Computer Outlook
"Palm Handheld Lifestyles"
March 21, 2007
SHOW NOTES
About Our Guest - Morgan Slain CEO, SplashData, Inc.
Founded in 2000, SplashData quickly emerged as a premier Palm OS developer with stand out titles such as FOO, FOO and FOO. One of the hallmarks of the company is the fact that they support both Windows and Mac PCs with desktop applications for most of their applications. In 2006, SplashData sold SplashBlog to SixApart, the company behind, MovableType, TypePad and Vox and at the same time, changed ownership of the company as well, which is when Morgan Slain took the reigns. More information on the changes can be found at this link.
Prior to joining SplashData, Morgan was General Manager of Mobile Digital Media (MDM), a spin off of Palm, Inc. focused on retail sales of reference and entertainment software for mobile devices. At MDM, Morgan licensed content from software leaders such as Microsoft, Electronic Arts and Atari, developed versions for mobile platforms, and then distributed these titles through leading consumer electronics and office chains as well as online distributors like Handango and Motricity. Prior to MDM, Morgan worked as a business development executive at Palm, Inc., where he managed strategic partnerships with companies like AOL, Yahoo, and NTT DoCoMo. Before Palm, Morgan spent eight years at The Walt Disney Company in a series of roles of increasing responsibility. Morgan’s last position at Disney was Vice President of New Media and Business Development. Morgan holds both an MA degree and BA degree with Honors from Stanford University.
You can find SplashData on the web at http://www.splashdata.com
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Palm OS / Access News
Jeff Hawkins Discusses his Treo Usage Habits
Interview with HandEra
- Good background on an early Palm OS PDA
Palm, Inc. News
Hawkins Hints at New Product Announcement in May
- "We're going to be announcing something... but I won’t tell you what it is... we will be launching this year, not in the distant future. I'll give you a much bigger hint: I'm going to be speaking at Walt Mossberg’s D Conference in May. It’s a high-end industry conference. Anyway, I'm going to be giving a talk there, and that would be something for the Palm fans to keep a close watch on."
Treo 755p Shows Up on Sprint Schedule
- The 755p will indeed be the first CDMA Treo with an internal antenna. EVDO, instant messaging, native voice dialing and a vague feature referred to as "mobile voice control" are also listed among the standard features.
- Presumably the unit will share a similar form-factor as the recently released Treo 680 & 750.
- The date targeted for launch is May 14th 2007 and, as previously rumored, burgundy and blue housing colors will be available.
Palm Brings in a New Software Engineer
AT&T Launches Red Treo 680
Palm Responds to 700p ROM Update Concerns
- Palm was taken to task regarding "quirks" on the web.
- Steve Sinclair, Palm's Senior Product Manager for Palm OS Wireless Products, has responded PDF
Palm Offers Exchange Update for the Treo 650
- Treo 650 users wishing to update their device can purchase the direct push update for $2.99 from Palm.
- In order to make use of the update you have to have a copy of VersaMail v3.5, while most standard 650's ship with v3.1.
- VersaMail v3.5 you can also purchase it separately from Palm for $12.98.
Other Devices
Nothing new to report
Software News
Universe Web Browser Beta Released
- A Tabbed interface (supporting up to 3 tabs)
- Advanced 5-Way scrolling (based off of the Nokia S60 Browser)
- Integrated RSS reader
- Private browsing (mask the history, cache and cookies)
- Support for JPEG, GIF, BMP and PNG (with alpha channels) images
- Support for HTML/XHTML/WML/RSS 1.0/2.0
- Support for WAP 1.0/2.0
- Support for Hires and Hires+ screen sizes
SplashData Releases SplashNotes
- a note-taking and planning tool aimed at helping people outline and organize everything from work projects, meeting agendas and speeches to class notes and event plans.