Early Access Program Starts Accepting Devs 5
Not too long ago Palm announced their Early Access Program, a way for select lucky developers to get their hands on the not-yet-complete SDK to help with testing, feedback, and suggestions.
Well, a few days ago, Gray Norton of Palm posted on the devloper blog. They've been "thrilled and, frankly, awed" by the developer response and the high number of applications they've received so far.
Currently their schedule appears to be letting small batches of developers in each week And as to what Palm is looking for in the developers they choose, Palm's Developer Community Manager, Chuq Von Rospach, said it best (and quite generically):
There's no easy answer, but that sounds like a cop out, I know. It isn't (well, mostly). I'm not the only person evaluating, but I look for well-thought out product ideas that fit the product feature set well. But I also look for people who seem able to jump in and get productive quickly and will be able to supply good feedback.
When casually asked how approximately how many developers get accepted into the Early Access Program in each batch of invites, Chuq responded:
Depends on how fast I type. Somewhere between
and .
At least they've kept their sense of humor! Just a reminder, if you're a developer and would like to apply for the Early Access Program, you can still do so here. And for more details, check their offical Early Access Program FAQs page.
5 Comments
So, what do you guys think of these two articles by David Beers?
Java Application Server running on Palm Pre
How Palm WebOS will storm the Desktop
I personally think they're both incredibly well-written articles. The first one I won't comment on as I'm not too knowledgeable on OSGi. The second one bring up some really neat ideas and David Beer's "crystal ball vision" of Palm's future certainly has some interesting prospects. His idea of a Palm Desktop Companion could become reality, though I don't expect it to happen anytime soon, unfortunately. I am confident that there could be a Foleo 2 with webOS in 2010; it just seems to make sense and fit so well
Heck, I am not at all kowledgeable about OSGi, or for that matter any of the programming languages that he talks about. Just know that Java runs on a lot of devices.
But from a 'lay-person/non-programmer's point of view.... I could kind of figure out where he was going with the two articles.
Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't the first article a lead-in to the second one? The idea of broad 'portability' of Palm's WebOS to multiple platforms, both mobile and desktop?
In the comments on the first article:
"And yes, it should be relatively easy for Palm to port a webOS layer over any OS capable of supporting a decently capable Java environment. Windows Mobile, Symbian, Android... as well as desktop Windows and OSX. That's part of the beauty of building a system on standard toolkits from the "grown-up" web.
Of course, webOS features like the touch interface might not be supported on most desktops and might not be ideal on those machines in any case. But that's where this component infrastructure I'm talking about comes in: if Palm did base webOS and its Synergy middleware on OSGi a desktop Java developer could simply plug in a native Windows or Mac UI toolkit (the same one that is in the Eclipse development environment Palm provides with the SDK) and write a Palm Desktop app that uses the same cool Synergy features, only with a native UI. I've actually done this. I was on a team that developed a Palm Desktop knockoff that ran on both Windows and Mac a couple years ago. OSGi and some other open source technology called Eclipse RCP were what made this possible. Same stuff Sprint is using in their new Titan platform."
Yea, the adaptability factor of the webOS could be quite huge, but with Palm current financial position, I don't expect any ports to WinMo or Windows/Mac for a while anyway. Don't get me wrong, it certainly seems doable, but currently Palm has other, more current, focuses.