By now most everyone addicted to Pre news knows about a file found on Palm's website called Mojo.js. It didn't take long for blogs and news sites to dive deeper. There was speculation that a company called Blast Radius was involved in webOS's upcoming Mojo SDK. There was also much speculation that Mojo is a mobile version of the DojoToolkit, based off the various Dojo references within that file.
Those speculations were pushed forward when DojoToolkit's twitter page started mentioning Palm and the Pre. A blog post from new Blast Radius employee seemingly connected the dots between Mojo, Dojo and Blast Radius. It all fits together so well doesn't it? How could it not be true?
This post was originally going to be a summary of the situation (well look at that, it's already happened!). But in the process of researching the situation I fired off a quick email to Brian Mitchinson, the VP of Marketing at Blast Radius. In a refreshing change from all of the mystery surrounding the Pre, I got a rather prompt reply full of -- get this -- straightfoward facts:
- Last year, Palm’s corporate marketing team hired Blast Radius to overhaul Palm’s website, which launched simultaneously with the announcement of Palm Pre and Palm webOS at CES.
- Palm called their framework Mojo, which just happened to be the same name as Blast Radius’ Mojo – which refers to a proprietary front-end framework we have created using Dojo, which we use on client engagements.
- Palm will be releasing more details on what exactly Palm Mojo is in the next few weeks, but they can safely say right now that it is NOT what you saw in mojo.js on Palm.com.
Palm will be reaching out to the folks who have been writing about this to clarify directly with them.
So there you have it. The whole thing is just series of coincidences. Palm's Mojo SDK for the webOS still looks to be primarily their creation until we hear otherwise.
Special thanks to Brian Mitchinson and Blast Radius for clearing things up!
Comments
I have to admit, you guys do a terrific job finding all the good juicy Pre info. As I surf the web at work, you guys by far have the best information. Keep up the good work!
o.O pyrogmnome? assosiated with Precentral? lol too obvious
Thats all well and good but a developer that is in Palm's camps has already come forward and said it was based on Dojo.
Sorry based it on this web page.
They have since lined out that entry but left it on the page.
The actually reference a blog by someone who works for Blast Radius that states:
"Last week was full of a lot of orientation, but I did my best to take it in stride and quickly dive into learning the way things work here. I’ve started learning Mojo, which is an amazing interface development framework that uses the power of Dojo to create a very robust and abstract environment for developers. The code is structured very strongly in a Java style pattern and I’m finding that I’m adapting to it very well. I’ll have a post or two more very shortly about my experience learning it and it’s details which might provide someone coming after me a starting place. "
The blog link led here.
So following Blast Radius's statement there is no definitive proof.
But I want to believe.
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