Reminder: Win a 32GB TouchPad in the 500,000 CEOs contest! Entries close on Saturday 30
Wed, 28 Sep 2011 9:24 pm EDT 
It was just last week that HP CEO Leo Apotheker was given the heave-ho and the PreCentral Forums crossed half a million members. So we decided we wanted to both celebrate and send a message to HP. So we’re having a giveaway contest! It’s called 500,000 CEOs, and the goal is to send a message to HP that webOS still have a place in this world. We want you, the awesome reader that you are, to craft an audio and/or visual message (infographic, video, comic, dramatic reading, etc) to HP and new CEO Meg Whitman telling them what you think they should do with webOS.
We’ll pick the best of what we receive, put it up to a public vote, and then the winner will get a brand new 32GB HP TouchPad with a Bluetooth keyboard and the folio flip case. Good deal, eh? You’ve got until Midnight Eastern Time on Saturday to make your case to HP, just send your entry to contest@precentral.net. Go ahead and post it on Twitter too – just be sure to mention @PreCentral, @HP, and @MegWhitman so we can be sure they get your message, and include the #webOSOS hashtag.
You’ve got a few days left to put your message together, webOS Nation, so get to work! There’s a 32GB TouchPad with your name on it.
More Info: 500,000 CEOs Contest
30 Comments
can I make a video telling HP why they shouldn't bother? it'd just be a still-shot of the amazon fire.
I was thinking a demo of windows 8 would be enough.
that too. in past comments I've been the biggest cheerleader for a rational plan for HP to move forward with the TouchPad Go and Pre3. Now I see there's no point. Windows 8 and the Amazon Fire pretty well erase any market share webOS might have hoped to gain.
however, I'm not talking to you. I'm an honest webOS user who sees the value in the platform, even if HP killed it and Amazon and Microsoft have made it obsolete. You're just an azzhat who hangs around to slip your petty zingers into every comment thread about how utterly useless webOS is. If I had the banhammer, it would long ago have struck down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger.
:D
I used to fight the good fight too. But went to the dark side after seeing the light sooner than most and being banned by the sunshine kids. But I usually kept my criticisms to what Palm or HP was doing. I loved webOS and of course that unrealized potential.
In HP's hands however, it has no value. And that was evident months ago.
Any perceived "zingers" I slip in are fully intended (and well deserved) in most cases.
I think it would be neat to do a video comparing webOS multitasking versus android and ios task switching as if it were real life... But don't have the time...
webOS Life (cookin dinner, changing laundry, watchin tv, talking to family) all at once, in real time, just like you actually live life.
Android/iOS Life ( Puts pot of water on to boil. stop. goes to put load of laundry in. stop. turns on tv. stop. returns to pot of water, not yet boiling as it's been 'paused'. stop. noticed out of corner of eye that tv is paused cause you are looking at the not boiling pot of water. Go down to laundry to discover that it still hasn't even filled with water because you went away from that task ) Very little is getting done because you are required to focus on each task exclusively and nothing is happening in the background. All the while you realize that your family has been frozen in place because you were working on those other 3 tasks...
That dude with the crazy rendering and editing skills that did the ninja video a while back should pick this up and make it awesome....
Aside from the complete lack of understanding displayed in your post of how multitasking works on Android, the real problem with your post is that your webOS guy would commit suicide approximately 45 days after his "rebirth" and it would be all over the blogs...er...news...just like in real life.
On his tombstone there would be a reference to his "potential" and the kicker would be the irony of his initials: T. M. C.
But don't let that stop you.
I sometimes look forward to taharka's comments, they are refreshing. It is always nice to have a different opinion and non fan-boy on this sight. It is rebuts like this that keep some of us fired up enough to want to make WebOS the best that it can be, that keep us going, to want to find out about as much as we can and push it as hard as we can. Sometimes I get complacent, but then I will read this and get back excited about WebOS. Thanks taharka, keep up the good work.
That's the thing. webOS could have been great if the people in charge would have just made better decisions. Just to be clear, I was a serious fan of webOS. I've converted people to it. I've written apps for it. I've promoted it to friends, family, co-workers, etc. I did all these things because I saw potential in webOS. What I'm not, as you've pointed out, is a fan-boy of any tech. In the end, it was Palm and then HP that failed to bring webOS into a desirable state (beyond the tiny niche). So all that's left is something with "potential" and after so much time in the market, "potential" loses it's value.
As for my comments above, they are meant as a jab to what amounts to a silly campaign. Silly because it's been done before (more than once) and didn't work. Silly because showing that webOS has some die-hard fans has NEVER been the issue.
I won't speak on whether it is wise to get excited about webOS in this post. What I will say is that neither the big companies nor the market in general seems to be.
Well said.
Some weird dudes were following me around on the front page yesterday claiming that I was praising the actions of the HP BOD for killing off WebOS. To the contrary, I agree with you that HP made a series of HORRIBLE decisions that cumulatively murdered this product.
But I think the worst one was the first one: buying WebOS with no real plan for it other than sticking it on phones, tablets, and maybe PCs sold for a (immediate)profit. That was never going to work without a brand like "Apple" or "iPod" to pull people into gadget lust while in a down economy. HP should have had a long term vision that protected it from the metrics of short-term losses for the first several quarters. But as we see now...there was never a real vision or real companywide excitement for the product. Just isolated champions here and there that didn't have the stroke to save it.
Well said indeed. I like your comments, I don't see you going overboard and downing all that is WebOS. One of the great things is, at least you have used the OS. Not just used it, you were part of it.
It seems some of the other people are just here to do one of a couple of things. Get you to switch, anger you if possible, or just say how bad of the operating system it is.
It isn't that WebOS is bad, it could be great IMHO, but it does have some work to go, and I would like to see HP or whoever, go that extra mile to do it. I don't see many people who have actually used it for more than a month, think that it isn't a great OS.
Again, thanks for your opinions, facts and replies.
Keep WebOS alive.
Who took my soap box?
yeah could have been great. But don't forget all the people that insisted on stifling criticsm and plugging their ears to any valid points. EVERY cheerleader here insisted that the device had no issues. It was perfectly fast enough, perfectly responsive, it was not too thick, nobody needed a camera, apps are not important, the veer would sell great cause small is in, the dongle on that thing was not an issue, it was fine that it didnt' launch after the feb press conference, it's fine there was no slab, everybody wanted a vertical slider, blah blah blah. And if anyone dared question those opinions they'd be have their posts deleted or threads closed to prevent any discussion other then cheerleading. How dare you even ask what "sales figures" for an hp device were.
All those people did nothing but fool HP into thinking the products the were going to release would sell. Blind cheerleading doesn't help. That's the behavior of yesmen. And if nobody is ever gonna say what you're doing isn't good enough you've got no incentive to improve.
Samsung looked at their product and looked at the ipad 2 and did exactly what HP should have done, said **** ours isn't good enough, redo it and make it quick." That's what criticism does. But webos community didn't want to hear any criticism. We just wanted people to say "veer is great, touchpad is great, don't say anything bad, even if it's true." And we got exactly what we asked for. If people had actually been allowed to criticize maybe HP would have listened instead of only being fed the line that everything they were doing was just fine. Sure HP and Palm screwed up but for years this place was full of people saying what they were doing was just fine.
This. Thanks..
Welcome
Indeed.
I remember the censoring political purging ban-fest that the forums turned into. Do not criticize webOS. Do not mention a competing platform unless it is prefixed with the word "inferior". Do not call out the mistakes or misrepresentations of other posters unless you were a moderator or hparsons. I remember one guy literally complaining because someone's auto-generated signature said "Sent from my EVO".
Funny stuff.
WebOS never benefited from a compare/contrast with Android or iOS. It's comparatively feature and app poor, and the hardware has never been anywhere near the same league.
This contest should be interesting, however. 500,000 registered members, but way less than ONE thousand are active. Maybe they banned the other 499,000 for not sipping enough Kool-aid?
Derek is adorable, that picture cracked me up.
I was thinking the same thing!!!!!!!!! I keep looking at him :P My first Geek crush I think lol
reminds me of something Steven Colbert would do. I mean that as a compliment to his comic ability.
Can I make one PPT instead?
I hate this World!
Why good thinks don’t triumph!
Pre phones, TouchPad and especially WebOS are good stuff. There are a lot of passionate behind it (at least 500.000 CEOs).
Please, HP don’t give up!
i love webos on Hp TouchPAD, can even play my facebook games with it which was a surprise lol i got the pre3 to go with it and trhat is perfect too. the touchpad is just as good as an ipad and even better in some ways.
keep working on WEBOS
So Derek, is that you in the picture? :P You are soooooooooooo cute :) Aweeeee We should totally dump Meg and make you the CEO of HP. Maybe we shall all get a $99 touchpad, if you are the cute CEO? :)
If only HP would have actually PURSUED the vision they announced for WebOs. Blackberry is on the way out of the enterprise, and Apple (of all companies) is moving into the vacuum.
But alas, here we are now at Precentral, not reading about the latest WebOs phone or Touchpad developments (for actually available hardware), but waiting for the next blue-light special on some accessory or another.
"God pity them both! and pity us all,
Who vainly the dreams of youth recall;
For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: 'It might have been!'"
-- John Greenleaf Whittier
Fitting.
If awesomeness is the X-Axis on that graph then what's the Y-Axis?
Number of "coming months". :-)
thread winner
hp touchpad on gossip girl premiere episode .. And was shown 3 different times in detail
http://www.phonesontv.com/2011/09/27/gossip-girl-s05e01-yes-then-zero-se...
Cool, where can I get one?