Actor, thespian, and all-around coolest man on the planet William Shatner has been a Pre user for a while now, and like the coolest man on the planet that he is he’s not afraid to show it off. He did so while taping an informal segment for The New York Times’ online Screen Test series, answering a call from his daughter Melanie. We have to say, we’re both fascinated and disappointed that The Shat uses the stock webOS ringtone, though we can understand that he wouldn’t want to use something so obvious as the Star Trek theme or a communicator chirp. Check out the video after the break.

Source: New York Times; Via: Eitan Konigsburg on Twitter

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HP, the soon-to-be-Palm-parent-company is moving quickly and strongly into Internet-enabled printers with its new ePrint Platform and four new "e-all-in-One" printers. These products will enabled users to send print jobs via the Google Cloud (Docs, Photos and Calendar), using new apps from partners like Crayola and Live Nation, and most relevantly for this community, "from any web-connected device – smartphones, iPads, netbooks and more", according to Vyomesh Joshi, HP’s Executive Vice President, Imaging and Printing Group. The release goes on to very specifically mention the possibility of "an executive on a train sending a presentation from a Palm Pre or Blackberry smartphone to print and pick up at a FedEx Office Store."

The Times piece, a feature on Vyomesh Joshi, includes a quote which could as easily be talking about future webOS development as printing:

"’Now that H.P. is going mass-market with this technology, we will more actively program to it,’ said Steve Youngwood, an executive vice president at Nickelodeon."

While this announcement is not expressly about putting webOS on printers, it shows that HP’s overall strategy of improving mobile data use from creation to production, a strategy for which webOS and the Palm smartphones will be a key component, is both moving ahead and getting positive attention.

Source: NYT and HP

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Smartphones: they can browse the web, play music, send emails and update Facebook.  Oh yeah, and they can  make phone calls too.  The New York Times has as an article up that examines how smartphone usage habits have changed over the last couple of years, and posits an interesting question: how often do we smartphone owners still use our phones as …phones?

I, like many of the people profiled in the article, talk surprisingly little on the phone. Most social engagements are arranged via Facebook or text, most work communication is done via email, and I usually only talk verbally once or twice a week – generally when something is urgent.  A quick check of my Sprint account via the online portal spells this out: we’re using only a tiny fraction (~300) of the voice minutes of the carrier’s smallest shared data plan (the Everything Data Share 1500), which is shared by two smartphone users.  Even that 300 minute number is on the high side for us.

Reasons cited by folks in the article about why they don’t use their phones as phones as often these days generally range from "it’s simply too disruptive" to "I really only call someone if I don’t have their Twitter handle or e-mail address".

People using their phones more for things other than talking is undoubtedly a trend, and one that will continue to accelerate in the coming years.  The NYT article cites Sprint CEO Dan Hesse as expecting that carriers will eventually stop charging subscribers for voice minutes entirely, billing them instead for data only.  Industry data even suggests that not only do folks talk less on their phones, but the average conversation is a full minute shorter than it was even a year ago.  

How often do you talk on the phone these days?

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Saul Hansell of the New York Times recently penned an interesting feature on Palm. Hansell opened the piece by describing Palm as a "mouse" in "a land of cellphone giants" including Apple, Research in Motion, Google, Microsoft and Nokia, then interposes comments by Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein with analyst thoughts to show both Palm’s strengths and supposed weaknesses. At one point in the piece, Tero Kuittenen, an analyst with MKM Partners, describes how opinions have fluctuated since the Pre announcement in January:

“These emotional extremes reflect a handset market in profound turmoil,” said Tero Kuittinen, an analyst with MKM Partners. “Palm soared to $18 when people were expecting Pre to be a blockbuster. American tech bloggers went crazy over Pre and pronounced it to be the St. Paul following the iPhone Jesus,” he said. “Then Verizon started pushing Droid and the bloggers reversed. Now Pre was doomed and Android was going to take over the global handset market.”

There were a few other noteworthy points, including Rubinstein being quoted as saying, "Android, and the droid in particular, are designed for the techie audience…We [at Palm] are doing a more general product that helps people live their lives seamlessly." Given Palm’s strong support for open-source development, easily modifiable code and other tech-friendly features of the Pre in particular, the idea that the Pre was not "designed for the techie audience" seems a bit odd, though Palm has repeatedly stated that they are pursuing customers that aren’t current smartphone owners.

On the prospects for Palm with the addition of the Pixi to its lineup, analyst Kuittinen estimates that "Palm may be able to sell 10 million handsets next year," depending on adding carriers in Europe as well as the United States.

Oddly, notwithstanding the largely positive spin of the piece, The Times’ headline changed between when the piece was first posted (and put into print) and the current online version. The original headline read, "Underdog Palm Takes on Giants in Smartphones," but the current version has morphed to, "Is Palm’s Comeback Losing Steam?" There’s no explanation either in or accompanying the piece for the change, and little indication in the article that Palm’s comeback may be "losing steam."

Setting aside the title change, the article paints a generally good picture of Palm’s current and future prospects, especially with the release of the down-market Pixi to fill the Centro role with which Palm was so successful in the past.

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We all have witness the battle over access to iTunes between Palm and Apple. Now Palm is taking this little war to a new battleground. Is good to see Palm tackling Apple head-on like this. Not only does this give Palm some good press, but it also reveals the monopolistic nature that the new Apple [...]

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We all know how annoying it is to wait for the mandatory 15-second voicemail instructions. Over the past week, David Pogue has been ranting about that particularly blatant money-grab by American cellphone carriers in The New York Times.

And yesterday, in the New York Times David Pogue posted asking for our help in his proposed “Take [...]

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Palm’s been teasing it for a few days now, and they’ve finally posted their first ad for the Palm Pre, titled “Flow” and directed by feature film director Tarsem Singh (The Cell, The Fall).

The ad was put together by ad agency Modernista!, who has done work for Cadillac, BusinessWeek, Converse, Napster, and Product(RED) amongst others. Flow was shot in and around the Chinese cities of Beijing, Zhengzhou, Dengfeng, and Kunming. The guys in orange you see are over 1,000 martial arts dancers from the Shaolin Kung Fu School in Dengfeng. Used here to show how your life and the Palm Pre experience ‘flow’, these talented young dancers previously performed in the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. The woman we see here – ‘Anima’ – will be a recurring character in Palm’s Pre ad campaign, which will focus on the phone’s ability to anticipate the user’s needs.

Check out Palm’s making-of video after the break, plus get the exclusive first details on Palm’s upcoming Pre ad campaign.

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As you may recall, the ad campaign kicked into viral mode a week ago with Palm issuing an invitation via their Facebook and Twitter pages to watch the yesterday’s premiere of the ad, along with a series of behind-the-scenes and making-of videos about the ad. Flow will go live today on Palm.com, as well as on various social-networking and video-sharing websites.

Even though the Pre is going on sale on Saturday, June 6, Palm’s ad campaign won’t kick fully into gear for a full two weeks after that on June 21 with an expensive homepage take-overs of YouTube (the #3 website worldwide, serving up more than 100 million video views a day), AOL.com, and Wired.com. Palm will also produce exclusive content for YouTube and will advertise its content integration on websites like the New York Times and Pandora.

June 22nd will mark the Pre’s first foray into television advertisements, outside of the brief un-credited appearances in Sprint’s Now Network commercials. Palm will focus on “in-season” primetime broadcast and cable shows such as Southland on NBC, Numb3rs on CBS, USA Network’s Burn Notice, and Mad Men on AMC, among others. Palm is also planning on making extensive use of outdoor digital advertisements, including ad space in airports, coffee shops, and various high-traffic office buildings.

So there you have it, the Palm Pre ad campaign in a nutshell. Be sure to check back with PreCentral regularly for more on the Pre’s release, marketing, and other developments surrounding Palm.

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PreCentral.net Forum member sbpooch caught an article over at the Indian site mydigitalfc.com that sure as heck looks like New York Times columnist David Pogue’s full review of the Palm Pre.  It’s not up at NYT.com as of this writing, so we’re guessing some syndicator somewhere made a mistake here by allowing the article to go up.  We suppose it could be a fake, but we know (and love) Mr. Pogue’s writing style and the article seems to match it.

Pogue’s verdict: he likes it:

So do the Pre’s perks (beautiful hardware and software, compact size, keyboard, swappable battery, flash, multitasking, calendar consolidation) outweigh its weak spots (battery life, slow program opening, ringer volume, Sprint network)? Oh, yes indeedy.

Pogue is looking forward to the Pre becoming available on Verizon’s network.  So are we.

Thanks to Mahootzki for the tip!

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The New York Times weighed in on the new national pastime of guessing the release date of the Palm Pre. In an article published on Monday, the Times wrote about the upcoming summer season of blockbuster smartphone releases and said that people who have been briefed on Sprint’s plans have been told by the carrier [...]

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Clearly, that’s what Sprint wants, and with the launch getting closer with each day, they’re ramping up the rhetoric and getting into the mainstream media, in this case, the New York Times. The Times notes that Sprint has been having trouble for the past several years, but we know all about that. While Sprint has had some modestly successful devices recently, most notably last summer’s Samsung Instinct. But since then Verizon and AT&T have enjoyed enormous success with the BlackBerry Storm and Apple iPhone 3G, while Sprint has lost hundreds of thousands of customers every quarter. So as you can imagine, they’ve got high hopes for the Palm Pre, which Sprint plans to market as a device that will bridge the corporate and consumer markets.

The New York Times spoke with Kevin Packingham, Sprint’s senior vice president of product and technology. He said, “It’s the highest confidence I’ve ever had going into a device launch that this is going to be a blockbuster. Since we’ve had little in the way of mass public buzz about the Pre, right now it’s hard to gauge how successful the Pre launch will be, which Packingham acknowledged: “I’m pretty sure we’ll know within the first week.”

Thanks to AdidasNYR in our forums for the tip!

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