CES 2009

Episode 889

Best of CES Awards
http://ces.cnet.com/best-of-ces/

Web site problems as Windows 7 beta hits
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10138449-56.html
http://ces.cnet.com/8301-19167_1-10139408-100.html
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/dd353205.aspx

Apple at CES? Unlikely
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10138499-37.html

Chrome gets Mac deadline, extensions foundation
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10138388-2.html

Nvidia 480-Core graphics card approaches 2 Teraflops
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09%2F01%2F09%2F2022231

Palm Pre Touchstone eyes-on
http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/10/palm-pre-touchstone-eyes-on/

Testing CrystalTalk
http://ces.cnet.com/8301-19167_1-10138219-100.html

Dell Adamo
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10138468-1.html
http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/09/dell-adamo-hands-on/

Setting ioSafe’s Solo on fire: The hottest blog ever!
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10138593-1.html

Trojan found at torrent sites insists “downloading is wrong”
http://entertainment.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09%2F01%2F10%2F0336243

The Air Force’s rules of engagement for blogging
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/01/09/the-air-forces-rules.html

E-mail
Hey JaMoTo +1.

I was listening to episode 888 and I was wondering why everyone is drooling over the Palm Pre. Didn’t we do the same thing when the Blackberry Storm was announced? We gave it so much praise until the time came for release. It was a failure. Are we certain this will be Palm’s savior or will the hype rise above what will really happen? Will the Pre truly be the device that brings Palm back or will it be lost and forgotten just as the Storm was?

Chris from Florida

**********

Hey BOL team just wanted to pop in let you guys know orange julius has a brand spankin new drink called the blackberry storm haha included is a pic i took of the ad and a link to the nutrition facts on the 2nd page of the pdf 3rd flavor down of the blackberry storm. I wonder which is slower trying to use the BB storm’s accelerometer feature or trying to get the drink through a straw? haha keep up the good work love the show! Jason Trambley
http://www.orangejulius.com/downloads/OJNutritionalFacts.pdf
–
Jason T

**********

Listening to episode 886. You guys were alking about the sling player
app for iPhone and whether Apple might accept it into the App Store
because it’ll steam video over 3g. I recently started using Orb Live
from the app store. This app works with the Orb client on your pc with
tv tuner at home and you can then stream your tv and any other media
to the iPhone app. Works well. Video quality is good enough over 3g.
So, there’s precedent for it. Hope I’m not jinxing anything by
bringing attention to Orb. Love the show!

Peter on the train in Chicago

**********

Wow, it might not take long for Molly’s prediction to go true:

Seattle P-I up for sale; could go online-only
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008609677_webpi09m.html

I agree with Molly that her prediction is bound to happen. I didn’t think it was going to happen to my local paper though! J

– Jiunwei

(Credit: Erica Ogg)

As day two of CES 2009 came to a close, The 404 wrapped up the day with a solid audience of tired, dreary-eyed show goers desperate for some much needed entertainment.

Today Brian Tong joins the show to talk about the worst of CES, primarily the men's bathrooms, crying babies, and recycled floor tape. Best of all, we add a new segment to the show called "Sexy Press Release."

Be sure to catch us live again tomorrow from the CNET stage at 5 p.m. Pacific Time.

EPISODE 255

Happy New Year! This week we bring you a special Dialed In podcast live from CES in Las Vegas. Listen in to hear all the highlights of the show and a complete rundown of the nominees for Best of CES in the cell phones and smartphones category.

Palm's new Pre smartphone quickly emerged as one of the hottest items at the show, and you'll get Bonnie's full take on this intriguing device. And there are plenty of other nifty handsets on the show floor. Nicole got the chance to try on the LG Watch phone and Kent scooped out the new models from Sony Ericsson and Motorola.

Earlier in the week, Kent also went to the Macworld 2009 keynote sans Steven Jobs. For the most part it was a snoozer, but there was a bit of iPhone and iTunes news.

Listen now: Download today's podcast

• Palm Pre
  
• Motorola Surf A3100
  
• LG Watch phone
  

From the Consumer Electronics Show, Larry Magid talks with Wall Street Journal columnist Walter Mossberg about Palm's new Pre cell phone and Yahoo's new Internet TV. Both Mossberg and Magid were impressed by the Palm phone, and Mossberg had some good things to say about Yahoo's TV initiative.

Today's stories:

Palm calls it a comeback with the Palm Pre

High hopes at Yahoo, Intel for Internet-enabled TV

Palm Pre

(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CBS Interactive)

Phew! Thursday was a long, action-packed day thanks to Palm. I'm just now getting to sit down and gather my thoughts on the Palm Pre and Palm Web OS announcements, and I have to confess that I went into the press conference with some skepticism. It's no secret that Palm's been struggling to keep up with the competition and has come under heavy criticism for its lack of innovation and delays in releasing its new operating system. So can you blame me for thinking that Palm might disappoint again?

Well, I'm happy to say that I was wrong. My CNET News colleagues Ina Fried and Tom Krazit did a great job of covering the press conference and reporting on the basic specs of the Palm Pre, but I wanted to put my two cents in on what I think of the Pre and Palm Web OS and what kind of impact it will have on the market.

User interface and OS
To me, the real highlight of the Pre is the user interface and OS. The UI reminded me a little of HTC's TouchFlo interface, with the various swiping gestures and cool animated motions, but Palm certainly put a fresh take on it. It's beautiful and smooth, and just plain cool. It's pretty evident that Palm put a lot of thought into the UI, as everything seamlessly works together to give you the best user experience and making the smartphone a really useful tool in your daily life.

Synergy on the Palm Pre

(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CBS Interactive)

The smartphone makes multitasking easy with the Deck of Cards feature that lets you scroll through various applications and toggle between them without having to open and close windows. It's slick, but most importantly, it's easy. I also think Synergy is a huge player, since it brings all your e-mail accounts and contact and calendar information from various sources into one place. Again, it's about simplicity and whether you're a consumer or business user, you have to love that.

Design
To facilitate all this is a best-of-breed design. First, you've got a multitouch screen that's absolutely sharp and brilliant in color with its half-VGA (320x480) resolution. Not only can you use the screen to navigate, there's a gesture area right below the display where you can use finger swipes and touches to launch menus, toolbars, applications, go back, or advance. Of course, my favorite part might be the slide-out full QWERTY keyboard. I've made it no secret that I'm a huge texter and need physical buttons, so I was more than delighted when I saw that the smartphone had a keyboard. The Pre's keyboard is similar to that of the Palm Treo Pro; the buttons are a little on the smaller side, but there is a good amount of space between them to reduce any problems.

Again, looking at the design of the phone, I could tell time and thought was spent on the device. The hardware feels solid and not as plasticky as the Palm Centro. When you slide open the Pre, it has a slight curve that makes it comfortable to hold against your cheek when talking on the phone or even when typing out messages. Also, going back to the touch screen, it felt responsive and--hooray!--on Web pages, you can pinch the screen like the iPhone to easily zoom in and out of pages.

Web

Pre's Web browser

(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CBS Interactive)

Speaking of the Web, the Pre's browser is pretty outstanding. It renders sites onscreen as you would see on your desktop, and quickly at that. When asked about Flash, Palm said they were not commenting on that at this point. We do know that there will be an app store, and Palm will release an SDK to developers. The company reiterated throughout the press conference that the Palm Web OS was built with developers in mind and based on HTML, CSS, and Javascript, so that's all one really needs to know to develop apps for the Pre and other Web OS devices.

Multimedia
As far as multimedia, the Palm Pre offers a 3-megapixel camera. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to snap any photos, but early reports say that the quality is pretty good. Disappointingly, the camera won't have video recording capabilities at this time, but those could be added in the future. In terms of music, like the T-Mobile G1, Palm has partnered with the Amazon Music Store, so you will be able to purchase songs over the air from your Pre.

The rest
The Palm Pre offers so much that I could write on it forever, but I'll save some for when we actually get the unit in review. (By the way, I'm not sure when that will be, but I don't expect it to be anytime soon. I know. I'm sad, too.) Just to cover some quick specs: the Pre offers integrated Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 (with support for stereo Bluetooth), EV-DO Rev. A, and GPS. There's 8GB of storage, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and high-speed USB 2.0.

Outlook
The Palm Pre and Palm Web OS isn't necessarily going to revolutionize the smartphone market, in that it doesn't offer any crazy, new features, but it definitely brings a fresh look into the way you interact with a device and how it organizes information. It also brings innovation and life back to the struggling company and has certainly set the tech world abuzz. Palm's undeniably taken a beating from the media and general public, so it's good to see the company respond and take action.

As much as the Pre is important to Palm, the smartphone will also be a key player for Sprint. It needs an iconic phone to compete with the likes o AT&T and the iPhone and Verizon Wireless and the BlackBerry Storm, and Pre could certainly be the one to do this for Sprint. Pricing will be key of course, but I suspect the Pre will be priced competitively with the iPhone and Storm. I also think its chances of overtaking the Storm are pretty high. It offers a better user experience and has more consumer appeal. There are still some unanswered questions about everything that will be offered with the Pre; in my opinion, and I know these words are thrown around a lot, but I think the Palm Pre could truly be the stiffest competition for the iPhone.

Palm took a bit of a gamble announcing the product early at CES 2009 and not closer to its release date, which is expected some time during the first half of 2009. Both Palm and Sprint will have to be careful to deliver on their promise and not delay the phone. (You can pre-register for Palm Pre at Sprint's Web site.) Still, the Palm Pre and Web OS has certainly gotten everyone excited and I can't wait to get some quality hands-on time with the final product. You can check out of Palm Pre photo gallery and of course, we'll update you as we get more information, but for now, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the Palm Pre and OS.

Today marks the first official day of the CES show here in Las Vegas, and the entire showroom floor is buzzing about the 404! Okay, not exactly, but we're here anyway to give you our unique perspective on the goings-on. Today, we ask Crave Editor Erica Ogg to join us for the first half and speak on the Palm Pre announcement.

One thing we've noticed this year is the popularity of electronic devices targeted toward the geriatric-age bracket. We're all for helping out Grandma, but does she really need a Bluetooth diabetes monitor? She's got enough on her plate with the upcoming cable box transition; let's not burden her with wireless medication, too. After chatting about the products on the show, we get into a subject close to Wilson's heart: the booth babes. Although not quite as scandalous they appear in the show adjacent to CES, the eye candy definitely made an appearance, and believe me when I say that I struggled to bite my tongue during the show. More on that when we get back, so stay tuned!

We also have a bunch of super hot guests coming on in the next few days and maybe even a prize giveaway, so keep listening, and don't forget to give us a call and leave a voicemail--we might even play it on the air!

Palm's plan for application development on the new Palm Pre will help determine its fate.

(Credit: Palm)

Palm's new WebOS passed its first test: it looks good. But will the device attract legions of developers?

Just hours after Palm showed off its new operating system running on the Palm Pre, details are still rolling in about the unit and its software. One important factor that will have to be addressed is application development and distribution. Palm has confirmed plans to administer some sort of central store for application downloads. But there still is scarce information about how that will actually work.

Palm's Stephane Maes said that Palm will not attempt to approve every single application developed for WebOS, as Apple does for iPhone applications.

"Certainly, we want to let a thousand flowers bloom," he said. "Every now and then there are a few dandelions we'll want to winnow out."

Unable to let the clichéd misquote of Mao Zedong pass (he actually persecuted many of those who dared let their ideas bloom), let's move on to ask the more important questions that went unanswered this morning.

If Palm is retaining some right to refuse applications, how will those choices be made? Apple has faced its fair share of criticism over nebulous policies for approving or rejecting applications for the App Store, which have frustrated many developers even as they've flocked to the App Store.

Even if Palm takes a laissez-faire approach to the types of applications created for WebOS, will the Palm Store be the exclusive venue for those applications, or will Palm allow competition between the types of online stores that sell current Palm OS applications and its own?

How will the WebOS SDK work? The Mojo SDK is available as a private prerelease, according to a message posted by Palm on its developer home page, and will be a public download later in the year.

Developers will use Mojo, WebOS's application framework, to develop WebOS applications using standard technologies such as HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript. That means it will likely be much easier for application developers to get up and running on WebOS as compared to the time needed to learn platforms such as Android, the iPhone, or BlackBerry. Palm also says there will be a way to migrate older Palm OS applications to WebOS, but doesn't say how that will work or how it might affect performance.

Palm, a mobile computing pioneer, is well-versed in running a development organization but times have changed since the Palm OS was the PDA world's dominant operating system. It is unclear whether the company will be able to reclaim developers who have moved onto the iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, or Android.

These are crucial questions to consider in judging how WebOS and the Palm Pre will play in the current market, not the least being that developer support is a key factor in making a smartphone a more attractive product. At least one Palm developer contacted us urging Palm to resolve these issues sooner rather than later.

Bill MacAdam, director of product development at auto industry software developer GigglePop and longtime Palm OS developer, wants very much to known what Palm has in mind regarding application distribution.

"We very much need to maintain the existing distribution model where the installation of software can take place without going through a store," he wrote in an e-mail. "While a store is a convenient place for consumers to purchase applications, it doesn't work well for business / enterprise applications. It is also very important that we have a very specific roadmap to help us with the transition."

Palm's a little late to the Smartphone 2.0 game, but it got off to a good start with the Palm Pre roll out. Obviously, it will take much more than a flashy demo to get Palm back on track. How the company handles application development will loom large in its success or failure.

Photos: Palm previews the Pre at CES

Photos: CES 2009: Palm Pre

Even before CES 2009 began, Palm created quite a buzz by announcing that it would introduce its new operating system as well as the first device of the family. On opening day of the show, the company finally introduced Palm Web OS and the Palm Pre and crowd was wowed. Check out our hands-on gallery of the smartphone.