JeffHawkins
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How would you change the Palm Foleo?
As much as we respect and admire the man, we sure wouldn't want to be in Jeff Hawkins' shoes these days, what with the cool reaction his promised "breakthrough device" has been receiving in the media and among the army of amateur online pundits. But rather than wasting time knocking Jeff for the somewhat awkwardly-positioned Foleo, why don't we instead use our collective knowledge and preferences to help him make the F2 a product that we'd be comfortable dropping a few bucks on. For instance, what if Palm got rid of the redundant processor, OS, and radios, and simply offered consumers a dumb terminal in which to dock their Treos for under $200? Or what if they let that screen get its swivel on and added 'e-book reader' to the Foleo's list of features? And for heaven's sake, some proper video support please! Those are just our suggestions; what's yours?
Wrapup of D day, plus bonus top nicknames for the Palm Foleo
It was a long day at WSJ's D down in San Diego, but there was plenty to see. Check out our coverage roundup below.Live coverageSteve Jobs and Bill Gates: Historic discussion live from D 2007Steve Jobs live from D 2007Steve Ballmer live from D 2007Palm's Jeff Hawkins live from D 2007AppleiPhone to get third party apps Apple TV gets 160GB disk... and YouTube tooiTunes Plus and EMI's DRM-free music hands-oniTunes Plus DRM-free music now official(er)MicrosoftMicrosoft Surface - surface and gesture based computing landsMicrosoft Surface hands-onPalmPalm Foleo hands-on Palm Foleo galleryPalm Foleo announced Etc. Livescribe shows off Leapfrog Fly-esque pen computer for grown-ups QiGO announces Internet Content KeysAlso, you reminded us that you're a hell of a clever lot that not seemed to think we were justified in totally panning Palm's new Foleo. So here are some of the top nicknames we've heard it given: Foolio (totally our favorite, by Jeff) Folly-o (by derF) The Palm Shark Jumper (by Brian) Feel free to leave some more in comments!
Palm's Ed Colligan: Foleo is the Wii of portable computing
We've seen Jeff Hawkins' -- the synaptic guns behind the Palm Pilot, Handspring, and Treo -- take on the ill-received Foleo. Now we've got the thoughts from his boss, Ed Colligan, CEO of Palm, Inc. As you'd expect, Ed toe the party line with the "mobile companion" spin. He even compares it to the PS3 vs. Wii battle, citing "technology overload" as the mysterious (and massively oversimplified) force that will drive people to Palm's new platform as it has the Wii. Ed also tells us that Palm will be providing the tools to developers after which he expects, "very quickly, there'll be thousands of applications" for the Linux-based Foleo. Hey Colligan man! We get it, but we still don't think it's a good idea. Though if only for nostalgia sake, we'd love to be wrong. See the video after the break.
Palm Foleo announced
As rumored, the big new device that's Palm's Jeff Hawkins has chosen to announce at the D conference today is the Palm Foleo, which the company is billing as a "mobile companion." Boasting a 10-inch widescreen display and a full-size keyboard, the device is intended to be used in conjunction with your smartphone, with any edits to documents made on one device automatically reflected on the other thanks to the device's Bluetooth connectivity. The device also promises to turn on "instantly," boasts built-in WiFi, and should last about 5 hours on a single charge. The pricing and release info leaked out earlier also look to have been spot on, with it now officially set to be released sometime this summer for $500 (after a $100 mail-in rebate). We'll have plenty more pics of it shortly, but for now you can check out one more after the break.
Palm Foleo and Linux OS for summer is what Hawkins is announcing at D?
Woops! Looks like someone was trigger-happy at Palm and shot out the press release for tomorrow's announcement a little too soon! Apparently what Jeff Hawkins is going to announce in the morning at D is called the Palm Foleo (a name we've heard rumored before), and is being positioned as a "smartphone companion". We didn't know our smartphones weren't quite smart enough to need a guide to the interwebs, but the Foleo syncs to your mobile device, providing a full size keyboard and larger display for editing documents and triaging email (among other things). So yeah, basically it's a dumb device piggybacking all your Treo's most useful feature -- its connectivity. Apparently users can expect instant-on access, five hours battery life, Palm's new Linux OS, and a $500 pricetag to round off that Treo kit to about a grand this summer. Assuming all this is indeed the case, we can only come to one conclusion: damned if we need yet another friggin device. Seriously, please Palm, what we need is for you to improve the Treo -- or whatever phone device you expect us to carry and use -- not design the Treo its very own Lenny Small to hack around sluggish handset design. The yet-another-device philosophy doesn't carry, so to speak, and it's sure as hell not the future of mobile computing.P.S. -No, that's a jokey Sony UX UMPC to the right, not the still-unseen Foleo.[Thanks to Brian and everyone who sent this in]Read - Screencap of the supposed releaseRead - Treocentral thread
Jobs, Gates, and Hawkins: times (in approximate) for tomorrow's festivities
Ok, we've landed and have some rough times you should be ready for things to go off tomorrow. Remember, we've got a Steve Jobs presentation, Jeff Hawkins is showing off whatever Palm's got next, and the icing on the cake is Jobs (again) for a hot legend-on-legend sitdown with Bill Gates. Here are the windows to watch out for, we'll try and blog as much as our battery can hold out for:Wednesday, May 308:00AM - 10:30AM PST windowSteve Ballmer / MicrosoftJeff Hawkins / Palm11:15AM - 1:00PM PST windowSteve Jobs / Apple7:15PM PSTBill Gates & Steve Jobs 2getha 4evaThursday, May 3111:00AM - 12:45PM PST windowEric Schmidt / Google
Palm's Hawkins to finally reveal 'third business' next week?
We've known for almost two years now that Palm has been cooking up a mysterious mobile computing device for what founder Jeff Hawkins calls the company's 'third business' (with the other two being PDAs and smartphones, obviously), and now several sites are claiming that attendees of Walt Mossberg's D: All Things Digital conference will be the first to learn hard details about this ambitious project. Although it's been public knowledge that Hawkins would be speaking at next Wednesday's D for some time now, both Brighthand and I4U are reporting that he will indeed be divulging material information on what many people are predicting will be a UMPC-like tablet codenamed 'Hawk' and powered by Palm's recently-announced Linux-based OS; when we contacted Palm, they would only say that "Jeff...will be presenting something to do with Palm." For whatever it's worth, we do know that Hawkins shares our love of cramming as much power, storage, connectivity (well, for the most part), and usability into as small a package as possible, so to those folks who have been discounting Palm and its seeming inability to innovate, you may be in for quite a surprise next week. Read - I4URead - Brighthand's predictions
