Andy Payne has a post about the disappointing rate of innovation these days in GPS navigation systems. I agree with Andy -- there is a lot of room left for innovation in these devices. Check out Andy's GPS feature wish list wiki page.
Digital Photography School has some beautiful examples of long exposure photography.
With their announcement of the Pre at CES last week, Palm hopes to return in a serious way the the smartphone marketplace. As an iPhone fan, I'm happy to see some competition, which can only help drive innovation for all of us. The Pre joins the iPhone and Android-based devices as the leaders (the Blackberry Storm seems to have missed the mark, and Microsoft still hasn't gotten Windows Mobile right).
Some early thoughts about the Palm Pre:
- At least for now, the Pre is exclusive to Sprint. This will benefit Sprint, but not as much as AT&T has benefitted from iPhone exclusivity in the United States. Sprint's reputation for poor coverage and weak customer service will make many users reluctant to change carriers just the get the Pre.
- Sprint-only means CDMA-only. Palm needs to develop a GSM version as soon as possible. I want to be able to use my phone world-wide (with my home SIM card, or one from the country I am visiting).
- The wireless charging dock for the Palm is intruiging, and I hope to see this feature show up in a lot more consumer electronics (my electric toothbrush has it now). But according to Palm's website, use of the wireless dock "requires Palm Pre back cover for Touchstone charging dock, sold separately." I wonder what this will add to the thickness of the Pre?
- I'd like to know more about application development for WebOS applications. It's encouraging to hear that the platform will be more open than that of the iPhone. It's not clear (to me) yet what the application development and delivery ecosystem will look like. Also, what will HTML/CSS/Javascript mean for performance? Ars Technica has more.
- Palm says the Pre will ship in "first-half 2009." Presumably, Palm has given themselves some buffer in this delivery promise. If they miss this schedule, they may find themselves behind the next version of the iPhone .
- Early indications from Sprint seem to be that Palm will price this higher than the iPhone. This is a mistake for Palm.
Ten ideas for Amazon S3 applications