Automatic Bookmarks for Keys Mobile Apps

Automatic bookmarking of each app has been released to iPhone, Android, Palm, Blackberry, Chrome, Safari, and other platforms. It's a significant change for the user experience and a new feature that allows rapid release of more enhancements.

Fat Library of E-books

Each Keys mobile app is a collection of 30 to 200 terms, hundreds of images and videos, and activities like Learn, Watch, Spin, Match, and Guess that aid learning and memorization. When compared to e-books, each app can have thousands of pages - ie thicker than the textbook to the right.

As our library has expanded to over 600 apps, we needed a better way to track the status in each app.

The automatic bookmark feature has no user interface - it just works. When you select a term, that bookmarked term travels from activity to activity. When you restart an app, the last term shows immediately. In short, it's a bookmark.

The Technical Details

We use local storage, a feature that is supported by the iPhone, iPad, and iTouch (v2 or better); Android (v2+); HP Palm (all versions); Blackberry (version 5+); Safari (v4+); Chrome (v4+); Opera (v10+); Firefox (v3.5+); and Explorer (v8+). Other browsers from Japan and Nokia may support the same feature. IE6, IE7, older Firefox browsers won't have the automatic bookmarking.

Using local storage, we'll be able to release many more features that enhance the learning experience.

PS: A belated thank you to the 1,500,000 users who have downloaded Keys. And a special thank to the Amazon tech who suggested this approach to improving the user experience.

HP Unveils Palm-Based Tablet, Phones to Bolster Mobile Sales

By Aaron Ricadela

Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Hewlett-Packard Co., aiming to gain a foothold in the market for handheld computers, plans to begin selling tablets and smartphones that run software acquired in the purchase of Palm Inc. last year.

HP, the world’s largest maker of personal computers, unveiled a new tablet called TouchPad and smartphones dubbed Veer and Pre 3. The tablet, the first powered by HP’s WebOS operating system, will let users access Adobe Inc.’s Flash player from its Web browser, the company said in a statement.

Palm chief Jon Rubinstein, who helped develop the iPod and iMac when he worked under Steve Jobs at Apple Inc., is now pushing to help HP products vie with Apple’s iPhone and iPad, as well as devices that run software from Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. HP is trying to ease its dependence on PCs by focusing on smartphones and tablets, two of the computer industry’s fastest- growing markets.4

HP rose 34 cents to $48.48 at 1:51 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares lost 18 percent last year...

(full article)

UPDATE – The Product Page for the TouchPad is now live.

Snapshot of Keys Users from Android/Linux, Palm, Blackberry, Nokia, and iPhone

Pageviews by Operating Systems

Linux 414,581 (34%) Palm 285,090 (23%) BlackBerry 249,240 (20%) Nokia 129,358 Samsung 40,335 Windows 35,353 SonyEricsson 32,547 LG 8,901 iPhone 8,024 iPod 3,233

TEARN Media on HP Palm WebOS 2

Press Release through HP Palm:

TEARN media produces coffee-table apps for light education and light entertainment with over 800,000 downloads in less than 10 months. Leading titles include State Capitals, 300 Puppies, Elements, Bio Lite, and GRE Lite.

The Palm users have been uniquely loyal to Palm, passionate about their phone, least likely to be a hacker, and heavily weighted toward women who do most of the buying. We have found Palm users to be the most likely to download new apps that we release. Unlike other platforms, these users have patiently waited as we improved our apps for webOS. In short, Palm users are a great group of realistic folks.

TEARN media is looking forward to webOS version 2 performance improvements --- that allows the superior, polished user experience of webOS to finally shine through.

Summer Activities; and Palm 50% Discount for Mobile Apps

Like all parents, are you struggling to find activities for your kids this summer?

Palm has a timely announcement:

Summer Half Off App Catalog Promotion—a Win-win for Consumers

To celebrate the beginning of Summer, Palm wants to help you boost sales of your apps! From June 18th through July 9th, Palm will be offering all paid apps available in the U.S. at a 50% discount to consumers — a fantastic promotion that benefits everyone!

To take advantage of this fantastic savings, here is a list of our Palm products:

• Animals Collection (here)
  
• Life Sciences (here)
• Biology (here)
• Bio AP (here)
• Kids Chem (here)
• Chemistry (here)
• Chem AP (here)
• SAT hot words (here)
• SAT starter words (here)

Let your kids enjoy a light, stimulating summer - and get a head start on the coming school year.

PS: Here's the updated gourmet food collection which we just updated with over 300 essential ingredients like spices, fruits, breads, cheeses, coffees.

HP Buys Palm for $1.2 Billion

After months of speculation, smartphone maker Palm has finally found a buyer. HP has said it will buy Palm for approximately $1.2 billion.

The move will give HP a foothold in the fast-growing smartphone business, at a time when HP rival Dell has its own smartphone available on AT&T.

Palm’s chairman and CEO, Jon Rubinstein, a former Apple executive, will remain with the company, says HP.

Read More http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/04/hp-buys-palm-for-12-billion/#ixzz0n5HYFiuH

Palm WebOS for Pre and Pixi

The Palm brand still has 5% to 6% global share, but declining. The new WebOS platform enables rich application development using the same webkit as the iPhone. In fact, most of the development team came from Apple.

Strengths of Palm

• Some loyalty among old-time Palm customers.
• Distribution through existing relationships with global carriers.
• Alternative to Apple for carriers concerned with global dominance of the iPhone. i.e. Verizon positions the Palm as an emotional favorite for women.
• Use of Javascript, rather than the closed development platform from Next. (e.g. full Javascript support for accelerator - which is missing from iPhone platform.)
  
• Innovates with both keypads and touch pads.
  
• Simpler software development, submission process.
  
• Simpler app store with weaker DRM.
• App catalog is open, exportable.
  
• High user demand, low software supply. (e.g. our first app netted 1,500 downloads on day one.)
  

Weakness of Palm

• Dependent on investors for survival. Best developers are unlikely to work for Palm.
• Smaller development team - slower to fix code problems. (e.g. Google Analytics fails on Palm sites.)
• Not able to draw major content partners - like Youtube, publishers, broadcasters.
  
• Less sophisticated portal for developers.
• Terrible documentation - incomplete/incorrect.
  
• Cost disadvantage - due to lower volumes.

Development Tools

Never got the emulator to work via the Eclipse software platform kit. However, the new Ares web platform dramatically simplifes coding, testing, and submission - particularly for HTML, CSS, and Javascript developers.