Geek News and Musings

Palm Reveals New ‘Post’ Smartphone, Still Working On Pre

In an unprecedented move, Palm has revealed its heretofore ultra-secret WebOS-based smartphone - the Palm Post - at CTIA 2009.

While the mobile world has been patiently waiting for the Pre since it was first teased back in January, Palm has apparently been hard at work on the (clandestine) Post as well.

According to Palm’s press release:

We’ve put an enormous amount of time, energy, and resources into the development and production of our new flagship device - the Palm Post. Rather than rush our highly anticipated Palm Pre to the market, we thought it was in the best interest of both our customers and our company to perform extended R&D on our new hardware and software.

Not only does this ensure that consumers will receive the highest quality mobile device possible, but by moving our top engineers to a new facility - The Orchid - we’ve been able to do what no other company has been able to achieve until now…we’ve preemptively included all of the features and technologies that our customers (and Sprint) will want come 2011 in the Post! In other words, thanks to the DHARMA Intiative, we no longer have to wait for months of testing and feedback, but instead can rely on the needs and desires consumers will develop in the not to distant future. This enables us to provide the best, most comprehensive smartphones available anywhere on planet Earth.

The Post’s most spectacular features include:

• 3.5G / 4G / 5G octo-band radios
• WiFi / WiMax connectivity
• 21 MP digital camera with 1080p video recording
• 4.1″ AMOLED / E-ink “reader” dual-mode display
• Bluetooth 4.0
• Wireless USB charging/syncing
• 128GB flash memory
• Hydrogen-cell battery: 2 weeks talk-time / 2 months standby
• HD pico projector w/ 5.1 channel surround
• T10 predictive thought text auto-correction

That’s right folks. You heard it here first. Palm, by utilizing nontraditional means, has developed and will soon release a mobile device - the Post - with features that you didn’t and couldn’t even know that you wanted! The Post is expected to be available online and in Sprint brick-and-mortar stores by April 10 for the fantastically low price of $49.99 w/2yr contract.

In other related news, Palm still plans to release its pending Pre smartphone by April 30 in an effort to beat out iPhone 3.0 / other new Android devices to the market…if anyone still cares in light of this incredible announcement.

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Hands-on with the latest build of the Android “Cupcake” firmware at CTIA 2009

We’re in good ol’ Sin City, fresh out of a pre-CTIA 2009 meeting with HTC. While most of the hardware they brought to the party were things we’d seen at Mobile World Congress last month, they had one thing on the software end that was just out of the oven: the latest build of the Android “Cupcake” release.

The firmware build number we were playing with was 1.5/CRA79. We didn’t spot any major new features in this build - but we did see a good number of things we’d heard about previously get their first implementations. Oddly, we also noticed at least one thing missing since last time.

Orientation animation:

While the currently publicly available Android build already supports orientation detection and switching, it’s a bit of a hack to get it to work. When we saw a Cupcake build at MWC, it had it enabled by default - but it was a bit slow. They’ve optimized it a good amount since, but have added an orientation switch animation to make any delays less obvious. It now zooms out and then visibly “Wobbles” - see demonstration in the video above.

Emoticon key:

When we did our initial run through of the Cupcake build back in January, we noticed that certain text emoticons suddenly had graphical replacements. Which ones had replacements, however, was impossible to determine. In this latest build, emoticons have a key of their own on the virtual keyboard. Press it briefly, and it inputs a standard smiley. Hold it, and it brings up the entire array. It replaces the enter/carriage return key.

Slide-out drawer background:

This change seems a bit odd to us. On the G1 and all previous Android builds, the slide out drawer (where applications are kept) had a semi-translucent grey background. In this build of Cupcake, this has been changed to an opaque checkered background. It sort of looks like carbon fiber.

“Add to Home Screen” changes:

“Add to Home Screen” is a pop-up window that appears when you hold your finger on the desktop. It’s essentially the same as it was on the G1, with a few trivial changes: All labels now have graphical icons, and the “Application” shortcut list has been placed within “Shortcuts” rather than being immediately available from the initial list.

As we mentioned, one thing is missing from builds prior; at MWC, we noticed that YouTube was getting some love from Google with a Live Shortcut of its own. This is now gone.

On-screen Keyboard Auto-correct/Suggestions:

We knew it was coming, but it was curiously absent in the build we played with last. When Android thinks you may have made a mistake, it highlights the word it thinks you meant in orange above the input box - but unlike the iPhone, it also offers other not-as-common options as alternative suggestions. There are two Auto-correct options: Basic and Advanced. We’re not sure what the difference is.

Other notes:

• This is the first time we noticed any implementation of the input method framework. You can now select custom keyboards, though the default Android keyboard was the only one installed on this handset.
• You can add words to the Auto-correction dictionary by holding them, or by manually inputting them in settings.

[PSGallery=1kbwasftvn]

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Remains of the Day: Fixing Facebook Edition [For What It's Worth]

Fix Facebook’s new, much-maligned interface, wave goodbye to Encarta, and enjoy Android tethering while you can in our daily leftovers.

• Three ways to hide the Facebook sidebar with userscripts
  Download Squad rounds up three Greasemonkey scripts that correct the wrongs Facebook users feel the new interface has inflicted. [Download Squad]
• Microsoft to kill Encarta later this year
  Remember the last time you reached for a CD-ROM to look something up? Raise your glass to Microsoft Encarta, which will be officially discontinued later this year. [Ars Technica]
• American to add Wi-Fi service to domestic flights
  American Airlines follows suit with other hip airlines, offering $10-$13 Wi-Fi access on domestic flights. [USA Today]
• Android tethering apps pulled from Market
  Looks like we may have to adjust our iPhone 3.0 vs. Android feature table. [Android Community]
• My painfully poky week with IE 8
  A week with IE8, surprisingly, is not a good time for this tech writer. [CNET]
• Pirate Bay Torrents Spread Via Facebook
  The Pirate Bay integrates with Facebook for some serious torrent sharing. [TorrentFreak]

Remains of the Day: Gmail’s Mysterious Fifth Birthday Surprise Edition [For What It's Worth]

Gmail turns five next Wednesday, and they’re planning a birthday surprise for us.

• Google Plans Fifth Birthday Present for Gmail Users
  What mysterious birthday present awaits us? Apparently it has nothing to do with dropping the beta tag. [PC World]
• InstallerApp For Mac Installs Jailbreak Apps Without Jailbreaking Your iPhone
  $7 application aims to put jailbreak apps on your iPhone or iPod touch without requiring you to do any jailbreaking. [Gizmodo]
• Android to Get Flash
  Add one more feature to the Android-only category in the iPhone 3.0 vs. Android Showdown. [OS News]
• iGoogle’s got game… themes!
  Google shows off how “cool” they are with the “kids,” adding gaming themes to iGoogle homepages. [Official Google Blog]
• For Whom the .Tel Tolls
  .Tel operators are trying to make it into a “phone book for the internet.” We can’t help but think domains are pretty meaningless to most people at this point, but good luck! [NYT]

Remains of the Day: Gmail’s Mysterious Fifth Birthday Surprise Edition [For What It's Worth]

Gmail turns five next Wednesday, and they’re planning a birthday surprise for us.

• Google Plans Fifth Birthday Present for Gmail Users
  What mysterious birthday present awaits us? Apparently it has nothing to do with dropping the beta tag. [PC World]
• InstallerApp For Mac Installs Jailbreak Apps Without Jailbreaking Your iPhone
  $7 application aims to put jailbreak apps on your iPhone or iPod touch without requiring you to do any jailbreaking. [Gizmodo]
• Android to Get Flash
  Add one more feature to the Android-only category in the iPhone 3.0 vs. Android Showdown. [OS News]
• iGoogle’s got game… themes!
  Google shows off how “cool” they are with the “kids,” adding gaming themes to iGoogle homepages. [Official Google Blog]
• For Whom the .Tel Tolls
  .Tel operators are trying to make it into a “phone book for the internet.” We can’t help but think domains are pretty meaningless to most people at this point, but good luck! [NYT]

Remains of the Day: Gmail’s Mysterious Fifth Birthday Surprise Edition [For What It's Worth]

Gmail turns five next Wednesday, and they’re planning a birthday surprise for us.

• Google Plans Fifth Birthday Present for Gmail Users
  What mysterious birthday present awaits us? Apparently it has nothing to do with dropping the beta tag. [PC World]
• InstallerApp For Mac Installs Jailbreak Apps Without Jailbreaking Your iPhone
  $7 application aims to put jailbreak apps on your iPhone or iPod touch without requiring you to do any jailbreaking. [Gizmodo]
• Android to Get Flash
  Add one more feature to the Android-only category in the iPhone 3.0 vs. Android Showdown. [OS News]
• iGoogle’s got game… themes!
  Google shows off how “cool” they are with the “kids,” adding gaming themes to iGoogle homepages. [Official Google Blog]
• For Whom the .Tel Tolls
  .Tel operators are trying to make it into a “phone book for the internet.” We can’t help but think domains are pretty meaningless to most people at this point, but good luck! [NYT]

Twitter Restores UK SMS Functionality For Vodafone Users; Mysterious Ad Box Gets A Refresh

Twitter has just announced that it has restored full SMS functionality to customers in the UK who are using Vodafone. While any Twitter user can submit updates via text message, for months only users in North America have been able to receive them (a key part of the service if you don’t have a smart phone). Other countries used to have this functionality, but Twitter began to cut them off after reporting that a single heavy UK user could cost up to $1000 in fees per year.

From Twitter’s blog post:

Vodafone UK has signed an agreement with Twitter allowing customers to send and receive SMS updates at no additional cost. Sending tweets from your mobile will be part of your normal text messaging bundle with Vodafone—there will be no extra fees. In fact, for the first few weeks, sending tweets won’t even effect your bundle. Receiving tweets via SMS on your mobile is totally free. Vodafone loves Twitter!

For more on the new UK deal, check out our post on TechCrunch Europe.

Also worth noting is the latest chapter in the story of Twitter’s mysterious sidebar box that may-or-may-not be an ad, some day. Two weeks ago Twitter introduced an unobtrusive box in the ride sidebar of user profiles, where it began to promote some of its own services (including Twitter Search). Three days ago, it began showing ads for third party services. One of these was for ExecTweets, a recently-launched aggregator of Tweets from high-ranking business exectuives that was built in part by Federated Media. Federated’s John Battelle wrote that the ad network was paying Twitter, but it was unclear if this was directly related to the promo appearing on Twitter’s homepage. And the other two apps being promoted - an iPhone client called Tweetie and a web app called Twittervision - weren’t paying a cent.

Today Twitter appears to have swapped these promos out for new ones, which include Twidroid (a Twitter app for Android), twistori (a social experiment), and march tweetness (a Twitter service that revolves around the NCAA tournament).

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Google Mobile for Blackberry Adds Search by Voice, My Location [Downloads]

Jealous of the very cool search-by-voice feature available to Google Mobile users on both the iPhone and Android? Well, if you’re a BlackBerry user, today you get to join in the fun.

Not only does the new Google Mobile for BlackBerry feature search-by-voice, but it also adds a My Location feature to search so that you can do local searches for nearby businesses. BlackBerry users, rejoice!

You can grab the latest version from your phone by pointing your mobile browser to http://m.google.com/. Google Mobile is a free download.