HP webOS Developer Blog

Last week was a quite a week for webOS developers. We made the webOS 3.0 SDK available in our Early Access program, giving developers a head start on creating apps for TouchPad’s summer launch (get to it!).  We also launched a new and improved HP webOS Developer Center, providing developers with an even better resource for all their webOS efforts. To share the news, we went across the pond and joined an extensive roster of speakers at the webOS CONNECT community event in London.

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After announcing the next exciting chapter of webOS at February 9’s Think Beyond event, we took our show on-the-road, hosting a webOS App Developer Conference at Mobile World Congress. The excitement and buzz around webOS and upcoming devices like the HP TouchPad were incredible. We had an awesome time meeting with everyone and hope everyone there had a blast.

If you couldn’t make it to Barcelona, we posted videos from the event to help you re-live all the magic. These sessions include a look at what’s new in webOS, really cool demos with upcoming devices like the Pre 3 and TouchPad, as well as a closer look at Enyo, our next generation application framework.

You can check out the individual videos below, or watch them all as a playlist on our YouTube channel.

Part 1 – Introduction with Jason Zajac

Part 2 – webOS update with Joe Hayashi

Part 3 – webOS demonstration with Sachin Kansal

Part 4 – Development overview with Gray Norton

Part 5 – Enyo overview with Matt McNulty

The fun has just begun. Enjoy and stay tuned!

Couldn’t make it to our developer event at Think Beyond? Watch the session with Matthew McNulty, Director of Frameworks and Tools for webOS, who provides a closer look at Enyo, our next generation application framework.

Like what you see? What else would you like to know? Post your questions and comments and we’ll tackle as many of them as we can in future posts.

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.

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The last couple of months have been a busy time of travel for me, Ben Combee, and the HP Palm Developer Relations team.

Our tour started in mid-September with web 2.0 Expo in New York City.  Our former directors, Ben Galbraith and Dion Almaer were on a panel on the future of web browser, while HP Palm had a presence on the vendor floor where Kevin Hague, Lisa Brewster, and I talked about our system and phones, the Mojo JavaScript framework, and the Ares web-based development environment to attendees during breaks.

While everyone was in NY, we were able to take a break from the Expo and head over the Brooklyn Bridge to attend the NY JavaScript Meetup.  Ben & Dion did a version of their “Why the Web Will Win” talk while everyone enjoyed food and drinks at the reBar gastropub.  It was a great opportunity to meet with several webOS developers already in the area and expose our ideas and platform to some of the brightest members of New York’s technology crowd.

Our next event was in early October in beautiful Austin, Texas with Game Developer Conference Online. I attended as part of their iPhone/iPad Gaming Summit to be on a panel on Alternative Mobile Platforms.  I was on stage with representatives from Aurora Feint (who recently launched support for Android), Sony, Microsoft, and Cydia (the app store for jailbroken iOS devices).  I emphasized how many iOS developers have been able to quickly port over applications from Apple’s mobile OS to our system using the PDK’s support for OpenGL ES and I stressed how the Palm App Catalog provides a great way to gain access to a growing user base.

October finished with the first Mobile Apps World conference in London, England.  This was an event gathering application developers with brand managers, media buyers, and corporate executives, and HP Palm was there as a gold sponsor.  I gave a keynote address on the advantages of using HTML and JavaScript to build applications for a wide range of devices, and then followed up with an afternoon of hands-on sessions where I took developers through building an app using PhoneGap for both HP webOS and Google’s Android operating system. Look for a screencast soon with this material.

While in London, I also took the opportunity to visit with some of our London partners, including Quickoffice, who’ve done a great job building a first-class hybrid document viewer app that we’re including in webOS 2.0, and Ideaworks Labs, the creators of the Airplay SDK that allows building cross-platform C/C++ apps for webOS and many other systems.

Our next big event is the HP webOS Developer Day in New York City.  If you can get up to New York on November 19th and 20th, it will be time well spent.  We’re going to be going deep into some of the new features of webOS 2.0 while also featuring many of the cross platform technologies that can make you successful as a mobile developer and expose your apps to a huge audience of users.

On the Road Again
Our Developer Relations team has been delivering keynotes, sitting on panels, and hosting workshops and meetups around the US and abroad to share our enthusiasm for webOS and other web-based development tools – tools that are changing the face of mobile development and making it easier for you to get the most from your investment. Here’s where you can catch us in the coming weeks:

Mobile App World — October 19-20 — London, UK
On October 19th at 2 p.m. Ben Combee will be speaking about one of today’s hot topics: Using Web Technology to Solve Device Fragmentation. Then on October 20th he’ll be presenting a free workshop you won’t want to miss. Building Cross-platform Apps Using WebKit will feature step-by-step instruction for developing a cross platform app that deploys to webOS, Apple iOS, Google Android, and others without restarting development efforts for each platform. Ben will showcase PhoneGap tools in combination with the webOS SDK to develop code that can be easily deployed to many major platforms. Sign up for one of the two-hour sessions: 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. or 2:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Space is limited in each session to ensure an in-depth learning experience.

HTML5 Live — November 9 — New York, NY
Ben Galbraith and Dion Almaer will be presenting HTML5 vs. Apps? from 6:15 p.m. to 7:15 p.m. They’ll tackle topics including how HTML5 can power mobile apps that people want, and how web technologies have a material role to play in creating mobile apps and reducing production costs for development.

webOS Developer Day — November 20 — New York, NY
We’re coming to New York City for two in-depth days of webOS training and education. If you’re new to webOS, there will be a special pre-conference tutorial on Friday, November 19th. Then on Saturday, November 20th, Developer Day kicks off with a keynote by HP Personal Systems Group CTO Phil McKinney on the future of webOS, followed by technical sessions and panel discussions designed to enhance your webOS skills. Space is limited, so register soon.

webOS Meetup — December 3 — San Francisco
We look forward to hosting our Bay Area developer community for a holiday webOS Meetup at Terra, 511 Harrison Street in San Francisco from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. Ben Galbraith and Dion Almaer will present the latest updates in webOS and our developer community initiatives moving into the new year. Afterwards, we hope you’ll stay to chat, hack, mix and mingle with webOS developers and peers while enjoying beer, wine and delicious hors d’oeuvres. If don’t already have a Palm Pre, we’ll be raffling some off throughout the night. Details and registration information are coming soon.

Last weekend Palm co-sponsored an un-conference in Portland called CyborgCamp.

Despite the name, CyborgCamp isn’t really about cyborgs in the traditional sense (though we did have a disembodied robot head to look at). It is about how humans are augmenting their lives with technology in various ways (phones, Google, pacemakers, eyeglasses), and how we are adapting to this new world.

Some of the highlights included:

• An expert on human waste treatment (very insightful).
• Sally Applin, an anthropologist who designed a framework for determining human responses to different augmentations. You can read her slides here, and listen to an interview with her on “marking.”
• A wearable computing expert from Microsoft.
• Aaron Parecki and Amber Case, experts on geolocation and long term location tracking and analysis.
• Tyler Sticka on The Uncanny Valley of Interaction Design.
• A discussion on ways to effectively get and use government data.

In addition to great speakers, we also played with some interesting gadgets. This is conference organizer Aaron Pareki wearing video glasses which record everything he sees. They are surprisingly cheap. You can plug the camera into your computer to play back the captured audio and video.

Thanks to @caseorganic for the photo

A home made multi-user touch table running a novel music sequencer

Conference organizer Amber Case wearing a brain reading helmet

And of course before we go: one awesome robot head named Maxwell.

Maxwell, your robot friend who’s fun to be with!

A huge thank you to everyone who helped make this event a big success—CyborgCamp was a lot of fun. We look forward to attending next year!

Palm is sponsoring Portland’s CyborgCamp this weekend. What is a CyborgCamp, you might ask? It’s an one day un-conference in Portland that brings together engineers, designers, and anyone else with an interest in the future of humans and computers interaction.

Palm believes the future of computing will come in a variety of devices and form factors that help connect many parts of your life. Palm is proud to sponsor a group studying the intersection of humans and technology.

CyborgCamp is an all day event, starting with breakfast at 9, going through the wrap-up and prizes at 6pm. Anthropology Ph.D. student Sally Applin will be visiting from San Francisco to discuss the notion of the “invisible cyborg.” Marshall Kirkpatrick will talk about Journalism, Information, and Time and Space Compression. Max Ogden will speak about Maps, Sharing, and the Civic Web. These are just a few of the great speakers and attendees who will be there.

The cost for CyborgCamp is only 15 dollars and includes breakfast, lunch, coffee, and drinks. Space is limited (only 120) so if you are in the Portland area be sure to sign up now. Oh, and Palm will be giving away one of our much coveted sturdy water bottles to every attendee!

Last Saturday the Palm team descended on Atlanta to help WebDirections USA host an incredible one day hackathon called Amped!. The goal of Amped is to form a team, code up an app to meet one of several challenges, win prizes, and of course have a ton of fun; all in a single day. And what a day it was! Prizes were won and fun was had by all.

The Palm team showed up at the venue, the GTRI conference center graciously donated by premiere engineering school Georgia Tech, at around 7am to set up the space. This mainly consisted of putting together tables and couch spaces for people to hack away, plus a ton of power outlets. Around 8:30 the attendees began to arrive, breakfasting on the free coffee and pastries in the hall.

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Get Amped About Cross-Platform Mobile Web Development at Web Directions USA

Join Palm and Web Directions in Atlanta on September 25 as we reinvent the traditional hackathon. Amped is a free, all-day, high-octane hack event featuring the Palm® webOS™ challenge, where you’ll build creative cross-platform mobile apps using the web languages and technologies you already know and love. Best of all, you’ll walk away with apps that can be deployed across platforms—a huge advantage in today’s mobile market.

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