Other than gobsmackingly-awesome new hardware, the general consensus is that the biggest thing webOS needs is more apps – a lot of them – and high quality apps to boot.  Now that Ben and Dion have left Palm / HP, you might worry that HP / Palm have taken their eye off that ball.

That doesn’t appear to be the case, however, as the group that’s primarily responsible for developer outreach, Palm’s Developer Relations Team, already has a new home and a new leader inside HP. A source familiar with the matter has let us know that the team is moving into HP’s "Attach Group," headed by Jason Zajac. Zajac, perhaps not incidentally, worked at Palm for three and a half years as the VP of Strategy and Business Development.

HP’s "Attach Group" group is in charge of the software and service partnerships for the Personal Systems Group inside HP (that group also contains the Palm Global Business Unit).  In other words, HP is looking to take the scale they already have set up for their other personal computer businesses and apply it towards bringing more developers into the webOS fold.

The source also confirmed the earlier rumor that Nokia’s Ari Jaaski has indeed been hired on by HP / Palm to head up webOS development.

(Image via jdlasica on Flickr)

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The seventh installment of Palm’s ongoing developer podcast series is now online, and the subject this time around is the browser-based Ares development tool.  Ben and Dion (who helped to create Bespin while at Mozilla, on which Ares is built) sit down with Matthew McNulty, Palm Director of Developer Tools, to discuss the history of the development tool from its inception to its public release and where Palm hopes to take it in the future.  The podcast continues (after a somewhat humorous editing gaffe midway through) with McNulty walking us through some of the features in Ares and giving suggestions on how you might include the Ares in your tool chain.  

Ares is a fascinating and exceedingly well executed concept, and many a developer (webOS or not) would be smart to catch a glimpse of where development environments will be headed in the future by catching the video after the break.

Source: Palm Developer Center

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If you live in Boulder and have some free time around 6:00 on July 19th, you’ll be able to catch a presentation from Palm’s Director of Developer Relations Dion Almaer at Mobile Monday Colorado where he’ll discuss Palm/HP, webOS and the future of mobile and the web.  It’s hard to say if there will be anything in that presentation that hasn’t already been talked about at length in Palm’s treasure trove of developer videos (although the presentation will come after the June 25 stockholder vote that will seal the fate of the merger so there may be some juicy tidbits), but it’s probably still worth seeing one of the more prominent voices in the Ajax community in person if you get the chance.  It looks like there are still plenty of seats available if you’re looking to RSVP for the event.

Source: Palm Developer Center Portal

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