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Palm's plan for application development on the new Palm Pre will help determine its fate.

(Credit: Palm)

Palm's new WebOS passed its first test: it looks good. But will the device attract legions of developers?

Just hours after Palm showed off its new operating system running on the Palm Pre, details are still rolling in about the unit and its software. One important factor that will have to be addressed is application development and distribution. Palm has confirmed plans to administer some sort of central store for application downloads. But there still is scarce information about how that will actually work.

Palm's Stephane Maes said that Palm will not attempt to approve every single application developed for WebOS, as Apple does for iPhone applications.

"Certainly, we want to let a thousand flowers bloom," he said. "Every now and then there are a few dandelions we'll want to winnow out."

Unable to let the clichéd misquote of Mao Zedong pass (he actually persecuted many of those who dared let their ideas bloom), let's move on to ask the more important questions that went unanswered this morning.

If Palm is retaining some right to refuse applications, how will those choices be made? Apple has faced its fair share of criticism over nebulous policies for approving or rejecting applications for the App Store, which have frustrated many developers even as they've flocked to the App Store.

Even if Palm takes a laissez-faire approach to the types of applications created for WebOS, will the Palm Store be the exclusive venue for those applications, or will Palm allow competition between the types of online stores that sell current Palm OS applications and its own?

How will the WebOS SDK work? The Mojo SDK is available as a private prerelease, according to a message posted by Palm on its developer home page, and will be a public download later in the year.

Developers will use Mojo, WebOS's application framework, to develop WebOS applications using standard technologies such as HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript. That means it will likely be much easier for application developers to get up and running on WebOS as compared to the time needed to learn platforms such as Android, the iPhone, or BlackBerry. Palm also says there will be a way to migrate older Palm OS applications to WebOS, but doesn't say how that will work or how it might affect performance.

Palm, a mobile computing pioneer, is well-versed in running a development organization but times have changed since the Palm OS was the PDA world's dominant operating system. It is unclear whether the company will be able to reclaim developers who have moved onto the iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, or Android.

These are crucial questions to consider in judging how WebOS and the Palm Pre will play in the current market, not the least being that developer support is a key factor in making a smartphone a more attractive product. At least one Palm developer contacted us urging Palm to resolve these issues sooner rather than later.

Bill MacAdam, director of product development at auto industry software developer GigglePop and longtime Palm OS developer, wants very much to known what Palm has in mind regarding application distribution.

"We very much need to maintain the existing distribution model where the installation of software can take place without going through a store," he wrote in an e-mail. "While a store is a convenient place for consumers to purchase applications, it doesn't work well for business / enterprise applications. It is also very important that we have a very specific roadmap to help us with the transition."

Palm's a little late to the Smartphone 2.0 game, but it got off to a good start with the Palm Pre roll out. Obviously, it will take much more than a flashy demo to get Palm back on track. How the company handles application development will loom large in its success or failure.

Photos: Palm previews the Pre at CES

Palm's new Pre, running its WebOS mobile operating system.

(Credit: Corrine Schulze/CNET)

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 storage, among other things. Palm did not announce a price for the Pre, but said it should be available some time in the first half of 2009.

Like the Apple's iPhone, Palm's Pre has a single button when the slide-out keyboard is shut. Everything on the screen can be controlled by gestures similar to the ones used on the iPhone, and the homescreen has four icons at the bottom for the most frequently used tasks, such as the phone, e-mail, and calendar.

Unlike the iPhone, it has the aforementioned hardware keyboard, and what appears to be a background notification system for applications. Apple has promised to roll out some sort of background notification system that lets applications send notifications to the user when they are running a different application, but they are well past their deadline of September 2008 for doing so.

We're awaiting many more details on the Pre, such as what it will cost, how application distribution will work, battery life, and multimedia support. Stay tuned for those.

Photos: Palm previews the Pre at CES

LAS VEGAS--We're live at the Venetian Ballroom, moments away from the unveiling of the long-awaited new phone platform from Palm.

10:54 a.m. PST: The consensus sentiment here is that Palm needs a home run if it is to compete with the likes of Apple and RIM.

10:55 a.m.: In very un-Palm-like fashion, the company has managed to keep a tight lid on the details of what it has in store, making this one of the most dramatic moments of the show.

11:00 a.m.: It's a swank room with a video playing on a giant video wall amid dim lights. Chairs are mixed in with wood end tables stocked with Smartwater and another fruity water called Function.

11:02 a.m.: Speech starting. Ex-Appler Jon Rubinstein, Palm's executive chairman, takes the stage. "Some of you are wondering what I am doing here at Palm."

11:03 a.m.: He notes that he moved to Mexico after leaving Apple. One day, he got a call from Elevation Partners' Roger McNamee and Fred Anderson (ex-Apple CEO).

"I was a pretty busy guy in Mexico," he said, showing a picture of himself in a hammock.

11:04 a.m.: He said that Ed Colligan (Palm's CEO) made a compelling pitch to help restore innovation at Palm.

Ed Colligan, Palm CEO

(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks)

11:05 a.m.: Rubinstein intros Ed Colligan.

11:07 a.m.: Colligan notes the company is looking forward. When Palm launched the original Pilot, it wasn't trying to compete with the Newton. "We thought about competing with pen and paper"

"Mobile is in our DNA," Colligan said. "We don't do computers...We don't do refrigerators."

11:08 a.m.: Colligan teases the new stuff, but takes us down Memory Lane. Talking about original Pilot.

11:11 a.m.: Talks about the Treo and how it helped stave off an era where everyone was carrying too many devices. But there's a new problem, he said. That's that information is all over the place: work systems, Gmail, Facebook, etc.

11:12 a.m.: Wouldn't it be nice if your contacts in Outlook showed up with the photos you have of them that are on Facebook? That's what we want to do, he said.

11:13 a.m.: "There are capabilities of it that can't be done on the desktop."

It's called the Palm WebOS.