AT&T running webinar for webOS developers on June 17th 24
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!
24 Comments
I'm wondering if I could be a developer...
must say. somewhat exciting :)
very cool...i might switch jobs I love creating. we may be on a upswing folks..YAY!
wow I guess that's one way to make up for lousy marketing when the Pre was released.
Now that's what I call carrier support!
Way to go AT&T....
I wonder how common something like this is among carriers.
I will give my AT&T store credit--they didn't force an iPhone on me. What I did find interesting is that (at least at my local store) they aren't telling people that come for an iPhone to look at a Pre; however, they are trying to convince Blackberry users (or anyone wanting a physical keyboard) that they ned a Pre instead of an RIM device.
Anyone else think that it's a good idea? I do. Your people coming in for iPhones don't care about Palm (or any other manufacturer).
Nice work, and they can probably target iDevs much more easily than Palm can.
AT&T doing this sends a message to IPhone developers that "Its ok to develop for the Palm OS devices", as AT&T is exclusive for Iphone. Add the $1 million dev contest & now we have some excitment. Anyone know how to post on AT&T/IPhone site about the Palm App contest? Great way to get the word out to the 10,000+ IPhone developers...
If someone mistakes Palm OS for webOS again...
I very much doubt it will make that much of an impact. iPhone 4 out in a week or two and more and more Android / HTC phones out. This sort of thing isn't being offered by other networks in other countries and Palm / HP won't make any impact in the US alone.
I imagine iPhone devs are busy getting their apps on the iPad and updating them to take advantage of the new features of iOS 4 (including the kinda-sorta-multitasking-ish feature).
Still, if it's as easy as Palm claims, I hope they consider webOS.
"kinda-sorta-multitasking-ish feature" ... :) ... iOS is doing this the right way, IMO ... Multi-tasking, much faster processor, beautiful display, new features and 40% longer battery life.
Too each their own. Personally, I believe multitasking should be at the OS level, not something a developer must go back and "add" to an application. The iPhone can do it at the OS level (I've seen it done on a jail-broken iPhone) but whatever.
It's interesting that people really believed the line from Apple "We don't allow multitasking because it's bad for the user...tested one app and battery drain was 40% more."
Hint, multitasking by itself is not the the battery killer Apple wants you to believe. Multitasking bad apps, well that's another story. Apple picked an IM app that did heavy polling and claims that it was multitasking that killed the battery. Well guess what, if you were to run that bad app by itself, it would still kill the battery at an unacceptable rate.
It will be interesting to see how certain apps work with this. Save-state and task completion will work for many app. I'm just curious to see how it will work for things that need to complete a task and move on to the next while in the background (like Pandora for example). If it finishes the task of playing the current song, will it be able to go to the next, or will the user have to switch back to it to begin the next task? What about some of the GPS based apps, will they be able to continue tracking in the background? I don't know the answer to these, so it will be interesting to see how they play out.
AT&T doing this sends a message to IPhone developers that "Its ok to develop for the Palms webOS devices", as AT&T is exclusive for Iphone. Add the $1 million dev contest & now we have some excitment. Anyone know how to post on AT&T/IPhone site about the Palm App contest? Great way to get the word out to the 10,000+ IPhone developers...
Actually, that is a good question. I expected support like this coming from Sprint last year, but then who knows and big thumbs up for ATT opportunity!
Either way, I registered, love training, and appreciate anything I can learn even if it is just basic intro stuff.
Actually, Palm and Stanford University have put together some great overviews that can be found here on Precentral or by searching Youtube for Stanford University Palm WebOS lectures .
Should be interesting and BTW did anyone else notice Palm webOS missing from the registration options?
Probably just online form Symantics and either way thanks for the insight. Sorli...
Duplicate...please delete. Sorli...
Does this paragraph seem interesting to anyone? It's from the registration page. Seems to imply a whole lot...
"Palm webOS is designed to run on a variety of hardware with different screen sizes, resolutions, and orientations. It works with or without keyboards and works best with a touch panel, though it doesn't require one. Because the user interface and application model are built around a Web browser, the range of suitable hardware platforms is wide. Palm webOS requires only a CPU, some memory, a wireless data connection, a display, and a means for interacting with the UI and for entering text."
Wow...yes that is very interesting and I missed it completely.
Thanks for the insight and interesting on how things were played out in the registration and description. Sorli...
That's been the description of webOS from day one. I remember reading that back during early access. Palm has always said that webOS was designed to be used on a variety of hardware...etc.
I wonder if AT&T took a good look at the competition and realized a strong WebOS and a good relationship with HP/Palm could be a good thing for AT&T. They are working, and/or competing, with three juggernaughts: Google, Apple, and Verizon. AT&T likes being a power player, and they really aren't right now.
There needs to be a market for them (Devs) and with Palm having a market share the size of a dot does not make them that attractive to develop for. iPad, iPhone 4, iOS4 and HTC/Android is where people will make their money so that is where they will look at developing. The Pre has been out for a year in the States, not far off 9 months in the UK and it has been an epic fail here and the EVO 4G sold more in one day than Palm and Samsung did over 3 combined. That tells you where people will be developing. Palm and webOS are in limbo for a few more weeks and then and only then will we see what HP intend to do if anything Re a new phone and it has to sell well, very well!
The biggest problem is that the brand 'Palm' has been damaged and if people see webOS on a new phone they may well think to all the problems the Pre had. Networks will think twice, more so here in the UK after the terrible sales and returns of phones. The insurance company that o2 deal with won't send them out as replacements now they have had so many back! A phone for example called the HTC C40 sounds good and with webos on it i would buy it as i know HTC make very good phones, Palm and HP don't anymore.
If a dev had to start from scratch - you would have a point.
But that's not the case. Somebody developed an App for IPhone and/or Android (especially if already ported between the 2) most of the work is already done. So when porting an existing app to webos - the dev doesn't have to worry about what it costs to develop the app from scratch - only if the market share is big enough to justify the cost to port - which is a small fraction.
Considering that even for 3D games this effort just seems to be a few hours - small market share is not much of a hindrance to porting the app - as long as the required APIs are available (i.e. microphone).
So - if a cool app cost 15000 $ to develop - then - yes - that would make a dev hesitate to risk that on webos for now.
But if that cost has already been invested for the Iphone and it only costs 500$ to port it, then even the small market share of webos brings in easy money. And you get a foot in the door in case the market share rises (more than fair chance for that now that HP is in).
Palm knows that and that's why they made it easy and spread the info to port apps from Iphone.
Another fact is that with the bigger market share of the Iphone a developer also gets way more competition. It's not easy getting your app noticed among 150k apps. In the smaller pond of webos a cool app by a lesser known dev has a better chance of making a splash.
Interesting presentation and better Q&A session.
Loved the question about new devices - which he replied I can't discuss it, but we have a road map, HP is coming, and next year will be very exciting. (paraphrased...)
Missed first half of presentation since ATT's Microsoft Office Live Meeting doesn't work on Mac I had to scramble to setup a Windows workstation.
Either way, interesting and thanks for the heads-up! Sorli...