Apple has been sending all kinds of love Palm’s way these days, from its recently revealed intention to purchase (and even fund) the the venerable handset maker to CEO Steve Job’s admission that the company makes "good" software.  The latest  has Apple taking a page from Palm’s Touchstone technology with a patent application titled  "Methods and Apparatuses for Docking a Portable Electronic Device That Has a Planar Like Configuration and That Operates in Multiple Orientations",  that would cover the inductive charging of a device such as an iPhone or an iPad.  It’s looking like Palm users won’t be the only ones enjoying an elegant inductive charging option in the near future.

Via: UberGizmo; Source: AppleInsider

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Fortune has put together another list of names they want to recognize for excellence, and this time it was the smartest people in the technology industry. Executive Vice President of HP’s Personal Systems Group, and Palm chief Jon Rubinstein’s immediate supervisor, Todd Bradley grabbed the title of Smartest Executive on Fortune’s list (smartest exec is not to be confused with smartest CEO, a title unsurprisingly claimed by Apple chief Steve Jobs).

Bradley is a familiar name to Palm fans, as he was CEO of PalmOne (the hardware arm of Palm) from 2001 to 2005 during the transition to the smartphone, at which point he was recruited by Hewlett Packard CEO Mark Hurd to head up the Personal Systems Group of HP. Since taking charge of the Personal Systems Group, Bradley has taken the desktops, laptops, and mobile devices arm of HP to new heights. They’ve toppled Dell as the world’s largest and jumped to $42 billion in annual revenue with a 300% increase in profit.

Reading the tea leaves, Bradley sees the future of HP and the Personal Systems Group in the mobile ecosystem. As such, it’s ironic and humorous that as the head of the Personal Systems Group, Bradley will once again be in charge of newly-acquired subsidiary Palm, Inc.

Bradley finds himself on the list with such tech luminaries as the aforementioned Steve Jobs, Google founders Sergei Brin and Larry Page, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, Apple designed Jonathan Ive, analyst Mike Arrington, and film-maker James Cameron (for his pioneering 3D cinema work).

Source: Fortune, Via: webOSroundup

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Multitasking. Unified email inboxes. Multiple Exchange accounts. Welcome to the future, our iPhone-toting friends. Well, eventually you’ll get there. Apple last week provided a preview of iPhone OS 4.0, and it looked vaguely familiar to those of us that have been using webOS. There are two truly big features that will be part of iPhone OS 4.0, with multitasking being the one that most users will care about. The implementation, however, is less than impressive.

Here’s the thing, as Rene Ritchie over at TiPb has pointed out before, webOS’ cards metaphor for multitasking seems to be an extension of what Apple did for managing multiple open pages in mobile Safari, with a dash of gestures thrown in for good measure. If you were to ask me, I’d say that’s more than likely what Steve Jobs and Co. would have preferred to do (and probably were preparing to do) for multitasking on the iPhone. But as important as multitasking is for the future of the iPhone platform, their perception as a leading innovator is also important, so just copying what Palm has done would be a PR disaster.

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Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ short email responses to customer inquiries have both revealed both new information and a glimpse into the mindset of the head of one of the world’s most influential technology companies. But what of Jon Rubinstein, former Apple exec and current CEO of underdog Palm? Yeah, he’ll reply to random unsolicited email too, with a plethora of exclamation points to boot. But useful insights into Palm products or strategy? Nope, that’s not coming from Jon. As with his carefully calculated replies during financial conference calls, Rubinstein’s also coy in revealing anything new or exciting from his perch in Sunnyvale. Email!!!

[via: Gizmodo]

UPDATE: For all who are doubting Gizmodo’s authenticity, we present a second email from Jon Rubinstein, this time to PreCentral reader SP. This email too, was about the above-emailed ad, and Rubinstein apparently thought it worth pointing out Palm’s ad which clearly inspired the fan-made one (- SP lets us know he was referring to a different ad.) And he was sure to include plenty of exclamation points and a bit of non-capitalization. Though, for all we know, maybe he does go by "jon." Email after the break!!!

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The HTML5 specification came another step closer to becoming a Web standard today, as the first editors draft of the technology was released to the World Wide Web Consortium. HTML5 is the technology that makes up a significant portion of webOS, the new and improved Google Voice mobile web portal, YouTube and a few other notable Web services. This is great news for the Web as a whole and for the webOS platform in particular, but what are the implications for Adobe’s Flash technology?

Despite Steve Job’s recent comments about Adobe and the fact that the iPhone and iPad won’t support Flash, the proprietary Web technology won’t be going away anytime soon. As Dion Almaer (the guy Palm hired last September along with fellow Mozilla luminary Ben Galbraith to head up developer relations) noted in a post to his personal blog, Flash has good penetration and Adobe can rapidly evolve the technology. There’s no question that HTML5 is powerful and will one day be as ubiquitous as Flash is today, but it’s still a young technology, and short-term expectations need to be tempered with some perspective:

[…] And, this brings me to the Adobe half of the Steve Jobs equation. Flash isn’t dead. HTML5 is slowly going to put a dent into it if we ever get some of the use cases just right (e.g. video), but Adobe has a good penetration and can move at the speed of a dictatorship. The iPhone/iPad combo not shipping Flash will have an interesting dynamic here too, hopefully helping the HTML5 video cause. There is still much more work to be done. Flash and browser plugins have had a long history at forging new paths, and the Web can come in behind them and standardize. May that continue. […]

It also helps to keep in mind that HTML5 is still some ways away from becoming completely standardized. The W3C website spells out the process of a specification from start to finish, and the HTML Working Groups’ own website anticipates a candidate recommendation later this year, and a final recommendation sometime in 2012.

So, while HTML5 continues to evolve and companies such as Palm, Apple, and Google continue to go back and standardize on it, Palm is also going to give this Flash thing a go.

Meanwhile, we’re excited for the features possible with HTML5. Developers: anything in this spec making you giddy? 

Thanks to flea for the tip!

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Everybody and their mother thought that a Verizon iPhone announcement was a sure thing for Wednesday’s Jobsnote. While the magical and revolutionary (Steve Jobs’ words, not ours) iPad was unveiled to an overhyped public, the iPhone for Big Red was nowhere to be seen, not even as one of Jobs’ famous “Oh, one more thing” moments.

Judging by the depressed price of Palm’s stock that morning, investors seemed to feel the same way, pushing Palm’s stock down nearly 3% by the time Jobs took the stage. But by the time the iPad presentation was wrapping up, investors had come to see that Apple’s relationship with AT&T was still strong. The iPad was going to be available with pre-paid data service from AT&T, and using 3G frequencies not available on T-Mobile, the only other GSM carrier in the United States. That alone was enough to trigger a rally in shares of PALM. The stock gained 11% from the day’s low to peak at $11.98 a share, though it eventually settled down at $11.70 by the close of the market. That was a 4.7% gain from the open and a rally of close to 8% from the low of $10.75. For what its worth, Apple’s stock was up a hair under 1% for the day, but it only trended into positive territory after pricing for the couldn’t-possibly-live-up-to-the-hype iPad was revealed.

With neither the iPad nor the iPhone coming to Verizon (or any other US carrier besides AT&T), Palm’s positioning on Verizon with the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus appears to be secure for now. That is, until the Nexus One arrives.

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So over the weekend, Engadget put on the very first The Engadget Show, and all things considered, it went quite well. Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein was the show’s first guest, sitting down for a one-on-one chat with Joshua Topolsky for a good thirty minutes. They discussed Rubinstein’s time at Apple, his prior relationship with Steve Jobs at NeXT, and how Rubinstein guided both the development of the iMac and iPod as part of his helping turn around Apple.

The discussion then turned to Rubinstein’s move to Palm and the similarities – and differences – with what he’s doing in Sunnyvale to what he did in Cupertino. Unlike the Apple turnaround, which was in a low-growth market (computers) against the monolithic Microsoft, Palm views the handheld market as ripe for expansion with the potential for four or five players to share leadership (clearly, Palm wishes to be one of them). When Rubinstein came to Palm, he did what he did at Apple: evaluate all the current products and narrow the company’s focus. In this case, he killed several projects in development (including the Foleo), leaving Palm to focus on the Centro, Treo Pro, and webOS.

There’s much much more in the interview, including plenty of laughs, a Pixi demo (nothing new here, though), how Palm kept the Pre secret, why Palm made the Pixi the way it did (including the insinuation that the removal of WiFi was Sprint’s idea/request), what’s up with the whole Palm vs. Apple brouhaha, and more than a few wonderful out-of-context quotes from Rubinstein: “It’s nice to be the pretty girl at the dance.” (in reference to Verizon and AT&T publicly expressing interest in a webOS phone).

So head on over and give The Engadget Show premiere a download, and soak in the glory that is half an hour of Palm talk.

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While the Pixi isn’t likely to overshadow the buzz of Apple’s press event this afternoon, Palm is showing that it does indeed have the moxie (the audacity, if you will) to stand up to the big dogs. If you’ll think back just three months to the launch of the Pre, where Palm showed it had the balls to launch two days before the world knew Apple would unveil the new iPhone. Apple is expected today to show off their latest iPod line, while most eyes will be waiting to see if Steve Jobs and his patented Reality Distortion Field will be making an appearance, Palm’s going to be standing at the sidelines waving two Pixi phones over their head screaming “Look at me!” And the media will look, as they like nothing more than to compare to the iPhone.

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