Palm Pre iTunes Syncing, Credit: Gizmodo

Palm Media Sync

Palm Media Sync is a webOS feature which syncs seamlessly with iTunes on both Mac and PC and also lets you sync your DRM-free music, videos, and Photos to your Palm Pre. The Palm Pre also works with your default photo editor and seamlessly import’s pictures taken with it’s  built-in 3.0 megapixel camera.

Palm Pre Harddrive

You can even use your Palm Pre as a harddrive for mass USB storage. Simply plug in your Palm Pre and your computer will detect it as another harddrive. The Palm Pre has 8GB of space, so you can easily transfer a lot of files from your computer to your Palm Pre or from your Palm Pre to your computer.

Amazon MP3 webOS App, Credit: Engadget

Amazon MP3 Store

There’s also an on-device Amazon MP3 store that allows you to search and purchase individual songs or full albums. You can only download the purchased tracks when you’re connected to a Wi-Fi network.

Palm Pre Twitter Universal Search, Credit: Gizmodo

Twitter in Universal Search

Palm also announced that Twitter was featured in Universal Search. When you search using the Universal Search feature you can search through contacts, applications, or Google, Google Maps, Wikipedia, and Twitter.

Fandango webOS App, Credit: Gizmodo

App Catalog

Jon Rubinstein and Roger Mcnamee showed a preview of the beta version of the App Catalog. Applications featured in the beta version include AP News, Citysearch, Fandango, Pandora and uLocate.

The Fandango webOS app uses the Palm Pre’s location-based services to find theaters close to you, lets you watch trailers, buy tickets, and showtimes to your calendar and find directions to the theatre. The Pandora webOS app takes advantage of the webOS’s multitasking capabilities and runs in the background while you’re using other applications. It highlights a unique aspect of the notification bar which lets you see what song is currently playing and control or pause without needing to go back into the application.

[via Palm, Engadget, and Gizmodo]

Related posts:

1. Palm Pre FAQ at Gizmodo
2. Verizon Wireless coming to Palm Pre?
3. Developing For Palm WebOS

Pandora has already been developing for the Palm WebOS and in an interview with Tom Conrad, he explains exactly why Palm WebOS provides an edge to the others out there like the iPhone and Android:

What makes it this “webOS” is that the programming models for your developer rather than being C or Java is really just HTML and CSS and Javascript. So you can take a developer who’s been developing web applications and quickly get them productive in the webOS SDK, leveraging their familiarity with these web-based standards. And that decision is one of the reasons we were able to get, very very quickly, a version of Pandora up and running. We were able to take one of our star web developers – someone who has never touched the Palm webOS and not done mobile development before – and have that person be immediately productive because it’s all based on systems that they’re familiar with from web development.

The entire interview is pretty good although Tim Carroll, the question asker, seems a bit more amused by his own jokes than Tom Conrad. You can’t win them all I guess, but in terms of information the interview gives some really good stuff.

Read and listen to the entire interview at PalmInfoCenter.com

Related posts:

1. Handcase To Make Palm WebOS Apps
2. Will Palm Pre & WebOS Save Palm?
3. New webOS features revealed at All Things Digital

Handcase, the maker of over 300 smartphone applications, announced that it will be taking its catalog of applications to the Palm WebOS and Palm Pre. Of course that will take time, but this first sign of allegiance is a good development and I would expect other companies and independent developers to start jumping on board and joining the momentum as it starts to build.

Handcase is a Brazilian mobile software development company and a quick visit to their YouTube Channel shows it as their summary reads, “Handcase user can create the video about our products (commercial and freeware)and send to us. We make post all. This is the channel of users Handcase.”

[Via jkontherun]

Related posts:

1. Developing For Palm WebOS
2. Will Palm Pre & WebOS Save Palm?

The first place one might look is the stock market, as John Paczkowski from AllThingsD did:

Wall Street seems convinced that the Pre is not a postscript for Palm (PALM), but the beginnings of its rebirth. A historic turning point worthy of a trading bacchanal. Indeed, expressing a “renewed confidence in Palm’s prospects, Standard & Poor’s raised its target price on the company to $4.50 from $2.50. “Pre uses a new operating system that allows for the merging of multiple data sources,” Standard & Poor’s analyst Todd Rosenbluth said in a research note. “While the new system has been in long-term development, we believe it could help to bring consumer and carrier interest back to PALM’s devices, which have been losing market share.”

Matt Hoffman of Cowen & Co. went one step further:

“We believe WebOS will immediately be competitive with the industry’s most advanced mobile platforms, including Apple’s OS X and Google’s Android,”

That sounds like  saving grace to me, at least on the stock market analyst side of things. Eric Savitz from SeekingAlpha posed the exact question, “Is Palm Saved?” in the title of his article… unfortunately it doesn’t address the question and only goes over the “what we know and don’t know” about the Palm Pre saying only, “Palm actually has a story to tell, which has not been the case for a long, long time.”

Perhaps the best explanation of the Saving Palm movement is explained by Zach Epstein of BGR who, at least initially, is overwhelmingly encouraged:

First impressions mean everything and for the time being it’s safe to say we were supremely wowed. Seriously, did you ever imagine you’d see the day when Palm would release a handset and OS combo so perfectly evolutionary and well designed?

But Epstein refuses to simply buy into the hype without critically analyzing Palm’s current position in the market. There is still a long way to go and he cites an exclusive Sprint debut as the main detractor from Palm’s revival attempts. Will the Palm Pre be available on Verizon since its CDMA? One would think, at some point, it would. How about AT&T and/or T-Mobile?

We’re forgetting that the Palm Pre is just one device but the Palm WebOS could have several devices launch with it during 2009. So don’t be dismayed if the Palm Pre isn’t on your carrier or isn’t exactly perfect for your needs. Palm’s renewed efforts are only immediately invested in the Pre but in the long-term there is a kick butt OS to lead the way.

Related posts:

1. Developing For Palm WebOS
2. Wired Covers The Palm Pre
3. Handcase To Make Palm WebOS Apps