Google's Android OS has always been a bit of a mystery to webOS fans: Here's this giant web company committed to open standards, yet their mobile OS isn't as web-centric as what Palm has put out. One example: the Ares development environment (just discussed in a podcast), which lets developers build apps entirely in their web browser. Google has apparently heard the news and gotten caught up with the Android App Inventor, which does drag-and-drop, in-a-browser development for Android.

There appears to be a few extra steps required for Android than what Ares + webOS needs, but otherwise we're thinking that these are very similar concepts and implementations. Anybody out there happen to take both for a spin and can tell us the critical differences? Sound off in the comments!

via Android Central; thanks to everybody who sent this in!

Back in April, we reported on a new app that was just hitting the WebOS-Internal’s testing feed called Save/Restore. The app was designed to help you restore all of your applications' saved data and preferences after wiping your phone from a visit to the webOS Doctor or after a phone replacement. While still not officially at v1.0, the application has been in the production feeds for a few months now has been a great success and has seen some major enhancements. But before we talk about those enhancements, let’s give a quick recap on what Save/Restore actually does and why it’s necessary.

Keep reading after the break!

read more

In addition to waiving (and refunding) the $50 app submission fee, Palm is now offering the $99 fee to get a full developer access to submit to the app catalog free gratis. The fee had been waived back 'for a limited time' back in April and had also been free for open source apps - now that applies to everybody.

No word if, as with the $50 app fee, Palm will be refunding developers. Update: Actually, Palm never did charge that fee - change here is they aren't planning on it in the future. Either way - the skids for getting apps into Palm's app catalog are officially greased. 

Source: Palm Developer Forums; Thanks Arthur!

Temkin joined Palm in October 2009; he writes that his role included "Leading the team responsible for the webOS app catalog, SDK, developer tools, and portal." Temkin was also formerly the founder and CEO of Lazlo Systems

Other employees who have recently left Palm include Matias Duarte (to Google), Mike Abbot (to Twitter), and Rich Dellinger (to Apple). We're the furthest thing from corporate takeover specialists, but as with the previous exoduses we're not thinking this is anything beyond the normal churn that happens during these kinds of events.

Source: PaidContent and LinkedIn; Thanks to Jason for the tip!

Palm isn't just throwing parties and giving away cash to woo iPhone developers into porting their iPhone apps to webOS (a process that, seriously, is easier than it seems), they're also putting together practical articles explaining how the SDK and PDK work to people whose development proclivities tiend more to the Apple frame of mind.

The first (well, we hope it's just the first of many) explains the SDK and webOS's web environment to somebody who is used to developing for the iPhone:

We hope we've demonstrated that webOS enables you to take advantage of the expertise you've established creating applications for the iPhone. You can leverage and upgrade those skills by building applications for the webOS. Now it's time to turn your iPhone applications into webOS applications and open them up to another platform and a new audience!

Source: Palm Developer Center via Palm Developer Center Blog

Palm and Appcelerator hosted a party last night to woo iPhone developers into taking a look at PDK apps on webOS - the porting of which apparently takes surprisingly little time. You can check out Ben Combee's slides on the matter, but one in particular made us smile: "Interpreters? Fine. Emulators? No Problem."

We suspect that the above might have been sweet sweet Palm Balm to the lips of iPhone developers parched by Apple's banning of both of the above from their App store. Given the agenda above and the fact that the party was cohosted by Appcelerator, we were slightly surprised to not see an announcement of webOS support for their Titanium development product, but we hope it'll come soon enough.

Either way, iPhone devs have a chance to get in on the $1 million that Palm is giving away to developers who submit PDK apps, so get in early.

Source: Slideshare

Source: Steve Gill's Blog; via: Palm Developer Center Blog and PhoneGap

read more

Palm’s Ben Galbraith and Dion Almaer, directors of developer relations at Palm, took some time near the end of the third episode of their Palm Developer Podcast Series to talk not only about the Palm Developer Day event, but also the announced HP acquisition.

After a bit of silliness (hawking HP printers, ink and even paper), they both spoke extremely positively about what the HP deal might mean for the company and its developer community.

Ben: “We couldn’t be more excited about the possibilities that this merger opens up for developers. We are…really thrilled about what’s possible here….“If the deal goes through, we will be with the largest technology company in the planet.”

Dion: “webOS is this amazing but very young operating system, and now, with a parent like HP, if all of this goes through, we’ll have the runway to do amazing things. You guys have kind of gotten in in the ground floor, and I think where we take things from here, is going to be an amazing fantastic way.”

While they also pointed out that, “thanks to the legal system being what it is,” they couldn’t say much more, they seemed genuinely enthusiastic about HP and its plans for Palm. (Dion’s offer at the end of the video, “Use webOS, get a free HP printer,” should probably not be taken seriously, though.)

The discussion starts at about 44 minutes into the video, after the break!

read more

We're fresh off the Palm Developer Day Keynote and a crazy-good interview - both with Ben Galbraith and Dion Almaer of Palm. We'll have a full write up of the interview on Monday, but we wanted to hit up the big developer news from this morning's keynote for those who missed the liveblog.

Though Palm's dynamic duo didn't say what version number we're looking at, they did suggest that 'by fall' we should see the features they described today. Primarily we're talking about new APIs and tools for developers - the main new user-facing feature is an updated version of the App Catalog.

After the break, a preview of some of what's coming in the next version of webOS.

read more

Will there be exciting news? Could be? We'll be there live if there is. Will there be a chance for developers to learn how to do awesome stuff on webOS? Definitely, and we'll be there to watch the magic.

More importantly, will there be a chance for developers to get on camera, show us their apps, and get featured on PreCentral? Yes, yes there will be just that chance. Keep an eye out for the guy with silver glasses hiding behind a videocamera, he wants to talk to you.

Not going to be at Palm Developer Day? Stay tuned - PreCentral loves you too.