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Photos: Palm Pre and Palm Web OS

Even before CES 2009 began, Palm created quite a buzz by announcing that it would introduce its new operating system as well as the first device of the family. On opening day of the show, the company finally introduced Palm Web OS and the Palm Pre and crowd was wowed. Check out our hands-on gallery of the smartphone.

Answers to burning Palm Pre questions

Updated 6:20 p.m. PT, to note that the Pre does have the technical ability to act as a modem for a laptop.

LAS VEGAS--As the device with the most mystery attached to it, there were plenty of questions left after Palm introduced its Pre on Thursday. I had a chance to sit down with Palm vice president Stephane Maes to get some (but not all) of the answers to my burning questions.

Palm isn't answering the big question--how much will it cost--but Maes did say "we obviously know what all the prices are of the products … Read more

Palm calls it a comeback with the Palm Pre

Palm took one giant step toward regaining its position as a relevant mobile computing company with the introduction of the Palm Pre on Thursday.

If you missed out on Ina Fried's live coverage of Palm's press conference in Las Vegas at CES, here are a few basic details about the Pre (rhymes with glee). It's a touch-screen phone with a slide-out keyboard than runs WebOS, Palm's long-awaited new operating system formerly code-named Nova.

Sprint will be the exclusive launch carrier for the Pre, which comes with Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, a 3.1-inch display, GPS, and 8GBs of … Read more

Palm announces the Pre

Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein, in a CES keynote, just unveiled the company's much anticipated new handset, the Palm Pre, which features the new Palm Web OS. The device has all the going features--Bluetooth stereo, Wi-Fi, 8GB of storage, and GPS. One thing that makes it a bit different is that in addition to a touch screen, it has a fold-out curved keyboard.

Head over to CNET News' live blog for the full story. And click on the audio link below to hear CNET News reporter Tom Krazit talk about the new smartphone.

AUDIO

Early take on Palm Pre Crave … Read more

Live blog: Macworld 2009 keynote

We're posting live updates from Macworld 2009 at San Francisco's Moscone Center, where Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, Phil Schiller, is delivering the keynote speech.

8:55 a.m. PST: We're live inside the Moscone Center for Macworld 2009, having braved the elbows of the friendly media hordes and the rather aggressive ushers. The room is fairly full, but the line outside this morning seemed a little smaller than usual, unless IDG did a better job of herding the masses in early. The pre-keynote music is skewing more current than usual before a Jobs keynote, with Death Cab for Cutie and the like, which maybe gives us an idea of what Phil Schiller uses to warm up.

9:03 a.m.: We just got the cell phone warning message, which probably gives us a five-minute window or so. They turned up the volume for Coldplay's "Life in Technicolor," and I'm assuming we're getting close.

9:04 a.m.: The lights dim as the song ends, and Apple's Phil Schiller takes the stage to start Macworld 2009. He appears to be rocking an all-denim ensemble. It's a little hard to tell from here. "I'm so personally excited to be the one delivering Macworld 2009 to you. I'd like to thank everybody for showing up," which gets a chuckle.

9:06 a.m.: Phil's first topic is the general state of Apple, talking about some of the new Apple stores that the company has opened overseas, such as Beijing and Sydney. He's gushing about some of the new store designs. "I can't imagine any other company delivering something like that." Every week, 3.4 million customers visit an Apple store around the world. "That's 100 Macworlds each and every week," a clear pointer to Apple's decision to make this its last Macworld.

9:07 a.m.: Phil's going to start with the Mac, and he seems to be hinting that's all we're going to talk about today. Last year was the best year for the Mac in Apple's history, he said, growing faster than the industry based on what Phil calls Apple's best product line ever. Phil has three new things he's going to cover.… Read more

Hands-on with Picasa for the Mac

I'm a somewhat dissatisfied owner of a new MacBook. One of the things I was looking forward to with the computer was the vaunted easy photo management I kept hearing about. But I found the Mac's free photo management app, iPhoto, frustrating to use, compared to the product I had become accustomed to on Windows: Google's Picasa. I didn't like the fact that I had to manually import photos into the product--even photos already on my Mac--and that the import process made duplicates of my photos when I did so. I much prefer Picasa, which simply … Read more

Google to release Picasa beta for Mac

Google plans to release on Monday a beta version of Picasa for Mac OS X, helping Apple fans catch up to Windows and Linux users already employing the free tool for editing, cataloging, and uploading photos.

The Mac version largely matches the features in Picasa 3 for Windows, said Jason Cook, Picasa's marketing manager. Though the company has been scrambling to include some secondary features such as geotagging and the ability to get photos printed, the core abilities of Picasa are present, he said.

Picasa lets people edit and print photos, create collages and movies, and add labels, star ratings, and tags. More significantly, given Google's cloud-computing focus, it also lets people upload their images to the company's online Picasa Web Albums site where images can be shared. Google acquired Picasa in 2004.

"We have many Mac users," Cook said, though declining to offer any estimates, "and we think they'll be excited about this. It makes the Picasa Web Albums experience better." … Read more

Ready to automate data center management?

I wrote not long ago about the various disciplines that data center operations teams will need to work through to address those cloud-computing values you often hear hyped by people like me.

In that post, I noted that many organizations had gained an understanding of how server virtualization could be used to abstract software concepts, thus managing them distinctly from the underlying hardware. I also noted, however, that few organizations had made the decision to systematically automate that management.

Channel-V tonight pointed me to an interview by Virtualization Review's Keith Ward of Bogomil Balkansky, VMware's senior director of product marketing. In the interview, Balkansky discusses the upcoming VDC-OS product release, and what it means to the next generation of data centers. He starts with a very familiar theme:

"Henry Ford introduced automation to the manufacturing world," Balkansky says.

"We're transitioning from swinging hammers to pushing buttons," he continues. "The focus becomes on what needs to happen, not spending the majority of your time executing it and making it happen. Ford introduced speed and efficiency and predictability in the (manufacturing) process." Those same elements will characterize VDC-OS, he says.

Balkansky goes on to point out that the very core of the system administrator role will change as a result, an argument that I've been making for some time. Rather than focusing on reactive, tactical operations, the system administrator of the future will "specify the service levels the application requires: availability, security, scalability."… Read more

Android Netbooks: Fact or fiction?

A couple of freelance writers for the blog VentureBeat say they have ported Google's Android operating system to an Asus Eee PC. But does this constitute a new trend in Netbooks?

Matthäus Krzykowski and Daniel Hartmann said in a post Thursday that they compiled, in four hours, the open-source Android operating system for an Asus Eee PC 1000H Netbook. The two run a start-up called Mobile-facts.

In somewhat breathless prose here's what the authors conclude about Android on Netbooks: "For (a) myriad of (Silicon Valley) software companies, it means a well-backed, open operating system that … Read more