It has been a little over 8 months since the Palm Pre was released to the public, and its just this week that Palm has finally released a Video Recorder as part of the operating system upgrade for webOS 1.4.

My initial tests with the video recorder generated video in .mpg4 that looks pretty good on the phone itself, a 60 second video takes up just under 40 megabytes of space on the phones memory.

It comes setup with a YouTube and Facebook video uploader, but neither one of them worked the first 3 days, I used the video recorder. 

But finally today, I was able to upload one of those videos successfully to YouTube so maybe the bugs are getting chased out of the new system.

So from my perspective, I am a mobile video blogger once again! I haven’t had this capability on a smart phone in almost 2 years since my Treo 700P on Verizon died and was replaced under warranty for the 5th time and I switched to a non-smart phone so I could actually make and receive phone calls.

You can also email videos with the Palm Pre but for some reason you are capped at sending videos of no more than 17 seconds (about 10 megabytes), which is very different from the Treo, which allowed you to send and attachment as large as the receiving email system would allow.

The webOS 1.4 update has a few other changes.  The buttons look ‘cooler’ and when you launch any given application, a slightly smaller than full screen image of the application shows up immediately on the screen as if your Pre is doing something, but unfortunately, the actual launch of almost all applications from the point of pushing the button to the point of actually being able to do something with the application seems to be a couple seconds slower.  (Score one for Form over Function!)

All in all, I’m still very happy with my Palm Pre.  Glad Palm finally decided to meet the minimum market standards for a smart phone by adding video.  I could never understand why Palm followed in Apple’s moronic foot steps and decided not to include video on the Pre (a year after Apple made the same mistake).  Regardless, I’m glad video recording is here now, and from my perspective the Palm Pre is now a fully functional smart phone.

Finally!  Palm is finally (almost) going to turn on the video recording and editing capability in Palm Pre’s.  The Pre has been out for a year and they expect to send this out in an over the air update in February.  Sure you might ask why the delay until February.  Well ask away, it was silly to wait this long, no point in expecting rationality at this late stage. 

Palm will be pushing out and over-the-air update to all webOS devices (Pre and Pixi) that will enable video recording and editing without the need to purchase additional hardware. This is a feature that has been sorely lacking on webOS.

The recording feature works nearly identically to that of the iPhone’s on-device video editing tool. It lets users crop a video and reduce the size of the clip. Users can then upload to sites such as YouTube, Facebook, and MySpace with a single tap. Uploads will occur the background. Once uploaded, webOS will alert the user and give then the opportunity to send SMS links or MMS messages to the video to their friends.

The update will be free and will be available in February.

Informationweek

Not Really?

There have been several major updates for the Palm Pre since it was launched last summer.  One update made the camera function a bit overly complicated, and another one fixed it.  In general that is rather representative of the 2 steps forward, steps back results that your typical user experiences with Palm Pre’s.  Completely absent still today is any video recording capability in the Palm Pre 1 year after it was announced at CES 2009, and over 6 months after it was launched in the US.  That’s rather extraordinary considering Palm has offered video recording capabilities in Palm devices for about 5 years or more, yet the Palm Pre designed to save the company doesn’t offer this basic standard functionality, following in the Apple iPhone tradition of releasing a very advanced phone with a very noticeable flaw (the same exact flaw no less).

So today, as I went to pick up my phone and make a call, I was call blocked with the news that an update was destined to be downloaded and installed on my phone.  Its been my experience that whenever one of these bad boys is coming down the pipe, NOTHING really works until you bring it in.

So I proceeded to download the update, which I later learned was about 13 mb in size.  I brought it in while at home, where my Sprint network bars on my Pre fluctuate from 0 – 3, even though my wife’s Sprint phone consistently shows 2-4 (not a Palm).  Maybe someone is curving up the bars on her phone, or maybe my Pre gets crappy reception, I don’t know.  I tend to think its partly the update from 1.3.4 and partly the Sprint network, which does not seem to broadcast at a steady strength despite the fact that we are just a few miles from the 4g rollout in Charlotte.

It took about 25 minutes to download, then I got the opportunity to actually ‘install’ it.  That took another 30 minutes.  Ironically, I was helping my wife pull in about 35 updates and one Office Service pack at the same time.  Crazily, the updates and the service pack downloaded faster!

Even though my wifi was turned on on my Pre, it didn’t help speed things up either.

OK, so complaining about the lack of progress (or benchmark maintenance), here’s what you do get with this update.

webOS 1.3.5

Version information

Version: webOS 1.3.5

Release date: 28 December 2009

New applications

NONE

Feature changes to existing applications

App Catalog

• App Catalog significantly improves the application download experience.
• A user can now download multiple applications simultaneously.
• Downloads continue in the background if the user moves away from the download screen.
• A user can manually pause, resume, and cancel downloads.
• A user can also download all available updates for the user’s downloaded applications with a single tap.
• App Catalog automatically resumes downloads in cases where a download was paused because it was interrupted—for example, if a user moves out of network coverage and then moves back into coverage.
• Users can now take advantage of the full storage capacity of the phone for downloading applications. This gives the user more control over how to allocate the phone’s storage space across applications, music, photos, and other media. Downloaded applications are now stored on the phone’s USB drive.
• App Catalog lists search results based on an improved search algorithm.
• Locations from which users can purchase paid apps from App Catalog now include U.S. territories.

Calendar

• In Day view, switching between days happens more quickly.

Date & Time

• When the user has network time zone enabled, a city and country are no longer displayed.

Device Info

• A user can perform a full erase by pressing and holding Sym + the orange/Option key + power for 10 seconds.

Email

• A user can now edit forwarded text for all email account types.
• When the user sets up more than one Yahoo! email account, the account names displayed in Account List view include the associated email address so that the user can distinguish them.
• If an account mailbox is too full to send messages, after the user frees up space in the mailbox on the server, the user can send the messages successfully.
• The default email signature no longer includes the macron over the “e” in “Pre,” so that the product name shows correctly on a recipient’s phone.

Messaging

• If a user deletes a conversation with a contact, new conversations with that contact are now correctly displayed in Conversations view.

Screen & Lock

• When the screen is locked, the time displays in a new font.

Sprint Navigation

• A user can launch Sprint Navigation from an address in an open contact entry in Contacts.

System

• Users can now take advantage of the full storage capacity of the phone for downloading applications. This gives the user more control over how to allocate the phone’s storage space across applications, music, photos, and other media. Downloaded applications are now stored on the phone’s USB drive.
• This update improves battery life in areas of poor wireless network coverage.
• If the user is working in an application that supports landscape mode (such as Web or Videos), notifications now appear at the bottom of the landscape screen.
• After a user signs in to an existing Palm profile, applications the user installed from App Catalog are restored in the background. The user can use other features of the phone while the apps are being restored.
• Swiping to delete a list item that contains a link no longer causes the link to open in the web browser.

Updates

• After taking the 1.3.5 update, users can download future updates over a 2G (1xRTT , GPRS , EDGE ) data connection by opening Updates and tapping Download Now.

Web

• The web browser now supports the display of animated GIFs.
• Audio files with a .3g2 extension play correctly as audio files, not video files.

Security

This release includes a security fix to the dev portal. Credit to Kris Siegal for reporting the issue. Individuals interested in contacting Palm to report suspected security issues can find more information at palm.com/security.

source http://www.precentral.net/webos-135-now-available-download

I wanted to mention again that this weekend, I will be speaking at the Birmingham WordCamp hosted by Andre Natta of The Terminal.

WindowsLiveWriter – Blogging with any Blogging Software Has Never Been Easier

I will be covering how to use WindowsLiveWriter to manage multiple blogs and how to use it with WordPress (among other blogging tools).

Whether you write for 1 blog or 10, Whether you use WordPress, Blogger, Moveable Type or Type pad or many others, Windows LIve Writer can speed up your work, polish your presentation and much more.

Image via Wikipedia

Should be a great event and I’m looking forward to it. I haven’t been to Birmingham in about 17 years or so, and I’m packing lots of equipment including cameras, tripods, a projector and more cords, cables and Cat5e patch cables than you can shake a stick at, just to be prepared.

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I’ve had a couple difficult weeks working with web hosting companies.  One of the web hosting company that I work with, but I don’t trust very much has been predictably unreliable.  That doesn’t surprise me too much, however one of my most reliable web hosting companies has been giving me some issues that I just didn’t expect and that has been putting me through the ringer.

So I’ve been looking around and trying to find for more information on web hosting companies in part to reset my perspective and figure out where things stand today.  I have not done a shakeup in my web hosting partnerships in a couple of years.

I am not convinced that it is time to change my partnerships, however I do need to understand a little bit more about the lay of the land of web hosting companies and so I was looking for some sites that might help me with this.  One of the sites I came across was called Webhostingrating.com.  This website offers about a hundred plus web hosting articles.  Those articles are typically very in comprehensive.

At first glance you might suspect that the website is simply attempting to convert some people on affiliate programs for Web hosting companies.  This is all too common with number websites that cover the same topic.  Honestly this one I can’t tell one way or another however I can tell that they do offer some very useful articles with in-depth analysis and looks at how web hosting companies work, how their services work, and more importantly how you can make them work for you.

I focused my attention on their Dedicated Servers topics and on their Reseller Web Hosting Topics, but I do plan to circle around and cover some more areas soon.

The website doesn’t ask would provide too much information about Web hosting ratings, but their articles and tutorials are actually pretty useful.  I would consider this a comprehensive site but the topics that they do cover are thorough and you can definitely fill in some gaps by checking out this particular company.

Journey to Create Video Tutorial for Internet Research with MindManager Pro 7

I do not work in the worlds of Macro writing or testing or even in the world of browser plugins and add on’s, but I would really like to see someone that is versed in this area tackle this issue with a tool that makes it easier to gather information from the web and map it out faster in a mindmap (MindManager being my preference, but if someone else figures it out with a different tool, I will definitely use it even if I have to run the thing from the command prompt.)

I often times have to do a deep dive investigating a topic of information with web research.  Once I have a large number of links for further review, I like to start pushing them into a MindMap.  MindManager has a useful tool for doing this one page at a time from Internet Explorer.  However, MindManager falls short in the following areas:

• Doesn’t work with Firefox, Opera, or Safari
• Doesn’t have the ability to send multiple tabs, bookmarks or favorites into a Mindmap all at once.
• No longer has the ability to send highlighted text on a web page into the mindmap with the topic name and link
• I’d like to see the highlighted text of a web page either become a sub topic or at a minimum get pushed into the notes section of MindManager.

Plus, Internet Explorer is just plain tedious for doing this work as compared to other browsers. 

That said if you have to use Internet Explorer then you have to so I put together this video tutorial to show you how to use it.  Its a manual process but can get the job done.

I do not write about this concept too much on Maven Mapper’s Information these days, however there is a very good and slightly old fashioned way to network with other bloggers across the blogosphere.  Its called a blog surfing exchange. 

How Blog Surfing Exchanges Work

A blogger or a non-blogger signs up (works better if you have a blog).  You then surf through the directory of blogs that they offer, they tend to display a new blog one after the next in categories that you pick.  You control the speed and you can rate blogs as you go if you want to do that type of thing.  You can also block or favorite blogs as you go.

For each blog you visit, you earn some credits.  You can then use these credits to list your own blog in the exchange and other bloggers will then see your site in the que.

This is a good way to find other bloggers, see what they are doing, how they are doing it and network or share or develop ideas. 

This is not a good way to market your website or products or ebooks.  If you are into that type of thing, you should probably look elsewhere.

This is primarily for bloggers to connect with other bloggers and generally communicate blog to blog.

As I mentioned this concept has been around for a long time.  I am a long time member in BlogExplosion and BlogMad.  These are two of the largest surfing exchanges.  BlogExplosion is the oldest I believe and BlogMad seems to have recently eclipsed it as the largest.

To my knowledge if you have more than one blog, there is no limit on the number of blogs allowed at BlogExplosion.  That said, they are slow at approvals and very picky.  You can expect to be rejected a few times.  Try and take it in stride as it can pay off later. 

I do not agree with their philosophy, but it is their club.

BlogMad is much easier, but they limit you to 3 and then later 6 blogs.  Essentially you have to work your way up the levels to get more benefits such as the ability to list more blogs.

I’m just about to hit the ‘Mad’ level for example, I was hoping to win a Technomarine watch, but will settle for the ability to add more blogs.  Sounds goofy, but hey its about as mature as Facebook.

Big Picture Purpose for Building Subscribers

This isn’t a good place to go strictly to get traffic for your website, however as you network there and as people see and possibly like your site, they will essentially be able to use that introduction as a means to coming back and maybe subscribing to your syndicated delivery via rss or email.

You bought your kids the Wii and paid $450, and talked to a friend that found a great deal on the Wii for $350.

Doh!

It happens to all of us at some point or another, especially after Cyber Monday and Black Friday.  Not all of us are cut out to get up at 3am to get to a store that opens at 4 am so that we can swarm the aisles looking for the single Wii listed for $75 on the shelves somewhere in the store.  I just saw a news report and Ebay is selling the Wii on average for $411 about $100 over suggested retail price, but good luck winning that auction!

Most of us, hear about the great deals after its too late.

That’s why you will now find many more sites that do not actually sell products, but help you find the great deals that are ‘really’ out there.

Here’s is an example, its called TechBargains.com and they provide information for where the latest tech deals are and what those deals look like.  They give information for both online and bricks and mortars stores from Best Buy to Tiger Direct and even some direct buys from the manufacturers themselves. 

Now the site is not a shopping cart system, so do not expect to see some ooh’s and ahhhhs type of layouts with web 2.0 buttons.  This site is designed to give you powerful knowledge to save a lot of money when you shop, without having to waste a lot of time on research.  So if you are looking for a discount computers, or a Wii or a GPS unit or whatever, you can search here, but the stuff isn’t the reason why you go here. 

The reason why you would use a pre-shopping service like TechBargains.com is to allow them to scout out the deals for you.  Now, not all retailers give a flat discount off their prices to get you in the doors.  Some will give free shipping to your house, some will give free shipping to the closest store to your house and some will give a $40 rebate or some other incentive.

Using a pre-shopping scouting service like this you can look for the gizmo you want and then find the type of good feel, good deal that is right for you.

Plus, for those of you that are feed savvy, if you do not see the deal you are looking for today, you can sign up for alerts.  Then when say, Best Buy launches a sale in the middle of the week, or Tiger Direct gets a shipment of refurbished gadgets Thursday night, you can receive an email alert or a rss feed alert that the deal for the gadget you are hoping to buy is moving somewhere in some new way.

There is a new and promising Social Bookmarking concept on the net. Its called Thoof.com and they provide a social bookmarking version of personalized news. I think that is some sort of play on the concept of Proof Reading, but I’m not sure.

The concept is that you can read stories and not only show your interest, approval or lack of approval in those stories, but you can alter the description and the write up that go along with that story. Future or other readers will then vote up or down on whether your recommendation of changing the description, title or tags helps the story or not.

Once you submit the story your story gets a ThoofRank button like the one below that relates to an article I wrote titled “Funny Numbers Playing on iPhone Sales?“

The submission process is easy and not half as intimidating as that of a Digg or Slash, but not so simple that its worthless either like Delicious or BlinkList either.

I do like the concept of the group/social edit function and if you watch the video demo at their site you will get an interesting look at how they bring information to you, socially.  I suspect there is a little bit of potential for group think, but in general it seems to take a couple steps past some of the issues that plague Digg.com.

I have been using a number of tools to test my websites, web pages and web designs for several years now.  I keep a long list of these tools in my bookmarks in my browser.

For about a year now I have been meaning to organize these bookmarks and write up an article to share the list and the tools with other web designers, programmers, web masters and or bloggers.  I just never got around to it.

Fortunately, on the internet no great idea remains unique for very long.

Aviva Directory put together a list of 31 website tools that happens to include all of the tools on my goto list plus a half dozen more that I wish I had had a year ago.

Accessibility

In particular they have an excellent section of tools listed covering accessibility.  In the United States website accessibility has not been a major concern.  However, in the United Kingdom its actually the law.

I have a number of readers and visitors from the UK and upgrading and improving my sites to comply with accessibilty requirements is one of my major goals for 2007.

Not only is it good for SEO and good for compliance, but its good for your readers.  I don’t think any website owner or bloggers wakes up and thinks to themselves, “I’d like to make my site less accessible today.”

Browser Simulators

I’ve used a number of browser simulators over the years but I also really liked the concept of Browsershots, which takes snapshots of your website rendered on several different browsers.

Missing Tools

The article definitely covers its bases, but I’d probably also throw in some type of keyword density tool.  I’m always looking for a better tool in this regard, but I do regularly use a tool from SearchEnginePromotionHelp.com (yeah its a long domain name, but that doesn’t bother me if the tools work).