The upcoming AT&T “Meet the Expert – webOS Q&A” webinar this Thursday, November 4th, just got more interesting for those considering attending.  AT&T has announced that they will be giving away a Palm Pre Plus to two lucky webinar attendees.  Free Palm Pre Plus phones, an overview of webOS 2.0, and an in depth Q&A with expert webOS developers Greg Hrebek and James Harris are helping shape this webinar into a very worthwhile event.

AT&T is clearly making strides to continue support of webOS development.  The intent of this November 4th webinar, as reported previously, is to continue the momentum gained among developers of other OS platforms from previous webinars and to capitalize on both the announcement of webOS 2.0 and upcoming new webOS devices.

Let us summarize by saying one word, "free."  Free is good, as in free to register with AT&T’s developer program, free to attend this webOS webinar and last but not least, two free Palm Pre Plus phones up for grabs for attendees. 

Source: AT&T Developer Program; Thanks @mahootzki

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AT&T will be hosting a “Meet the Expert – webOS Q&A” webinar for intermediate and experienced mobile application developers interested in developing for webOS.  The date and time for this event is Thursday, November 4, from 10-11 a.m. Pacific time. 

This latest event marks AT&T’s second webOS webinar.  The first, back in June, was touted as an “Introduction to Palm webOS” and featured Josh Marinacci from Palm’s Developer Relations team.  That webinar generated a great deal of interest in webOS among developers of other platforms, most notably, iOS and Android.

The November 4th webinar will be hosted by the “expert” webOS developers Greg Hrebek (Syntactix, YouView) and James Harris (FlashCards, Anonymous Texter, and now.. Syntactix too!).  This webinar will feature a brief overview of what’s new in webOS 2.0, while the main focus will be a developer to developer Q&A session.  AT&T hopes not only to capitalize on the announcement of webOS 2.0, but also to continue the momentum gained from the previous webOS webinar among developers of other OS platforms.

Additional information and online registration are available at the AT&T Developer Program website.  It should be noted that registering with the AT&T Developer Program is free of charge and will allow you to access information on developing for all AT&T devices. 

Source: AT&T Developer Program; Thanks @Syntactix

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More than anything else we find ourselves clamoring for new hardware from Palm. The Pre and Pre Plus are getting to be incredibly long in the tooth (the base hardware was revealed more than 18 months ago). We all knew that something new had to be coming, and at the developers webinar hosted by AT&T today, Palm let it slip that new stuff is on the way. Asked if there were plans to release new devices this year, Palm’s rep said:

“I’m not allowed to talk about future roadmaps, especially because we’re in the process of being acquired by HP, so I can’t say. But yes we have a road map. We are working on future devices. And [a] new version of the OS. So I think, you’re going to find the next year very exciting.”

Very exciting indeed. Watching what’s been coming out of Apple, HTC, and even Motoroa, we’re aching for new hardware in webOS land. Of course, “the next year” means that we have a approximate twelve-month timeframe in which to be excited, though our hope is that the excitement can be spread out over the entire period instead of one big pop. That said, he did say devices, not device, so hopefully the next year will bring more than one or two new launches.

One of those spread-out excitements we hope to see at some point is Flash. While all the delays have made us more than a bit jaded, the tip we got from sepherous isn’t helping. After asking about the continuing delays with getting Flash onto web-friendly webOS, the response boiled down to Palm simply not being able to say what the hold up is.

Update: for completeness’ sake, here’s Palm’s official statement on Flash:

‘Adobe and Palm continue to work together to bring Flash Player 10.1 to WebOS as quickly as possible. At present, the integration work between the Player and WebOS is undergoing extensive testing to ensure we deliver a high quality implementation.’

The full video of the webinar is due to be posted on AT&T’s developer site sometime in the mystical next week. Until then, we’ll just savor the transcripted bit and dream of a brighter future.

Thanks to Gerorne for the transcription!

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If you are a webOS developer (or would like to be), AT&T has an upcoming webinar for you. “An Introduction to Palm webOS,” featuring Josh Marinacci of Palm’s Developer Relations team, will be happening on Thursday, June 17, from 10-11 a.m. Pacific time:

From beginners to developers with intermediate knowledge of mobile development, this session will benefit anyone looking to build a new mobile application or those interested in easily porting existing mobile applications to a new platform for greater distribution.

In addition to learning about webOS development, attendees may also enter to win an AT&T smartphone (one would hope they’d choose the Pre Plus or Pixi Plus!).

More details and signup information are available on the AT&T Developer Program Web site. Kudos to AT&T for its support of webOS development, and we look forward to hearing feedback from those who participate in the webinar.

Thanks to TopTongueBarry in our forum for the tip!
 

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Got some questions about the Palm Pre or Sprint? Well, I hope your Thursday mid-day is free, because Sprint is going to be holding a live discussion on Facebook about the Palm Pre. What exactly they’ll be discussing (apart from the Pre) is unknown, but the talking is sure to be full of how great Sprint is and why they’re the perfect network for the Pre, and so on. Remember the disappointing “webinar” back in March? Who knows, maybe we’ll learn something new, but we wouldn’t count on it. So if you’re free on Thursday at 2 PM EST/11 AM PST, head on over to Facebook and check it out.

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You Tube, I Tube, Palm Tube, Pre Tube … you get the idea. A SprintPalmPre channel has been greated at YouTube and now hosts total of 17 videos from the invite-only webinar that we’ve reported live on a few days ago. Below is the Pre Demo video but make sure to check the channel out [...]

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During the first Sprint/Palm Pre Webinar, Palm’s Matt Crowley pointed out that the Pre was designed to look and feel like a river stone.  Trying to find news from the event was basically like trying to squeeze blood from that proverbial stone.  We’ve already touched on the hard new info we got — details on Sprint plans for the Palm Pre — but there is another issue that cropped up briefly.  That issue: just how many cards / apps can the Pre run simultaneously.  Here’s the scoop.

There will be a limit on how many cards the Pre can have open at the same time, but it’s not going to be a hard and fast number.  Instead it will be based on how much RAM is left on the device depending on how much RAM your apps are using.  Have a ton of heavy web pages and email and other RAM-intensive apps open?  The number will be lower.

There’s no hard and fast number, then, but about how many?  Well, we have conflicting information.  In my previous hands-on time with the Pre, I was told that somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 cards was certainly possible and not going to slow the device.  During the webinar, however, Crowley said something to the tune of "Anything more than 4 to 5 cards becomes unwieldy."  That sent a chill through the liveblog comments, but I don’t think I conveyed his intentions with that statement clearly.  It wasn’t that 4-5 was an upper limit, it was just that keeping track, arranging, and finding your open cards could become a bit of an ‘unwieldy’ chore if you have more than those open.  So it wasn’t so much a statement about limits as it was a statement about how Crowley prefers to use his Pre.

So there you have it — we don’t know the exact upper limit, but it’s definitely more than 5 and that limit to cards will vary depending on what you’re doing with the device.  Just what will happen when you approach or reach that limit is unclear — just another question to add to the stack of nitty gritty details we can’t wait to answer when the thing finally gets released.  Someday.

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If you were hoping for big big news from the Webinar, you will be disappointed — the event was all about Sprint and aimed at people who might have been new to the Pre and be part of an endangered species: looking to invest.

Anyhow, in an event designed to be all about Sprint, it makes sense that the question of plans would crop up.  As you might expect from a Sprint exec, a clear answer on SERO was nowhere to be found, but we do know a bit more about what the plans can be.  For inviduals:

• $99 Simply Everything
• $69 Unlimited data + 450 minutes – "Everything Data"
• $89 Unlimited Data + 900 minutes – "Everything Data"

The situation is pretty much analogous with the above for family and business plans — any plan you want, as long as it has unlimited data.

Sprint used the word "required" a lot when it came to having an unlimited data plan with the Pre — but it’s theoretically possible that you could try to argue your way out of that for a cheaper plan.  Well, we should say "cheaper" plan, because the Pre sucks down data willy nilly all the time with Synergy.  It’s even worse when you’re using the device actively because, well, it does such a great job rendering web pages and pulling in email.  So we’re saying that you’ll almost surely go over pretty much any data cap you may have no matter how diligent you are about WiFi hotspots.

In other words — it looks like there won’t be any hard and fast requirements, but if you are looking to get a plan not enumerated above, schedule in some extra time for haggling, the hard sell, and hire a personal assistant to keep track of your data usage.

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