PreDevCamp is today! Above, check out the welcome video from none-other than Palm's own Mitch Allen, CTO of Palm and author of the just-completed webOS development book. It's not too late to checkout PreDevCamp.org to find a local event in your city, but if you can't go to one, there are plenty of options to follow the excitement at home. Your best option is to head over to PreDevCamp.org/live to see live feeds from San Francisco, Kansas City, New York, Dallas, San Diego, and Los Angeles.
We're very pleased to see involvement from Palm here - supporting developers is absolutely the best way to grow a fledgling platform. In addition to Allen's video above, Palm employees are hitting up the 'camps and Palm is also donating 30 copies of Allen's book per city. We at PreCentral.net are pitching in with prizes ranging from Accessory Store Gift Certificates to Palm Pre phones. Yes - those Pre prizes will be going to the developers who have created the best apps in several categories and we're hoping to see a lot of the apps begun today show up in our Homebrew App Gallery.
Yours-truly is heading to Orlando - are you going?
P.S. Hear that about 2.5 million App Catalog downloads? Us too - not bad, eh? Imagine what it will be when the Pre hits other carriers and more apps start becoming officially available?
Comments
I love this website... Really absolutely informative, easy on the eyes and always the first to have palm/pre/webos news.
Thanks!
Palm once again proves that while it might not be the most popular right now, it's quickly on its way to being the ultimate iPhone contender (if not already). The support they show towards developers is great and I'm really looking forward to what they'll be coming out with in the next 6 months. Thats why I don't even mind that it's a little bare right now (but already had the building blocks. Nevermind homebrewed which is just fantastic.) iPhone can keep their App store, it's half filled with junk anyhow.
xorg here at the KC camp. About 100 people signed up, second largest site. There are a lot of iPhone developers here that don't have a Pre yet. Handmark is here, Sprint is here and several from St. Louis made the 4 hour drive. Good turnout, nicely organized.
hi
hi
Wish I could attend... sound like a great opportunity to learn. Hope all goes well and I am looking forward to reading new info here. :)
sadly the app catalog has only had about 32 uploads.
Actually, the App store has zero uploads but more than 2MM downloads in only two months. Hope that doesn't increase your depression. When the Blackberry and Iphone were at this pount in their development, they didn't even have an app store. They thought the were 'years ahead' of the pack by getting email on their phone. That was kinda sad to see how easily they were impressed by such an expensive device with so many limits compared to palm and sybian.. BBL, watching the Nascar race on ESPN2 live on my Treo.
I understand that "downloads" =include= downloads due to software updates so if an app has been updated since launch it is double/triple/whatever counted.
I think Palm/preCentral should clarify this.
I was told differently. Can you provide a link substantiating your assumption?
Looks like Palm/preCentral should indeed clarify this!
Actually you are wrong, all they are doing is adding together all the downloads labeled on each app in the app catalog. You can do this too if you look at the app catalog it provides the downloads number. This does not increase with updates.
I believe you are incorrect about the "updates doesn't increase individual app download count". Accuweather (sp?) had a dramatic increase in downloads when it was updated after launch (I think that was the application) suggesting that the update to the application caused all those who had already downloaded the application to download (the update) again.
Palm/preCentral should clarify this to remove the ambiguity.
Actually you are incorrect, accuweather acquires higher volume downloads when an update is released because it is brought to the top of the 'most recent' category which is the most visited category in the App catalog. The update download itself does not count as the app being download.
I believe kissing girls is more interesting than arguing about what constitutes a download on an app store total, but hey, that's just me. (Damn Darwin, thin the herd already!!!)
Merely kissing a girl will not help the reproduction of our species and Darwin turned to "God". Please education system educate our species! By the way, I have been dating the same women for 4 years. I am bored of kissing.
LOL, wrong girl.
No, Darwin should allow the small generally vegetarian animals to devour the Anona-trolls that are so stuck on "what is a download" in a futile effort to prove some unknown point and meaningless point. The slow of wit and of foot should be removed from our culture of smart-phone fans and improve the species.
It's not so much arguing about what "download" means, it's an attempt to figure out indirectly what the downloads imply as far as (1) Pres sold and (2) what the target market for a Pre developer (this IS the preDevCamp thread after all!) might be.
I think Palm/preCentral should absolutely with NO doubt about the source answer the question of "Are downloads due to updates of already-downloaded applications repeatedly counted in the download count for those applications?".
It's a simple question that should be answered direct from the horse's mouth.
BTW, we already have a handle (albeit poor one) on the downloads of Pandora as a percent of possible downloads of Pandora due to the poll somewhere around preCentral for a typical preCentral reader - 90+%. Is the typical preCentral reader representative of the current Pre customer set within some small error or does the current Pre customer set have a large population of folks who would NOT download Pandora? If the former then the (poor) handle we have on total Pres sold is on the order of 300,000 (assuming updates are NOT counted as "another download"). If, say, instead we have some large population of the Pre customer set NOT downloading Pandora then the total Pres sold appears to be somewhat larger than that - maybe 500,000 if one is pessimistic about the percent of Pre customers who download Pandora.
So what have we learned from this, anyway!?
Palm could settle the whole thing, easily.
It's just a number, a fuzzy number, strictly for entertainment purposes, please, no wagering. If Palm and developers want hard numbers, they have to decide they want to share. Pcentral reports the numbers, not a statement of what it means. Bugs in this regardless:
1) If I've been through 5 Pre's, is that five or more downloads?
2) What abou people that gave up and returned their Pre?
3) Is receiving an update counted? (from update my Pre)
4) Is updating by revisiting and re-downloading the app from the app store counted.
5) If the app sucked and got deleted should this be reflected?
The app developers I know that can shelter and feed themselves dont waste time with such trivial concerns. Here is what the successful app developers asks:
1) How easily can I code it, what support is offered.
2) What capabilities does the O/S and hardware offer.
3) Will Palm or Sprint get in my way.
4) How much can I charge.
5) How soon can I get paid.
6) Does/will anybody offer the same or similar in the store.
7) If my product is better than a competitors and they get in the store first, will anybody try/buy mine?
And frankly, judging by the IP store, not a lot of developers ask questions #6 and 7.
yeah i think your right, updates to apps dont count as a additional download.
but all of the 2 Mil downloads does include all the people who download Connect 4 Demo every other day
it doesn't really matter how the palm compares to the iphone and blackberry when they first came out. The reality is people want some apps on their phone now. by that rational people with a pre should just be happy to have an app store a year after the phone's out like they did with iphones. I don't think that's realistic.
Palm just is NOT on the ball. Their SDK should have been out long before it did. The should have sorted out how to charge for apps long before now. That's not a difficult issue that should have been solved like back in January. And though i think the whole hacking itunes thing is funny as hell and they should keep doing it just to be annoying, the problems with media copying music into hidden itunes files, issues with playlists really should have told Palm long ago that they need to make their own itunes clone for media management. it's a great phone but Palm sketchy decision making, typified by their horrendous feminine hygene commerical-like marketing campaign, gives me very little faith in Palm's business ability.
Seriously if homebrew can make 100 apps in about a month and half you have to figure palm could have partnered with 100 companies by launch day to have at least 100 apps in their store at launch.
Guess you didn't pickup on the secret development campaign to protect Palm's technology and capabilities as they developed the hardware and software to back up their announcement. I want apps. I want more jobs. I want three hot wives. I want lower taxes....But things worth having are worth waiting for. Wait! Or go buy an iphone. Or if powerful apps, go buy a Treo.
kinda a childish response. a treo? sorry but not good enough. Pre, iphone's blackberries are in a different class then a treo. the reality is things like apps are what people will base phone purchases on. And a ton of people will go buy an iphone instead. it doesn't help palm to pout in the corner and tell potential customers, "go buy a competitor's product". That company has issues. And they surely haven't made 100% smart decisions in their launch. And if they don't have the security to keep their own trade secrets while partnering with other companies well then that doesn't give me much faith in their management either.
The iphone and blackberry have yet to equal the Treo for availability of power apps. Now, if you're looking for turn-by-turn guidance to fried chicken, the Pre and Iphone and BB are the phones for you.
And yes, Treo vs. Iphone/Pre et al, they are in two different classes at the moment. Treo is a tool. The GUI touchscreens are toys. Get some power apps, then maybe they can be more useful and not just entertaining.
lol to the guy above me. Hey so uhh, Who is that guy talking? Sorry if I am stupid.
watched some of it live. great stuff! although i wish the L.A camp would have gone live. the boss is here so i shall get back to work. :)
Doesn't look like very good attendance around the country - handful here, handful there. Above is a comment saying "a hundred signed up" but how many actually SHOWED up and did anything significant?
How do you define "good attendance". I'm getting reports of dozens of attendees at many of the camps. Remember, there are many camps going on it is not a single conference in a single location.
Looking at all videos available via the above-mentioned "live" site, I'm seeing a handful of attendees at ALL sites, not "dozens" (in fact, not "dozens" at ANY of the sites).
Now, unlike you who apparently have sufficiently high rank to "get reports", I can only use what I'm seeing with my own eyes and that's what those eyes are telling me from viewing those videos.
Fortunately, unlike "the reports" you're getting, everyone else can also view those videos (archival and live) and see what they're going to see, too!
About 40-50 showed up in KC with about 100 registrations. They changed the location day before to different part of metro so may have impacted attendance. Two people I know who planned to attend didn't make it but are still interested in attending future ones.
Great sessions overall.
Here's a comment from longtime TreoCentral poster DarthRepublican about the Chicago preDevCamp:
>>> "...I attended the Chicago Pre DevCamp. Turn out was
>>> pretty low. Only about eight out of 42 attendees actually
>>> attended..."
http://www.palminfocenter.com/comments/6765/#153784
I think they did a fabulous job organizing and getting people together. there 67 people here, a few apple fans no doubt checking out the competition. i think palm is doing the right thing. they want high quality apps in their store when it opens. i think its great that we have a homebrew store here on precentral. I just to show people that there are a lot of talented people wanting and willing to make them.
I was in on the Dallas devcamp. not used to the scientific jabber, but was very interested in the sales and team bonding.
I learned a lot. some parts were a bit boring. i think i was one out of two girls there and responding.
remember how long did it take apple to build their app store?
or how long it took blackberry to do blackberry app world? and they have been out forever...be patient!
I enjoyed the learning experience
Will this event be repeated?
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