What is it about Thursdays? 26

What do the following have in common? The days over the past month that Palm has added to the App Catalog. The launch of the Pre on Bell Mobility. Palm’s Q1 2010 earnings report. The rumored release date of webOS 1.2 and the ecommerce App Catalog (aka today, we sincerely hope, unless the recent rumor is correct). The pricing and availability announcement for the GSM Pre (also aka today). The unveiling of the Palm Pre at CES.

If you guessed Palm, well, that’d be correct, but the answer we were going for was Thursday. Especially over the past several weeks Palm has had a thing for Thursdays. What gives?

We decided to do some digging, and it turns out that there’s really no rhyme or rhythm to why they picked Thursdays for all the fun - as Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein said during last Thursday’s Q1 2010 conference call, webOS updates are put out on a web schedule (i.e. when they’re ready), not the traditional structured scheduling that most computing platforms deal with.

But we’re not content with that. There had to be more. Our hunches:

• According to the Thai solar calendar, the color of Thursdays is orange. The Romans named Thursday after Jupiter. Palm’s old logo: Orange like Thursdays, round  like Jupiter. Coincidence? I think not!
• John Steinbeck’s sequel to Cannery Row was titled Sweet Thursday (with Wednesdays being Lousy and Fridays Waiting), so far Thursdays have been rather sweet, though we wouldn’t go so far as to call them succulent.
• As Arthur Dent once said, “I never could get the hang of Thursdays.” Ford Prefect handled them just fine, so perhaps Palm employees are aliens. Somebody check to see if one of those Hoopy Froods is carrying a towel.
• The English word for Thursday came (originally) from the Old Norse "Day of Thor." Palm decided that Thursday will be the day that they "Bring the Hammer."

There are plenty of other possibilities.

Or maybe Thursdays were picked for App Catalog updates to give Palm’s staff time to get the new apps in order, do some testing, and fix bugs on Friday without having to worry about the weekend, and everything else is sheer coincidence. Clearly, there’s plenty to counter the Palm Thursdays trend, given that the Pixi was announced on a Wednesday, the Pre launched on Sprint on a Saturday, and Palm’s new circle-free logo isn’t really all that Jovian anymore.

Update: Palm chimes in via Twitter, it's definitely the Thai solar calendar.