Palm Dev Day NYC - Day #2

Day 2 was awesome.  The day started off with Ben Galbraith and Dion Almaer talking about how far the web has come, and how HTML5 and mobile are changing things.  Followed by an Oprah moment, we all got Palm Pre 2s!  Phil McKinney spoke next giving HP's position on the mobile field and webOS.  He seemed really excited about the possibilities.  This only encouraged the crowd.  He gave a bunch of good ideas.  I really enjoyed his ideas about education and how we are currently raising test takers and not creative minds.  There are plenty of opportunities for apps out there.

Next i went to talks on the PDK and how I can leverage my C/C++ abilities within the webOS framework.  I also learned about the apps currently out there that utilize both JavaScript and the PDK.  The PDK presents a unique opportunity.  After that I attended Greg Simon's talk about optimizing performance of webOS.  He had a few tips on things not to do, but mostly he was talking about the webkit browser and JavaScript engine.

Lunch was after and it was awesome.  There were shrimp po boi sliders, jambalya rice, corn and bean salad, and cornbread with jalapenos.  They also served sweet tea of the mint, raspberry, and lemon varieties.  For desert there was ice cream and bourbon bread pudding.  Everything tasted so great.

Following lunch there were lightning talks.  In these talks webOS developers gave 5 minute presentations on how they overcame a problem they had with webOS.  It was a good lessons learned teaching experience.  There was a Cross-Platform Apps panel, developers of different frameworks talked about how they came about and how they are used to develop web apps across multiple platforms.  Really cool stuff, especially since you can develop a single app that works on webOS, IOS, Android, Symbian devices and more.  This gives developers a wider market to spread their app to.

The last couple talks I attended were about using HTML5 to spruce up your apps and the different JavaScript frameworks out there for us to take advantage of.  The last talk of the day, focused on the next generation webOS framework, Enyo.  Enyo take a lot from Ares to build a webapp.  They are trying to abstract some of the JavaScript setup work from building a webapp.  They are also working to make the process more stream lined and object oriented.  They demo'd an email app that was really slick.  It adjusted to different size windows very well, and looks promising.

Palm Dev Day NYC - PreConf Activities

I enjoyed the first day of the HP Palm WebOSDevDay.  It was enjoyable and a learning experience.  The food was good, the wifi not so much, but the people made the day awesome.  The facilities are nice too.

I spent time in talks about the webOS architecture, the PDK, webOS Internals, and managing Metrics for your application.   Since I do some C/C++ development already I'm looking forward to working with the PDK to see what I can leverage from it.  I started the day hoping to do some development, to work on an app or something of the like.  Sadly this was not the case.  This did not ruin the day at all though.

My favorite talk of the day was the webOS Internals talk by Rod Whitby.  I had heard of how  awesome the webOS community was, but today I learned to the extent.  I got to learn about how it came a long, how things were developed, and how Palm has embraced the community and its users instead of shutting them down like other companies would.  Since I use Preware, it was pretty kool to hear the history and meet Rob.

The best part of the day was the networking experience at the end.  Not only did I get to have free beer, in a mug I get to take home, but I got to meet a bunch of really cool people.  The webOS developers are all really cool and fun.  Everyone was nice, I got to spend time with the Precentral team as well as the infamous Geoff (@zhephree).  I was totally geeked out to be in the same building with them, let alone conversing with them.

The first day was great.  I look forward to tomorrow, as well as to meeting more developers and getting my first webOS app into the catalog.  I'm also hoping for a extra special treat tomorrow...

On my way to Palm Dev Day

I'm on my way to the Palm WebOS dev conference.  I'm a little excited and a little nervous.  I'm nervous because I've been reading about and playing with webOS since last spring, but I don't have anything to show for it.  I'm a C/C++ and Ruby developer by trade so I haven't fully grasped the framework and Javascript.  I know Javascript isn't a hard language to learn and work with, but it's different.  Event handling isn't something I'm used to working with.  My natural application space is not web apps, so this is all new to me.  It doesn't help also that I'm in grad school either.

I'm hoping going to this conference will help me put it all together so that I can get my mobile/web dev game going. It's something I've wanted to do for some time now,  My goals for the conference are to meet 10 people, and learn enough so that I can put something together in the following two weeks, so that I complete my goal of putting something our before the end of November.  I really enjoy webOS and I hope that I can help contribute to it's success and this conference is a good motivation point to start and grow from.

ESPN3 and my Xbox Experience

I tried.  For almost 2 months I had cable.  It wasn't worth it.  Verizon FIOS is pretty cool, but for someone like me who doesn't watch a lot of TV it wasn't the best deal.  I mainly wanted to watch the soccer channels (Goal TV and Fox Soccer Channel) which used to be part of the basic package.  Not any more.

Lucky for me the Monday after I canceled my cable, Xbox released their fall update.  This added ESPN3 to the Xbox Live experience.  This channel alone makes Xbox Live worth it.  ESPN3 just about satisfies my sports viewing wishes.  I don't get NFL football, but I can get it over the air.  I do get most college football, English Primer League, La Liga, and Serie A football matches which just gives me the warm fuzzies.  The viewing experience is awesome.   I really like it and I look forward to what will be coming with it in the future.

I'm sure one day most if not all of ESPN's programming will be available through ESPN3, right now I get more than enough.  Every day since the update, I've come home to watch something.  The MLS playoffs, the Manchester and Milan derbys, NBA basketball.  It's simply great.

When the Xbox 360 was first released, Microsoft had hopes for it to be the ultimate home media center.  For me with ESPN3 it's become just that.