What You Need to Buy

There are plenty of smartphone accessories that are worth considering, and a few that you actually need. Proceed with caution, but don't be afraid to treat your new smartphone, and yourself, to a few goodies.

A Case: They look goofy, Jason hates them, and they screw with your device's carefully designed curves. But here's the thing: smartphones are fragile. They aren't like dumbphones, and a single fall—especially with devices with a glass screen—can poop all over your new smartphone party. Until you're trained, play it safe. Wrap your unit. Case brand isn't important, so just take your pick from your local Best Buy or wherever. Just make sure your device's corners are covered, because it's edge impacts that break the most glass. Just remember, you're stuck in a multi-thousand dollar contract with this device, which itself would costs hundreds of dollars to replace. It's actually kind of terrifying! Pretend it's a baby, if that helps.

Headphones: Your smartphone is now your primary media player, too, so you're going to need to ditch the headphones or headset it came with. Yes, they all suck; no, your phone's aren't the one exception. If you don't care about a microphone, treat yourself to a decent pair of in-ear headphones. If you do, get a midrange wired headset.

Storage: Phones either come with internal storage, like the Pre or the iPhone, or taunt you with "expandable" storage, which pretty much means they've got an empty microSD slot. If your phone comes with less than 2GB of space and has said slot, you need to fill it. Buying a microSD card is a little different than buying a regular SD card, because speed doesn't really matter, and nothing you're using your phone demands particularly high transfer speeds. This is a place to store your music, photos and videos—that's it. Buy these online, where branded 8GB cards regularly dip below $20—in stores, you'll pay much, much more. Also, don't worry too much about getting a full-sized SD adapters, as pictured above. Most phones will allow you to mount your smartphone's microSD card as mass storage when they're plugged into a computer, so removal is rarely necessary.

Cables: Pick up a spare charging cable for your phone. For most smartphones this is a simple mini/microUSB cable, while for iPhones it's an iPod dock connector. Why worry about the spare? Think of it this way: if you lose your only iPod cable, you can't listen to music until you buy another one. If you lose your only iPhone cable, you're out of touch with the rest of the world in a matter of hours.

What You Don't

Of course, the temptation of new accessories is great, and there are legions of companies waiting to seize on your post-transactional bliss. When buying smartphone accessories, proceed with caution.

A dock: Again, people have a tendency to confuse their PMPs with their phones, which may look and act similar, but are used in a completely different way. Unless you want to dock your smartphone near your bed to use as an alarm, it's going to be charging—and syncing—with your computer whenever it's not in your pocket. An impulse-purchased dock will, in all likelihood, live a lonely life. Don't let this sad thing happen!

A branded navigation mount: These are almost always overpriced, and all they really do is hold your phone in your line of sight. Just buy a dirt-cheap windshield or dash mount, buy a 12v DC converter to plug your USB charging cable into, and you've got all the functionality you need for about $20.

Cleaning Kits: Cleaning your smartphone isn't hard, and it shouldn't cost you much at all. Just follow our instructions, and avoid any smartphone-specific cleaning kits. They're a guaranteed waste.

Bluetooth anything: Bluetooth headsets can make anyone look like a dweebish soccer dad, and while they might make chatting on the phone while driving more legal, they don't really make it much safer. Just hold your phone like a normal human, put it on speakerphone, or take the call later. You should avoid Bluetooth headphones too, but for a different reason: they suck. They sound terrible, they'll drain your phone's battery and they're overpriced. If you have to buy a pair, spend as little as possible.

Getting Started

If your smartphone is a newborn, this is where we teach it to walk.

Contacts: Somehow, in over two decades of cellphone development, we haven't settled on a simple way to transfer contacts from one phone to another. Here's how you should proceed through this somehow-still-painful process:
• Get your carrier to do it. If you're upgrading handsets on one carrier, they should be able to transfer your contacts, and probably for free. If you're switching carriers, there may be a small fee. Don't spend more than five bucks.
• Use your SIM. Are you on AT&T or T-Mobile? Is your smartphone on the same carrier as your old dumbphone? Most phones will have an option to write all contacts to a SIM card, which is the little chip that your phone uses to identify itself on a cell network. Do this, pop your old card out, pop it into your new smartphone, and transfer all your contacts from the old SIM onto your new phone's memory. Sadly, this won't work with Verizon or Sprint phones, which are CDMA-based, and therefore don't have SIM cards at all.
• Google Sync. Through a protocol called SyncML, Google Sync supports quite a few features phones, and can pull all your contacts into your Google account. Your new smartphone can then yank them back down from the cloud. Bonus: they're now backed up to Google server's, too.

Email: Email, you'll find, is one of the best things about owning a smartphone. Setting up your email varies from smartphone to smartphone (iPhone, Android, Palm Pre, Windows Mobile) and service to service (Exchange and Gmail setups will be completely different, obvious) but there are few rules of thumb to keep in mind during account setup. For example, use IMAP (versus POP) whenever you can—this will keep your messages and their read/unread statuses in sync with your desktop clients. And since most of your email downloading will be happening over 3G, set the individual message size limit at or below about 10kb. This will ensure your messages come in quickly, but also that you have something to read once they arrive.

Calendars: If you keep a Google Calendar, having it sync with your smartphone is a revelation. Android phones will automatically sync with your default Google account's calendars, as will the Pre, while the iPhone will need to be configured with CalDav. If you don't keep a calendar, your new smartphone is a good excuse to start.

Media and Syncing: Most smartphones rely on some kind of desktop software to transfer personal info, music, video and photos to and from the handset. For the iPhone, this basically means downloading iTunes—which you have to do anyway. For BlackBerry, this means downloading BlackBerry Desktop Manager. Windows Mobile phones are best served by Windows Device Center, while Android and Palm phones—and optionally Windows Phones, iPhones and BlackBerrys—play nice with doubleTwist, a cross-platform music player/media syncing app.

Converting Video: You can't just copy your torrented videos or home movies over to your smartphone; you need to downsample those videos, stat. Just download Handbrake for this—it's basically magic, and it works on Windows, OS X and Linux. These instructions are iPhone-centric, but videos converted to 320x240 h.264 will be suitable for most new smartphones.

Apps! Apps! Apps! Apps!

Without apps, smartphones are nothing. With apps, they're practically anything. Every smartphone platform has an app storefront now, from Apple's pioneering App Store to BlackBerry's App World to the Android Market, and they're all, to different extents, treasure troves.

iPhone: First stop, Gizmodo's Essential iPhone Apps Directory. These are the best of the best, and everything you need to make your iPhone into a mobile powerhouse. If you're averse to spending money on your new iPhone—this thing wasn't cheap, after all—check out our Essential Free Apps. We do regular posts and weekly roundups around here too, so just keep an eye out.

Android: It's got the second best app selection, which is to say there's some really great stuff out there. Our Essential Android Apps roundup cuts through the noise of the App Market, while our monthly roundups keep you up to date with the latest additions to the store.

BlackBerry: We cover the biggest new additions to App World, but it's best to defer to a specialist site like CrackBerry for this one—they have their own app store too, which isn't really much better or worse than BlackBerry's janky official shop.

Palm: We've just pulled one of our patented "Essential" roundups fresh out of the oven, so consult that first. Beyond that, PreCentral's official app reviews are fairly fantastic. Also worth checking out is their extensive homebrew app gallery, which has about as many decent apps in it as the official Catalog.

Windows Mobile: App development for WinMo isn't exactly picking up nowadays but there's a tremendous backlog of useful reviews and materials at WMPowerUser, WMExperts, XDA and MoDaCo. And yeah, we occasionally still do Windows Mobile app roundups, though until things get exciting again, expect less, not more.

Living Happily Ever After

Lastly, a few odds and ends to make sure your metal'n'plastic darling lives a happy life, at least before the end of its two-year contract.

How to back up your smartphone: Your smartphone probably contains as much personal data as your computer, and it's subjected to way more physical risk. Preempt the pain. Back it up.

How to keep you smartphone clean: These little machines are fantastic at collecting fingerprints, dust and grime. Wipe them off every once in a while.

Any other tips for new smartphone owners? Chuck them down in the comments. Happy Holidays!

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

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]

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.

It looks like the Palm Profile has been having issues with corrupted backups, leaving users trying to restore from a backup without their data. It's not everyone who's had this problem, just more people than can be called a fluke.

Here's Palm's statement on the matter:

We are seeing a small number of customers who have experienced issues transferring their Palm Profile information to another Palm webOS device. Palm and Sprint are working closely together to support these customers to successfully transfer their information to the new device.

Good to know, clumsy Pre owners. [PreCentral]

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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

When WebOS 1.3.1 skipped updating the camera app, the developers of Precorder decided not to wait any longer, and things are looking promising. The app supports MPEG-4, H.263, and H.264/AVC video recording, lets you control the flash, and videos can be played back in the Pre's video player. Again, it's alpha software, so try with caution. But you can check it out at: [Precorder via Pre Central]

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

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]

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.

Songs are a mere ten pennies through Lala because they would be streamed to your phone, but there's more to the app than streaming. It would allow for your own music collection to be uploaded to and accessed through the cloud for free. No more fretting over music storage.

There's good news for the non-iPhone users too. Lala intends on coming out with an app for Android, Palm Pre, and Blackberry phones as well. [Wired]