The good folks at MakleSoft are celebrating the holiday season and the release of their new app Plancastic! by offering both of their webOS apps on sale for a limited time.

• Plancastic!  $0.99  (first 1,000 paid downloads)
• SecuStore  $4.49  (50% off the regular $8.99)

Plancastic! is a new Plancast client for webOS.  Plancast is a free web based service that allows you to share your upcoming calendar and events with friends and family. SecuStore is a highly polished, full featured password and data encryption app.  Both are on sale now in the official Palm App Catalog.

While you’re at it download the free On Sale app from the App Catalog for a full list of apps currently on sale.  Go ahead, get yourself and your webOS device some new and shiny coding this holiday season.  Your Pre 2, Pixi 2, Pre or Pixi (Plus or Minus… this is getting confusing) will thank you for it.

Years ago, Palm CEO Ed Colligan coined the term ‘mobile accomplisher,’ meant to describe the type of folks that used Palm’s PDAs and smartphones. Today, Colligan and the gang are gone and Palm is now owned by HP, and it’s time for a new advertising campaign: the mobile expressionists.

Palm is reaching out to webOS developers to feature their works in a new marketing campaign focusing on ‘mobile expressionism.’ What is that, you ask? As Palm explained in an email to developers, the mobile expressionist is the innovative and artistic developer, many of whom were just honored with our Best of 2010 Awards. Palm is looking to feature these developers in success stories and even short documentaries to be advertised on ‘developer and tech web sites.’

While Palm isn’t direct about their intent, the purpose behind this campaign is made clear by the targeted websites: getting more developers on board with webOS. Applications are the key to any modern smartphone platform, and the relatively low number of webOS apps (at least in comparison to the oodles available to iOS and Android users) was part of Palm’s downfall. By targeting the sites that mobile developers frequent, Palm is hoping to convince more of them to ‘join the movement.’ We can think of more than a few webOS developers that would be perfect for this kind of campaign.

Source: Palm, Via: webOSroundup

From a leak we feel dubious about to a leak that looks solid, Engadget has photos of webOS 2.0.1 running on a Sprint Pre. Exhibition mode is here but not fully working yet - just the clock works now, but more modes like photos, agenda view, and Facebook are in the works.

This version is "Barley" with another called "Barleywine" in the works, both codenames we've seen dropped before. Apparently the OTA update won't come until the whole shooting match is updated to 2.1, which lines up with the 2011 release rumors we've heard as well.

Looks like all the Sprint custom app are here, with one addition called "Sprint Music Plus" that we look forward to never using. Also, it looks like there is a new voice dialing feature! It looks like the feature will search for contacts as well as accept straight-up numbers for those of you who actually remember those anymore.

Source: Engadget

If you’re one of those folks that lives in a country where webOS handsets aren’t yet available, but you couldn’t help yourself and got one unlocked and are running it on your network of choice, then you might want to fire up the App Catalog and check out what may be waiting for you. We’ve received reports from Portugal and Sweden that the App Catalog, at least in its free apps version, is now available to those users, despite being in a country where Palm doesn’t officially provide services. And if we had to guess, it's probably becoming available elsewhere. Is this the first step in Palm’s path to eventually open up the App Catalog to everybody (ecommerce included)? We certainly hope so.

Thanks to Stefan and Gilberto for the tips!

Good news for college football fans who also happen to be Sprint subscribers: that ESPN deal Sprint secured back in March is going to net you some more exclusive content. Specifically, the end of this year and the start of next will be filled up with live college football bowl games, thirty of them in all, including all five BCS bowl games. All you’ve got to do is fire up Sprint TV and pick the ESPN Mobile TV channel to get watching the epic matchups. Seems there may be a few advantages to having an original Pre or Pixi on Sprint after all...

Source: Sprint; Via: Android Central

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the PreCentral.net Best of 2010 Awards. We received more than 27,000 votes for this year’s awards, and the wide array of winners reflects the variety and ingenuity of the webOS developer community, both official and homebrew. Dozens of apps to choose from, made by dozens of skilled developers, but in the end, there can be only one Best of 2010.

So, without further ado, the winners are... listed after the break. Yeah, such a tease.

read more

PreCentral reader Sean points us to this page on HP's Canada site claiming that the Palm Pre 2 is "Now available from Rogers." That the Pre 2 is hitting Rogers is no surprise at all given that there are already dummy units (with dummy pricing) on display in stores.

A quick perusal of Rogers' website doesn't yield up the ability to purchase the webOS 2.0 wonder; ditto for Palm's Canada site. Can we just announce and officially release this thing so we can get back to our other weird Pre 2 release question? To wit: figuring out why the Verizon Pre 2 was pulled from big V's internal systems and dummy units pulled from stores. We still think the Pre 2 will hit Verizon in the "coming months," but have to admit it's frustrating watching Palm, Rogers, and Verizon soft-pedal this launch.

Update: Kevin points us to the Pre 2 page on Rogers. It's $99.99 Canadian with a 3-year contract, $349.99 at 2 years, $399.99 on 1-year or month-to-month. Thanks Kevin!

Source: HP Canada, Palm Canada, & Rogers; Thanks Sean!

• Hands-on with the "Pure Google" Samsung Nexus S
• Gingerbread source code is released; How to flash Gingerbread to the Nexus One
• Android goes dual-core with the LG Optimus 2X

• RIM launches BlackBerry News Feeds beta
• Amazon MP3 for BlackBerry now available
• Press Release: Research In Motion reports third quarter results

• No other smartphone today can match the Nokia N8 hardware & functions
• Angry Birds Seasons now available on the Ovi store
• Nokia delays E7 and confirms 800 employee reduction

• webOS 2.1 coming in early 2011?
• Myte, Gyst, and Veer trademarks
• Palm bluetooth keyboard leaks

• Why Apple probably isn’t worried about the Nexus S
• Tons of new iPhone and iPad games, massive holidays sales, see what we're buying!
• Top 10 accessories for your iPhone, Top 10 accessories for your iPad

• HTC releases YouTube app for Windows Phone 7, supports HQ playback
• WP7 Connector for Mac gets a new beta, fixes many issues adds new features

Checking in is a rapidly growing area of social networking. GetGlue, a network that lets you check in to what you are doing rather than where you are, is considering a webOS app. Founder and CEO Alex Iskold told me there are no definite plans yet but if you want an app, send GetGlue a tweet to @GetGlue with the hashtag #webOS and let them know. In the meantime, you can also check in on Getglue's mobile site at http://getglue.com/mobile, but that is not nearly as much fun. Currently there are GetGlue apps for Android and iOS.

Unfamiliar with GetGlue? Read on for a quick look at this social service.

read more

HP's Senior Vice President and General Manager, Palm Global Business Unit (say that ten times fast), Jon Rubinstein, has joined Amazon's Board of directors, reports All Things D. Rubinstein received 5,000 shares of limited Amazon stock as well.

Good to see Palm making more connections in the industry. Let's hope that Palm is making one more connection with Amazon - getting their Kindle ebook app available for webOS devices - the Android Kindle app is looking mighty nice after the update.

Source: sec.gov; via: All Things D