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Palm Pre User Guide: the highlights, so far

by Laura June posted May 28th 2009 @ 8:31AM

When word that Sprint Gurus had gotten hold of the Palm Pre User Guide came across our desks yesterday, we couldn't wait to get our eyes all over it... and then we saw that it was almost as long as Infinite Jest. Okay, we kid, it's not as bad as all that -- just 344 pages of heretofore unseen glorious tidbits. So here's what we've culled thus far: first, the Pre's main musical squeeze, Amazon MP3, will queue your music downloads when on the 3G network for later download when the device is on a WiFi network -- which is sure to cause annoyance and dismay the whole world over (and by "world" we mean the Pre's world, which is the US only). There is however, plenty of good news: the Pre will, in fact have IMAP IDLE (AKA Push) Gmail capabilities, meaning that you'll get your spam nearly the moment it hits Gmail's servers. Finally, the previously spied Reminder field in the Pre's Contacts has been found out, and it's a really awesome feature allowing you to make a note and attach it to a particular contact, so that the next time you are in contact with that person, the reminder will pop up and... remind you. For anyone suffering mild memory loss (like us) little touches like this are sure to make the Pre a more attractive proposition. Hit the read link for the full manual, and let us know what you find. Warning: the user's manual is a PDF, and has an insanely huge Sprint Gurus watermark across every blasted page.

[Via Pre Central, My Pre]

Pandora, Amazon, other third-party apps demoed on Palm Pre

by Chris Ziegler posted Apr 1st 2009 @ 9:23PM

Dovetailing dreamingly with the company's SDK announcement today, Palm's chosen CTIA to show off a round of third-party apps for the Pre, and the good news is that they're definitely dispelling some doubts we had about the robustness of webOS' development platform and its ability to deliver compelling software. We were emphatically reminded that everything here is strictly for the sake of preview -- it's all beta, just like the Pre itself -- but that being said, it all looked smooth and relatively crash-free (as best as we could gather anyhow without giving it a more ruthless hands-on beating of our own).

First off, we saw a NASCAR app, perfect for die-hard fans (but really, even more perfect for Sprint's track record of sponsoring NASCAR events) that culls video highlights, driver profiles, and more. Next, we were treated to a brief look at the Pre's Google Maps implementation, Pandora, Amazon's music store, and FlightView, a trick little flight status app that every frequent traveler will likely want loaded. We also saw a Pre version of the Sprint TV player -- a staple service on most of Sprint's devices -- proving that the Pre has the stones to handle multimedia within its development framework. Video was just a little bit choppy, but they're not making any claims that this is final, optimized code at this point. The best part of the whole demo, perhaps, is Pandora's notification implementation, which brings up a mini-player by tapping on the "P" visible at the bottom of any Pre screen; from here, you can play / pause, rank tracks up and down, and see a full track name, all without leaving the comfort of whatever app you might be in. Try that on an iPhone, eh? Follow the break for video!

Gallery: Palm Pre third-party app demo at CTIA

Continue reading Pandora, Amazon, other third-party apps demoed on Palm Pre

Amazon: 6 million DRM-free songs on T-Mobile G1

by Thomas Ricker posted Sep 23rd 2008 @ 8:40AM

It's true, Amazon just announced that its MP3 music store will be pre-loaded as an application on the T-Mobile G1. Users will be able to search, download, buy and play music from Amazon MP3 -- that's a selection of 6 million DRM-free MP3 songs from all four major labels and many independents. The pre-loaded Amazon MP3 application provides G1 owners with a phone-optimised view of the Amazon MP3 store -- WiFi is required to download music, but searching, browsing, and listening to samples can be done over 3G the T-Mobile network. Tracks cost around $0.89 with most albums priced between $5.99 and $9.99. How you like them Apples, Apple.

Amazon music, movie downloads coming to T-Mobile G1?

by Chris Ziegler posted Sep 22nd 2008 @ 9:08PM

Amazon's always looking for creative new ways to distribute digital media -- and in light of its recently-launched Video On Demand service and the decent head of steam AmazonMP3 has managed to build, it'd probably just love to shoehorn its way onto a high-profile mobile device right about now. VentureBeat is reporting a juicy rumor of a G1 that made an appearance somewhere in San Fran's seedy underbelly over the weekend bearing an Amazon music and video app designed to dole out media for cash, suggesting that Android's first commercial hardware might come out of the gate ready not just to lock horns with the iPhone's WiFi App Store, but also to straight-up beat it by throwing in movie and TV download capability. Then again, no 3G network -- particularly one with as small of a footprint as T-Mobile's -- is mighty enough to effectively do feature-length movie downloads over the aether, so it remains to be seen exactly how this would all play out. Get a good night's sleep this evening, folks, because if everything goes according to plan, we'll have some solid answers in just a few short hours.