CES 2011 is just a few weeks away, and we’re all assuming (and hoping) that Palm announces some awesome new devices to replace the aging hardware that’s out there right now. At this point, given the current marketshare numbers, what might be needed more than the new hardware is a new consumer mindset pertaining to Palm.

According to the latest numbers from Nielsen, Palm’s marketshare stands at a paltry 1.3% in the United States, and we’d reason that international marketshare is around that, if not lower in countries where Palm products are even available.

With Palm’s market penetration so low, the question weighing heavily on our minds right now is how do Palm and HP turn around their fortunes with webOS – especially if we need to wait some time for new hardware? The answer lies not with rebuilding marketshare. No, the answer is to reboot the public perception and start over. webOS is a fantastic operating system, but it was already fighting an uphill battle against iOS when it launched, and has since been eclipsed by Android and is facing competition for the bottom rung from, of all companies, Microsoft with their turn-the-smartphone-OS-on-its-ear Windows Phone 7.

In this mess of smartphone operating systems, how is Palm to differentiate itself and make the case for why Joe Consumer should buy a webOS phone over an iPhone or Droid? Reboot, reset, and start over. Palm needs to be aggressive with their advertising. It can’t be “We’re still here.” No, the message must be “We are here. This is why we’re awesome.”

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Welcome to Round Table, which is in fact not a table at all. Round Table is a continuing series on PreCentral where we pose a question to the staff and they provide their thoughts and insights. The question could be something simple like “what’s your favorite use for the Pre’s mirror?” or something a bit more complicated, like “why are you sticking with webOS (or are you)?” Or maybe we’ll just end up discussing our sandwich workflow. Today, however, we’re diving into the latest version of webOS. While few have been able to handle webOS 2.0, the veritable cornucopia of videos, screenshots, and reviews have made it easy to draw some preliminary conclusions. After the break, see what the crew has to say about HP webOS 2.0.

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The folks at Mashable are putting on a fourth edition of their annual community-based awards extravaganza, and we couldn’t help but notice that webOS could qualify for a go at several categories. While there’s clearly no chance that the Pre, Pixi or the Plus derivatives of either could garner one of the top five nomination spots for a device category, it’s worth looking at categories like Best Mobile Platform (only so many options, right?). And we can’t forget about all of the apps available on webOS – so many are contenders for nominations in categories like Best Location-Based Service or Best Mobile User Experience or even Best Use of an API. Go grab your Twitter or Facebook ID, check out the categories, and get nominating.

Source: Mashable; Thanks to everyone that sent this in!

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You may recall that, as part of its final response (and denial) last week about their webOS aGPS issue, Verizon Wireless promised a bit of potential help in the future:

We are working on offering location APIs / LBS enablers for our developer community. Please check the http://developer.verizon.com for updates. Later this month at our VDC Conference 2010 event, we will be talking about these LBS/location enablers in detail.

Well, Verizon’s Developer Conference was today, and sure enough, VZW announced a new set of location-related APIs collectively called "NAVBuilder Inside" or NBI. Only problem is, webOS was conspicuously absent from their list of supported platforms. The APIs, which cover both access to navigation systems generally and interaction with VZ Navigator, are being offered only for Android, Blackberry, Brew, and Windows Mobile. We checked with webOS Internals‘ Rod Whitby, who confirmed that these are "binary libraries, [with] no support for webOS."

We have reached out to both Verizon Wireless and Palm for comments on this newest rejection of webOS developers and users. Meanwhile, James Harris, creator of GPS Fix continues his  investigation in our forum of the oddities of GPS function on Verizon Pre Plus and Pixi Plus phones.

Source: GigaOm

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When webOS 2.0 comes around, Foursquare app developer Geoff Gauchet (a.k.a. Zhephree) is going to be ready with version 2.0 of his popular check-in app. As announced on his blog, Gauchet plans to hook into every webOS 2.0 feature announced thus far. You’ll be able to find places near you and submit shoutouts directly from Just Type, as well as unspecified interactions via the opened-up Synergy and new Exhibition mode.

Patching it up to work with webOS 2.0 isn’t the only thing Gauchet plans to do with Foursquare 2.0. In the cards is a massive rewrite of Foursquare’s core code, fully integrating many of the new features that have been implemented since the first release. This will serve to do a few things, most notably make it easier for future additions with less extraneous code lying around and make the app all-around faster than before. Less code means the phone needs to do less thinking. Foursquare for webOS will also be moving to an OAuth log-in scheme, just like Twitter and associated apps and services did earlier this year. Oh, and there’s the matter of switching to the not-yet-released-but-sure-to-pack-lots-of-newness API from the folks at Foursquare HQ. Even with all this, the developer is finding the time for a few new tools and features that will be sure to delight Foursquare users.

Source: Zhephree.com

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Developing for webOS has its pros and cons. On the one hand, you have the easiest mobile platform for web developers to target. On the other hand, the application-programming interfaces (APIs) for natively accessing important features aren’t all fully baked yet. To wit: the microphone and camera. 

Now that Palm’s Plugin Developer Kit (PDK) is out in public beta, there is renewed hope for getting these API’s and therefore a new breed of applications.  Ben Combee (@unwiredben) of Palm’s Developer Relations team is posting a series of FAQ’s on his livejournal page and his has shared that the latest PDK will not include those API’s for the mic or camera.  

We still hold out hope that access will come soon and apps like Shazam or true barcode scanners will become possible – but it looks like we’ll be waiting a bit longer. 

You’ll also find within the FAQ a tidbit on Pixi support for the PDK.  It’s there, but in a VERY limited way.  Ben says you can try testing apps out for Pixi but we should keep in mind 3D gaming isn’t intended for the initial build.

In general, we have a lot of hope for the PDK. The ability to mix and match traditional webOS formatting elements with native code could be a Big Deal for faster and more advanced apps.

Thanks to Gene for the tip! via PalmNewsDaily

Update: Ben Combee rightly posts an clarification that we neglected to mention with regard to camera access:

Added small clarification to FAQ on PDK camera support — you can capture images from Mojo and then load them into a native PDK component.

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Announced at MWC was yet another partnership between the world’s cellular carriers that will end up resulting in, well, very little. Networks around the world have banded together to create the Wholesale Applications Community, which in essence will be a global cross-platform app effort. And here’s why it’s going to fail: manufacturers, particularly the ones that are invested in an operating system (such as Apple, Palm, and Nokia), will have no interest in participating. Especially those that have created an app store, Apple in particular.

The Wholesale Applications Community (WAC) will end as a failure, at best withering away as a token gesture to interoperability. There are a million political reasons why it won’t work, but the biggest hurdles to overcome are the technical ones: programming languages and APIs. While we can see feature phone manufacturers rallying around the WAC, nobody buys a T9 flip phone to run apps. They lack the hardware to properly execute – that’s why they’re feature phones.

App developers too aren’t interested in feature phones, because the meager hardware will limit what they can do. Not to mention the varying screen sizes, processors, radios, keypads, and everything else. App developers are interested in smartphones, and that’s where the WAC starts to fall apart.

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Mahootzki lets us know that Chapter 6 of the Palm webOS programming book is now available at Safari Books.  The chapter is titled "Data" and focuses on using Cookies, the "depot," HTML 5 storage, and AJAX.  Essentially your average web app hasn’t historically done a great job of storing data locally, but with HTML 5 you can and Palm is utilizing that web standard for apps on the webOS.

Of course, if your app is fairly simple and/or you don’t want to hassle with database queries, webOS also makes some local storage available to you via a special call: "Mojo.Depot()" — with it you can use up to 5 megs of storage for your app.

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