We’ve waited, we’ve asked, PreCentral forum members have lobbied, and now we’re officially being rejected: DataViz announced today on its Facebook page that it "made the difficult decision to cancel development for Docs To Go for WebOS":

We regret to announce that we have made the difficult decision to not produce a Web OS version of Documents To Go. We understand that our delay in this area has caused much disappointment to our current and very loyal user base. We would like to explain in more detail the reasoning behind our decisions thus far.

Our intention had been to replace the Palm Viewers, which were based on the Documents To Go technology, with a full editing, aftermarket version of Documents To Go. In order to do this in a way that we felt would be most intuitive to users, we wanted to have the full version seamlessly replace the built in viewers. To do this, we needed some technical help from Palm. Because Palm was focusing on other areas at the time (including their very survival), and there was no official information available allowing developers to help ourselves, i.e., an SDK, there was a delay in getting us this information. Rather than do a substantially larger project that would result in a "sub-optimal" user experience, we decided to wait. This wait was much longer than anyone at DataViz expected. During this wait, we focused our efforts on other smartphone platforms, not because we were not loyal to Palm, but because it made "business sense" to do so. We have now come to the realization that it is not in DataViz’ nor our users’ best interests to continue the wait and produce the full version. We understand that another developer has chosen to create an editing Office product for webOS and we wish them the best. Again, we apologize to our users for taking this long to reach, what is for DataViz and many of our users, a disappointing conclusion.

This decision is both disappointing and irritating for many within the webOS community, especially those who have been loyal Dataviz customers since the original Docs To Go came out for Palm OS. Its rationale is also a bit suspect, given the ready availability of Palm’s PDK for months, as well as the fact that the HP acquisition closed more than two months ago, with many, many PDK-based apps being developed and released, some quite sophisticated, since then.

Here’s hoping that we get an editing solution in short order, possibly from "another developer" with the interest in webOS users’ business that DataViz apparently lacks.

Source: DataViz; Thanks to BruceBradford in our forums for the heads-up!

UPDATE: Oh, well that might explain it. DataViz has been bought by BlackBerry maker Research in Motion for a cool $50 million. So it’s not just webOS that’s about to be left out of the loop; we wouldn’t be surprised to see all non-BlackBerry OS DataViz products discontinued or left to waste away in the land of no updates. Read all about it over at CrackBerry.com.

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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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It’s apparently a day of price cuts. It happened with little fanfare, but now interested customers can grab a Palm Pre Plus for free from Verizon proper. It’s little surprise, what with Big Red set to phase out their current webOS devices by the end of next month. The freeness of the Pre Plus also handily undercuts Sprint’s just-leaked reduced pricing for the lesser original Pre by $50. All these price drops are obviously happening to help clear out stagnant inventory, but we can’t help but wonder if maybe, just maybe, they might be working to clear out inventory to make room for something new and exciting.

Source: Verizon; Thanks to unseenme for the heads up!

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It’s taken a lot of poking and prodding, but Sprint has finally seen right to drop the pricing of their webOS offerings. According to the latest edition of The Playbook, Sprint’s internal employee newsletter, effective September 12 Sprint will be dropping the new-contract price of the Palm Pre to $49.99 and the Palm Pixi to flat-out free. Right now a Pre will cost you $149.99, while a Pixi costs $49.99 – both prices sadly still include the $100 mail-in rebate.

In addition to the new contract pricing, Sprint is also dropping the pricing for off contract purchases, with $200 slashed from the Pre (dropping it to $349.99 off contract) and the Pixi cut by $50 to $299.99. After a cursory glance at Sprint’s smartphone offerings, that’ll make the Pre and Pixi the cheapest way to get into the smartphone game on America’s #3 network. Unless, you know, you want a Centro ($80 off contract, free with a new subscription).

Thanks anonymous tipster!

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Most people celebrate their birthdays with gifts from people the people they know and love, but psychologist Dr. Phil McGraw of his self-titled Dr. Phil talk show wants to celebrate his 60th birthday by giving stuff to the people he loves. Specifically, the audiences that attend tapings of his show. And during the week of September 13th, Dr. Phil is planning to give away Palm Pixi phones to the tune of 300 units to his live studio audiences. No word on which carrier those Pixi phones will be on, but if we had to guess it’s probably the original Pixi from Sprint and not the Pixi Plus available on Verizon and AT&T. Of course, we’d love to be wrong (nothing against you Sprint Pixi, but we likes us some Wi-Fi).

Source: HP on Twitter

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We’ve been speculating about how Palm would pull off a tablet or other keyboard-lacking device, and that of course would require some manner of virtual keyboard. While Palm clearly didn’t announce any sort of addition to webOS with the reveal of 2.0 earlier this week, that doesn’t mean that it couldn’t happen. In fact, an anonymous tipster pointed out to us that the /etc/palm/luna.conf file in the webOS 2.0 SDK contains not just a reference to a virtual keyboard, but subsection all to itself titled [VirtualKeyboard]. There’s one value in that subsection, VirtualKeyboardEnabled=false, and right now the SDK doesn’t have any files that would be enabled by changing that value to true. But this is still a sign that Palm is indeed prepping a keyboardless slate device, and we won’t see it until webOS 2.0 hits. Or maybe 2.0 will bring the virtual keyboard to devices like the Pre…

UPDATE: Due to this leak, Palm has decided to suspend processing of new applications to the Early Access Program. Developers up to this point only needed to be registered with the Palm Developer Center and have an app in the App Catalog for apply for access. According to webOSdev on Twitter, Palm is currently reevaluating their restrictions on access to early releases of the SDK (developers are required to sign an NDA) and may reopen admission to the Early Access Program in the future. For the sake of all developers, we hope that happens soon.

UPDATE 2: Palm has reopened developer admissions, saying on Twitter "We’re accepting early access admissions again. No reason to make everyone pay the price here."

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In a bidding war that ended like a scene out of The Graduate, HP finally placed the winning bid for cloud storage and database automation firm 3PAR. The offer, clocking in at a hefty $2.4 billion is sure to make 3PAR’s shareholders very happy, and has finally proved to be too rich for Dell, who last offered $32 a share only to be topped by HP’s $33/share bid.

To recap, HP and Dell have been going at it since last week, with Dell making the initial unsolicited offer of $1.15 billion. Yes, if you’re doing the math right, that means HP is spending more than double the opening bid. Clearly, HP really wanted this one. And yes, this is also twice what HP paid for Palm, and this is for a company most hadn’t heard of before the bidding war began.

Pending approval from 3PAR’s shareholders, HP expects the acquisition to close by the end of the year, with HP integrating 3PAR’s automated database management and cloud storage systems into their various enterprise offerings.

Source: HP; Thanks to everybody that sent this in!

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If you’re in Canada and you’ve been waiting for the most ridiculous deal ever before you’d jump on the webOS bandwagon, Bell is doing their best to ensure that you run out of excuses. Previously Bell had implemented a discount that brought the price of monthly service for a Palm Pre down to a starting rate of $50 a month. Now they’re throwing an additional unadvertised $15 a month on top of that, cutting the minimum monthly commitment to a paltry $35 a month on a three-year contract.

That’s a paltry $1.15 a day for 200 talk minutes and 500MB of data, with an additional option of doubling those minutes, having unlimited texting, unlimited calls and texts with five preselected numbers (your Unlimited Five), or free nights starting at 5 PM. A good deal, no? Oh, and the Palm Pre is free on Bell. Still.

Source: Bell.ca; Via: RedFlagDeals.com; Thanks to Rob for the tip!

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It really wasn’t all that long ago (i.e. yesterday) that we were talking about the possibility of Verizon offering prepaid plans for the Pre Plus, Pixi Plus, and other smartphones. Instead of spinning off a new sub-brand (ala Sprint and Boost Mobile), Verizon’s leveraging their own brand name and phones to offer prepaid contract-free wares, and now they’re adding smartphones to the mix.

The list of phones is by no means exhaustive, but it is comprehensive. In addition to Verizon’s webOS offerings, customers can also pick up their entire Android line-up and a whole slew of BlackBerry smartphones and several multimedia feature phones. All of these phones are eligible for a $30-a-month unlimited data pack (multimedia phones can opt for a $10 for 25MB (really) data pack) to be added onto one of Verizon’s already-existing pre-paid options.

If you’re mostly using your phone for web access and run with limited calls and texts, then this might be the option for you, as Verizon’s prepaid voice plans work on a day-by-day system where if you don’t use the service for a day, your pre-paid allotment isn’t charged for that day. In fact, if your peeps are on Verizon you could get away with paying $40 a month for unlimited Verizon-to-Verizon calls and texts ($10) and unlimited data ($30). Not a bad call, eh?

Source: Verizon; Via: PhoneScoop

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Memristors, it’s okay if you haven’t heard of them before now. But if HP and new partner Hynix have their way, memristors will be in everything electronic you own within five years. The partnership (Hynix is a semiconductor company) aims to mass produce and popularize memristors, a new type of solid state memory that promises to be faster by at least ten times and significantly more resilient to write/rewrite than the flash memory chips that handle storage needs for so many of our devices (including all Palm phones).

Memristors aren’t just faster and longer-lasting. According to HP they’re also more power efficient, to the tune of drawing one tenth the power. To make things even more fun, they’ll be able to work with the same chipsets, pin connections, and protocols as current day memory chips, so manufacturers wouldn’t have to make serious changes to their build process or coding to be compatible with the new chips.

So you might be thinking to yourself, “Great, another flexible display product we won’t see for ten years.” HP and Hynix want to put you into your place, and aim to have memristors in mass distribution by 2013 (that’s three years from now, if you’re keeping track). Additionally, they hope to leverage HP and Hynix’s scale to produce the memristor chips at a cost that is competitive with flash chips. Of course, there’s no telling how development is going to go in the coming years, and there’s also no saying how supply and demand are going to affect flash prices over that same time. Either way, we’re actually more excited about memristors than we are about flexible displays or webOS printers.

Source: Engadget

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