Amazon Considering Purchase of Palm, webOS

Fresh off the announcement of the Amazon Kindle Fire, there comes word from Venture Beat that HP is looking to sell-off Palm. Sources within HP say that Amazon is close to finalizing the deal. Amazon’s Kindle Fire uses a heavily customized version of Android. By purchasing Palm, perhaps they would migrate to webOS and possibly remove themselves from the legal tangles being experienced by other Android manufacturers.

Amazon’s Kindle Fire is largely a media consumption device, so there is no reason why webOS wouldn’t work nicely as the default OS. It would represent a major shift, considering the Android based Kindle Fire lands in mid-November. Will Amazon dump Android and move to webOS for the second generation Kindle Fire? That would render purchased apps rendered useless and make for a tough transition for early adopters.

Perhaps Amazon is willing to endure some short term pain, with the hopes that owning their own OS would be the best move for their future in the mobile space.

Never count out Palm. The company has a thousand lives.

Source: Venture Beat

HP Offering Up Free Six Pack of Apps

HP is offering free six pack abs. Not really, but they are offering up six free apps, including the highly touted Glimpse for TouchPad. The following apps are available to TouchPad users, all for the price of free. Just enter the code listed next to each app.

  • Glimpse (Inglorious Apps, $5, injoj55410gavxv): Amp up your TouchPad multitasking to 11 using this customizable and addictive split-screen interface.
  • Kung Fu Panda 2 Storybook (zuuka, $2.99, eotss76676jjzqr): Enjoy images and voices from Kung Fu Panda 2 right on your TouchPad.
  • Big Boss (Fair Play Labs, $1.99, vfimk09918lngoz): Design your “ Big BossBoss” – a gigantic monster – and attempt to defeat the brave heroes and powerful wizards of WackyLands.
  • Sparkle HD (10tons Ltd., $4.99, pweuq32135vrbhx): Save Crowberry Woods in this TouchPad version of the popular desktop game.
  • Camera for TouchPad (Keen Studios, $0.99, rijon62171nhvtu): Start snapping away, with options for managing your photos and using them with other TouchPad apps.
  • Audubon Birds (Green Mountain Digital, $14.99, jjiox66488ddnik): This searchable digital field guide to North American birds offers stunning photography and thrilling (trilling?) bird songs.

 

$99 TouchPads, free apps. The craziness continues and that’s a good thing for webOS users.

Source: HP Palm Blog

webOS Will Not Be Saved By Licensing

Bloodletting

Yesterday’s news that HP was ending support for webOS devices, was followed up by a story on This Is My Next that HP is “not walking away from webOS“. For webOS enthusiasts, it was the glimmer of hope that some hardware manufacturer will ride in on a white horse and save the platform. Like Palm before them, HP continued the tradition of feeding a silver lining to the webOS community. Don’t believe it.

Continue Reading …

Palm Branding Dropped On Palm.com

A quick look at Palm.com and it appears that the next step in transitioning to HP has occurred. The first thing you’ll notice are the familiar colors of Palm are completely gone, replaced with the look and feel of an HP website. When HP purchased Palm, the Palm logo remained in a uncomfortable position next to the blue and very dominant HP logo. That too is noticeably absent on the site.

HP website

The transition is still in flux, with the logo redirecting to the HP website, with visible links to phones or tablets. Times, they are a changin’.

New HP webOS Ad Takes Walk On Wild Side

HP used the Grammy’s last night to preview the HP TouchPad and webOS among other
HP technologies. The “Anthem” ad uses the classic Lou Reed song “Take a Walk on the Wild Side”.

Thumbs up? Thumbs down?

HP Plans To “Make Things Right”

The exhaustive amount of feedback on blogs, Twitter and Palm’s own Facebook page saw a huge outcry from the webOS community in response to word that legacy devices (those prior to the Pre 2), would not receive an update to webOS 2.x. The Palm blog last night responded to the criticism.

“…ultimately it became clear that we would need to choose between supporting the past with over-the-air updates and ensuring that our upcoming devices would live up to your hopes and expectations for them. It was a difficult and, frankly, painful decision for us, and we realize it was a frustrating outcome for many of you.”

It’s still not clear as to when Palm (branding moves aside, this was a move by Palm) made this tough decision, but clearly the timing was not very well thought out. Yesterday should have been a day of positive vibes for the company, but was tarnished by the news. HP doesn’t have a solution yet to appease the community, but they are working something to ease the pain.

“We’re working on something that we hope will help make things right for you. We’ll be sharing the specifics with you when they’re ready.”

Our hope was that webOS 2.0 would help fix the sluggishness that’s present on current generation Palm webOS devices. It’s not clear if “making things right” will mean a webOS 2.0 doctor that allows us to update or perhaps some sort of voucher to purchase a future product at a reduced price. HP doesn’t have the answer yet, so anything on our end is just pure speculation. If I had to guess, a coupon for AppCatalog purchases might make sense. It would continue to stream cash to developers and customers having more apps would be less likely to flee the platform.

How about you? What are you expecting from HP that will “make things right”?

via Palm’s blog

Video: webOS Think Beyond Event

HP has just posted the entire video of Think Beyond event and we present it to you for your viewing pleasure.

No webOS 2.0 OTA Updates for Palm Pre, Pre Plus, Pixi or Pixi Plus Owners

News is breaking that HP will not be releasing any OTA updates to webOS 2.0 for existing devices. So if you’ve purchased an original Palm or even a recent Palm Pre Plus, you will not be receiving an OTA update to webOS 2.0. The only path to that OS is to purchase a new device. What, what, whaaat?

No webOS update

PreCentral’s Dieter Bohn reports that HP intends to launch a website in the coming months that “offers a path to 2.X”. For months, we’ve all been hearing that webOS 2.0 would be available as an OTA download. The reason given has to do with major backend changes required that would have made it increasingly difficult to offer webOS 2.x to previous owners.

And people though we were crazy when we talked about the fragmentation of webOS. This is just all sorts of wrong.

via PreCentral

HP Palm To Introduce Smallest Smartphone

According to Robert Scoble, HP will introduce the smallest phone he’s ever seen, a phone that he’s seen first hand.

But recently I got a look at the smartphone that HP will be announcing in an hour and a half. More on that later today.

What is it? The smallest little phone I’ve ever seen. It’s like a large pebble in your hand. Smooth and really nice to hold.

Scoble goes on to say that it’s “fashionable, cute and women are going to love it.”

via Scobleizer

Sound Off: What are your hopes, dreams and wishes for today’s event?

In less than three hours, the fun begins. HP|Palm is set to unveil “the future” at their Think Big. Think Small. Think Beyond event. By now it’s pretty much a given that we’ll see one or more tablets and we’re surmising some new phone. Our hope is that we’ll see some shipping dates attached to the new products announced today, in addition to a wide array of carrier support.

What are you hopes, dreams and wishes for today’s event? Have a prediction or two or three. Let us know in the comments. Our thoughts, Palm needs a superphone.