Fortune has put together another list of names they want to recognize for excellence, and this time it was the smartest people in the technology industry. Executive Vice President of HP’s Personal Systems Group, and Palm chief Jon Rubinstein’s immediate supervisor, Todd Bradley grabbed the title of Smartest Executive on Fortune’s list (smartest exec is not to be confused with smartest CEO, a title unsurprisingly claimed by Apple chief Steve Jobs).

Bradley is a familiar name to Palm fans, as he was CEO of PalmOne (the hardware arm of Palm) from 2001 to 2005 during the transition to the smartphone, at which point he was recruited by Hewlett Packard CEO Mark Hurd to head up the Personal Systems Group of HP. Since taking charge of the Personal Systems Group, Bradley has taken the desktops, laptops, and mobile devices arm of HP to new heights. They’ve toppled Dell as the world’s largest and jumped to $42 billion in annual revenue with a 300% increase in profit.

Reading the tea leaves, Bradley sees the future of HP and the Personal Systems Group in the mobile ecosystem. As such, it’s ironic and humorous that as the head of the Personal Systems Group, Bradley will once again be in charge of newly-acquired subsidiary Palm, Inc.

Bradley finds himself on the list with such tech luminaries as the aforementioned Steve Jobs, Google founders Sergei Brin and Larry Page, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, Apple designed Jonathan Ive, analyst Mike Arrington, and film-maker James Cameron (for his pioneering 3D cinema work).

Source: Fortune, Via: webOSroundup

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If a few weeks ago you’d pointed your Pre’s browser to Amazon.com, you were greeted with a less-than-inspiring mobile site that felt like it would have been more at home on a Treo than in the advanced WebKit-based browser shipping with webOS. Thankfully, that’s changed, and the new Amazon.com mobile site runs in a manner that’s much more cohesive than what you’re used to from the full site.

The front page greets you with drop down menus for the stuff that smartphone users are bound to be looking for on Amazon: books, entertainment, and gadgets, as well as a link to take you to similar menus for eleven major categories. Every item page has been packed with much of the info you’re used to from the full site, including options to add to your shopping cart or wish list, descriptions, reviews good and bad, and full image galleries when available. Every single page also provides one-tap access to your cart, wish list, account, 1-Click settings, and Amazon’s full site should you so desire it.

All together, it’s a welcome aesthetic and functional refresh from the mobile Amazon.com of old. And is it just us, or does it seem to run faster too? Even better.

Source: Amazon.com, Thanks to foggylemon for the tip!

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While we can argue about the merits of subsidized phone contracts until we’re blue in the face, we can’t argue this: Amazon Wireless has the AT&T Palm Pre Plus on sale for $0.01. Sure, that’s one copper-plated zinc core Lincoln away from being free, but we’re sure you can find more than enough coinage buried between the couch cushions to cover this expense. Of course, you’ll still need to dig up plenty more coins to cover the cost of AT&T’s new data plans, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

If you’re already on an AT&T plan and looking to upgrade, Amazon Wireless will hook up with a Pre Plus for $49.99 in upgrade pricing, but as with the once cent Pre Plus, you’re going to be signing a new two year contract to get that deal. We don’t know how long this pricing is going to last, but we do admit that it got down to one cent awfully darn quick. In the meantime, Amazon Wireless is offering free activation on AT&T phones and free two-day shipping on all phones. If you’ve been waiting to jump on the AT&T bandwagon, we don’t see a better time than now coming up. Unless you’re holding out for free.

Source: Amazon Wireless; Thanks to Dennis for the tip!

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Borders is working on a cross-platform eBook store to rival that of brick-and-mortar competitor Barnes & Noble as well as online juggernaut Amazon, and it looks like the reader/store might be headed for the warm waters of webOS. PreCentral reader musicianmike decided to reach out to about the possibility of a webOS app, and here’s the response he got after a less-than-useful automated reply:

“Thank you for contacting Borders with your eBook inquiry. There will be a free application available for the Palm Pre.”

Huzzah! To make it even better, the Borders eBooks store is destined to be of the DRM-free variety, simply providing you with what we assume will be an ePub file or something similar. Due to launch some time this month, Borders eBooks will come with more than a million titles out of the gate, along with store/reader apps for PCs, Macs, iPhone OS devices, Android phones, and BlackBerry devices. And if their customer support is to be believed, webOS is to be added to that list.

Thanks to musicianmike for the tip!

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Author and friend-of-the-site Craig Johnston let us know that his new book My Palm Pre (co-written with Joe Hutsko) from Que is now available for preorder (you should pardon the expression) at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.  It should also be hitting actual bookstore shelves between May 10th and 20th. It looks to be a useful guide for new webOS users.

Look forward to a full review once it is released!

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If you were thinking that the Buy One Get One Free deal still running at Verizon was a good deal, but not good enough for you, we’ll happily direct you towards the fine digital folks at Amazon. The online mega retailer is now selling both the Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus for, get this, one cent. Of course, that’s with a new two-year contract, but upfront it’s always fun to know that you can pay more in shipping than for the device itself. Except that the two-year contract also comes with free two-day shipping (you can pay more for faster times, if you’re into that sort of thing). So you’re looking at a grand total of $0.01 upfront.

And if a new contract isn’t your thing (you still need one to activate the phone, unless you want to go all MetaDoctor on it), you can grab an off-contract Pre Plus for $619.99 or a Pixi Plus for $379.99 – or you can even upgrade your phone on contract through Amazon now. Sweet deals abound. As you may expect, this deal is more thank likely for a limited (and publicly undefined) time, so if you want to jump on the webOS bandwagon for super-cheap, now’s the time.

[via: webOSroundup]

Thanks to Complex Pants for the tip!

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Attack of the Show might be a bit late to the reviewing the Palm Pre Plus game, but we know there are a lot of people that watch the popular program on G4TV. So we’ll let you know that the Chris Hardwick and Alison Haislip on Attack of the Show checked out the smartphone and with all the newness (Wi-Fi hotspot, double RAM, etc) they levied the first ever 5/5 rating for their Gadget Pr0n segment. Apparently they also got a Pre Plus from the future, as they tout that webOS fully supports Flash (it will, just not yet). A big driver behind the 5/5 rating: Amazon’s and other third-party resellers’ recent ridiculous price-cutting of the Pre Plus.

Thanks to everybody (we mean everybody) that sent this in!

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If there was any doubt that Verizon is looking to turn things around after sluggish initial sales of the Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus, it’s time to put those to rest. After dropping the mail-in rebates in their own stores, it looks like The Network is making it easier for 3rd parties to sell the Pre Plus at lower prices. Our own Wirefly affiliate has the Palm Pre Plus for $39.99 for new Verizon customers after instant rebate and still has the Palm Pixi Plus for the low low price of free (yes, those are ’support PreCentral’ links). Amazon is also selling the Pre Plus for the $39.99 and the Pixi Plus for one cent.

The best part about the above options is that, unlike what seems to be happening at most Verizon retail locations, when you use them you won’t have a Verizon employee trying to convince you that you should get a Droid instead.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

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The scrum of analysts trying to get their two cents in before Palm’s financial call continues. We won’t note all of them, but when something surprising or interesting pops up, we can’t help but mention it.

While we hope that the financial results on Thursday will give us a better glimpse into how well the Pre has sold in Europe, the analysts over at MKM Partners aren’t hesitating to say they’ve done well. The firm recently upgraded Palm’s stock from Neutral to Buy and raised their price target to $20 (up from $11). What motivates such optimism in the face of a quarter that is expected to have been as good as predicted but still not that great?

Like us at PreCentral, MKM believes that the expected launch of the Pre and Pixi on Verizon next year will open up Palm and webOS to millions more customers, as well as mitigating “the uncertainty of an AT&T relationship.”

MKM also noted something of particular interest: Palm has performed better in Europe than expected and the Pre has been “outselling key HTC and Motorola [Android] models in major markets like the U.K.” If that is the case, it represents a surprising turn, where Palm historically did well in the US and failed in Europe, but is now struggling in the US and succeeding overseas. Right now we have no way of confirming the hypothesis, though we do hope that Palm at least breaks out their sales by carrier or region.

Thirdly, MKM’s analysts believe that the price battle between Amazon and Wal-Mart over Pre and Pixi pricing is not only indicative of the ongoing war between the two mega-retailers, but that it shows strong support for both devices and vindicates “Palm’s strategy of targeting the mass market, rather than tech enthusiasts.”

And in the last note in their four-point position, MKM actually expects that the soon-to-be-reported quarter from Palm will actually exceed expectations. They also expect that Palm will miss their mark in the coming quarter (ending February 2010), but expansion onto new carriers in 2010 will not trouble investors too much.

While Thursday will bring the answers we’ve been waiting for, it is nice to see that analysts have been more positive on Palm this quarter than last. Then again, they may have learned their lesson when Palm blew out the predicted unit sales by hundreds of thousands. But Palm is still a shaky company in a fast-moving industry in a very shaky global economic climate. Right now, investors are looking for signs that the Pre was not just a one-hit-wonder – they want a company that can survive, or at least one that will make an attractive acquisition target.

Thanks to rowehc for the tip!

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If there’s anything that we at PreCentral love to see, it’s two giant retailers going after each other’s price tags in the quest for customer wallets. Lately, mega-box super retailer Wal-Mart and ecommerce monolith Amazon have been going at it, slashing prices back and forth in a battle that shows just how efficient these two companies’ distribution systems are. And with the western front battle over iTunes all sorts of quiet between Palm and Apple, we need some other fight to cheer on, right?

The beneficiaries of all this back-and-forth price cutting is clearly you, the potential customer. Not satisfied with having just matched pricing with Amazon, Wal-Mart has lowered its pricing on both the Sprint Palm Pre and Sprint Palm Pixi be a few dollars to best their online competitor. A Pre will set you back $74.99, while a Pixi from Wal-Mart now costs $22.99. Wal-Mart’s contract renewal and off-contract prices remain unchanged. We can’t say for sure how long this pricing will last; the cheap Pixi deal at Wal-Mart only stayed around for about a week.

Amazon, the ball’s in your court now.

UPDATE: Game, set, match. Amazon has matched Wal-Mart’s prices on the Pre and the Pixi.

Thanks to Eric for the tip!

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