Missed PreDevCamp Baltimore? Duane (duanedude1 in our forums) didn’t, and he helpfully brought his recording equipment (and sweet news reporter skills) to the even to talk to the organizers, developers, and presenters at the event. Hit up the file below to hear Duane interview all of the above, including Palm’s own Ben Combee, who confirms that webOS 1.4.5 is coming very soon and will bring full-screen PDK support to the Palm Pixi.

(Speaking of, an anonymous tipster has let us know that 1.4.5 has been finalized and went out to carriers for testing and approval last week)

Anyhow, big big ups to Alice Carback for organizing the event, to the developers and presenters in attendance, and to Palm for supporting the whole shootin’ match. We’ll append the audio to our next PalmCast podcast.

Download it directly with this link

 Thanks to duanedude1, who currently rocks a Verizon Palm Pre Plus, although he admits that he almost got a Droid instead.  While the green robot’s hardware and apps are tempting, he loves the way WebOS works, especially when it comes to multitasking.

Satisfied that he made the right choice, his history with Palm includes a Centro, a Treo 650, and a handful of Palm PDA’s before that.  He is hopeful that the HP deal will result in a great future for WebOS, one that includes even better smartphones, a robust relationship with developers, and continued awesomeness from the homebrew community.

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So June 6th is the Pre’s 1-year birthday and #webOSAppDay, but tomorrow holds another notable event, preDevCamp Baltimore. We’re betting that @ACarback won’t mind a late registrant or two – register at http://bit.ly/webosBaltimore.

The event will focus on developing apps for webOS and feature Frank Zammetti and Palm’s own Ben Combee giving talks on developing regular and PDK apps, respectively. We’re also told there will be cake (no lie) and door prizes. If you’re near the Baltimore area tomorrow, be sure to register!

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If you’re a developer in the Baltimore and Washington DC area, then you’ll be delighted to know that the second annual preDevCamp in your area is scheduled for June 5th.  It’s not looking like the event will be as widespread in 2010 as it was last year, with the Baltimore folks so far being the only ones to put one together, but this time around developers will be armed with a vastly more mature SDK, a PDK, and an much improved toolkit (Project Ares, anyone?).  They’ve officially opened up registration, and the organizer of the event can be reached by way of Twitter @webos_baltimore.

[via Palm's Developer Center Blog]

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Ok, it finally time for the other shoe to drop. Your humble preDevCamp organizers have reviewed all the applications submitted, reached a consensus, and are ready to announce the winners of the preDevCamp application contest. The winning applications are:

Category
Application

Communications
gDial Pro

Games
PreJeweled

Multimedia
PrePod

Productivity
Quick Contacts

Reference
Scientific RPN Calculator

You may notice that one of the original categories, System Utilities, is missing. [...]

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You’ve been patient with us and we’re grateful for that.
You’ll need to be a little more patient; the judging of the preDevCamp Homebrew apps is taking a little longer than anticipated, but we’re hoping to be able to announce the winners within the next 7 days.
We’ll keep you posted!

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What a great day we had!
Apps were built, Pres were rooted, Pizza was eaten…
preDevCamp was a big event, but we want to keep things rolling. Many of the local events have spawned local Pre Coder Groups and we see many events coming down the line.
The three of us are looking for volunteers to help us [...]

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As of this writing, our Homebrew Apps Gallery has 117 apps for your downloading pleasure.  What’s new?  Plenty.

We have several apps that look to fix up the Pre’s core PIM functionality. There’s Quick Event, which uses the Pre’s "Just start typing" philosophy to let you enter in calendar information like "Dinner with Jane 8pm to 10 pm Thursday at Vescio’s" and turn that into a calendar entry automatically (bonus: Linux gurus can patch Universal Search do to the same!). We have Quick Contacts and Quick Dialer, two honest-to-god speed dial applications, too.  Or how about three Google Voice apps that have been seeing near-weekly updates?

There’s plenty more, but we’re going to take a moment to once again point out that we have a bunch of app that were created or significantly updated at preDevCamp – find them all here. preDevCamp developers have until Midnight on Saturday to submit their apps to the gallery for voting both in for the category prizes (Pre phones!) or the User’s Choice award (another Pre Phone!). More details on the contest here.  Developers: Contact us to get in the gallery.  Homebrew lovers, be sure to vote on your favorite preDevCamp Apps!

read more

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The PalmCast keeps on ….Truckin. This week the crew discusses the aftermath of preDevCamp, what’s new in Homebrew apps, and the rest of the week’s news. Congratulations to Live Listener Beverly, who won the Incipio Horizontal Carrying Case we gave away.

Have a question for the PalmCast? Email us: podcast@precentral.net . You can call call in to 877-624-9162 x222 to leave us a voicemail too.

• Download it directly with this link
• Subscribe via iTunes
• Subscribe directly to the Podcast feed with your favorite Podcatcher here
• Listen to it here with the player above

Thanks to everybody for writing and calling in!

read more

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Our friend Marco went out to the preDevCamp at Palm HQ in Sunnyvale, California, and lucky us, he took a video camera and blogged it up (mad props to you, mate!). Aside from some delicious-looking pizza, we also got a look at a few applications that were developed/refined during the programming sessions.

First up is an app that pulls dream summaries posted online down to the device, refreshing with the accelerometer shake API. Next was a video poker app, followed by Word Ace, by Self-Aware Games, described as a combination of Texas Hold’em and Scrabble. Word Ace was demonstrated working on multiple platforms and playing together in peace and harmony on two Pres and an iPhone. Once released, Word Ace looks to be a very in-depth application, with profile support, awards, and more. Another attendee coded up a simple little accelerometer app that bounces a tiny Palm logo around the screen as you tilt the phone. The developer behind Twee was also in attendance and demonstrated the slick CSS3 animations used in his application.

Lastly there’s Marco, who showed off his amazingly slick scientific calculator, inspired by those classic 1980’s scientific calculators. The app supports haptic feedback (it vibrates with each virtual button press) and includes a very useful in-calculator unit converter. The latest version of Marco’s Scientific RPN Calculator app is available in the PreCentral.net Homebrew Apps center and will land in the App Catalog as soon as Palm opens it up.

Tony Peric of PreThinking was also at the preDevCamp at Palm HQ and provided a liveblog of the event. Interesting notes include an application development checklist and Palm’s preferred UI development tool (Adobe Fireworks). Palm even gave away a copy of Adobe CS4 to one lucky attendee.

Oh, and by the way – the preDevCamp Developer Challenge is on!  They’ve published the official rules and we’re publishing the apps they’re creating — all right here at this special homebrew apps page.  Be sure to rate the apps you see there – the top app will garner a Palm Pre for its developer.  Meanwhile, developers from preDevCamp have until this Saturday, August 15th, midnight Pacific time to submit their apps – be sure to contact us to learn how to submit!

Were you at preDevCamp? Sound off in the comments a let us know how it went where you were!

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So I want to talk more about the developer challenge we announced on August 8th.  The whole goal of preDevCamp is to get people writing apps and learning from each other and get people excited about the possibilities the pre can offer.  So with precentral’s help, we’ve created a competition; the winner will receive a [...]

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