Last weekend we held our second two-day developer event, and it was twice as epic as the first. Developers from 32 states and 9 countries joined us in New York City for presentations on everything from webOS fundamentals to the future of cross-platform development.
Palm’s fearless Developer Relations leaders Ben Galbraith and Dion Almaer hosted a little shindig Wednesday night along with Appcelerator CEO Jeff Haynie. (Appcelerator is the creator of Titanium, a cross-platform development environment that uses JavaScript to write native code for multiple devices—can you guess why we like them so much?) The DevRel team met lots of developers who wanted to know more about porting to webOS, did some tutorials, gave away prizes, and generally partied ourselves silly.
We were also excited to celebrate the announcement of Palm’s new Hot Apps program, dedicated exclusively to PDK applications, and resident PDK expert Ben Combee was on the scene to talk about just how easy it is to port OpenGL iPhone applications to webOS. I hate to rub it in and say you had to be there to get the full impact, but you can at least get an overview of what all he covered from the slides he posted. (And just for the record, full PDK documentation is here).
Even though we we made Ben work, the night certainly wasn’t all business. Over 350 developers made their way over to see us at 111 Minna, DJ Mike Relm was spinning mad beats all night long in his requisite suit and orange shoes, and Palm engineers across the board were out to chat up developers and get the drink tickets flowing like manna from heaven.
But the highlight of the evening was probably the ridiculous number of devices Kevin Hague and I managed to give away in a random drawing (and by random, I mean we kept asking each other to pick a number). I don’t even have a final count of how many we gave away, but I got several text messages describing the scene as “craziness.” Congratulations to all the winners, and click here if you need instructions on how to use your new device for development without activating it.
Mega thanks to everyone who came out, and maybe we’ll see you guys again next year! 
If you’re not already familiar with Dropbox, you should be. And based on how fast DoGood’s Dropboxify client has been climbing up the Hot Apps charts, webOS users are already onboard with the service or are getting the hang of it pretty dang fast.
In a nutshell, Dropbox is a cloud-based file hosting service that makes it easy to keep files synchronized across multiple devices. After registering for a free Dropbox account, Dropboxify gives webOS users access to their documents, spreadsheets, presentations, video, and photos – it even streams music! What it doesn’t do yet is file upload (which also translates to only being able to view files, but not saving any edits), but this functionality is promised in a future version.
But Dropboxify isn’t written by Dropbox themselves. DoGood was able to use the Dropbox API to extend the service to their mobile platform of choice. Wins all around for Dropbox and webOS users, and yet another example of a Hot App making it “in the money” in less than a week!
Finally, a photo editor for webOS? Finally, indeed! As a photographer myself, one of the features I appreciate the most about the Palm Pre is the extraordinary camera quality. For the past year I’ve marveled at all the shots with perfect exposure and white balance that would have come from my SLR only after several rounds of test shots and fiddling. But an automatic system can’t calculate a photographer’s creative vision, and now with Photo Effects we’ve got some tools at our disposal.
This application comes in two flavors: the free Photo Effects gives users access to filters such as black and white and sepia, and Photo Effects Plus adds cropping and resizing functionality for only $0.99. This is something that Photo Effects definitely does right: having a limited free version is a great way to build consumer confidence that your app delivers the functionality they’re looking for.
Photo Effects free makes a modest plug to promote the paid app with an application menu item, but as someone who looks at an awful lot of apps, I think it’s totally appropriate to toot your own pro version horn — especially to an eager and currently underserved market like photographers. These folks have no shame dropping hundreds of dollars for a new lens…go ahead, be bold and use an occasional splash screen to tell them about the extra features they’ll get for less than the price for a latte!
So let’s take a look at what makes this app awesome. Following the app’s directions to tap the folder icon to select a photo presents the user with the standard webOS photo picker. I’m going to work on a picture I took in Mexico last year where the colors came out a little dull. I still like the composition, however, so I’d like to see how it looks in black and white.
Now here’s where this app really gets interesting. Currently, webOS can load a photo into the canvas for editing, but doesn’t have a way to save the resulting image. Some apps get around this by directing the user to manually take a screenshot, but Photo Effects came up with a great workaround by uploading the photo to their server for processing, then sending it back down to the phone and saving it. Here’s the end result.
After downloading the edited version, the user can set it as wallpaper, or send it via SMS or email. The whole process is very quick and seamless; I’d have no idea that the photo was processed on a different server if the app didn’t say so.
This method is admittedly more complicated to implement, but by combining great functionality with a better user experience now, this app has a head start growing a user base that will put them ahead of the competition when we make improvements to this functionality in the future.
What features have you run into in an application that gave you an “ah ha” moment? If you have either run into this in a webOS application, or of course if you have written this yourself, let us know! If you’re close to submitting your app, do it now! You can still benefit from our Hot Apps promo; Fast Movers have shown that you can get in the money within a week!