Steve Jobs sought no-poaching deal with Palm

Steve Jobs sought no-poaching deal with Palm

Apple’s autocratic CEO suggested a possibly illegal deal with the head of Palm two years ago, according to a report by Bloomberg, under which Palm and Apple would stop poaching each other’s employees. The two companies, five miles apart in Silicon Valley, have a history… Continue Reading

Best Buy accidentally sells Palm Pre for half-price $99

Best Buy accidentally sells Palm Pre for half-price $99

An unknown number of shoppers over the weekend were able to purchase Palm’s hot new Pre smartphone for half its current price. A “human error” listed the Pre for $99 instead of $199 in a printed advertisement. A Best Buy store in San Francisco sold… Continue Reading

Palm’s brazen Pre hack back into iTunes

Palm’s brazen Pre hack back into iTunes

Palm’s latest Pre software deliberately identifies the device as manufactured by Apple, in order to let the Pre connect to iTunes on PCs and Macs.

The back story: Palm and Apple have been battling over the new Pre smartphone’s access to Apple’s iTunes music management application…. Continue Reading

Apple confirms: Pre locked out of iTunes

Apple confirms: Pre locked out of iTunes

Apple PR wrangler Natalie Kerris has officially confirmed to BusinessWeek what Pre owners have been tweeting: “iTunes 8.2.1 … disables devices falsely pretending to be iPods, including the Palm Pre. As we’ve said before, newer versions of Apple’s iTunes software may no longer provide syncing functionality with… Continue Reading

Market research vs. gut instinct

Market research vs. gut instinct

Jeff Hawkins, founder of Palm Computing and the inventor of the Palm Pilot, knows a thing or two about innovation. In this segment, from Stanford University’s Entrepreneur Thought Leader Lectures, Hawkins discusses how to balance market research with your intuition.

Focus groups can only take… Continue Reading

Roundup: Schmidt is bullish, Yahoo spikes New York Times traffic, Windows 7 on a thumb drive

Roundup: Schmidt is bullish, Yahoo spikes New York Times traffic, Windows 7 on a thumb drive

Google chief executive Eric Schmidt says it’s “reasonable to be optimistic for 2010″ — Reuters has more.

Michael Jackson traffic set off cyberattack alarms – Google’s automated defense systems interpreted a sudden tsunami of “Micheal Jackson” [sic] queries as an attack. I’ve gotten similar stories under FrieNDA… Continue Reading

Roundup: RIP Farrah Fawcett, Palm’s not-so-big loss, PC sales looking up

Roundup: RIP Farrah Fawcett, Palm’s not-so-big loss, PC sales looking up

Palm’s fourth-quarter performance beat Wall Street expectations, and that’s before the Pre’s arrival kicked sales into high gear. The company’s Q4 loss was $53.4 million, or 40 cents per share, on sales of $113.2 million, excluding one-time items. Wall Street had been expecting a 62-cent… Continue Reading

Apple hints that Palm’s ability to sync with iTunes may be short-lived

Apple hints that Palm’s ability to sync with iTunes may be short-lived

At a recent conference, Palm executives proudly proclaimed the recently launched Pre smartphone’s ability to synchronize with Apple’s iTunes media. But the technical achievement may turn out to be temporary.

Apple hinted that future versions of iTunes may break compatibility with third-party media players. That’s one… Continue Reading

Palm promotes former Apple exec to CEO

Palm promotes former Apple exec to CEO

Palm cleared up its leadership questions at the top today as it promoted Jon Rubinstein from executive chairman to chief executive. Meanwhile, current Palm CEO Ed Colligan is taking a job at Elevation Partners, the private equity firm that owns much of Palm.

Rubinstein is the… Continue Reading

Palm Pre goes on sales at Sprint stores nationwide

Palm Pre goes on sales at Sprint stores nationwide

The Palm Pre went on sale at midnight last night in Sprint, Best Buy and Radio Shack stores around the country. Crowds lined up to get their hands on the smartphones, which are expected to be in short supply.

Palm and its exclusive wireless carrier for… Continue Reading

Roundup: Verizon Pre not coming too soon, the fall of Vidoop, and more

Roundup: Verizon Pre not coming too soon, the fall of Vidoop, and more

Here’s the latest action:

Verizon won’t be offering the Palm Pre within half a year — Lots of coverage on Techmeme.

“The Fall of Vidoop” – A fascinating, in-depth look at issues inside the secure storage company, as told by former employee and web developer Chris Messina.

Facebook gets… Continue Reading

Palm Pre lets you command an army of Asian dancers, new ad says


Hot on the heels of the glamorous Hollywood launch of Palm’s much-anticipated Pre smartphone, you can now watch what is apparently the first television ad for the device — to which my initial response is: “Huh?”

Palm is hoping the Pre will be a strong competitor… Continue Reading

Palm launches Pre with the glitterati of Hollywood to get cachet

Palm launches Pre with the glitterati of Hollywood to get cachet

Hollywood and Silicon Valley met Wednesday night as Palm bankrolled a big party of stars to celebrate the launch of its Palm Pre smart phone.

It’s a sure sign that introducing a new phone isn’t just a big deal for tech fiends. In the photo above,… Continue Reading

Palm shows off the Pre’s ability to sync with iTunes

Palm shows off the Pre’s ability to sync with iTunes

Sometimes there’s no need to reinvent what your enemy has done. That seems to be the thinking that Palm embraced as it announced today that the Palm Pre cell phone will be able to sync with Apple iTunes content.

Although the iPhone is Public Enemy No…. Continue Reading

Palm’s day of reckoning coming on June 6, with the Pre’s release

Palm’s day of reckoning coming on June 6, with the Pre’s release

After much public speculation about the release date and pricing of the Pre (Palm’s answer to the iPhone), Sprint announced today that it will start selling the device on June 6, with a price of $199.99 (basically equivalent to the cheapest iPhone), if you make… Continue Reading

Roundup: Hulu eyes world domination, Schmidt busts antitrust talk, Nokia plots app store and more

Roundup: Hulu eyes world domination, Schmidt busts antitrust talk, Nokia plots app store and more

Hulu closer to going global — The online video site backed by NBC Universal and Fox has signed a bevy of content deals with overseas television producers with an eye toward British and Bollywood programming.

OpenTable sets terms for IPO — The restaurant reservation service plans to sell… Continue Reading

Roundup: Windows 7 nearing launch, Facebook phished, Dean’s upcoming Seattle speech

Roundup: Windows 7 nearing launch, Facebook phished, Dean’s upcoming Seattle speech

Here’s the latest action:

Windows 7 readying for birth — Microsoft’s new operating system is entering its final stages of testing and the company has a “release candidate” ready, possibly for launch on May 5. It will be interesting to see if it lifts computer sales in… Continue Reading

Roundup: Amazon’s ‘ham-fisted’ error, Facebook’s baseball surge and more

Roundup: Amazon’s ‘ham-fisted’ error, Facebook’s baseball surge and more

Here’s the latest action:

Gay books disappear from Amazon’s sales rankings
— What caused the incident now known as “amazonfail”? The online retailer first blamed a glitch, and is now saying a “ham-fisted” cataloging error is at fault. Meanwhile, a hacker claims to be responsible.

With the start… Continue Reading

Palm announces availability of webOS Mojo SDK — but it’s limited

Palm announces availability of webOS Mojo SDK — but it’s limited


Today at the Web 2.0 expo in San Francisco, Palm announced the availability of its Mojo software development kit (SDK). Third-party developers will be able to use this to build applications for its webOS software which will run on the Palm Pre device.

It’s important that… Continue Reading

Report: iPhone and Android taking everyone else’s market share

Report: iPhone and Android taking everyone else’s market share

The iPhone’s operating system provided 50 percent of U.S. advertising requests to Admob last month, according to a report the mobile ad network published today.

Meanwhile, the seminal Android-powered G1, built by HTC, has grown to 5 percent only three months after launch, the report says…. Continue Reading