

And tonight I came across Appcelerator’s Titanium.

I don’t know how applicable it is to what Palm is doing, but this video seems to offer a great deal of promise for what’s possible with the tools used to develop for webOS:

The Flow Of webOS

I was thinking about the way webOS assigns each activity a Card and allows quickly moving from one task to another.

I was also thinking about what a miserable experience my Palm OS 5 LifeDrive has been.

And then I recalled what a joy my Palm OS 4 Sony CLIE S320 was to use.

How could it be that a Palm OS 4 device with 160×160 monochrome screen and a weak CPU was better than a more powerful larger- and color-screened LifeDrive?

Flow!

Palm OS 4 allowed the use of Hacks.

And they were the Joy Juice of OS 4.

I could, for example, be in SmartDOC and need to quickly refer to something in MemoPad.

A stroke in the Graffiti area would call up MemoPad in a pop-up window over the SmartDOC document. How wonderful is that?

Another stroke, no matter where I was, could call up a tiny Calculator.

Another stroke would call up a list of the last ten apps I’d used (a feature that was added to OS 5 itself).

Yet another stroke would call up a display of special characters, such as the Copyright or # symbols, so I wouldn’t have to memorize the Graffiti strokes for those.

I also had one to call up the current date and time and battery meter.

Really, it was simply lovely the way I could move from one thing to the next. It was speedy and graceful. It didn’t get in my way and I could get things done effortlessly.

webOS will bring back some of that.

I’m especially excited by having more than one email open — from more than one account! — at the same time. Having multiple web pages open. And the wee Notifications area at the bottom to bring in live information.

webOS will bring back what’s been missing from Palm’s hardware: Flow!

Another reason for me — and you — to be excited about the Palm Pre!

On The Buzz Radar: Spotify

I heard about Spotify several weeks ago and went to its home page, only to learn it’s not (yet) available in the U.S..

Spotify wikipedia entry:

Spotify is a Sweden-based proprietary music streaming program, which allows instant listening to specific tracks or albums with virtually no buffering delay. Music can be browsed by artists, albums or created playlists as well as by direct searches. Although it is not possible to save the streamed music for use outside the application, a link is provided to allow the listener to directly purchase the material via partner retailers.

Spotify provides the transfer of soundfiles via internet through the combination of server-based streaming and peer-to-peer technology (P2P) involving the listeners themselves (see also: mesh networking). Even with slow internet connections, there are no great delays when playing music. An internet connection of at least 256 kbit/s is recommended, as the bitrate of the stream is up to approximately 160 kbit/s. The sound files can be played on demand, as if they were installed on the hard disk of the user. Songs are cached on the client computer to prevent wasting bandwidth by streaming the same songs over and over. The audio codec used is Vorbis.

So far, Spotify only works on desktops (well, notebooks too, I’m sure). I’m not techie enough to know if its reliance on P2P for the underlying distribution structure means it requires a persistent broadband connection and would therefore be unable to work with hop-on/hop-off clients via WiFi. I don’t see any software for smartphones listed, so perhaps this is marooned at desktops.

Here’s an interesting article about Spotify and the future of music:

Let me clarify. There’s a good chance the iTunes Store could be toast, a veritable sideshow. Because soon, the majority of people will not own their music, they’ll rent. And they’ll be happy to do so. True cheapos will pay in advertising, those with more sense than time will pay. But nobody will bother paying by track to own in an evanescent format, they’ll just want to stream.

I think that will very much depend on the price and selection.

Contrary to the history of digital hardware, “analog software” has a tendency to be in the hands of those who are greed-driven instead of — for lack of a better term — “improvement-driven.”

Just look at the history of pricing for CDs, magazines, books, movies, and even cable TV. If those had mimicked the Silicon Valley model of constant improvement, we’d be whizzing along with the fastest Internet connections on the planet — both wired and unwired — and enjoying all “content” (a word I very much dislike) in digital form at pennies (or even fractions thereof) per sip.

We still have a long way to go to get there.

PrePoint Via RSS

I’ve added the RSS widget to the sidebar now, right at the top.

I hope I’ve configured it correctly.

If you’ve been getting PrePoint via RSS before, let me know if anything has changed.

In fact, leave a Comment to let me know if it works at all. There are options there and they seem to do unpredictable things.

webOS As Lipstick

Recently the TamsPalm blog ran some pictures of a Palm Centro allegedly running webOS.

I immediately thought it was a fake of some sort and didn’t bother with blogging about it.

1) webOS has no place on the Centro, period.

2) If Palm wants to introduce a lower-priced Palm Pre, they can do it with the original 8GB one by introducing a 16GB model — and even possibly a 32GB one.

The webOS pictures were actually a new product from those Foleo-burned wizards at TealPoint Software (hmmm … no, I didn’t even consider their company name before naming this blog!):

TealOS
The next best thing to WebOS

More than just a visual skin, TealOS is a multi-functional application launcher that gives your time-honored handheld the exciting look and feel of the newest devices. Providing a powerful and intuitive way to organize your activities and work flow, it runs under PalmOS but simulates the card-based interface of WebOS on the new Palm Pre. TealOS comes complete with support for thumbnail image cards, a translucent applications screen, customizable background images, and even a popup wave launcher. While keeping your existing phone and applications, it’s the next best thing to a brand new phone.

Apparently it’s been released today — February 21 — which makes it as new as new can be.

It’s priced at US$14.95 — although it can be downloaded and tried for free for thirty days.

Here’s a video preview:

I’ve been debating whether or not to try it on my miserable LifeDrive. I still have iPhoney — which mimics the iPhone home screen — on my LifeDrive and have hardly ever used it.

– thanks to Jay Canuck for the tip.