Our friend Marco went out to the preDevCamp at Palm HQ in Sunnyvale, California, and lucky us, he took a video camera and blogged it up (mad props to you, mate!). Aside from some delicious-looking pizza, we also got a look at a few applications that were developed/refined during the programming sessions.
First up is an app that pulls dream summaries posted online down to the device, refreshing with the accelerometer shake API. Next was a video poker app, followed by Word Ace, by Self-Aware Games, described as a combination of Texas Hold’em and Scrabble. Word Ace was demonstrated working on multiple platforms and playing together in peace and harmony on two Pres and an iPhone. Once released, Word Ace looks to be a very in-depth application, with profile support, awards, and more. Another attendee coded up a simple little accelerometer app that bounces a tiny Palm logo around the screen as you tilt the phone. The developer behind Twee was also in attendance and demonstrated the slick CSS3 animations used in his application.
Lastly there’s Marco, who showed off his amazingly slick scientific calculator, inspired by those classic 1980’s scientific calculators. The app supports haptic feedback (it vibrates with each virtual button press) and includes a very useful in-calculator unit converter. The latest version of Marco’s Scientific RPN Calculator app is available in the PreCentral.net Homebrew Apps center and will land in the App Catalog as soon as Palm opens it up.
Tony Peric of PreThinking was also at the preDevCamp at Palm HQ and provided a liveblog of the event. Interesting notes include an application development checklist and Palm’s preferred UI development tool (Adobe Fireworks). Palm even gave away a copy of Adobe CS4 to one lucky attendee.
Were you at preDevCamp? Sound off in the comments a let us know how it went where you were!
Comments
finally! some good news and some useful information.. good job!
That's CRAZY! Advertising the homebrew app section @ Palm headquarters....I LOVE it!
Great work Marco!
finally! some good news and some useful information.. good job!
finally! some good news and some useful information.. good job!
Yeah good props to marco for devling a haptic caluclator. Man I hate pressing the "x" symbol and not knowing if I pressed it. And good job of getting in with the palm dev team. Maybe you can tell us how much ur banking off this once the catalog gets out of beta. Haha
Man... not even a mention of my stupendous BoardGameGeek app (that only lists a user's games and coincidentally didn't even actually work)
OK, so maybe there's just a tad more work to do before it's ready for public consumption.
:)
That said, the preDevCamp was phenomenal. Very well run, lots of cool folks, and soooo much more informative than just a simple day hacking. Very nice job, guys.
@pappy sorry about that dude! There's some other stuff missing as well. Thing is I tried to keep the program under 10 minutes because that tends to work better for most people. :)
And... (full disclosure) I gave my own app a bit more airtime because after all it was me videoblogging ;)
Oh please, I would have been *shocked* if you had. It wasn't exactly a good demo. I was just giving ya a hard time.
Besides, my ridiculously bright shirt might have broken your camera.
Look, I appreciate all of the hard work that you guys have put into your app development, but I have to say that I am getting a little worried. Is this the extent of the Pre’s capabilities? This is supposed to be the most advanced mobile technology available and we are getting excited about card games, food/coffee locators, web links, and calculators (no offense intended, Marco). Where is the substance? Where are the cutting-edge applications? I’m starting to wonder if I bought more hype than device.
This isn't the full extent...and won't be until Palm lets developers get deep down root access.
I certainly hope that you are right. Because, even though the current apps are very good, they do seem to be hitting the current limitations of the device. I will be anxiously waiting to see what comes next.
Glad to see the mobilization and enthusiasm of developers. My only grip with this site so far is that there are so many pages with app lists. There is the traditional repository, then there is gallery, two versions of it, then the list in filecoaster, now this is for apps from dev camp...I wonder why is it not easier to just create one app gallery. I find myself going back to repository and finding things not on other lists it, some in repository link you to gallery. Just my complain sorry...the work is great though and much appreciated by everybody here. My last request is can somebody create a DICTIONARY app, pretty please!
Outstanding work, Marco! You've obviously put a lot of thought and impressive work into your calculator. Watching this gives some small indication of where the platform is headed. Thanks for the vid blog too!
1leggedpuppy No offense taken!
Now here's something to consider though: What kind of apps did the iPhone have when it came out and everyone was worshipping it as the best thing ever? All there was for a year or so was iPhone optimized websites. WebOS / MOJO is perfect for almost any application except for gaming. It's easy to develop for, it works VERY well and because it's rather easy compared to diving into Objective C or C++ way more developers can jump on board. If you know your Javascript well you're already a Pre developer!
I for one wouldn't be able to do what I did on the Pre on the iPhone or an Android device. Yet, an app like mine wouldn't be any better if it were written in C++/Objective C.
I DO hope that Palm will eventually open up and allow native apps because I sure would like to play iPhone quality games on my Pre. The hardware is there so there's no reason to not use it. Now, to draw the parallel with Apple again: Apple too didn't (seem to want to) plan anything but web apps on it's platform initially. This changed later on and I have good hopes that Palm will eventually do the same thing.
Note that if this change would come I don't think it would make the MOJO platform irrellevant all of a sudden. It is and will stay an absolutely awesome mobile development platform. Probably the most productive platform ever.
hey Marco, in your spare time could you make just a weights and measures conversion calculator :-)
Thanks
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