Common Paradox Tech Blog

Having recently acquired iambic, SplashData announced in an email sent to iambic customers that they intend to expand their offerings onto new platforms. Specifically, Agendus, and specifically onto webOS and Android:

If you haven’t heard, SplashData has acquired iambic, combining the resources of two of the most respected and established developers of mobile productivity software. We are very excited to have the opportunity to work on Agendus and expand its features as well as bring it to new mobile platforms such as Android and webOS.

Agendus is iambic’s signature product and something missed by a great many Palm OS users after making the switch to webOS. When we’ll see Agendus on webOS and what condition it will be in is still up in the air, but it’s great to hear that it’s coming regardless. And trust us, as soon as we hear something more, we’ll let you know!

If you’re not familiar with Agendus, it began as a Palm OS app (back in the day when the were still called applications) that served as a replacement for the Palm OS Date Book. Agendus was more than just another calendar: it integrated with your memos, tasks, contacts, and more to bring it all into one tightly-knit package: your agenda. There’s even more to it than that – to see why Agendus was such a beloved Palm OS app, we’re going to point you to Agendus’ extensive feature list. If just one quarter of those features make it to webOS we’ll be exceedingly happy campers.

Thanks to Doug for the tip!

It’s a question we’ve been pondering for a while, and with much more intensity in recent days: does Google care about Palm webOS? It is something we have to wonder about, with Google Maps on webOS lagging greatly behind its iPhone and Android counterparts, webOS being at first excluded from the Buzz party and then only invited inside the lobby, and the general lack of effort Google seems to be publicly exerting in getting their products to work to their full potential on webOS.

It all came to a head last week, with Google making a change to the way Google Voice works that ended up breaking webOS Google Voice clients, such as the popular gDial Pro. Nathan, the developer of gDial, learned that the change was not a move to break compatibility with unofficial Voice clients like gDial, but a natural progression of the development of the Google Voice system. In fact, Google has no problems with such unofficial clients and is pretty much willing to turn a blind eye to them so long as they aren’t acting in nefarious ways. Unfortunately, that blind eye doesn’t come with any support.

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Got a Palm Pixi but still need to run some old school Palm OS apps? Right now, there’s no way to go about it while your Pre-toting friends can fire up Classic and get the action going. Never fear, for MotionApps hears your pain and is in the process of cooking up a version of Classic that will work on the Pixi and even make use of the device’s smaller screen.

Currently, Classic on the Pre shows up with a classic Palm OS D-pad and device buttons meant to emulate the physical controls on the older PDAs and Treo smartphones. These controls are dropped below the 320×320 Palm OS screen, using the remaining 160 pixels on the Pre’s screen. The Pixi, however, has a shorter display and only 80 extra pixels below the Palm OS screen, which means that any controls would have to be squished. Or they could be done webOS-style for maximum space utilization, as MotionApps posted on their Facebook page. It’s a pretty darned slick solution to what could have been a nasty problem.

[via: Palm Infocenter]

Looks like the pundits may have been right on this one, as the latest smartphone survey from ChangeWave shows that Android’s mindshare has surged in the last quarter, with 21% of potential customers eyeing Android as their future platform of choice. In September 2009’s survey, Android was tied at 6% with webOS. In the past three months, new releases like the Motorola Droid have catapulted Android’s mindshare over Palm, Windows Mobile, and BlackBerry, leaving only the iPhone in its sights.

So what about Palm? According to ChangeWave’s numbers, Palm’s potential buyers were cut in half to just 3% of respondents. Windows Mobile and iPhone also dropped, but their losses were 33% and 13% respectively.

The operative word here is "Ouch." We’ll break down a few more numbers after the break.

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If hacking your N900 to make it run Palm’s Garnet OS applications is your cup of oolong: good news! The Garnet VM Beta 5 emulator is compatible with the N900. [ACCESS via PalmInfoCenter]

It’s been a little while since we’ve seen an analyst comment on the nonexistent acquision of Palm by Nokia, but Brian Blair of Wedge Partners has come to our rescue with a piece on why Nokia should buy Palm. His points mirror our own thoughts on the front of where it would make sense: Palm needs money, Nokia has money; Nokia needs a good OS, Palm has a good OS.

In an ideal world it could very well be a match made in heaven, but there are still some things to consider. Namely, those things are the hundreds of millions of dollars that Nokia has invested in Symbian S60 and Maemo. Clearly, Nokia has settled on Maemo as their operating system of choice for the future, even if it lacks some of the polish and functionality of webOS. It’s also worth noting that while Nokia may be a small player in the US smartphone market, they’re still the dominant force in the global smartphone market.

Nokia and Palm do need each other, but both companies are committed to doing things their way and alone at that. Thus far, every acquisition Nokia has made was not to either enhance their current strategy, or to expand into a new market. Purchasing Palm would do neither – it would replace or compete with their current strategy. Nokia has enough problems competing with their own products, that’s why they’re cutting their 2010 product line in half, adding Palm to the fold would only compound the inter-company competition. Let’s as General Motors how well that works, shall we?

For as much sense as a Nokia to buy Palm, there are just too many complications for it to actually happen.

This video is the best-look yet at the slick OpenGL-accelerated OS from Else (formerly Emblaze) and Access (who developed a next-gen Palm OS before Palm ditched it for their own). The big news: The First Else phone arrives next-year.

Confusingly, the name of Else’s first phone is actually “First Else”. As we mentioned in October, the phone has a 3.5-inch (480 x 854-pixel) touchscreen display, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS, and 5-megapixel camera (capable of 480p video at 30fps). It’s also very likely to have a TI OMAP 3430 processor, a 1450mAh battery, up to 32GB internal memory, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. Apparently, it may only support HSDPA 3G and EDGE (no Verizon).

As for the Linux-based OS, it uses a one-thumb wheel that avoids digging through menus, has GPS aware reminders, can record voice calls/messages and store them along with when the call was made, and straight-up looks sci-fi.

It seems that Linux-based mobile operating systems like Android and webOS will soon have a new competitor. [First Else via Pocket-Lint and SlashGear | Video via Engadget]

ELSE INTUITION™ is a complete mobile platform developed by ACCESS and Emblaze Mobile. Thanks to the combination of ACCESS Linux Platform v3.0 and an advanced user interface engine, jointly developed by Emblaze Mobile and ACCESS, ELSE INTUITION™ delivers a highly compelling and differentiated user experience, coupled with state-of-the-art hardware, accelerated 2D/3D graphics and elegant transition effects. ELSE INTUITION™ takes advantage of ACCESS Linux Platform v3.0 to provide advanced flexibility and configurability, enabling users to run multiple applications simultaneously, switching between them with ease. All data and content, including contacts, appointments, videos and photos can be rendered anywhere, not just within a single dedicated application, giving users faster, easier and more consistent access to their information

I’ve been a loyal Palm user for many years. Going back to the old Palm M105 I’ve been a Palm diehard, up through the Tungsten T, Tungsten T3 (best PDA ever), a Treo 650, Treo 755p, and now the Palm Pre. Don’t get me wrong, I really do like the Palm Pre and believe that it is the best smartphone on the market and webOS certainly has more potential than any other platform, but years of observation have left me somewhat jaded on the future of Palm.

This time one year ago I was lost as to what my next phone was going to be. My Sprint contract was close to being up for renewal and while I was still a fan of the old Palm OS, it simply couldn’t compare to the offerings from Apple and Google. Problem is, Android a year ago was still pretty darned rough around the edges and even then I didn’t like the idea of being locked in the Apple iPhone ecosystem. And Sprint, oh poor lowly Sprint, they didn’t have a single new phone that I found really appealing. My Treo was by no means in bad shape – the 755p was a tank, after all – but I’m a self-professed technology whore and I had a bad hankering for the latest.

Thankfully, it wasn’t much longer before Palm revealed webOS and the Pre. I though I was saved, and through the next six months that it took for Palm and Sprint to finally ship the phone I read everything I could about it, jumped back into discussion of the phone and Palm, and eventually came to be a writer and editor for PreCentral. The Pre finally landed in my hands on launch day and I couldn’t have been happier.

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We know that there are some of you out there that have a Palm OS app that you can’t do without. The folks at Palm and MotionApps also knew that, so they created the Palm OS emulator Classic so that you could still run Agendus and Epocrates and other Palm OS apps on your webOS device. But where oh where to get the apps? How about PreCentral? Yep, that’ll do. We’re pleased to be able to announce that PreCentral has partnered with MobiHand to create the PreCentral Classic App Store where you can browse and buy your favorite Palm OS apps and download them straight into Classic.

More than 150 apps are available from the PreCentral Classic App Store, several of them free. There are apps for the business and finance crowds, dozens of games, reference apps, and even apps for personal healthcare. Check it out at http://software.precentral.net 

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One of the most exciting things about Android was the idea that it could be ported back to older handsets. This turned out to be harder than expected, except or a few HTCs and, amazingly, a Palm Treo from 2004.

The 650, which runs old-school Palm OS, must be straining to boot Google’s mobile OS, working with just 32MB of RAM and a 312MHz processor—a far cry from even the G1, which isn’t known for its snappy performance. But, with time and patience, she flickers to life anyway. And for its mere fact of existence, this Frankensteinian monster should be applauded. Onward and downward, brave Android hackers. [Engadget]