We just wrapped up the keynote for Palm's Developer Day in New York City. A tag-team of Ben Galbraith, Dion Almaer, Phil McKinney, and Joe Hayashi took the stage to give an overview of where they see web and mobile development now and where they see it going in the future.

Ben and Dion noted that the web and HTML5 really are going to become a first-class app development and distribution platform - as evidenced by even Microsoft's new and surprising support for HTML5 standards.

Phil McKinney gave his 'stump speech'  about the excitement within HP for webOS and reiterated that HP is looking to drive webOS to lots of form factors and devices to fill the gap between the smartphone and the PC. Phil also broke out his flexible display technology. We asked him how he's going to keep excitement up over the next few months for webOS in the consumer market and his response: it will be easier to generate excitement when you have new devices. Expect HP to bring tablets, new phones, and "really interesting new form factors" in 2011. McKinney also noted that HP controls literally 10% of the shelf space in the consumer electronics space and they plan to make Palm "to play an important part for that shelf space."

Later on, Joe Hayashi teased that HP will be moving away from the current application framework (called Mojo) to something called "Enyo" that will be faster, support multiple form factors, and work with Palm's online, drag-n-drop development Ares system. (in fact, "Enyo" is a Greek goddess of war and a companion to the war-god Ares - get it?). Hayashi notes that the Early Access Developer SDK will see support for both Enyo and tablets in early 2011. Also pegged for "Early 2011"  - those slates and phones that Palm is very much aware we are all waiting on.

We'll have more on the Enyo app framework later this afternoon. Keep it locked to PreCentral!

webOS is moving up to version 2.0 and bringing along with it a whole host of new features sure to please even the most jaded of webOS users. There’s the stuff that we’ve already covered: card-grouping Stacks, enhanced and more capable Just Type with search and Quick Actions, Exhibition Touchstone dock modes, and expandable Synergy plug-ins.

That’s a lot, but if you ask us, not quite worthy of bringing the big 2.0. Here’s what else Palm didn’t let slip until today:

webOS finally supports Adobe Flash Player 10.1 (beta), and it comes baked right into webOS 2.0. Flash support is limited to the browser, but by and large it’s a rich and fluid experience, and one that we’re glad we can stop wondering if we’ll ever get.

You can now tag contacts as a “favorite.” Doing so has two consequences. One: the contact will show up under the new Favorites view in the Phone app. Two: contacts tagged as such will appear at the top of searches in Contacts, Email, Messaging, and Phone.

As glimpsed in earlier leaks, webOS 2.0 comes along with Text Assist. The new app and service build upon and greatly expand the auto-correction capabilities of webOS, including general spell checking, dictionary customization, and the ability to set your own macros (custom text strings with a short typed trigger).

Skype Mobile is coming to webOS, so long as you’re on Verizon. This leverages that exclusive Verizon deal, so don’t count on seeing Skype calling on any other webOS devices any time soon.

The new Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite is included from the start, displacing DataViz’s abandoned Documents to Go package. But the only thing you’ll get by default in webOS 2.0 is the Quickoffice viewer, which lets you read Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. There’s no editing just yet (we suspect Quickoffice wants to charge for that, which is reasonable, albeit disappointing), but the included app does sync with online services like Google Docs and Dropbox.

The Facebook app is also getting a bump to 2.0, which brings along support for Facebook Chat in Messaging, through the magic of Synergy. The new Facebook app also leverages the other new webOS tools, like Stacks, Quick Actions, and Exhibition.

And that's just the beginning - explore the world of webOS 2.0 updated features after the break.

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If the question “What platform do you see yourself developing for in 12 months?” had been posed a few months ago, the responses for webOS would have plummeted through the floor. But with the power, scale, and enormous bags of cash of HP at Palm’s back, it turns out that developer interest has turned around. In fact, it’s a doubling of interest, though that’s not saying a lot when you were standing at 3% current interest (dead last).

The doubling to 6% ties webOS with Symbian for one-year-out developer intent, but it pales in comparison to Android (up 56% to 61-out-of-100) and of course iOS (still leading with a resounding 82%. Interestingly, it appears that developers are looking to expand their reach across multiple platforms, with interest in HTML5, Windows Phone, BlackBerry OS, and even Symbian up. The only platforms that are staring down the tunnel of declining developer intent are Java and Flash, which comes as little surprise to us. Now all we need is some kick-ass hardware from Palm and some gangbusters sales to get devices in hands and developer interest up.

Source: GigaOM; Thanks to Jimmy for the tip!

That screen you see above, that’s what shows up when you point a webOS phone to get.adobe.com/flashplayer. We’ve gone through many iterations of this screen, with the text prior to this one promising that Palm and Adobe were working to get Flash Player 10.1 onto webOS “as quickly as possible.” That came in July, and before that it was the second half of 2010, or the first half of 2010, or February, or by the end of 2009.

Obviously, not a single one of those has panned out (excepting the "second half of 2010"), despite the fact that we’ve been seeing Flash running on webOS devices since October of last year. And Adobe announced in June (of this year) that the finished version of Flash 10.1 had been released to their mobile platform partners, Palm included. It’s been three months since Palm supposedly received Flash, and in the meantime we’ve seen Adobe tinkering with download redirects. But now the message presented to webOS users is nearly as depressing as that given to iPhone users. It now reads:

Sorry Adobe® Flash® Player is not available from Adobe.com for your device’s operating system or browser.

Sad, eh? Having received this message ourselves and a number of tips from users like yourself, we decided to investigate, only to be met with nothingness. Our contacts at Palm had nothing to report, which is better than what we got from Adobe. Despite repeated requests for comment, we were met with stony silence from the folks at Adobe.

So the question remains, do we even care anymore? Sure, Android has Flash Player 10.1, so long as you’re running the right version of the OS on the right device. Even then, with the massively superior hardware that we’re seeing crammed into more and more Android devices, the Flash experience is still less than ideal. It’s slow, it’s cranky, it’s resource hogging. It's, well, it's Flash.

Android devices may be selling like gangbusters, but there’s still a large and influential player in the smartphone market that wants nothing to do with Flash: Apple. We’re not the biggest cheerleaders of the bitten fruit brand and their iOS operating system (though will continue to laud them for outstanding advertising), but at this point we’re understanding their position on Flash. In fact, we’re moving from understanding to agreeing.

Do we want a slow and painful experience on our mobile devices? No. Nobody wants that. It’s not like Flash is really a great experience on our desktop computers, and they’re several times more powerful than anything you can fit in your pocket. There are still some things that modern HTML5 browsers cannot do that Flash can, but here’s the question: between increasingly capable HTML5 websites and fully capable PDK apps, is there any need for Flash?

Under strict instructions to relax before the new webOS 2.0 arrives.

Dave Balmer, Palm webOS developer extraordinaire, is jumping from the creation to the support side of the development field by joining Palm’s Mojo SDK development team. Dave, who runs Gobico Games and built the popular webOS games Wobble Words (swoon) and Poker Drops, was recruited to join the Mojo SDK team and, as he puts it, to help “take a great SDK to new heights.” We’ll agree that the SDK needs some new heights, and are excited to see an accomplished developer like Dave joining the team.

If you’re fearful that your Gobico Games apps are going to fall be the wayside, fear not. Dave assures us that he’ll still be working on improving Wobble Words and Poker Drops, and may even push out some new apps if time permits. He’s also going to continue work on his open source JavaScript and HTML5 app framework “Jo.”

So congratulations to Dave! And golf claps to Palm for picking up another fine programmer to keep pushing the SDK forward. Now bring on those APIs!

Source: Palm Developer Center Forums

We've recently seen NBC and Vimeo make their content available using HTML5, and we're beginning some great demonstrations that showcase what's possible with burgeoning set of technologies that make up the standard.  Engadget has put together something of a roundup of some of the more cutting edge stuff that's floating around on the 'net, and one that really caught our eye was Akihabara. Akihabara is a collection of 5 open-source games that aim to emulate the 8 and 16-bit games of old (think Super Nintendo) that all utilize a small subset of HTLM5 to get them up in running in most modern web browsers.  All of the games here are playable through the browser in webOS, and they run great, though the user-configurable keyboard controls are somewhat difficult to get used to on the Pre.  

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An increasing number of companies are changing the way they serve up content on the web by moving away from Adobe's Flash technology to HTML5 and/or direct streaming.  Two notable sites, NBC.com and Vimeo, have made it so any modern smartphone platform with a decent WebKit based browser can view their content.  Why are an increasing number of media companies making this move? It's probably safe to assume that Apple and its recent success with the Flash-less iPad has something to do with it.  

As evidenced in the above video, performance isn't terrific on my Sprint Palm Pre when using either site, as things bog down considerably when more than one browser instance (or just one browser instance) is open. Overall quality seems to be much better when viewing Vimeo content, as NBC.com content is consistently too compressed on both the audio and video fronts. Still, it's great to have access to more of this kind of content without having to have Flash, because who knows when it'll actually come the way of webOS.

We know that HP is hot-to-trot to get webOS up and running on a tablet/slate device and obviously webOS is going to continue to run on smartphones, but this article on Forbes has us thinking: is HP thinking bigger?

"Smartphones are a part of this, but this is really about the Web operating system," Shane Robison, HP's chief strategy and technology officer, told Forbes. "It's a change in our business model to a connected device model." HP, he said, is assuming a world in which almost everything needs at least the potential to connect to the Internet.

Long-time followers of mobility may remember that 3Com (former Palm owner and soon-to-be fellow HP-owned subsidiary) had just such a vision with the Audrey. It didn't work then (the dot-com bust didn't help) and in general the dream of every device in your house getting an internet connection has always been of the pipe-variety. Perhaps HP thinks that time is coming?

We're not arguing that webOS should be slapped on any old thing - but it does raise an interesting question for us: what, at its core, is webOS? If it's a great multitasking smartphone OS, well, then shoehorning it into other devices isn't going to work so well. But what if HP buys into Palm's argument that webOS is, at its core, the best way to take the web and modern, HTML5 standards and turn it into a touch-friendly operating system? If so, then HP could be making a play to make webOS the best way to put "the web" on devices.

It very similar to the ideas behind Google's Chrome OS, but the direction that Palm has already said they are taking with the future of webOS sounds much more robust than Chrome OS.

Toasters? Bad idea. But HP is definitely thinking outside the smartphone box:

In his call to analysts Wednesday, Bradley identified vertical markets like health care and education in which devices might soon appear, sold through HP's partners.

What do you think is the essence of webOS? Do you think that HP could help make it the de-facto way to get the web on internet-connected devices, supplanting Android and WinCE?

Multitasking. Unified email inboxes. Multiple Exchange accounts. Welcome to the future, our iPhone-toting friends. Well, eventually you’ll get there. Apple last week provided a preview of iPhone OS 4.0, and it looked vaguely familiar to those of us that have been using webOS. There are two truly big features that will be part of iPhone OS 4.0, with multitasking being the one that most users will care about. The implementation, however, is less than impressive.

Here’s the thing, as Rene Ritchie over at TiPb has pointed out before, webOS’ cards metaphor for multitasking seems to be an extension of what Apple did for managing multiple open pages in mobile Safari, with a dash of gestures thrown in for good measure. If you were to ask me, I'd say that’s more than likely what Steve Jobs and Co. would have preferred to do (and probably were preparing to do) for multitasking on the iPhone. But as important as multitasking is for the future of the iPhone platform, their perception as a leading innovator is also important, so just copying what Palm has done would be a PR disaster.

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