www.webOShelp.net

The last we heard from New York Times' columnist David Pogue he was at CES 2009, and left the event billing the Pre as the "smash hit of C.E.S." Recently he had a chance to revisit Palm's new webOS handset, and in his review, he concluded that the Pre's perks outweigh its weak spots.

"The star of this summer blockbuster is Palm. The Pre...is an elegant, joyous, multitouch smartphone that seems intended to be ‘‘iPhone, remixed.’’

He goes on to state that this is the first real challenge to the iPhone in a long time, and it stands out among "so many awful iPhone killers". Part of this is due to an experienced team, including ex-Apple employees who really got the design right. Below is a summary of what he came away with:

Hardware: Smaller than the iPhone, the Pre feels more comfortable as a phone. When turned off, the screen disappears into the smoky finish, leaving a "stunning, featureless talisman".

Price: The device itself matches the iPhone in price, but the service plans are where you really save. For example, Sprint's $70 plan costs $240/year less than AT&T's equivalent plan.

Typing: Thanks to the domed key shapes and sticky rubber surface, the keyboard is faster, less frustrating than typing on an iPhone. However, the Blackberry's keyboard is expansive in comparison.

Phone: Just pop the keyboard open and start typing to find contacts.. Audio quality is average, however the ringer is too quiet. "Expect to hear a lot of people complaining about that".

Software: webOS is "gorgeous, fluid and exciting". It shares some iPhone ideas (i.e. pinch to zoom), but has its own personality. Multitasking is excellent, such as playing internet radio while reading a PDF, or having two open e-mail messages. The gesture area is intuitive, allowing you to skip forward or backwards in videos with just a flick. He also liked the accordian feature of the calendar (seen here).

Battery: The Pre's "heartbreaker". On days he used the Pre often, it was dead by late afternoon. With occasional use, it was dead by dinnertime. Sprint blames it on poor coverage in his area, thus eating up more power to find a signal. At least you can carry a spare if you need it.

Applications: For music and photos, iTunes never knows the difference (referring to the Pre's iTunes syncing capability). The color-coded combined calendar "makes enormous sense", and while the App store is starting small, Palm intends to approve thousands in the coming weeks.

Weaknesses:

• Opening programs can be very slow, sometimes 8 or 9 seconds, with no progress bar or hourglass.
• The universal search won't look through your e-mail or calendars.
• There are a "few bugs" left to exterminate.
• The Pre is not quite as simple as the iPhone; all the extra features mean there's more to learn.

Overall, Pogue found that the numerous plusses of the Pre (beautiful hardware and software, compact size, keyboard, swappable battery, flash, multitasking, calendar consolidation) outweigh the negative (battery life, slow program opening, ringer volume, Sprint network). Also, the fact that Verizon Wireless will also carry the Pre within six months or so will be icing on the cake.

Check out the full review here!

Services enable access to low-level hardware hardware capabilities such as GPS and acceelerometer data, and higher-level data services such as Palm Synergy, cloud services, and any other web service APIs.

Services can be divided into the following groups:

• Application services, which include
  • Core application services
  • Palm Synergy Services
  • Viewers & Players
  • Third-party Applications
• System services, which include
  
  • Alarms
  • Connection Manager
  • Location Services (including GPS)
  • Power Management
  • System Properties
  • System Settings
  • System Sounds
• Cloud servivces, which includes
  • Mojo Messaging
  • [Palm implies additional services will be offered later]

Most Application services will launch an application in its own card and will not return automatically to the calling application. System and Cloud services typically return some data to the calling application through one or more calls to a callback function that is defined in the calling application.

All Mojo service calls are asynchronous, meaning that you must define a callback function to receive the data returned from the service request.

There are some constraints to using services in applications that are not in the foreground that Palm has not yet revealed (will come in Chapter 10). Briefly, in many cases the application should limit or stop service requests altogether when it is minimized or in the background.

In addition to an early Pre review by Boy Genius, a few more sites got their hands on Palm's new webOS handset. Sprint employees have also been busy playing with the phone, most recently posting pictures on Twitter. We should see more mini-reviews before the big day, as early phones continue to get passed around. Below is a summary of what each reviewer liked (and disliked) about the device:

GigaOM: In this "super quick" hands-on review, writer Om Malik got some one-on-one time with the Pre.

• Design: It has a squat design, nice screen, is easy to grip, and is round in all the right places. However, the slide out keyboard seems flimsy and cluttered.
• Browsing: Browsing was really fast, comparible with Apple and Google's, and trumps Nokia's browser. The phone is also good at integrating web-centric apps.
• webOS: "oozing with smarts" that include universal search, unified address book and calender, and dozens of other such features.
• Overall: With the Pre, Palm joins players Apple, RIM, Microsoft, Google, and Nokia. Strong community, browser, webOS, and hype should help Palm sell itself to companies looking for an acquisition, like Dell.

PedroTheGoat: In this review via the Precentral forums, one member got to play with the new webOS device for "about an hour". Here's what he came away with:

• Design and keyboard: The phone feels solid. Throw the "Fisher Price" stuff out the window. It feels "marvelous" compared to the Blackberry 8330. Solid slider, great ergonomic feel. Even with very large hands, the keyboard worked just fine. Thumbs hit the bottom of the screen on the top row, but overcome easily with adjustment. "After only about 1 minute I was able to type just as fast as on my Blackberry."
• Battery and Screen: Battery hardly moved after 45 minutes of heavy use (29% to 23%), but won't hold up as well as Blackberry or Touch Pro. Bright, crisp screen, FAST accelerometer.
• webOS and Browser: No crashes or slowdown, even with 10 cards open. Web pages loaded just like as on a desktop, faster than an iPhone.
• Other: Camera worked as it should, contacts screen looked "really beautiful", speaker was loud with minimal distortion.
  

Looks like Palm is already ramping up their celebrity exposure prior to the launch of the new webOS Pre. Scheduled for June 3, just a couple days before the Pre launch parties begin for Sprint Premier customers, this invite-only Hollywood benefit event for IAVA (Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America) will be hosted by Jason Alexander (George Costanza on Seinfeld) and will feature comedian Jerry Seinfeld himself, eWeek reports.

If these two will be good spokespersons for Palm's new handset however, remains to be seen. "We're not sure about Jason, but George Costanza seems more like a Motorola brick phone kind of guy to us", quips Business Insider.

The event will be at Raleigh Studios, Hollywood, and will feature a famers' market in the centre of the cocktail reception, with proceeds going to IAVA. To help increase star power, Palm will donate a Pre to a veteran for every celebrity in attendance.

Also, a new Palm Pre commercial will be debuted at the event (and to the public on Facebook), notes the Palm Blog. The bold new ad features an artistic interpretation of unique Pre features, such as Synergy and multitasking. Directed by acclaimed film and commercial director Tarsem, it will feature over 1000 martial arts performers orchestrated by Sun Yupeng, who also choreographed the impressive Beijing Olympics opening ceremonies.

Palm has already posted several behind-the-scenes video clips from the commercial, which you can watch here.

UPDATE: Check out a photo of the official invite to the Hollywood event below.

We covered some of the possibilities for Ajax in webOS applications in our first webOS and AJAX tutorial. Mitch Allen also covers this topic at the end of chapter 6 of Palm webOS. This article revisits Ajax usage in webOS from Palm's perspective.

First of all, Palm explains that there are multiple ways to implement AJAX in webOS applications:

• Using the Ajax class functions of the Prototype JavaScript framework.
  • Use this method for simple functions that encapsulate the lifecycle of an XMLHttpRequest object and handlers.
  • Works with simple XML, JSON or text-based web services.
• Using the native JavaScript XMLHttpRequest object directly
  • Use this method if your data protocols are SOAP based or anything other than the data types listed above.

Palm covers only the Prototype methods in this chapter. To learn about using the native JavaScript XMLHttpRequest object for AJAX transfers, see our other article AJAX and webOS.

Ajax.Request

The Ajax.Request object manages the complete Ajax lifecycle and allows you to define callbacks at various points to insert processing within the lifecycle where your application requires it. Ajax requests are asynchronous by default, but this behavior can be overridden if necessary. (Synchronous transfers with XMLHttpRequest (the native JavaScript JavaScript object) are currently disabled in webOS. Currently, "the UI and applications run as part of a common process", so Palm says it's "necessary to preserve UI responsiveness".)

Here's an example of Ajax.Request in use:

It's been a couple weeks since Chapter 7 was released, and now Chapter 8, System & Cloud Services, is out for budding webOS developers. Below is a summary excerpt of what to expect from the latest chapter:

"This chapter wrapped up the presentation of the Services available on Palm webOS. We covered the System Services in detail, showing examples using the Location services for retrieving the current position or tracking; checking connection status; setting a wakeup Alarm; getting the device ID and the System's date and time. While few of these are used in the News application, there were specific code samples for most of the service calls.

The chapter finished with an overview of the initial Cloud Service, Mojo Messaging an XMPP messaging service. This service is essential for background applications that require notifications from a web service or applications that want to share information and events across a community."

Way back before most people had heard of the Pre or webOS, we published an article that covered HTML 5 local database storage capabilities that would be included with webOS.

Palm has now published some more specific information about how HTML5 database storage will be implemented in webOS, and it's quite similar to what we had originally anticipated. HTML 5 is so new that the database API is still in draft spec and subject to change. It seems that Palm is intent on conforming to the HTML 5 Database API spec as closely as possible and recommends checking it for the latest database capabilities of webOS:

http://dev.w3.org/html5/webstorage/#databases

We previously covered the use of Mojo cookies and Depot for local data storage. The HTML 5 Database API should be used when your application's needs exceed the capabilities of these simpler functions.

The HTML 5 local storage spec includes support for two objects: Database and Storage. The latter evolved from Firefox's DOM Storage, and is not supported in webOS. webOS uses the Database object.

The openDatabase() method creates a new database or open an existing database, returning the database object opened or created.

With the launch of the Pre just a week away, new device features, webOS developer news, and other interesting tidbits continue to stream in. Here is a round-up from recent industry sources to keep you on top of the game:

PreDevCamp Update:

Despite the big shake-up last week in the upcoming webOS developer camp, things seem to finally be coming together for the big day. Below is a summary of the latest PreDevCamp happenings:

• Greg Stevenson, organizer for Orange County, wrote a letter stating that their camp was scheduled for June 13, but expressed concerns that logistics and timing of the SDK could pose an issue. The organizers have since responded, and have officially scheduled the camp for August 8. This will allow time to arrange a successful event and work around other conferences, such as the Apple WWDC.
• Palm has thrown full support behind the camp, with Pam Deziel, VP of Palm Developer Marketing, posting on the PDN blog apologizing for any misunderstanding, presenting an optimistic outlook and offering to field any suggestings and ideas for the future.
• Organizers whurley and gio have stepped down from the organizing team, and have expressed their good wishes.
• Lisa Brewster and Greg Stevenson have joined the primary team to lead the discussions, bring excitement, and take up some of the slack with their experience.

Head over to the official site to join a camp in your area and to read more about this great event. 

Early Palm Pre review:

Boy Genius managed to get their hands on a Pre, and put it through the paces. Overall, they concluded the Pre screen was top notch, second to the iPhone only by size. However, the slightly smaller screen made the unit closer in size to a Sidekick or BB Pearl, so it had a better feel in the hand and pocket than Apple's offering.

WebOS is also off to a great start, and will blossom when developers get their hands on the SDK. Battery life is decent, and it has a great browser and media player. However, they found that the keyboard was cramped (earlier reports compared it to the Centro) and the plastic shell made it feel "a little cheap". Head over the full review here. More news after the break.