All you gallery-haters, click here.

WHERE: WHERE integrates several widgets designed to answer any question that starts with its name. Where's the nearest coffee shop? Where's the nearest gas station? But it's more flexible than that, able to answer some questions that start with "what," as in "what's the traffic on I-95 like?" Hell, it can even do some "whens," like "when is Fantastic Mr. Fox playing?" It's got Yelp, YellowPages, Starbucks and more. Free

Evernote: Evernote is arguably the best note-taking app on every platform on which it appears (iPhone, Android) and on Pre it's nearly as good. For some reason the Pre version lacks voice notes, but it's still what I use for grocery lists. Free

Pandora: It's Pandora. It's great. Especially essential on the Pre, which has a mere 8GB of non-expandable memory. Free

Fandango: Another one that you probably already know, Fandango's the best movie-finding app on WebOS. It saves nearby or favorite theaters, uses GPS to find those closest, lets you watch trailers—it's everything you'd want in a movie app. Free

Twee: I had a hard time deciding between Twee and Tweed for the title of Palm Pre Twitter Champ, but decided on Twee for two reasons. First, I like its story—it was a jailbreak app first, and muscled its way into the App Catalog on sheer moxie and pluck. Second, it offers a free version, which is the one I actually use. Tweed has a more conventional (read: prettier) interface, but I'm not sure that's worth three bucks when TweeFree is totally competent. Free

NYTimes: An essential for any smartphone platform, the Pre's NYTimes app falls in between the iPhone's and Android's in quality. It's less buggy and better-looking than Android's, but its smaller screen and slightly slower performance gives iPhone the edge. Regardless, it's a great app for the greatest news outlet in the country, and lets you feel informed even though you're just skimming headlines while sitting on the toilet. Free

TasteSpotting Today: TasteSpotting is my favorite food website, but the things that make it great (huge and constantly updated selection, links to external websites, great photography) also make it a headache to read on a mobile device. But TasteSpotting Today puts the massive amounts of info in an easy-to-read format. Great for anyone who likes food. $1

Tea Timer: Honestly, I don't really like tea. I can never get it to taste like much besides tea-flavored hot water, and, you know, I always feel like could be drinking coffee instead. But I have to say, Tea Timer, which provides exact steeping times for a huge variety of tea types (as well as a countdown timer), did result in the best cup of loose-leaf Rooibos I've ever had. Still tasted like tea-flavored water, but it was the best tea-flavored water I've ever made. Way to go, Tea Timer. $1

Topple Ball: The Pre's definitely lacking in games compared to the iPhone, but Topple Ball is the perfect waiting-for-a-bus game. It's kind of like that tilting maze game Labyrinth, but with obstacles like bumpers, launchers and teleporters to provide extra challenge. Surprisingly tough, but my go-to timewaster. $2, free version available

Stitcher: As with Pandora, it's important to have a source of streaming media to make up for the Pre's anemic storage, and Stitcher is my favorite podcast app on the platform. It's sleek, fairly full-featured, streams quickly, and has an easy-to-use interface. Free

Scoop: Scoop is my pick for best RSS reader on the Pre, due to its solid integration with Google Reader. Feeds is the other frontrunner, but it's five times more expensive and you definitely aren't getting more for your money. $1

Open Table: Open Table is a great (albeit sometimes limited) way to reserve tables at restaurants without having to, like, talk to a human being. It's really effective in major urban areas like NYC and SF, although in my suburban Pennsylvania hometown I was better off using Yelp and calling the restaurants. Free

Accuweather: Tells you the weather. Free

Dealert: Tracks deals from a variety of online deal purveyors, like SlickDeals, DealNews and FatWallet. That's provided you need some other source of deals beyond our own Gadget Deals of the Day, shocking though that may be. $2

Yelp: The premiere source for sometimes-corrupt listings of restaurants and local businesses. Need pan-Asian-Ethiopian fusion food right now, in the middle of Little Italy? Yelp's got your back. Free

JogStats: If you're one of those weirdos who likes jogging even when there's a perfectly nice couch you could be sitting on, JogStats is the best running assistant on WebOS. It tracks your distance, speed, calories, altitude, all that stuff that makes me exhausted just typing it. $5

Classic: For the guy who just can't let go to the past, this oddly third-party app recreates the classic Palm OS on your Pre or Pixi, complete with virtual buttons, and will run any Palm OS app. Free

GDial: The Palm Pre's Google Voice app is damn good—in John Herrman's words, "The Pre handles Google Voice nearly as well as Android, and obviously way better than the iPhone." Free

Crosswords: It ain't from Will Shortz, but the Pre's Crosswords app is surprisingly excellent. Clever puzzles, huge selection, with a range of challenge from Monday to Saturday (there's a little crossword humor for you). Seems expensive, but if you're into crossword puzzles, this could mean dozens of hours of entertainment. Or, if you're like me, hundreds of hours. $10

Media Remote: A version of Apple's very first iPhone app, Remote, Media Remote takes the idea to the next level by letting you control several different programs on a Windows PC—WMP, iTunes, MediaMonkey, VLC and XBMC. Pre only (since the Pixi has no Wi-Fi) and yeah, Windows only is lame, but I use this app all the time to control my XBMC-running media center and it works great. Free

I ask because smartphones have contracts, generally and because of that they seem like a complicated thing to gift. And a personal decision! What do you think about it?

The Ares app development program will of course mean thousands more apps will be available for download, and the 1.3.5 update will help with installing them. As well as talking about the webOS update, Rubinstein also gave hope to non-Sprint fans everywhere, commenting:

"We don't believe in building large portfolios of products. Our focus is around having a small family of really great products. Right now we have two great products in Pre and Pixi and our objective right now is to expand with more carriers and more regions."

They'll probably hold off on releasing update 1.3.5 until CES, where they're expected to announce something big. [PreCentral]

It works! I've never designed an app in my life, but that didn't stop me from creating a masterpiece in, like, four minutes.

As far as I can tell this is something like a full development SDK, insofar as the regular MojoSDK can be considered a full developement SDK. That is to say, while anyone with any development experience will have no problem creating apps with it—in fact, a layperson with a few spare afternoons could probably make something—they're still going to be of the same web-app-like caliber we've gotten used to in the App Catalog. Games, modal UIs, and a lot of the advanced features that make Android and iPhone apps shine are a little beyond Ares' reach, I think. Still, pretty cool stuff. [Palm]

Specifically, if you jump back a year to Q2 2008, when Palm lost an astonishing $508m—no small feat for a company that shipped less than half a million phones during the period—things are downright rosy right now. If you look back to Q1 of this year, though, not so much:

The company shipped a total of 783,000 smartphone units during the quarter, representing a 5 percent decrease from the first quarter of fiscal year 2010

Despite launching a second phone and expanding their international reach with more carriers, Palm's sales have slowed over the last few months, not picked up. CEO Jon Rubenstein is stil optimistic, but that's his job:

We are continuing to execute strongly against our long-term strategy with the delivery of Palm Pixi, the new carrier launches completed this quarter, and the upcoming opening of Palm's full developer program. We're still in the early stages of a long race, and we're energized by the opportunity to compete in this exciting market.

It doesn't take a genius or an insider to know what's wrong with the Pre—its lack of serious app development means that people view it as more of a feature phone than a smartphone—and Rubenstein clearly knows this, and the webOS concept still has a ton of potential. But this is an issue of dollars: if Palm can't start turning this potential into real cash, it'll never get fully realized. Rumors of a Verizon rollout are promising, but they're not a sure thing. And alone, they probably wouldn't be enough—the Pre and Pixi aren't riding on particularly new tech, so Palm needs something fresh to remain a serious competitor.

Anyway, hey, CES is coming up. Do something! [AllThingsD]

According to Phone Arena these 20-minute long training sessions are "to re-introduce Palm and webOS to [Verizon's] personnel [and] will be ongoing until January 4, 2010," so we could speculate that there'll be some excitement in the first quarter of the year. Ah well. At least we can enjoy the catchy tune of the Pixi commercial while we wait. [Phone Arena via Engadget]

This chart from Fierce Developer shows that while Apple and RIM have been booming, and Symbian and Android have shown decent growth for smaller players, Palm webOS and Windows Mobile have been largely stagnant. Microsoft even managed to lose market share between May and July. At the rate this is going, the two carriers will need some drastic changes to stay in the game. For Palm, the answer could be as simple as an expanded or refreshed product line. For Microsoft, though, it looks like a fix won't be coming any time soon. [Comscore via Fierce Developer via Electronista]

An updated Pre is the safe bet. I don't think they're going to let their brand go an entire year without a new high-end phone, and the Pre is getting a bit worn compared to the hype on the 3GS and the Droid (and Android as a whole). Palm has to pull out something big to wow people back into their camp.

Electronista also points out that this will be the first "major presentation" for CEO Jon Rubenstein since he became CEO.

Forum-dwellers at PreCentral are claiming the update doesn't bring much to the table, with it apparently addressing lag when using multiple programs. Mind you, considering we described the Pixi as being "brain-damaged, three-legged dog slow" in our review, it's a much-needed fix. Let us know how you get on with the firmware upgrade, and if that three-legged dog just grew an extra limb. [PreCentral]

If you hate the gallery format, click here.

All pricing shown is with a new 2-year contract, and some deals may be temporary.

AT&T

iPhone 3GS
The iPhone 3GS is the best overall smartphone you can buy. It's really that simple. Best user interface, best internet, best apps, best media support—the list goes on. Okay, not the best network, but nothing's perfect. $199

BlackBerry Bold 9700
I miss the original BlackBerry Bold's king-sized keyboard, but the Bold 9700 squeezes the best of the BlackBerry for CEOs into an impressively tight form factor—faux leather back included—making it very possibly the best BlackBerry you can buy. $10

Bonus: Nokia e71x
It's free, and an actually good smartphone—my favorite Nokia phone on the planet. Free

Verizon

Droid
It's a terminator. A huge, disgustingly high-res screen, Batman-worthy industrial design, and the full power of Android 2.0 make it the best phone on Verizon—and the fact that it's running on arguably the best network in the US make it the second best smartphone you can buy, period. $150

BlackBerry Tour
Sure, it's notorious for trackball problems and it's missing Wi-Fi, but this is the BlackBerry of choice for email warriors if they're not on AT&T or T-Mobile—and it sure as hell beats anything running Windows Mobile. $50

Bonus: Droid Eris
If you're desperate to save $100 over the Droid, the Droid Eris will run Android 2.0 soon enough, and is smoother, smaller, and friendlier, if a little blander. $100

Sprint

Palm Pre
The Pre offers one of the best user experiences of any smartphone with Palm's webOS, and it's probably the best phone on Sprint, hardware build issues and comparatively dinky App Catalog aside. $80

HTC Hero
The best Android phone not running Android 2.0, HTC's Sense UI makes the sometimes confusing Android interface more digestible and has a few nifty tricks of its own, like integrated social networking. $100

Bonus: There is none. The Pixi's close ($25), but the fact that you can get the Pre for nearly as cheap undercuts a lot of the value, as much as we like the design and form factor.

T-Mobile

Motorola Cliq
Motorola's other Android phone is gussied up with Blur, a custom interface that's bright and friendly, with widgets for keeping track of everything happening on your social network. It's our favorite Android phone on T-Mobile. $100

Unlocked iPhone
No, I'm not kidding. A jailbroken and unlocked iPhone, even without 3G powers, is the second best smartphone you can use on T-Mobile.

Bonus: BlackBerry Bold 9700
The BlackBerry Bold 9700 is the first BlackBerry with 3G on T-Mobile, which is reason enough, really, but it's good the reasons listed above, too. $130

I call this a deal on a phone with a terrific UI on a terrific network, but I'd pay double these rates if the Palm had a more sizable app library. But if your'e set on palm, remember what we said: For $80, even if 3x as much, the Pre is a much nicer piece of hardware. All Things D's John Paczkowski says it best: "If Things Get Really Bad, Palm's Pixi Will Make a Great Happy Meal Prize" [Amazon via All Things D]

The $100 Pixi made sense once upon a time, when the Pre was $200 and Palm needed a phone for the masses—like the Centro, oncer upon a time—to establish the webOS as a real platform. A leaner, cheaper version of the Pre was a good idea. Now, you can get the real thing—faster, stronger, screenier—for under a hundred bucks. The Pixi's existential crisis is not insignificant.

What's Neutered vs. the Pre

• Slower processor (using an older ARM11 architecture vs. faster ARM Cortex A8)
• Smaller and squintier 400x320, 2.63-inch, 18-bit color screen (vs. 480x320, 3.1-inch, 24-bit color)
• 2-megapixel camera (vs. 3MP)
• No Wi-Fi

Pixi Perfect Design (Just About)

There has not been a candybar phone more perfectly designed and executed than the Pixi. It's exactly the size and shape a phone that aspires to be small should be. It's a Hot Pocket sliced in half, but flat and glossy on top and round and rubbery on the bottom. It almost feels fake, like a concept that you hope is a real phone but isn't, except that in this case, it really is. It fits inside of an iPhone, if you wanna get more literal.

Plastic, slightly sticky Rice Krispie keys, arranged in four rows form a keyboard so electrifyingly good it's thrilling, like finding an actually sweet wind-up toy in your cereal box (Rice Krispies, of course) every time you type. They keys are tiny, but have a deceptive amount of rise, so your fat thumbs can feel out individual nubs, which pop in this remarkably satisfying way when you click down. The size-to-goodness ratio might just be the best on any keyboard I've used. If there's any reason to pick the Pixi over the Pre, it's if you type a shocking amount on your phone, because the Pixi's is better by like an order of magnitude. Or eleventy.

Between the screen, with its shaved corners, and the keyboard is a stretch of empty space. Until you run your finger along it, and a spark—a line of light, really—emerges. The LED strip, invisible when it's not indicating something, replaces the ball on the Pre, which I always thought was a weird little speed bump when you stroked the gesture area, anyway. It's kind of beautiful, the stark aesthetic of it emotionally tinged with sci-fi imagery, from Gort to Cyclop's visor.

Two things are wrong. The screen lock button on the top left is a little too in touch with the overall robustness of the phone, so it's hard to push and doesn't provide enough feedback. On the opposite end of that spectrum, the trap door covering the micro USB port feels flimsy and aggravatingly snaps shut, making plugging in a USB cable a struggle worthy of a Homerian epic every single time.

Tinkerbell Would Be Pissed

The Pixi is slow.

Achingly.

Maddeningly.

Ripyourhairoutandsmashitagainstthewallingly.

It lags, it hangs, it stutters, it freezes. A lot. A simple fact: Multitasking isn't better than unitasking when it takes longer to get shit done. An example: I wanted to take a picture while I had the browser and and App Catalog open. Simple. The camera froze spectacularly, rendering the entire phone completely unusable for well over 30 seconds—whenever I tried to flick the camera card away (cards are apps), it would shoot halfway off the screen, then appear back in its place. Somewhere between 30-45 seconds later, it regained composure. That's with just three core apps open, and no active syncing happening in the background.

True, I could sometimes have up to four apps running without problems, at least for a minute or so, before things starting getting cludgy. But it hangs even with just a single app running sometimes. (Just try loading the full Gizmodo page.) And every time you open an app, there's a solid expanse of time that elapses that you can feel, and it gets old real quick. Maybe webOS is just more transparent about load times than the iPhone, which masks them with title screens, but the whole experience of using this phone is like swimming through very pretty Jello, with one arm, wearing a cast-iron suit, or something like that.

Screen, Camera and Other Hardware

You get used to the smaller screen and its 80 fewer pixels, mostly. It's cramped, but you'll only be directly, painfully cognizant of it from time to time, like when you're reading some text outside of Palm's own apps or navigating web pages. It's not a crappy screen, but it's not exceptionally bright or vibrant, either. The touch accuracy seemed less spot-on than the Pre too, though that could've been the effect of smaller targets because of the tinier screen, like the drop down menu for apps in the top left corner, which is just a sliver on the Pixi.

The Pixi's 2MP camera is unimpressive. The comparison shot above—of ramen, people—was taken with a 2MP iPhone 3G in the exact same lighting and place, snapped within 10 seconds of each other. The camera app, when it's not freezing up, is quick to shoot once you press the button though, which is definitely something.

And I'll just say it: No Wi-Fi sucks, since there are lots of place in NY where even Sprint's 3G can't penetrate.

Software

The Pixi comes with webOS 1.3.1. Palm's definitely tuned things up since webOS originally shipped in June with stuff like more support for Yahoo services, the ability to buy songs over 3G, performance improvements and other interface sprucing up, but it's not a radically difference experience than the one Chen documented exhaustively here. (In other words, read that for the software review, since it's basically the same, just much slooooower on the Pixi.)

What's different now is that there are over 300 apps in the App Catalog, and Palm's dumping fresh ones in every week. So the app situation is greatly improved. The problem is that it's still behind the rest of the pack though—iPhone, Android and BlackBerry—and being fourth-place development priority for cross-platform developers with limited resources it not a great place to be, so Palm's got a rough road here. Oh, one interesting point, since this is supposed to be the smartphone OS for multitasking, is that while an app is downloading from the App Catalog, you can't browse for other apps—if you leave the download page, it cancels. So I hope you've got good Sprint reception in your house.

The other thing that's changed is iTunes. Palm's former official way to sync your media to your phone is broken. Irrevocably. Even if Palm does restore iTunes syncing with its dirty hack (no really, it is a dirty hack, impersonating an iPod with a false USB ID) the entire model is screwed. Putting people buying your phone in the middle of a stupid pissing match that you're destined to lose isn't cool. In the meantime, Palm's official solution is for people to sideload or use third-party apps like DoubleTwist.

Don't Buy It

The Pixi is screwed. It's totally cannibalized by the technologically superior Pre, which you can find for under $100. Even if you can get the Pixi for $30 at Walmart, it's worth trading up to the Pre for $40 or $50 more if you're absolutely wedded to the idea of a webOS phone, simply for the speed and screen. Mostly the speed, since the Pixi is brain damaged, three-legged dog slow, as nice as the hardware is on the outside.

Not to mention, for a hundred dollars, there are phones that just offer better experiences and aren't in the same awkward position Palm is in the smartphone fight. I'm talking of course, about the Droid Eris, Android's 99-dollar darling on Verizon. The entire reason to buy the Pixi—a value proposition—has completely evaporated. And I almost feel bad about that. Almost.

Incredible keyboard (for the size)

Awesome design and build

webOS is nice

Camera sucks

Palm's dumb iTunes fight

Slow

I mean, slooooooooooooooooooooow

Apple Issues Update for Current-Gen iPod Nano

Apple quietly issued a firmware update for its newest, video-taking iPod Nano, and it's pretty minor but does fix a few problems. Audio podcasts can now be played back in Normal, Slow or Fast modes, and a few random bugs were patched (Nike+ integration, mono audio, VoiceOver). It's in Remainders because it really is a minor update—we wouldn't even bother with it except the Nano is such a ridiculously huge seller. [TUAW]

Barnes & Noble Giftcards Won't Buy Ebooks, Screwing Some Nook Pre-Orderers

Apparently Barnes & Noble's giftcards will buy you everything B&N sells—except ebooks. It's an inexplicable and irritating omission, but what makes it really rankle is that nobody seems to know about it, even those who work at the stores. Check out this story:

My wife and kids pre-ordered a nook for my birthday at our local B&N. The sales person also sold her a $100 gift card to "get my eBook collection started." When I tried to purchase a few books, I found out that gift cards can't be used on eBooks.

What a dick move! We're going to assume ignorance on B&N's part, but this is sloppy stuff, especially given our proximity to the holidays—their giftcards are incredibly popular and this will not be an isolated incident. Get it together, B&N. [Consumerist]

Dell Mini 3 Officially Launched in China

The Android-running Dell Mini 3 smartphone officially began its launch sequence today. It's been shipped out to sellers in China today, for release later this month, with a Brazil release to follow later this year. In early 2010 it should hit AT&T and Verizon—we'll see if we care by then. It's a noticeably low-key release, considering it's the first handheld in years from Dell, but it ends up in Remainders due to its current China-only status. [Electronista]

Palm Stock Skyrockets After Nokia Takeover Rumor

Palm stock skyrocketed today, with trading over 15 times heavier than normal, due to an odd rumor that Nokia would be buying the company. It doesn't really make any sense to us—Nokia is really unlikely to be purchasing a competitor to its Symbian line, and buying the beleaguered Palm would be a weird way to try to make gains in the US market. This one plops into Remainders because it's both unlikely and mere financial news, which isn't really that exciting. [Electronista]

The 650, which runs old-school Palm OS, must be straining to boot Google's mobile OS, working with just 32MB of RAM and a 312MHz processor—a far cry from even the G1, which isn't known for its snappy performance. But, with time and patience, she flickers to life anyway. And for its mere fact of existence, this Frankensteinian monster should be applauded. Onward and downward, brave Android hackers. [Engadget]

Compared against the Droid Eris, the decidedly secondary, little-advertised rebranded Hero that happens to be launching alongside the Droid Droid (and also happens to be the cheapest new Android phone on the market), the Pixi's hasn't been driving much Google traffic at all, according to Google Trends. More odd is that even with reviews starting to hit, exciting deals showing up online and a release date rapidly approaching, the Pixi's buzz is flat. Yes, that Pixi—thelegitimately interesting handset aimed at a broader audience than its much buzzier predecessor. Hm.

A couple of points: Although I searched for "Droid Eris" in quotes, there's a good chance the Eris is getting a leg up on Google searches by piggybacking on the hyper-hyped Droid Proper. Also, I've seen three people, two of whom work with gadgets for a living, write "Pixi" as "Pixie" in the last 24 hours, which is funny! Also: probably a bad sign, for the buzz. But still, that explains a disparity, not totally flat interest, or the weirdly tiny bump in attention the phone got when pricing was announced back in October. General public: what gives? [Google Trends]

When you stroke the gesture area between the screen and the keyboard, the glowing indicator stares out of the center like the eye of Gort, except bad things don't happen when it lights up. I kind of want to throw it at something, simply because it feels like it can take it. I won't. We'll have more later, of course, but for now, here's some photos.

The $30 Pixis (Pixies?) are backordered already, probably because this is far and away the best deal we've seen so far for this handset. This news does two things: It raises the possibility of a free-on-contract Pixi sometimes in the near future, and calls into question again whether or not the Pixi can ever be a truly good deal. Today, the Pre is $100 at Amazon, so a $30—or even free—Pixi might not be worth the loss of screen size, speed, Wi-Fi and camera quality. This isn't the kind of queasy, awkward decision a company that's so close to the brink needs its customers making right now anyway.

And as BusinessWeek crunches it:

Amortized over the required two-year contract, with the cheapest offering being Sprint's $70 a month unlimited data, 450 voice minute Everything Data plan, the Pixi works a out to $74.15 a month and the Pre to $76.25. Not much to choose from there in budgetary terms.

And that's at $100 and $150 prices for the Pixi and Pre, respectively—not the new bargain basement/flea market/crack den rates. So what does that leave in the Pixi's favor? Size? Style? The fact that its name actually sounds like a noun? [EverythingPre]

In a way, software written in Ares is the purest kind of web app: It's designed in a browser, written in web languages and rendered like a webpage. In another, it's not, because the tools packages these things like native apps. As weirdly hybrid as the results are, Palm reasoning is straightforward: They want to "help Web developers make the leap to becoming mobile developers." You know, by making web development into app development, even moreso that webOS and the Mojo SDK already do. Ok!

The tool will be available by the end of the year, Palm says, but it's not clear what effect it'll actually have. The hope is that it'll spur development for a platform that runs the risk of scaring would-be developers away with its limited user base. The fear is that by encouraging the development of nicely-wrapped web apps before they have a steady stream of regular apps, Palm is dooming the Pre and Pixi to wallow in a sea of $1 farts and spam. I'm taking bets, in the comments. [PC World]

It May Be The Best WoW Costume Yet, But It Makes Me Cry

Right now this kid is probably thinking that he's the coolest MMMORPG player on the block with his costume that comes with a LED health bar, mana bar and spell casting glove, but I have the feeling that he'll be haunted by the glowing fairy companions of Halloweens past one day. I, on the other hand, already feel haunted by the misguided costume ideas of this particular Halloween. [Make]

Cupcake Frosting Robot Takes The Fun Out Of Licking Up Messes

The MakerBot Frostruder MK2 is the second prototype of a computer controlled cupcake froster. It looks kinda cool, but is it really necessary to build a robot for consistently frosted cupcakes, cakes, and toast? I'd rather use the time saved to nibble on the "defective" inconsistently frosted treats. [Makerbot via Make]

Palm Will Not Be Having A Very Merry Christmas

Things worse than creepy commercials loom on the horizon for Palm as analysts at Citigroup and CL King are predicting a rough winter for the handset maker. Part of the reasoning is the release of several Android handsets including the much discussed Motorola Droid over the next few months. Is it really surprising that people would flock to the new and shiny toys of the season? [All Things D]

Personalized Google News Pages Appeal To The Narcissists In Us

Google News now allows for personalized pages with multiple queries (rather than the single query sections of the past) which are publishable in a directory. Not really all that exciting, but as Techcrunch suggests, the best use for this feature is as the ideal vanity search, rounding up everything you didn't even know was online about yourself. [Google News Blog via TechCrunch]

Even Palm, who used this feature as a symbol of their underdog status, repeatedly defied a notoriously litigious behemoth and just wanted to give their users an easy way to sync music? Yes. It's a clear stunt to garner sympathy as a scruffy up-and-comer, it's in defiance of published USB standards, and Apple is clearly never, ever going to stop patching this "bug." You've got bigger things to worry about.

And even Apple, who's just trying to maintain control over a proprietary media player, and who has every right to do so? Yes. To users, the updates look weirdly protective, and make the company seem dickish, which here, they kind of are.

It's like watching children locked in a yes/no argument over whether or not licorice tastes good, and both parties should just leave it. I don't say this because I prefer Palm users to be locked out of iTunes or something—it's just that that's where things stand right now, it's the status quo and devoting any more energy to this protracted fight would be a waste. Apple can ignore this, because it shouldn't matter to them, and Palm should tell Prefolk to sync with doubleTwist, because that works—now even with the Pixi—just fine. Thanks in advance! [PreCentral]

Reviews aren't even hitting yet, but the early consensus is clear: Android 2.0 is the first version of Google's OS that's really grown-up. And now, with hardware like the Droid and the Hero, it's not just a technological triumph, it's the kind of thing that people—and not just leery, jaded tech blog readers—can connect with, and actually use. This is huge for Android.

iPhone OS is already a superpower with massive adoption, a huge app store and a bright future. They're not going anywhere. They learned their lessons about the importance of volume and apps when I was still a kid. But what about the other two smartphone players that consumers really love? You know, Google vs Palm? Think Apple vs Microsoft, circa the late 80s.

Hear me out: With version 2.0, Android is sitting on the cusp of greatness. And Palm? They've got a nice OS, but with just two handsets and a tiny user base they're up against a wall. Google is old Microsoft: They've got a open development platform, tons of hardware partners. They're going to start having problems with this strategy—you know, fragmentation, device support issues, etc—but as with Microsoft, it's going to serve them well, and make them huge. Palm is old Apple: With inhouse hardware and iffy developer support, they're just insular. What that means:

• Hardware partners: Who isn't developing an Android phone nowadays? Motorola, Samsung, LG, Sony Ericsson, and HTC dwarf Palm's hardware partner list, which consists of "Palm." Don't get me wrong, the Pre and Pixi are nice pieces of hardware—like Apple always had—but it's tough to compete with such a broad lineup with just two devices, both of which are somewhat polarizing. Android is the new Windows Mobile, but in a good way.

• Apps: Apple learned from their past mistakes, and actively courted developers from the start. Android's start was slower and more organic, but seems to so far correlate with handset adoption, meaning it's growing, and it's about to grow a lot more. More apps=a better user experience=joy for Google. Palm has introduced paid apps, but it's not clear why anyone would want to invest in development for such a small userbase. (The first paid app, if you remember, was an air hockey game.)

• Apps, again: Android came before webOS, and likewise the Android SDKs came well before mojoSDK. But no matter how far into the future you look, Google has Palm beaten from a developer standpoint. If Android handset sales start to approach iPhone territory—tens of millions—the combination of a huge potential market and powerful development tools, especially SDK 2.0, will make the choice for developers obvious: Go with Apple, or go with Google. Palm won't even register.

• Resources: Google can dedicate tremendous amounts of money and time to developing Android, as their pastry-themed release schedule can attest to; Palm is hanging by a thread, and they haven't issued a truly major update to their OS since it came out. Google can lose money on Android for as long as it wants—they've got Microsoft-level buoyancy, those guys—while Palm has to turn fast profit by building and selling phones, lest their nervous investors jump ship.

• Google is an app development powerhouse: Their apps are becoming more and more central to the general smartphone experience. Apple and Palm both use Google's maps and search, but naturally, Android always has a later, greater version of both. It helps for the company behind a platform to supply a few killers apps for it too—just look at Office and Window 2.0.

And take what happened yesterday, with Google Navigation for Maps. Google can just will a free turn-by-turn navigation app into existence. Palm can't do this. They can license Google's technology, sure, but that leaves them at the mercy of a competitor.

BlackBerry handsets are safe in their own way—suits need their keyboards, and familiarity is worth a lot—and Windows Mobile is on a fixed heading for total irrelevance, as evidenced by their once-strongest ally, HTC, talking about the OS like it's in hospice care. But there are just three true consumer smartphone OSes out there—the ones that don't feel like complicated smartphones, but which do all the same tricks.

And assuming Apple's is safe—and it is—that leaves two. Like Microsoft once was in the desktop computing space, Google is poised for a meteoric rise, and like Apple, Palm should be bracing themselves for hard times. For all the similarities, though, there's one difference: Palm probably won't be able to pull through.

The Pixi is generally thought of as a hardware downgrade from it's older brother, because that's basically what it is: With a smaller screen, no Wi-Fi and a gimpier two-megapixel camera, it's more or less a neo-Centro. Sure, the keyboard's a bit easier to type on, and the device is slimmer, but Sprint (and Palm) really should've shaved another $50 of off this thing: It's a drop in the bucket next to what Sprint will make from each Pixi's two-year service contract, and would go a long way toward making the Pixi, which has to compete with not just the Pre, but a decent spread of $50-$100 entry-level smartphones, a decent buy.

And seriously, still with this rebate stuff? The Pixi's technical price is $250 dollars, yanked down to earth by a $50 instant rebate and a $100 mail-in card. But Best Buy, Radio Shack and Walmart credit the MIRs instantly, so what's the point?

In any case, the Pre didn't sell for full price for more than a few months—in fact, as John Paczkowski notes, Amazon has it on sale for $100 right now—so with any luck we could see a Pixi deal in time for the holidays. And even without any luck, within a few months after that. [Sprint via BusinessInsider]

Straight from the Twitter feed:

@lanvuch We will be carrying the Palm Pre smartphone early next year.

Finally, it's looking like Verizon is going to get a decent phone selection. Between this and the Android Devices we could see any day now, it seems like Big Red is finally getting with the times. [Twitter via BGR]

The App Store is a strange new place for developers. Veterans and newcomers engage in bareknuckle combat, driving prices down to levels people wouldn't have imagined charging just a few years ago. Margins drop to razor-thin levels while customers expect apps to get cheaper and cheaper, but with ever increasing quality and depth.

For developers, for other software platforms and potentially for the increasingly fickle customers themselves, it's uncharted, and treacherous, territory. But the most bizarre thing of all is—in an effort to keep people in the App Store, and to prevent competitors from getting a toehold in the mobile app business—Apple's charting a course straight into it.

"The App Store is a very competitive environment," says Caroline Hu Flexer, co-founder of Duck Duck Moose, an indie developer of children's edutainment apps like Itsy Bitsy Spider. "As an independent developer without a large PR budget or well-known brands, it can be very challenging, and you're pretty much at the mercy of Apple."

The Problem

Most iPhone apps had no life before the App Store, and currently have no life outside it. But with those that did, you start to see a pattern. App prices could reasonably be expected to fall over time—an older game is worth less to customers than a newer game, and with other types of software, a late-stage price drop is a great way to scoop up late adopters. What's strange, though, is how prices dramatically collapse after hitting Apple's store.

Two weeks ago we flagged some bizarre differences in pricing between equivalent PSP and iPhone games. Big titles, like Tetris and Fieldrunners, were inexplicably cheaper on the iPhone, even in cases where it was executed better. This didn't make a whole lot of sense. As it turns out, it had nothing to do with Sony and the PSP, and everything to do with the App Store.

As you can see in the chart above, many apps and services take a price dip in the App Store. Zagat's premium To Go guides cost a healthy $4/month for Windows Mobile phones, but sell for just $10/year on the iPhone. CoPilot 7, a navigation app, used to set you back a full $200 on a Microsoft-badged device (later lowered to $100); the much-improved version 8 sells in the App Store for a measly $35 today. The premium version of WeatherBug runs $5 for people who happened to buy BlackBerry's touchscreen phone, but just $1 for anyone who bought Apple's. VR+ voice recorder, a full-featured dictaphone app, runs $30 on BlackBerry, and an incredible $2 in the App Store. So how can this little App Store, itself a subsection of the iTunes store, squeeze so many developers to the point of near-suffocation?

Update: The BlackBerry Weatherbug app boasts a few extra features over the iPhone app, including push notifications. This accounts for some of the price difference

The Economy

Some of this is pure Econ 101: The store serves a massive, captive audience that's pre-trained to spend money in iTunes. The promise of higher volume makes it easier for developers to lower prices, which they use, along with interesting features and clever marketing, to set themselves apart from the competition.

If things work out just right, the App Store can move a lot of software for you. Spread your lower margins over tens of thousands of sales, and your $2 app could make just as much, if not more, than your old, slower-selling $30 app did. The App Store recently passed the 2-billion-download mark, and there are likely well over 50 million App-Store-ready devices in peoples' hands right now. A vast majority of these downloads—averaging an insane 35 per device—will likely have been free. Only Apple knows just how many. But even if just 5% of the 2 billion downloads were paid for, that's one hell of a market.

It's true that prices are falling as more and more iPhone and iPod Touch owners enter the market. But prices won't stop falling. And more and more developers from all over the world are submitting apps, too, so fewer devs are guaranteed visibility. Not all of the people investing time and money in their products are reaping the return they (reasonably!) expected.

Newsweek's exposé on the end of easy money at the App Store goes a long way toward making the case against going all-in as an iPhone dev. Not only are development costs high, while success appears to be basically randomized. But the story doesn't explain exactly what happened to make the situation so grim.

The Culture

Giz stories rage about app prices all the time, and in your own private way, so do most of you. Buying $1 songs and $2 TV shows has given us an expectation that apps should be cheap, no matter what their use. The glut of free apps you see filling out the app charts every day doesn't help either. Software is worth less to us now, even though we use it more.

I spoke with Steve Andler of Networks In Motion, the company that makes Gokivo. It's an app that we savaged for its introductory price of $10 a month, which then dropped to $5 a month a few weeks ago.

Andler explained reaching the unrealistically low costs with one thing: diminished features. Their app pulls up-to-date map, traffic and POI data from NIM's servers in real time, meaning that—beyond developer costs—they have to constantly pay for new, fresh data to pass on to their customers. But even at $5 a month, it's just about impossible for Gokivo to compete with an app like MotionX GPS Drive, which is $3 a month, or $25 per year.

Andler says there are subtle differences in services offered, which is true—MotionX, for example, doesn't yet read street names aloud when it gives you directions—but your average user probably doesn't know this, and there's a good chance MotionX might add it in an update later on, as their market share and revenues grow. But the damage is done. The app-buying customer is spoiled: As far as we are concerned, turn-by-turn GPS apps should now cost no more than $3 a month, period. This is the new retail, and it's weird.

Loren Brichter, father of Tweetie, is used to getting yelled at by jaded app shoppers. He's charging $3 for Tweetie 2, an update—but a whole new version, really—of his well-established Twitter app. Offering the software as a free upgrade isn't realistic for him:

I priced Tweetie at $2.99 not based on how much work I put into it (it would have been more), or to try and undercut other apps (it would have been less), but simply because I felt like $2.99 was a reasonable price to pay for a Twitter client. Impulse purchase, but not bargain-basement. I never liked playing pricing games either—a popular pastime of other App Store devs. It's always been $2.99, and will probably always be $2.99.

His decision wasn't easy. And even though his app is the darling of the tech press, and has hundreds of great user reviews, he's being lambasted for charging three measly dollars for a high-quality app that people will use again and again and again. Before the App Store, a complaint this petty wouldn't have even made sense.

Apple

From the outside, it appears that Apple is encouraging a race to the bottom. The top 10 lists in each App Store category—one of the only ways for an app to get any meaningful amount of iTunes visibility—are almost exclusively the territory of low-priced impulse buys, and are hard to cling onto for more than a few weeks at time. Flexer, of Duck Duck Moose, says she's experienced it firsthand:

The ranking by volume (as opposed to revenue) on the App Store seems to drive the prices of apps down. Aside from being featured by Apple, exposure of an app is dependent on its ranking in the top lists, so developers lower prices to obtain a higher ranking.

This is echoed and amplified by the makers of Twitterific, an app that, in a bid to stay competitive, saw its price fall from $10 to $4, despite active development and a growing featureset:

While these changes represent perks for users, it also means that sustaining profitability for a given piece of software in the App Store is nearly impossible unless you have a break-away hit.

And if things don't change?

Myself and others like me will have no choice but to focus our development efforts elsewhere.

With yesterday's announcement that Apple is allowing free apps to include in-app purchases, things just got even more tumultuous. Depending on how this is handled, the top "free" apps could all be paid apps in disguise. Either that or the paid app rankings will be dominated by free-on-a-trial-basis teasers. In either case, the rankings open themselves up for opportunistic abuse, and the highest goal for any honest, talented app developer—to just crack that list—just became more uncertain.

This is disastrous for developers, even if it's mostly incidental, and a function of Apple trying to sell apps like they've been selling music for years, despite a totally different set of product types and customer needs. But Apple's effect on pricing goes well beyond incidental. At least in some cases, Apple calls the shots.

A high-profile dev team that has sold a number of apps in the store since the earliest of days, and who accordingly wishes to stay anonymous, told us as much. When they approached Apple with their first app, they had a price in mind. Apple told them it was too high, and that they'd need to cut it to succeed. They chopped it in half. Even then, Apple told them to "be careful."

This company made out fine, since they were in a position to adapt. However, to play the volume game, they had to restructure their entire philosophy around a pricing structure that, just months before, would've seemed ridiculous.

With over 2 billion data points to graph and filter to their heart's content, Apple understands the App Store climate better than anyone else possibly can. As such, their advice is probably golden. Which is okay if you're a relatively nimble, single-purpose company, and you can afford to risk restructuring everything you do around their store, and your costs can be covered at whatever price you evidently need to set to sell at a certain volume. But you'll just want to keep in mind that their advice is self-interested. Apple wants cheap apps, to keep people buying them, and to keep other stores firmly in the second tier—and they're not afraid to say it. From Apple's last quarterly report to investors, a line they've been echoing since the store opened:

[Apple] also expects competition to intensify as competitors attempt to imitate the Company's approach to providing [digital app distribution] seamlessly within their individual offerings or work collaboratively to offer integrated solutions...While the Company is widely recognized as a leading innovator in the personal computer and consumer electronics markets as well as a leader in the emerging market for distribution of third-party digital content and applications, these markets are highly competitive and subject to aggressive pricing.

You don't need to look back any further than the launch of the iTunes music store to see an Apple that will do everything it can to push other peoples' prices down for their benefit. Of course, they can't really fix prices for apps—they're not songs or movies, and each one does something different—but they can nudge like hell.

What Happens Now

So what does the App Store Effect mean, right now? In the short term, we'll get lower prices. This is great. But in the long term, it might not be sustainable.

The promise that sales volume will make up for the rock-bottom prices you need to charge just to be seen in your app category seems increasingly hollow, and to put it bluntly, if developers don't have a chance in hell of recouping their fees, they'll stop trying. And I'm not talking about 99-cent iFart app spammers here—I'm talking about big players who already make money selling software. If the navigation companies, the big game studios and the premium content providers can't thrive in the App Store, they'll have to leave; even playing in Apple's sandbox threatens and undercut their (sometimes much more crucial) product lines elsewhere.

And don't forget, Palm and Android fans, this App Store Effect sends ripples well beyond the App Store. Customers expect to see functionally identical apps priced the same way across platforms, because to us, that's what makes sense. Can devs really afford to port an app to the webOS to sell to the tens of thousands of Pre owners, when they're expected to tag it with iPhone prices, calculated for a base of millions? Whether by Apple's design or totally by accident, everyone who doesn't own an iPhone will suffer for it.

The App Store Effect illustrates a new kind of economy, and it's not going to go away. In fact, it's going to get worse. Developers will either adapt, die or leave. But where will they go? Until there are 50 million Android handsets and 50 million Pre offspring out there, the rest of the mobile software world is pretty much screwed.

What's not surprising is that Motorola is dead last. Up until their Android Cliq they really didn't have much going for them—and neither did Palm, until their Pre. So our guess is that these ratings will look a little different next year with Palm moving up a slot or two, and Motorola pulling out of the shame spot.

Motorola doesn't do too bad on the dumbphone ratings, on the other hand.

Also, LG? [JD Power]

Just head over to the Palm store and enter in PALMPRE at checkout. [Palm]

Full HotSync compatibility is the highlight, and it works over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. As for the pre-installed apps and games—some are freebies, while others are limited trials; see the link below for the full list.

Other useful tweaks include quick keyboard mode switch, improved reset functionality, and reduced power consumption. As was the case before, Classic runs side by side with other WebOS applications. It's not a replacement OS and doesn't limit its features, it just runs the Palm OS apps inside the WebOS environment.

The Classic emulator is available in the App Catalog for $30 bucks, and there's a demo you can try out first. [Motionapps]

The talk began with an innocent forum inquiry:

I can't recall how many built in applications there are but I have 100 applications installed on my Pre - total.

Starting a week ago, I noticed I was no longer able to install applications (through either the App Catalog or by using fileCoaster). Per the recommendation offered by both the App Catalog and fileCoaster, I began deleting applications.

It seems, no matter how many I delete, I am still unable to install new ones. I've reset/rebooted without any change.

I am wondering - is this a permanent limitation? I can't imagine being limited like this - are there any planned work-arounds?

None of the inquiries such as that one, calls to Palm for help, or complaints seemed to have an effect though. The issue persisted, became more apparent to those who started to more apps, yet Palm remained silent. Now users at PreCentral are claiming that Palm's customer support actually denies the existence of issues relating to limits of how many applications can be installed on a Pre. Sure, they're right about there being no limit — if you use homebrew apps.

Homebrew apps aren't exactly helping Palm's App Catalog though, nor are they resulting in anything resembling profit. So why on earth are they not figuring out how to let users use apps that they buy?

From what I can make of various forum postings, users are speculating that the dreaded "Sorry, not enough memory" is related to some messed up memory partitioning, but who knows. With all the work Palm is putting into resolving iTunes syncing troubles, can't they spare a moment to resolve their own OS issues? And you know...profit? [PreCentral and Gadgets on the Go— Thanks, Christian!]

Why Homebrew?

Pre homebrew is as much about adding apps that Palm has been so slow to approve as it is tweaking your handset. Think of it like jailbreaking an iPhone, except that it's easier to do, and the benefits are much, much greater.

(This guide owes a huge debt to the PreCentral forums, where the developer of WebOS Quick Install, with others, have collected most of the necessary resources. Recognition is nice, but donations are better. If you find WebOS Quick Install useful, send Jason a few bucks.)

What You Need

Some downloads! The only app you'll need to run on your computer is a Java app, so it's completely cross-platform. This guide should work for Windows, Mac or Linux.

1. WebOS Quick Install:
This is the desktop program that effectively opens up your Pre for business. It's got quite a bit of power on its own, but one of its greatest talents is the ability to install package managers like Preware, which make installing homebrew apps to your Pre, from your Pre super-easy.

2. WebOSDoctor ROM (Sprint, Bell): This is just a restoration ROM for webOS, which WebOS Quick Install needs to work. It should be saved into the same directory as WebOS Quick Install, then left alone.

3. Java SE 6: Make sure you've got Java 1.6, or SE 6, so you can run these apps properly.

And one trick:

4. Dev Mode: Switching your Pre to dev mode is either sort of fun or sort of tedious, depending on your capacity for nostalgia.

All you have to do is type "upupdowndownleftrightleftrightbastart" on the keypad. That'll open a search query that'll uncover a new app on your Pre called "DeveloperMode." Run it, and it'll switch your phone into, you guessed it, developer mode.

Running WebOS Quick Install

5. Plug your Pre into your computer. When prompted for connection type, select "Just Charge"

6. Open WebOS Quick Install, making sure that the WebOSDoctor ROM is in the same directory as the Quick Install JAR.

You'll get this message:

Heed it.

7. When you reopen WebOS Quick Install, you'll be prompted to choose which kind of device you want to access. Choose "USB Device," which'll install the drivers necessary to crack into a physical Pre, not just an emulator.

8. Follow the driver installation prompts through to completion.

9. Open WebOS Quick Install again. You should see the app's home screen. Click on the bottom button in the right panel, as indicated here:

10. Select "WebOS-Internals Feed (all)" from the download list. Select both "Package Manager Service" and "Preware" from the resulting list. These will enable you to download and apply the tweaks and apps you want.

11. After download, they will be added to the previously empty list in the app's homescreen, where you should highlight both, then click "Install"

There you go!

Getting the Most Out Of Homebrew

Now that you're set up and ready to go, it's time to do stuff. Launch the Preware app on your Pre—at first load, it takes a while to sync up with all the repositories, so be patient—and explore the 200+ apps included by default. (You can add other repositories on your own, but most of the good stuff is already here.)

The "Package Manager Service" installation doesn't just enable downloads through Preware—it enables a whole range of WebOS Quick Install tweaks, which you can access through the Tools ->Tweaks menu. WebOS Quick Install may prompt you to install a few patches; just go along with it, it'll only take a second.

Once you're in the panel, you'll see a wealth of useful tweaks, from a 4-icon-wide app launcher, to a browser ad-blocker, to a user agent string changer, so your Pre asks for snazzier iPhone mobile pages instead of standard mobile fare. Generally, each tweak will restart your Pre.

Themes are managed either through Preware, which has a selection of over 200 that you can install with a single button press, or through the WebOS Quick Install menu, at Tools -> Themer. To install a new theme from WebOS Quick Install, you'll have to manually download from an external site, which you'll be directed to automatically. Once you've downloaded the theme, it's just a matter of loading it into the app. Preware is probably your best bet for this, though there isn't really a way to find out if a theme is any good without actually trying it.

As for that onscreen keyboard? You can install that through WebOS Quick Install: It's in the same place you found Preware, in the "WebOS-Internals Feed (all)" section of the package downloader. A word of warning: It's only officially supported up to WebOS 1.2.0, so you might be best advised to wait a few days until the developers have worked out any bugs with 1.2.1.

Anyway, the Pre Homebrew community is rich and fast-moving, so I'll let you all take it from here. Some great resources to get you started:

• PreCentral
• WebOS-Internals
• PimpMyPre
• PreYourMind

And again, a gajillion thanks to WebOS Quick Install Developer Jason Robitaille and the users over at the PreCentral forums.

If you have more tips and tools to share, please drop some links in the comments-your feedback is hugely important to our Saturday How To guides. And if you have any topics you'd like to see covered here, please let me know. Happy homebrewing, folks!

Palm's possibly heroic, mostly inconsequential iTunes-molesting theatrics aside, the fix most people were actually waiting for involved an error introduced this week by 1.2, which broke Exchange 2007 EAS syncing for quite a few people. That, along with a few bugfixes, is the main component of 1.2.1, which should be making its way to handsets over the weekend. In other news, paid apps are still totally MIA in the App Catalog. Weird.

Here's the full 1.2.1 changelog:

Email

* Resolved an issue where after installing the 1.2.0 webOS update some customers running Exchange 2007 could no longer synchronize with their Exchange account for Email, Calendar, Contacts, and Tasks.

System

* Resolves an issue preventing media sync from working with latest version of iTunes (9.0.1).
* Media sync now synchronizes photo albums, maintaining the album structure in the Photos app.
* Media sync now allows for synchronizing photos without requiring the full-resolution originals. This provides faster display of high-quality full-screen images and enables users to store more photos on the phone.

Web

* Resolved an issue where if a user tried to play streaming music or video, the media stream might drop out or have a long delay before starting.

Security

This release implements several security fixes, including the following:

* Addresses a security issue encountered by webkit developers. This issue did not impact end users.

Individuals interested in contacting Palm to report suspected security issues can find more information at palm.com/security .

[Palm]

We have been perplexed by a disconnect between PALM's device units sold and our estimates of store level sell through. According to PALM's reported sell through, inventory increased by 13k units and since the ‘vast majority' of both the device units shipped and the device units sold were units of the Pre, there couldn't be an inventory problem. The gap between the two is only 13k.

However, since the company recognizes revenue on sell in to the channel and the company defines device units sold as units that have been shipped from Sprint (their primary customer) to either customers or second tier distributors, PALM could offer investors a high number of units shipped but still have a glut of inventory in the channel. We believe that channel inventory is currently about 11 weeks, which we believe will pressure reorder rates and make it more difficult to sell high ASP products going forward.

Eleven weeks of inventory in the channel is an staggering number. If true, that may explain the fast price cuts by resellers: First a $50 discount to $150 with a rebate, then slashed to $100 in Amazon, and then the all-mighty Walmart cutting it to a ridiculous $80.

It will also explain Sprint CEO Dan Hesse's less than enthusiastic comments about the Palm Pre, when he admitted in a Charlie Rose interview that the Pre couldn't play in the same league as the iPhone, "the Michael Jordan" of smartphones.

Eller notes that the investors are not aware of this: "We polled several of the investors who attended the Boston road show lunch and each was under the impression that sell through translated into customer activations. How can this be?"

Palm, however, claims that their number are clear. Talking to Digital Daily's John Paczkowski, they had this to say:

The sell-through data we post reflects carriers' sales to their customers. For example, Sprint customers include consumers who buy in a Sprint store, and Sprint retail partners such as Best Buy and RadioShack. We rely on our wireless carriers to provide us with sell-through data, and we note this fact in our 10Q.

So, is the Palm Pre tanking or not? Is it meeting the company's expectations at all? Could this be connected to the rumors about Verizon ditching the Pre? Only time will tell. [Digital Daily]

• It's a corporate policy all apps use a version number of less than 1.0.0
• Ten pages of legal documents to print out, sign and scan
• If an app is in the App Catalog, it can't be distributed anywhere else—a problem, because Zawinski's apps are open source and free
• Developers need a verified PayPal account to pay Palm $99 a year to distribute their apps
• A whole mess of reviews and re-reviews
• 27 emails and months later, the apps are still in limbo

On the bright side, at least Palm actually replied to some of the emails. [jwz via Daring Fireball]