webOS 2.0 is the next generation of Palm’s mobile operating system, and it brings a number of new features that developers are going to want to use and features to make using webOS devices better. This beta of webOS 2.0 is being made available to let developers start building apps that take advantage of the new feature, and will be released to users later this year.

Here are a few highlights of what’s coming in webOS 2.0.

Stacks

Palm’s groundbreaking card metaphor made multi-tasking on a handheld device easy and intuitive for the first time. webOS 2.0 takes it to the next level by grouping related cards in stacks, reducing clutter, and making it even easier to move quickly between tasks.

Just Type

We’ve renamed Universal Search to Just Type and extended it to do much more. Quick Actions makes it easier than ever for your users to update social status, set reminders, add items to a shopping list — or do whatever it takes to get things done in the context of your app.

Exhibition

Exhibition is a webOS 2.0 feature designed to inform, entertain and delight you while your device is docked. Set your device on the Palm Touchstone Charging Dock, and it will enter a special full-screen mode optimized for passive enjoyment and utility. While a handful of compelling Exhibition options will be built into webOS 2.0, but we’re counting on you and your fellow developers to make Exhibition truly great. You can add Exhibition support to an existing app, or build something new just for Exhibition.

Synergy

In webOS 2.0, we’re opening Synergy up to our developer ecosystem. You’ll be able to develop Synergy connectors for Contacts, Calendar, and Messaging — and later, for other webOS data types as well. Using the new Synergy APIs, you can let your users:

• Connect to your chat or IM network from the webOS Messaging app
• Access their personal contacts, their favorite businesses, or your community’s shared address book from the webOS Contacts UI
• View and manage their personal and shared calendars, keep track of their favorite sports and entertainment events, and more, from within the webOS Calendar app

JavaScript Services

Roll your own services with Node.js: The popular Node.js runtime environment is built into webOS 2.0, which means that you can now develop not just webOS apps but also services in JavaScript. The active Node ecosystem is on hand to provide community support and a rapidly growing library of modules that you can use in your webOS services.

PDK Plug-ins

Today, you can use the webOS Plug-in Development Kit (PDK) to build games and immersive apps in C/C++. But the feature that gives the PDK its name—the ability to build C/C++ plug-ins for your HTML/JavaScript/CSS apps—is still in beta.

This feature will exit beta in webOS 2.0, opening the door for you to distribute apps that incorporate PDK plug-ins. Using plug-ins, you can more easily port app logic from other platforms while leveraging the Mojo Framework to give users a familiar interface and integrate seamlessly into webOS.

HTML5 Enhancements

webOS 2.0 adds a number of new HTML5 features and enhancements, giving you more tools to work with when building apps and sites for webOS.

Don’t think that this is all there is to webOS 2.0—these are just the highlights. We’ve added a lot of features that will give your apps more power and flexibility than ever. We’re excited about what webOS 2.0 has to offer, and we think you will be, too!

There are a bunch of ways to stay in touch:

• Subscribe to our podcast (or via iTunes)
• Subscribe to our developer blog
• Follow us on Twitter

There are a bunch of ways to stay in touch:

• Subscribe to our podcast (or via iTunes)
• Subscribe to our developer blog
• Follow us on Twitter

In addition, Ben is one of five judges of the Startup Competition in the Consumer Applications category on Monday from 9-11a.m. Ten finalists have been selected in the “Consumer Applications” category, and Palm will be awarding them with Pre Pluses. Each finalist will have 4 minutes to present their startup company and idea for a killer app. Congratulations to those who made it!

Look for Lisa Brewster and other Palm reps to be on hand, raffling devices and generally having a great time. Hope to see you there!

What does this mean for you, the developer community?

Phil McKinney, vice president and chief technology officer for HP’s Personal Systems Group (which the new Palm business unit reports into), kindly came to meet us and talk about the opportunity that arises from an HP backed webOS.

Phil discusses reasons why HP was interested in Palm, their commitment to the smartphone space, how they want to grow into new areas of mobility (e.g. slates, netbooks), and how their scale can help us grow to new heights.

Listen in to Phil to get a feel for what he and HP are thinking.

There are a bunch of ways to stay in touch:

• Subscribe to our podcast (or via iTunes)
• Subscribe to our developer blog
• Follow us on Twitter

This is good news for all developers, as you now have more time to get your PDK apps into the catalog. Expect to see Palm continue promoting your apps to give you even more chances of reaching consumers and climbing up the PDK Hot Apps leader Board.

Speaking of Leader board, June 30th marked the close of our first Hot Apps promotion, and we will have much more on the winners in the near future.  In the meantime, we are retooling our Hot Apps Leader Board and will re-launch soon to help you follow along with the progress of our new PDK Hot Apps Promo.

Get your PDK apps in now!
To ensure that your PDK app is reviewed, and in the app catalog on or before July 15th and in time for the start of the promotion, your apps must be submitted for approval by July 7th.  Avoid the rush and get your apps in now.  Developers will want to get in soon and start competing for your share of $1million dollars but remember if you’re not ready by July 7th, you can submit applications at anytime during the promotion and still be considered.

Have PDK questions, want to talk to a real person about porting your app?  Contact PDK@palm.com and one of our team members will get back to you.

To learn more about the promotion go to PDK Hot Apps .

We’re so happy with the response that we’ve decided to extend the sale for an additional two weeks. Not only will this give customers more time to explore the catalog and get great deals on your apps, it will give you more time to generate sales and revenue.

If you currently have marketing in place to take advantage of this sale, get ready to extend it to July 23rd. If you don’t have an app in the catalog yet, it’s time to submit one and take advantage of this great promotion!

One game that I’ve been happily wasting time with recently is ColorPhyll (get it here). The concept is simple: the board is created using blocks in six colors, plus black. Your job is to clear the board in a certain number of steps by choosing a color. Any sets of blocks that touch the black blocks are cleared from the board.

What attracts me to this game? Simple game play for one, and there’s no complicated learning curve to get going in it so it’s really good for this kind of casual “in and out” type of game usage. I happen to really like the fact that there’s no timer, no leaderboard, no top score or “score to beat” — it’s not really a competition style game, it’s really a form of solitaire that isn’t card based. It doesn’t matter if you put the app in the background for a few minutes or come back to it hours later.

It’s also a nice game in that you have to think through your strategy, but it isn’t a game that forces you to focus on it or concentrate — like a card-based solitaire, it’s easy to pop in and play part of a game, pop back out and do something else, then pop back in again later and pick it up where you left off. Not all games lend themselves to that.

The strategy isn’t overly complex, but the proper move is many times not the obvious one. The levels are designed so that you are likely going to finish one or two moves before the deadline — or one or two after.

This probably isn’t a good game if you’re a seriously competitive, “gotta do this in fewer moves, gotta beat the clock” type, but if you’re looking for a nice, well-thought out casual game to spend some time with, I think you’ll really like it. It’s challenging enough to keep you interested, but doesn’t require you to sit down and focus on it.

The implementation is clean and the graphics are simple but everything works well together. The only weakness to the game is that the levels are all manually designed and baked into the game, so over time you’ll get familiar with them — but there’s plenty of game play for the price, and hopefully the developer will update the game with new levels over time.

Overall, highly recommended.

In episode 4 of the Palm Developer Podcast, we were fortunate enough to have a great guest from Palm engineering. Jeff Bush runs the group that produces the Plug-in Development Kit (among other things). He joined us after our GDC coming out party for the PDK to share in detail information on what the PDK is, experiences from our initial developers (EA, Gameloft, Glu, etc), and then a full coding walk through of how you actually get going with the PDK.

Watch the show to learn about the tools that we have, what libraries are available, what the “PDL” is, how full screen PDK apps get the benefit of up-clocking the CPU, and much more!

If you’re interested in attending, you should sign up for the event while there’s still room. If you want more information or are interested in volunteering, contact Alice on Twitter.