The Palm Pre is setting us up for a technology revolution.

Essentially what I will be discussing is how the Palm Pre and it's Synergy feature could be used along with Facebook to create a sort of public directory that is available on any phone with Internet access sort of like DNS is available to any computer with Internet.

If Facebook created an option to allow people with your name to see your phone number they could essentially make that public, and anybody with a Facebook account would be able to login to their Facebook account on their cell phone similar to how people on the Palm Pre do now. They would enter their account info in the preferences options of contacts and it would pull all of their friend's into their contacts app and if their friend had posted a phone number it would be added, if they had posted a picture the phone would use that for the contacts picture.

Well What if this technology was on every phone? What if Facebook made an option to be part of the public listing, sort of like a phone book style digital database except it would be user maintained because each person would control their own phone number on their profile. This would essentially mean all you would have to do is type someone's name and your phone would look up that name on Facebook, first checking your friends, then using GPS to locate you and check local listings, compare your schools to seek out the correct "John Smith" It would need a pretty strong artificial Intelligence, but Facebook's suggestions are pretty accurate already so maybe that technology could be used?

Like I said it would essentially be like DNS for people, Your phone would be like your computer, the contacts app would be like your browser, Facebook is the DNS server, it finds the person's phone number (ip address) if you type their name (URL) Get what I'm saying? Of course you could remove Yourself from the public directory at any time.

I think this would be a pretty cool technology. What do you think? Join my discussion Here or feel free to comment.

What do we want out of a Facebook app?

So we are all pretty sure a Facebook app is coming for webOS; but the question is what do we want from it?

I have been thinking about this lately and I have decided I think a true Facebook app on webOS could potentially be spectacular. With synergy and the notification system it would be far more advanced than any other Facebook app. Here are some features I think it would be able to have because of webOS and why I think it could work.

Notifications - Everyone knows notifications on webOS are awesome; Palm did an excellent job of implementing this new idea of a dashboard. So Facebook notifications could potentially be awesome. The app should have a ton of options on what to notify you for. These would be push notifications of course and would instantly be pushed to your phone as soon as it was posted on Facebook. The notifications would give you the ability to tap them to go to the Facebook app and show whatever the notification was for.  Or of course you would have the ability to dismiss the notification and check it out later if you were busy with something else. I think the Facebook app should have an option to notify you again after a set amount of time if you dismiss the notification; of course we would want the option to be able to turn this off if we did not want it. I would hope that the notifications would work similar to e-mail and have 1 notification with a number next to the icon to show how many notifications there really are. It would be sweet if they would incorporate a way to cycle through your notifications in the dashboard area similar to how Tweed does. You could hit an arrow button to go to the next notification and actually view it within the dashboard and have the option to tap it to open the Facebook app or just keep moving on to check out the other notifications.

Synergy - Synergy on webOS is very flexible and can be used for many things. The Facebook app could use it to attach contact names to notifications and even display their photo in the dashboard along with a notification similar to how the messaging app does now. They could also make Facebook chat work on the native messaging app on webOS. That way Facebook could be fully integrated into the phone. You could be chatting with a friend via the messaging app, and if they comment on your status you would get a notification with their name and picture and everything attached and you could go right to the Facebook app comment back, then switch back to messaging and keep talking.

I would want all the functionality of the full website including liking things, commenting on things, photo comments, notifications and the ability to view all notifications.

I would want the ability to browse photos using something similar to Palm's photo viewer but right within the Facebook app. Of course multi-touch zooming is a must, I would also like to be able to save any photo to my phone in a folder of my choosing. I want it to be easy as well such as gesture area + tap photo. I don't want to have to have the keyboard open to do it.

So this is what i want from a Facebook app, I don't think we will see ALL of this in the first release but I think eventually we may have an app this strong.

I would love to hear your opinions as well. What features would you like to see from a Facebook app?

Desktop Syncing with the Palm Pre. How to

The Palm Pre is built from the ground up to keep your data synced between your device and the cloud; but what about keeping everything synced on your desktop as well? Markspace gave everyone a solution for this with their Missing Sync app available via the Palm app catalog. But many users are looking for a free way to sync their contacts and calendars with their Palm Pre, their desktop, and the cloud. Well today I'm going to show you how to make everything, including your desktop sync together seamlessly. I personally do not use Windows, and truly have no interest in finding ways to do this on Windows, so this guide will only be for Mac.

We all know the Palm Pre syncs your contacts, and calendars with Google. Well after a bit of research I found out that Google syncs fairly easily with a Mac, so if you get your Mac and Google syncing in turn Google will also sync the information to your Palm Pre and Vice Versa.

Contacts
To begin, we will enable Apple's Address Book to sync with Google: 
Apple allows Address Book to sync your contacts with Google but sadly this option is enabled only when you have an iPhone. Luckily there is a way to make your Mac think you have an iPhone and it is quite easy, here's how:

1.) First you will need PlistEdit Pro this program will work just fine as a trial, but if you would like you can buy it.

2.) Once you have PlistEdit Pro installed navigate to ~/Library/Preferences/

3.) Save a backup copy of "com.apple.iPod.plist" in case you screw up (to do this just copy it somewhere such as your desktop)

4.) Open com.apple.iPod.plist with PlistEdit Pro

5.) Expand the tree to "devices"

6.) As you can see there are many numbers on here, these are the serial numbers of all the "iPods" that have synced with your Mac, this includes your Pre if you have ever synced it with iTunes. Choose one of these devices, preferably one that you don't really use such as an old iPod or something. It really shouldn't matter even if you choose one that you still currently use but I haven't tested if it will screw anything up, that's why you made a backup right?

7.) So you have chosen one of these devices and expanded it. This is what you should see now:

 

 As you can see I have highlighted the Family ID of the device I chose. You will need to make the Family ID "10,001" as shown in the image above. To do this simply right click the current value and click "edit value" and change it to "10,001" without the quotes. This makes your Mac think that device is an iPhone and it will open up the option to Google sync in Address Book

8.) Within PlistEdit Pro click file-->save to save your changes.

9.) Open Address book (if it is already open relaunch it) Click preferences. You should now see Google Sync is an option, like in the image below (if it's not try doing a reboot), enable it, log into your account and there you have it your contacts from Address Book now sync to Google.

10.) Now all that is left is to make sure everything syncs up correctly. So open contacts on your Pre tap the app menu then tap preferences and accounts and set your default account to the Google account you set to sync with Address Book. Now when you add a contact to your Pre it will default to that Google Account, so it will update your Pre, Google, and now your Mac's Address Book!

Calendars

Google also has the ability to sync your iCal calendar with your Google Calendar.

1.) Open iCal and go to preferences click the accounts tab.

2.) Click the plus button on the bottom left to add an account

3.) Enter a description for your Calendar it can be whatever you want, then enter your Google login credentials. Click the arrow near Server Options to expand it. Where it asks for the account URL enter https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/YOUREMAIL@DOMAIN.COM/user Be sure to fill in your e-mail address and domain name in the URL. Click add

4.) You will now see your Google calendar account within iCal. Before closing preferences click the "Delegation" tab and select the other calendars you would like to add to iCal from that account.

5.) You may now close preferences. As you can see in your calendar sidebar you now have your Google calendar(s). If you would like to add an event to your Google Calendar via iCal you can click the calendar you would like to add the event to in the sidebar and add an event as usual. It will now update your Google Calendar and in turn your Calendar on your Pre. Also since it is a 2 way sync anytime you add an event to this calendar on your Pre it will update Google and in turn iCal, you may also add events directly through Google to update both of them.

So there you have it. Desktop syncing for the Palm Pre, it's very easy to set up, and very easy to use. As long as you use the correct accounts on your Pre (Google) everything will be tidy and updated.

Remember these updates do not usually happen instantly, they may take a few minutes to reflect on the different devices.

Enjoy your newly synced life!

So people say the Pre will be a flop...

So as I was working on a current event assignment for a class of mine I decided that it would make an excellent first post on my new blog.

The article I chose to discuss is Don Reisinger's article titled "10 Reasons Why Palm Pre May Become the Smartphone Flop of 2009" (http://tinyurl.com/ydlsexj)

Due to limitations on length I could not say everything I wanted to in my school paper so I will use it as a base here and just expand upon it.

     The article describes why the author thinks the Palm Pre will be a huge failure and probably the “Smartphone Flop of 2009”. Reisinger states in his article that the Pre is currently priced too high against competing products such as the iPhone, Blackberry, and Android phones and that given the choice a customer will choose the iPhone or other mentioned products over the Pre due to better advertising done by the respective companies. The Pre is currently selling for $149.99 whereas the iPhone is selling for $99; according to the author this price difference alone will make up most people’s minds. On top of just a price difference Reisinger says the Apple logo itself will draw in many customers and with Apple app catalog backing the iPhone it is a lot more powerful than the Pre and has better selling points. Reisinger also takes a stab at the Sprint network and says that the Pre will not be able to stay on just Sprint forever; he argues that Sprint is too small of a network and doesn’t have enough subscribers to get the Pre the publicity and appeal to the mainstream consumer.

 

I believe the writer of this article has many of his facts wrong and may be a bit biased towards Apple. While yes the Apple logo is appealing and it is often seen as a sort of status symbol and almost a benchmark of sorts for all technology the Pre still has a very good chance against the iPhone and other competing products. The writer mentions that the Palm Pre does not have as many apps as the iPhone, or RIM’s Blackberry or Google’s Android, which is true, but the author says there are only a few dozen apps for the Pre; this is partially true but not completely. The Pre is a mobile device based on a Linux Kernel it is extremely open source and developers have root access. If you know how to get into the Linux system of the device there are many homebrew apps you can install as well and many open source hacks that can expand the capabilities of the Pre. Doing these homebrew things is becoming easier and easier by the day people have written programs for the in java which will do everything for you. The whole homebrew community is mostly only temporary anyways until Palm opens up their app catalog submissions a bit more. These tech analysts that shoot down the Pre need to remember it is not going to be a stellar device right off the bat; the Operating system for the device is still on version 1.1.0 (soon to be 1.2.0 or maybe 1.2.1). It will take some time to smooth everything out and get it working correctly but we have seen updates from Palm quite frequently already and they seem to be doing quite well at getting things done.. The iPhone by no means was perfect when it came out and it still is not perfect today. The reason it sold so many devices at launch is because it was an Apple product. Palm is trying to re-launch their image here and by doing so they are, in a way, starting an entirely new company. So being a Pre owner and given the circumstances I think Palm will actually make it through the troubles and the Pre will become a very successful device. Reisinger mentioned that the Sprint network does not reach enough people to make the Pre a successful and popular device. While yes Sprint is a smaller network subscriber wise compared to AT&T they have a much faster and in my opinion more reliable network than AT&T. Also Sprint is more open to things such as Google Voice than AT&T is; AT&T shut down Google Voice for the iPhone very quickly whereas the folks at Sprint and Palm welcomed it with open arms, this makes for happy users, which leads to positive talk, which will eventually lead to more customers for Palm and Sprint. Give it time people.

The Pre may not be the most popular device right now but it is still growing, and is far from being a flop. The Pre is a very alive device it is constantly being updated in some way, whether it be through homebrew or official Palm releases it is always growing, always getting better. Give it the time the iPhone and Blackberry have had to sit and simmer for a while and it will surpass both of them by far. Maybe the device itself will not be the Pre, maybe not even the Pixi, but webOS itself has more potential than either of those devices could even begin to conceive.

The start of my blog

So I finally got motivated and created a blog. I have been Twittering for quite some time now, mostly about the Palm Pre but other things as well. My focus for this blog will mostly be technology focused more on the mobile technology end of things. I don't have any inside sources of my own so most of my posting, at least for now will be information I get from elsewhere that I just like to comment on or have something to say on the matter. I am always up for discussion.

I hope everyone enjoys reading my blog and maybe you will even subscribe. I am very new to this so bear with me as I get my blog all set up and finalized. I am working on graphics and just trying to fit blogging into my schedule. Depending on popularity I may eventually purchase a domain. Any help would be appreciated as well.