‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the fort,
Not a piggy was stirring, not even Old Snort.
The snow blocks were perched such that none could get in,
Surrounded by stone slabs and wood planks so thin.

The piglets were nestled all snug in their hay,
While visions of slop troughs awaited next day.
And King Snout in his gold crow, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap.

When out of the fort there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my hay to see what was the matter.
Away to the turret I ran so engaged,
Threw over the snow block and saw birds enraged.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow,
Gave the luster of mid-day to the birds below.
A slingshot they lined up behind with a clap,
And I thought to myself, “This is it, awww crap.”

Yes, after some teasing, Angry Birds Seasons is now available in the App Catalog. Rovio’s $1.99 game (for Pre and Pixi) gives you an advent calendar-style daily release of a new winter-themed level right up until Christmas, plus the complete Halloween edition that we missed out on this autumn. Be prepared to lose a few more hours of your life.

Thanks to everyone that sent this in!

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My, but do you all love flinging enraged avians at swine. Our tipline is full of people noting that the expected Angry Birds update has landed, bringing along with it the fourth group of levels with pigs in hard hards. Go on on and update or download and see if you can get yours stars before the promised Angry Birds Seasons version hits.

Thanks everybody!

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We know, we know. Angry Birds overload. But you should see our inboxes – the people, they want to know.

So: Rovio Mobile is apparently preparing another present for the webOS community: Angry Birds Seasons. The festive version of the uber-addictive game is just out for iOS and Android devices, but webOS users had remained uncertain whether we’d be included in the new release.

This morning, though, Rovio Mobile tweeted the following image with the caption "almost there":

that seems to provide the answer: Angry Birds Seasons is running on a Pre Plus.

Thanks as always to the Mighty Eagle and the crew at Rovio for helping to feed our addiction, and for their support of webOS.

Source: Rovio Mobile on Twitter

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Hang tight, bird flingers, an update is on the way. Last week we noted that Rovio said they had submitted an update to Palm for smash hit (pun totally intended) Angry Birds, but an issue with the Pre apparently prevented the app from getting pushed to the masses. Well, dear bird-toss catapult operator, you may soon be avenging the theft of your eggs on even more levels, as Rovio announced on Twitter that they and Palm have fixed what was wrong and the update is ready to go for both the Pre and Pixi. Just as soon as Palm approves it. We can tell you’re sitting on pins and needles here.

Source: Rovio Mobile (Twitter)

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While the iOS and Android-using Angry Birds addicts await the promised Christmas edition of the poultry vs. porker game, we in the webOS world are beginning to feel a bit left out. We didn’t get the Halloween edition, and we haven’t yet seen any of the new levels either. Given that Rovio Mobile did (handily) win $110,000 in the recent PDK Hot Apps competition, we were hoping for a little more love from our Finnish friends. We know the webOS user base is smaller than those of the other OSes, but we’re certainly tremendously energetic and loyal!

It does, though, appear that webOS will soon be seeing something new from Peter "Mighty Eagle" Vesterbacka and his colleagues at Rovio. After a flurry of tweets to Rovio Mobile from webOS users on November 28th, the company responded to one that it has "submitted update that brings exact same levels as for iOS, just waiting for Palm to fix issue re Pre." It gave a similar answer to other tweeters, as well as saying that it was "[n]ot sure about the seasonal stuff yet."

Whatever the "issue re Pre" that is keeping the update from the App Catalog, we hope that Palm and Rovio can work it out quickly. Meanwhile, we look forward to future releases of this and other games, and a broadened webOS platform that will encourage more developers to write for or port to our devices.

Source: Rovio Mobile on Twitter

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Hoping for something to pass the time while we wait for the new WebOS 2.0…

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If you haven’t already joined the webOS discussion on Twitter, here is one more reason to do so: info on upcoming app releases, direct from the developers. Today, the teasers come from Rovio (creators of PDK Hot Apps grand prize winner Angry Birds) and Astraware (which has already ported a number of its newer games to webOS).

First, we saw the following back and forth between Twitter user M_Osborn19 and RovioMobile:

@M_Osborn19: @RovioMobile please a webos version or at least an update?

@RovioMobile: @M_Osborn19 update will be out soon for webOS too

From Astraware came this nice piece of news:

@astraware: New game for release later today on Pre/Pre Plus – that must make it #weboswednesday!

While we always appreciate tips sent directly to us here at PreCentral, er, Central, we are also eagerly scouring Twitter for news you can use, and tweeting with our readers as well. We look forward to these news games, and we’ll see you on Twitter!

Source: Astraware (Twitter), Rovio (Twitter); thanks to jfd.lew in our forums for the heads-up!

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Palm’s PDK Hot Apps competition came to a close a few weeks ago, but it took Palm a little while to get through all the tallying and stuff to get a final list of winners. Unsurprisingly, Rovio’s ridiculously addictive Angry Birds came out on the top of the paid apps category, while Glow Hockey Free nabbed the top spot in Free Apps. That first place standing isn’t good for just bragging rights – the developers of each app will be getting $100,000 in prize money. Congratulations to Rovio and Natenai Ariyatrakool are due, so congrats, and enjoy the cash!

Palm tweaked things a bit from the Mojo version of the Hot Apps competition, so there were eight winners in the $50,000 prize block, four paid apps (Need for Speed Undercover by Electronic Arts, VisualBoyAdvance by dtzTech (with part of the winnings benefitting the open source warriors at WebOS Internals), Crusade Of Destiny by DVide Arts, and UNO by Gameloft) and four free apps (Raging Thunder by Polarbit, Pixi Dust Particle Simulator Game by WizardApps, Saber Ultimate by Draeger IT, and Natural + Electronic Drums for Pixi by EvilAnanas).

Another thirty apps (fifteen paid and fifteen free) netted their developers a $10,000 prize, while one hundred more (again, split between paid and free) gave the winners the option of $1,000 cash, or a brand new HP Envy 17 laptop computer.

Unsurprisingly, professional mobile game developer were scattered the PDK Hot Apps list just with their sheer numbers. Both Electronic Arts and Hexage had eight apps apiece make the list, while Glu Mobile had ten. But it was Gameloft that really dominated, securing twenty-five spots, all in the paid apps categories.

Again, congratulations to all of the developers that had winning apps. HP and Palm, more of this please. It’s fun, and this is the kind of stuff (along with pushing more units into hands) that’s going to help get developers onto the webOS platform.

Source: Palm Developer Center

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It’s not an official commercial by any means, but it is a official promo video for the Palm Pre 2, and we like it. With some more people to it to make it more personable and relatable, this could make a decent commercial. Just by virtue of its fast cutting and up-tempo music Palm has made it clear that this sucker is fast. There’s no need for specs here, “fastest” is much easier for customers to understand (when was the last time you heard an iPhone ad touting the clock speed of the A4 processor?).

In just 34 seconds the video manages to round up everything there is to love about HP webOS 2.0: Just Type “to begin just about anything,” multitasking with stacks, Synergy calendars and contacts, notifications, apps (featuring Angry Birds, naturally), and video recording and uploading. Like we said, it’s comprehensive but very clearly gets to the point of reintroducing the public to everything that webOS can do, now "Faster, smarter, and tons of fun." Video after the break.

Source: YouTube; Via: jsgraphicart in the comments

read more

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Palm’s PDK Hot Apps competition for one million smackaroos ends today, and the winners are starting to shape up. To remind you, there’s $1,000,000 to be split among the top free apps and the highest revenue paid apps, with the number one claiming $100,000, two through five getting $50,000, six to twenty netting $10,000, and the remaining twenty-first through seventieth apps getting their choice of $1,000 HP store credit or an HP Envy 17 laptop ($1300 value).

The top spots in both the free and paid app categories are pretty much locked down, and it’s no surprise to see Glow Hockey Free atop free apps and Angry Birds (shocker) reigning supreme over the paid apps. In fact, the top five free apps haven’t changed in at least a week, movement through the top five paid apps has been fairly static as well. That said, we’re happy to see the WebOS Internals-benefitting VisualBoyAdvance having moved all the way up to the #3 rank in paid apps, all but guaranteeing the developers a $50,000 check. Update: Rod Whitby of WebOS Internals has informed us that developer Will Dietz will be sharing 10% of his winnings with the open source group, retaining the rest to pay off student loans.

That said, there’s still some room for movers and shakers to jump up a prize level. Angry Birds Lite, the free version with nine extra levels not found in the paid version of the top-selling app, has rocketed up the charts to #8. Sitting at eighth place would net developer Rovio a $10,000 prize, but the game has a weekly jump rate of +21 (meaning this time last week it was 21 spots lower on the Hot Apps totem pole). With that kind of momentum, Angry Birds Lite could find itself up in the $50,000 app category by the time all is said and done.

The same can be said for NesEm on the paid side, sitting at #7 (two spots from $50,000) with a weekly rate of +4. Ground Effect, back on the free side, stands an outside chance at $50,000 as well, sitting at number ten with an impressive weekly rate of +18.

Rednecks Vs. Aliens looks to be threatened, with a weekly slide rate of -3 and sitting at the very bottom of the $10,000 bracket. The only saving grace there for developer Tower Defense Mashups could be that immediately trailing apps SongWave Drum Machine and Mech Invasion have worse weekly rates. TileStorm stands to take advantage of the apps’ waning fortunes, ready to jump out of the $1,000 bracket to ten times the prize.

Lastly, on the paid side of things, there’s one all but garaunteed app jump, and that’s Astraware Casino. Sitting at #22 in the paid line, just one app – NFL 2010 – stands between Astraware and a $10,000 prize. At their back is a very strong wind, to the tune of +3 daily movement and a very impressive weekly rate of +41. There also stands to be significant changes at the base of the brackets, with some of the fastest movers coming in from the bottom (like Whack-A-Mole, with its +131 weekly rate).

Have a favorite app not on the list – today’s the day to try to get that last minute push for more downloads. Check out the bottom of the leaderboard and the fast movers to see who’s on the bubble.

All said, it’s been fun to watch the Hot Apps competition and we’d like to think it did a lot of good for getting developers interested in Palm. It does sometimes feel like the app pace has picked up since the public release of the PDK, webOS 1.4.5, and the continuing Hot Apps competition.

Via: Palm Developer Center Blog; Source: Palm Hot Apps

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