UPDATE: Make sure to go to 981 Joseph E. Lowery Blvd. NW… not sw.  Here’s a direct link to the google map.

preDevCampAtlanta is almost here!

WHO: YOU!
WHAT: preDevCamp Atlanta
WHEN: 8:30 AM to 4:00 PM, Saturday August 8th
WHERE: Roundbox Global (981 Joseph E. Lowery Blvd. NW Suite 100, Atlanta, Ga 30318 PDF of directions)

As you can see, our location is confirmed!  preDevCamp Atlanta is happening at the Atlanta offices of Roundbox Global. Many thanks to Roundbox and Leif Wells for setting us up with this great space for our event. We’re still finalizing the timing for the day, but to give you a taste, here’s what you can expect:

• SDK setup: If you haven’t been able to get the SDK up and running, we’ll have hands-on help from those of us who have.
• webOS Development 101: We’ll have a presentation on the basics of webOS development
• App Ideas / Brainstorming / Beta Testing Sessions: From the shell of an idea for an app to an app already built and ready for testing, we’ll have a session for brainstorming new ideas, refining existing ideas, and even testing apps for attendees.
• App Development: We’ll round out the day with coding sessions. We plan to be flexible based on our final turnout. We’ll possibly have individuals hacking on their apps alone, people getting assistance with coding and/or design, and possibly even a group or two working on an app together.

As we don’t have a sponsor for lunch (please let us know if you’d like to sponsor lunch), we’re asking you to bring $5 to pitch in for Pizza (let us know if that’s a dietary problem or a financial one and we’ll be sure you’re taken care of). Coffee and Doughnuts in the morning along with water and several soda choices through the day are being provided by our volunteer organizers (thanks Alnaseer, Patrick, and Kyle).

Roundbox also provides space for the Adobe User Group of Atlanta, so there is a PDF of directions available online.

If you’re wondering what to bring, the San Francisco organizers have compiled a great list which we’ve included here (with some thoughts of our own):

1. A Laptop running one of the 3 supported operating systems in at least a virtual machine if not as the main OS (32 bit windows -xp or vista, Mac OSX, Linux)
2. A thumb drive or a cd with the SDK to share with your neighbor if they forget it. Get it at http://developer.palm.com
3. Your coolest geek shirt. Don’t have one? you still have time to order one from think geek
4. An Idea (or several!) of what you want to build or help build.
5. Your palm pre – you have one right? Ideally in developer mode.
6. Graphic Design software if you’re a designer – Adobe Fireworks works best. Get the trial here.
7. An IDE – Eclipse works best and palm has special plugins for it.  http://developer.palm.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1639
8. Paper or a notebook for sketching ideas and notes. – Portable whiteboards are cool too.
9. Hacker / devhouse  / excitement to learn / can do spirit  – without this you will have no fun, and at the end of the day I hope that is what you have.
10. Have a great camp!

We hope you’re planning to attend if you’re in the Atlanta area; if you are and you haven’t yet registered, please register now so we can be prepared.

From preDevCamp home page:

Great news, everybody!

Palm has just announced that the WebOS SDK is now publicly available. You can get a copy of it here: http://developer.palm.com/

The absence of a public SDK was the biggest risk to a successful preDevCamp… now everybody can use it. Get your coding skills polised… Invite all your friends… preDevCamp is gonna rock it!

August 8th, here we come!

Awesome! Now everyone can play with it before our Atlanta preDevCamp. Thoughts on the SDK from the Atlanta Developers?

Also, please RSVP to attend the Atlanta camp by commenting here (if you have not already).

preDevCamp organizers announced August 8th as our camp date and preDevCamp Atlanta is confirmed! 

Now that we have a date, we need to get confirmations from Atlantans on who is confirmed to attend. I would like to suggest that we start with a one-day camp (I suggest August 8th from 8:30AM to 4PM) and see if additional events or meetings need to be organized after the 8th. All, please comment with your attendance confirmation, suggestions, volunteer, etc. Looking forward to hearing from everyone. Please help spread the word as well. Thanks!

This is also to seek out volunteers for the Atlanta preDevCamp to help organize the event. There is much to be done (venue, sponsors, catering, agenda, etc), so anyone that can help, please come forward and comment here so that we ca coordinate.

From preDevCamp blog: http://predevcamp.org/2009/05/29/big-updates-from-predevcamp/

To ensure that everybody is as ready as they can be, we’re in agreement that preDevCamp needs to be pushed out a little longer. We’ve taken a look at the conference schedule this summer as well as worked out how much time is needed to arrange a preDevCamp and we’veselected August 8th as the date. This may feel a while out, but it means there’s plenty of time to get locations sorted out.

Its Official!

Palm Pre will be available on June 6th for $199 with Sprint.

From: http://tr.im/lLx3

Sprint (NYSE: S) today announced pricing and nationwide availability for the highly anticipated Palm^® Pre™ phone, offered exclusively from Sprint. Palm Pre will be available nationwide on June 6 in Sprint stores, Best Buy, Radio Shack, select Wal-Mart storesand online at Sprint.com for $199.99 with a two-year service agreement and after a $100 mail-in rebate. 

The Palm Pre phone will be available from Sprint on June 6 for $199.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate with a new two-year service agreement on an Everything Data plan or Business Essentials with Messaging and Data plan. An array of compelling accessories also will be available for Pre, including the Palm Touchstone charging dock. The Touchstone™ Charging Kit, which includes the Touchstone charging dock and Touchstone back cover for Pre, will be available June 6 for $69.99. The Touchstone charging dock and Touchstone back cover also are available separately from for $49.99 and $19.99, respectively.

So is everyone ready for June 13th weekend Atlanta preDevCamp? We will wait for organizers to confirm the dates for the camp. Here we go!

From O’Reilly Media and Palm: http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9780596802097

Chapter 7 on Application Services seems to be one of the most interesting one so far.  Topics include:

7.1. Using Services

7.1.1. Service Overview 

7.1.2. Application Manager (service that provides functions related to finding and launching applications)

7.1.3. Cross-App Launch

7.2. Core Application Services 

7.2.1. Broswer (launch a browser with URL)

7.2.2. Phone (initiate a phone call by opening phone app with specified number)

7.2.3. Camera (to launch the camera app, take a picture, and return the picture to the app)

7.2.4. Photos (launch photos app)

7.2.5. Maps (launch the Map app with specified address data)

7.3. Palm Synergy Services

7.3.1. Account Manager

7.3.2. Contacts & Calendar

7.3.3. People Picker

7.3.4. Email & Messaging

7.4. Viewers & Players

7.4.1. View File

7.4.2. Audio

7.4.3. Video

7.5 Other Applications

Good insight into Synergy and how it works. Future chapters will probably dig much deeper. This is definitely my favorite part of the OS. Fun stuff.  Enjoy.

From PalmwebOSBlog.com: http://palmwebosblog.com/mojo-sdk/palm-mojo-sdk-emulator-under-linux-screenshots-and-new-info/

What happens when I am approved for the early access?

Once you are approved for the early access you will get a username and password to access Palm’s database based on Confluence where you will be able to download the SDK. It seems that some people were able to access the download page without login and password a few days ago, however, this is unconfirmed and the page is now not accessible.

How to navigate in the emulator

Here are the keys to navigate between the cards in the emulator:

• Home or End – get to the card view
• Left and Right Arrows – switch between cards
• Esc – return back to the program
• Home and drag the card up – close the program

From O’Reilly Media and Palm: http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9780596802097

Another insightful chapter on data storage and organization. Topics include:

Depot — a wrapper on the HTML 5 APIs for simple object store and retrieval.
Cookie — a simplified interface to browser cookies, a single object store for small
amounts of data.

Book also discusses HTML 5 database objects elements, AJAX requests and responses

Thanks to Palm and O’Reilly, there is plenty of information now available to start developing for over-achiever developers. Hoping to get our Atlanta camp going soon. Please help get additional folks registered for a camp around mid Juneish (based on all the rumors)?

From: http://www.palminfocenter.com/news/9766/developers-still-anticipating-a-positive-webos-experience/

ADT surmises that the general consensus amongst the developer is that Palm is back from the brink of oblivion with a compelling, developer-friendly new mobile platform and device. The piece also discusses the various PreDevCamps, which are being formed and operated totally autonomously from Sprint, Palm Inc., or the Palm Developer Network.

Mitch Allen, Palm’s Software Chief Technology Officer and author of the upcoming Palm WebOS development book by O’Reilly Media, is quoted in his assessment of Palm’s rival platforms:

“Apple has some excellent tools but it’s still largely an embedded platform environment and BlackBerry is Java-based, though I am not very familiar with development on those platforms…but I think they are very different than WebOS, which is built around tools and models for Web applications. That implies a certain kind of workflow for the developer in terms of being able to build their applications fairly rapidly, iterate very rapidly using the kind of browser-based debugging tools. I think that workflow is a lot more productive than any of the embedded workflows, to be honest”

Older article referenced, but still a good read. Pre/webos release can’t be too far. Lets get in Camp preparation mode. Know any other Atlanta developers that can join us?

From O’Reilly Media Inc and Palm: http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9780596802097

Getting more and more of these gems. Here is a brief summary of what Chapters 4 and 5 cover:

Chapter 4: Dialogs & Menus

• Dialogs (Error, Alert, Custom Dialogs)
• Menus (Menu widgets, Application Menu, View Menu, Command Menu, Submenus)
• Commander Chain (propagate commands)

Chapter 5: Advanced Widgets

• Indicators that show progress [Spinner (that do not show progress) & Progress Indicators (Progress Pill, Bar, and Slider)]
• Scroller [multiple types of scroller]
• Pickers [input selection for dates, times, numbers, files]
• Advanced Lists [Formatters property, Dividers (filter lists)]
• Viewers [WebView, Image View, Audio & Video Objects]

From Industry Standard “Palm’s webOS lives up to hype, early developers say”: http://www.thestandard.com/news/2009/04/17/palm-s-webos-lives-hype-early-developers-say

The potential power of webOS lies in three capabilities that Palm has brought together into a coherent whole. First, mobile applications are written entirely in JavaScript, HTML and Cascading Style Sheets, which are technologies that an army of Web developers has been using for years. Second, webOS was designed from the outset to run multiple applications at once and, these developers say, to minimize the well-known potential problems that arise when doing so. Third, the application model is designed in turn to fully exploit both these features, creating, these developers say, a simpler, far more intuitive user experience.

It’s the combination of these kinds of capabilities that excites developers. “Palm started with a clean sheet of paper,” says Tom Conrad, CTO for Pandora, an Oakland, Calif., company that offers a personalized Internet radio service, widely used on iPhones. Pandora just introduced a version for BlackBerry and in December started working with Palm on a webOS version. “Everything about the Pre feels like it’s ‘future-oriented,’ not an iPhone-inspired knockoff.”

Great article for all developers to read. Can’t wait to get my hands on the SDK.

It seems that Palm’s development strategy is well thought out. Choice of language and ease of SDK will entice plenty of web developers and may entice thousands of Palm OS developers to jump on board and learn Javascript (though I know some are still hesitant), while they are working closely with more and more companies that can develop more sophisticated software for the webOS. To me, it looks like a great start. Eventually, they can open up the core of the OS to more and more while ensuring that the inital 3rd party programs will help maintain the stability and speed of the OS and not cause a negative PR issue for Palm.