Qt (pronounced ‘cute’) is Nokia’s attempt at creating a ‘write once, run anywhere’ programming platform – learn more here. It’s a big deal for them as they deal with supporting S60 and their new Meego linux platform (which Maemo will be merged into). The idea is that developers will be able to create their app in Qt and have it run on both S60 and Meego – and darn near everything else they can get it running on.

Add one more platform to that list – webOS. Darron Black successfully ported Qt to webOS in time for a demo at Mobile World Congress. Nokia was naturally thrilled and blogged it up themselves (twice).

We don’t know whether Qt is going to be a viable programming platform for Nokia – ‘write once, run anywhere’ has been a cruel, unreachable pipe dream to many would-be mobile moguls in the past - but now that it’s up and running on webOS, count us as behind it. We’ll take Qt apps, we’ll take iPhone ports, we’ll take it all. As Black noted in his post, webOS is ‘OPEN’ (but not, technically, open source). Add in that it’s arguably more accessible to more programmers than Android and we’re feeling pretty darn good about the platform’s potential.

We’ll have Matthew Miller of Nokia Experts and ZDNet on PalmCast Live tomorrow – you can bet that in addition to talking about his new Palm Pre Plus happiness, we’ll be talking Qt.

Thanks to muchtall for the tip!

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Game developers interested in accelerating profitability of existing and future apps are invited to join Palm to learn more about webOS at two upcoming conferences.
We’ll  kick off an exciting week at the Flash Gaming Summit, hosted by Mochi Media, on Monday March 8th at UCSF’s Mission Bay Conference Center. This one-day conference brings together the [...]

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Hot on the heels of last night’s release of webOS 1.3.5, Palm has released the Software Development Kit for the latest and greatest version of webOS. You can go read all the nitty gritty details here, but to our mind the best news is that the emulator can now receive keyboard shortcuts to simulate shaking and tilting – which means it will be a heckuva lot easier to develop games that involve tilting the phone.

Also improving those games, the "fastAccelerometer" API, which can "increase the frequency of accelerometer events from 4Hz to 30Hz." Previously, you could only get accelerometer data 4 times per second – not nearly good enough for proper control. Increasing that to 30 times per second will help a lot.

There’s plenty more here, including proper app placement in the media partition and some squashed bugs. Developers, go give it a go (unless you’re a 64-bit Windows user) and let us know if your life is changed.

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Palm has (finally!) gone public with Project Ares, which is a development platform for webOS that exists entirely in a browser. You can simply fire up your browser and go to http://ares.palm.com/, sign in with your developer account, and get coding.

Ares includes

• Complete integrated development environment
  • Drag-and-drop interface builder
  • Code editor
  • Visual debugger
  • Log viewer
  • Source control integration
• Fingertip access to the full library of Mojo UI widgets
• Push-button project & scene creation
• Drag-and-drop file upload
• Instant project upload & download for seamless desktop/cloud workflow
• Preview apps in the browser
• Run apps directly on the webOS emulator or device (requires SDK installation)
• Use Ares in Safari, Chrome or Firefox

Palm’s hoping this is the future of mobile development for webOS. We’re hoping that Palm can build in some developer collaboration tools and App Catalog submission tools.  Ok, never mind our complaints, Ares looks like a great tool for developers. Get more information here.

Developers, what do you think?

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Out at the Open Mobile Summit, Palm SVP Michael Abbot demoed a new development tool Palm is working on, dubbed Ares.  The platform is apparently a visual studio for webOS, utilizing a drag-n-drop interface. It will be entirely web-based and include debugging tools and a "mechanism for developers to share libraries and APIs."

To show off the power of Ares, Palm had an engineer code up a Flickr search tool — in front of a live audience — using the drag and drop tools to create the various widgets and form necessary for the app.

Directly within Ares, a developer can send the app to a phone, submit it to the App catalog, or share it with others.

In other words, the smartphone operating system that’s easiest to develop for? It’s going to get even easier by the end of the year.

Read: PCWorld [via @Adora and @openmobilemedia]

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Coreplayer has been a longtime favourite of the PalmOS community (not to mention Windows Mobile and Symbian).  Its vast collection of codecs, expansive options, and quick speed have made it arguably one of the best video players for the PalmOS, and now it looks like we may be seeing Coreplayer, in some form, on the WebOS.

Not too long ago, on the CoreCodec Community Forums, while talking about a future 2.0 release, BetaBoy happened to mention:

If we do release it for Palm… it might be released as a ‘last time thank you’ for their support… but note that we are already migrating to the Pre’s WebOS. The other thing that why some Palm ppl might still want it on their older devices is the new touch UI.

Very welcome news given how limited the existing player is.  That one statement leaves lots of questions out there.  Thankfully, not to long ago, BetaBoy also paid our forums a visit and gave us a view at some of their plans for the WebOS:

You’ll likely see CorePlayer on the Pre before Android….. we all have Pre’s here now(if that gives you and indication of what we are doing). [...]

We are doing the same thing that we have always done… but mostly for our OEM customers with CorePlayer API for Linux…. utilize the CORE of CP in API form to fully integrate it into the WebOS UI. In other words we are playing nice and will not being using our CoreUI interface we use for all the other platforms we support.

On the hardware side of things… this is where I don’t want to say much atm, but we do plan to support the native codecs when ever possible, no diff then we do now for all our other platforms.

On the SDK… we are hopeful that with each release it matures and that Palm (like Android) has a nice roadmap for native apps…. and when its ready, so are we.

Hopefully we’ll see Coreplayer for the WebOS before the next generation Pre gets announced. Perhaps CoreCodec could consider homebrew for the early basic releases, similar to TCPMP before going fully retail.

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webOS 1.2 is out and folks are having a grand old time, but what about developers?  Fret not: Palm has you covered.  In a new posting on their developer blog, Palm announced the release of Mojo SDK 1.2. The new version of the Software Development Kit includes all the new APIs in 1.2 as well as easier installation and improved SDK tools, including better logs, a resource monitor, a key service for wired headset buttons(!), a download manager, and much more.

If that’s not enough for you, Palm has also updated webOS Doctor, that savior of near-bricked-Pre phones everywhere, Beknatok points out in our forums. So if you’ve had a tweak or a patch go bad and you are forced to use webOS Doctor to save your phone, at least you won’t have to redownload webOS 1.2 after you recover.

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Following up on the story we posted not too long ago, the Mitch Allen "Application Basics" free webcast went off without a hitch. Thankfully, for those like myself who missed it, O’Reilly Media has uploaded the recording of it to YouTube, though it looks like the last few minutes were cut off.

This is of course the second webcast in the series and as such, covers the second chapter of the WebOS book, of the same name.  While the first webcast/book chapter was a general overview and introduction of what the WebOS is like, this webcast was a perfect introduction to the fundamentals of the WebOS.  The appinfo.json file and basics of scenes and their controllers are explained quite well.

This webcast series is just the thing that I’ve been wanting Palm to do; not only just giving an SDK and the option to buy a book on how to program, but actually engaging the developer community.  What better way that a free video webcast to explain the book and the WebOS platform, both explaining how the various components work, but also giving practical examples of usage.

If anyone reading this has ever thought about programming for the WebOS, I highly recommend this webcast series, and await eagerly for the next one.

Update: The Palm Developer Network Blog has some Q&A up from the event.

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Palm’s own Mitch Allen is teaming up with O’Reilly Media once again to bring us another free webcast on WebOS development.  Mitch Allen, Palm’s Vice President and Software Chief Technology Officer, previously did another WebOS development webcast way back in February, so it’s good to see some follow-up now that the device is out in the public in two countries.

The webcast is scheduled September 9th at 10am PST, will last 1 hour, and is titled "Application Basics."

This session begins with an overview of the basic webOS application structure and a demo of the core SDK developer tools, and includes detail presentations on the application launch lifecycle, and Mojo controllers and methods.

Keen readers might remember the title "Application Basics" as the name of the second chapter of the Palm WebOS book.  Indeed this webcast will be covering this chapter, as an aid to the book (and a nice resource for those who haven’t bought the book).

That’s not all. It appears Mitch Allen will be doing a webcast for each chapter of the book in a webcast series:

The webcasts in this series follow the Developing Applications for webOS: A Preview webcast (based on Chapter 1) presented in February 2009, with in-depth presentations on individual chapters in the book. Each webcast will cover concepts and background material, followed by a detailed example built using a sample application, News. Over the course of the series you will step through the construction of the complete application.

This is perfect opportunity for those interesting in developing for the WebOS to take a stab at it, following this free webcast series and learning how to make an application that takes full advantage of the Mojo SDK.

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PreDevCamp is today!  Above, check out the welcome video from none-other than Palm’s own Mitch Allen, CTO of Palm and author of the just-completed webOS development book.  It’s not too late to checkout PreDevCamp.org to find a local event in your city, but if you can’t go to one, there are plenty of options to follow the excitement at home.  Your best option is to head over to PreDevCamp.org/live to see live feeds from San Francisco, Kansas City, New York, Dallas, San Diego, and Los Angeles.

We’re very pleased to see involvement from Palm here – supporting developers is absolutely the best way to grow a fledgling platform.  In addition to Allen’s video above, Palm employees are hitting up the ‘camps and Palm is also donating 30 copies of Allen’s book per city.  We at PreCentral.net are pitching in with prizes ranging from Accessory Store Gift Certificates to Palm Pre phones.  Yes – those Pre prizes will be going to the developers who have created the best apps in several categories and we’re hoping to see a lot of the apps begun today show up in our Homebrew App Gallery.

Yours-truly is heading to Orlando – are you going?

P.S. Hear that about 2.5 million App Catalog downloads? Us too – not bad, eh? Imagine what it will be when the Pre hits other carriers and more apps start becoming officially available?

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