Palm announces WebOS platform, Mojo messaging service

April 2, 2009, 1:34pm PDT | Length: 00:03:59
At the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, Palm Senior Vice President of Applications and Services Michael Abbott announced an early access program of the company's new developing platform, WebOS. The new platform will run apps natively on the device and enables greater integration with cloud applications like Google and Facebook. Abbott stressed that the company is looking for developer feedback and that the platform is evolving.

Transcript

Palm announces WebOS platform, Mojo messaging service

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Speaker: On the Web OS platform, each application is built with HTML, JavaScript, and CSS and runs natively on the platform. What that means is it doesn't require a server to run, and it can run in a disconnected mode. We've effectively taken these desktop technologies and are running them on a mobile device. If we look at a little more detail about what a Web OS application looks like, we can see that we have standard HTML to define the layout of a card, effectively a web page. We have some JavaScript, which can define an animation or a transition, but also may access data that's on a device, as well as hardware services, as an example, location or the accelerometer. And in this particular case, we're accessing location. Then we use CSS to lay out the application in a beautiful way. All these applications that's we've actually demoed to date, for example at CES, are built with a framework that's a part of our SDK. And all the core applications are using that same framework to be built. Now, not every service, though, certainly lives on the device. There's many services that are cloud based. And we see there is several different types of cloud services. The first set are third-party web services. So, as an example, at Google we can integrate with G Talk, and we can integrate presence into messaging. But that's not enough. We can integrate presence into email and contacts. And we'll look at Facebook. We can integrate contacts, certainly, to bring your photo in, but we can embed that photo in mail as well as incoming caller ID. Now, Web OS is more than just about software running on the device. It spans both the device as well as the cloud. And as we've been actually going and building our own applications, we've seen the need to develop some -- several cloud services ourselves. And based on some of the feedback that we've gotten from developers, we see that there's some value in exposing some of these services to you. The first service that we're gonna be watching along these lines is the MOJO Messaging service. This provides a simple XMPP-based, inaudible of framework where you can send events, or push events into applications in real time that are running on Web OS. Why is this interesting? Well, let's say for example, if you're a developer, and you want to build an application around the fact that I want to target a particular set of users in an area because there's traffic congestions, and I want those folks to know about that, you, as a developer, can build such an application. Now, much like other aspects of our SDK, we're very interested in getting feedback from you and understanding how we need to evolve this. Now, this initial service is gonna come out in beta. It's gonna be, certainly, limited in scope as we go and learn to make sure that we're delivering what you need. So again, why is Palm here? Palm is here because the web as a platform is coming down to the mobile environment. And specifically, we want to actually expose this environment that we've developed to you, the developers, and to get feedback from you. So with that, what we want to do today is to provide an early access program to the SDK, a developer at Palm.com. And what you will get are a set of tools for emulation, debugging. You will get that framework that our core applications are built with, as well as documentation and support. Now, initially, we're gonna launch this in a very limited fashion so we can actually incorporate your feedback and expand it over time.

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==== Transcribed by Automatic Sync Techologies ====

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