WRAP-UP: Mobile Monday with Dion Almaer (Part 1)

On Monday night, if you were around, we had a lot of fun during our first exclusive live-blog from the Mobile Monday Colorado event with Dion Almaer, Palm’s Director of Developer Relations. We had an awesome turnout, not only to the physical event, but in our CoverItLive chat room as well!

It’s time now to give you the full review of the event in segments larger than just 140 characters. You can still read the full live-blog here, and see some of the discussions that our viewers had (I think we had 239 people in the room at one time, awesome!).

Unfortunately, Dion didn’t really say too much about future devices or webOS updates (at least, nothing we didn’t already know). I didn’t see any mystery gadgets on his hip and he didn’t slip-up and mention anything that was more than somewhat interesting.

In spite of that, however, we did get a lot of great info on what HPalm is doing to bring in more developers, how they are working on the OS to enhance the mobile web as a whole, and the direction they are taking to make webOS even more successful than any of us might have initially imagined.

Palm webOS Development

Dion started off talking about the things that many of us in the webOS community already know. But, since 85% of the people in the room had never used webOS before, it was probably a great idea to give the foundations of the OS first. Keep in mind that throughout the talk Dion targeted the few dozen iPhone developers that were there to get them interested, so most of this was perfect for their ‘virgin’ ears.

A little background on Dion – he was not hired for his ability to speak and market a product (though he seems to be great at that), he was hired because he is a great developer. He did, after all, co-found Ajaxian.com and work on Bespin with Mozilla (and some projects with Google). So, when he discussed some of the logic behind webOS and the mobile web, it really did change my own perspective on how it all worked. Hopefully, it does for you too.

One of the things that he discussed quite consistently was that webOS was designed to work like a web browser in many ways, and uses a lot of the technologies and languages from the regular web to make the whole system more open to developers from all backgrounds. Apps, therefore, aren’t just pieces of software on your phone, they are mini-websites that work natively and actively with the device’s API.

Notifications (the icons, banners, pop-ups, etc.), even, are considered (by Dion at least) to be web pages that a user can interact with. Because webOS is built using the WebKit browser (not just in the web app, but across the entire OS), it makes it very easy for someone to develop an application that will work across all other platforms that use WebKit in their software.

This is really only one way that Palm is working to push an open standard across all platforms, and shows a deeper purpose behind building webOS the way that they did (other than it being really easy to use for consumers). It doesn’t just work well, it is also easy to work with (which is seen over and over again in the next section).

Be sure to check out http://almaer.com/webosplayground/ to see some of the cool things that webOS can do (and generally just play around with the functionality that comes with it). It is also a good way to see the webOS infrastructure working in any modern web browser.

The Excitement at HP

When Dion spoke about his new relationship with HP and the changes that were coming to Palm, you couldn’t help but feel his excitement. Over and over again he said the words “HP is very excited about what Palm and webOS can do.” Of course, Palm is very excited to.

Listening to him speak, though, it sounded as though there is still a lot going on with this new acquisition that we, as fans and consumers, haven’t yet caught on to. In the (recent) past, Palm built their devices using a process that took a bit longer and was more expensive. Now, with all of the resources being put into them by HP, they have immediate access to plants and processes that make phones less expensive to build, easier to deploy and faster to release.

HP also has 325,000 employees (which Dion says he is amazed at) that all seem to be really excited to support webOS. Palm, which was a relatively small company in comparison, gets all of the advantages of having this huge network to work with, and none of the pain of having to manage it all. Plus, they get a lot of talented people working behind them now. It’s like they’re building an army of webOS warriors.

But besides there being a lot of excitement, there is also a lot of shifting going on to focus people on the projects that they are most efficient with, cut costs, reduce production time and basically make the entire operation that much more effective. Which, obviously, means a lot of cool stuff in store for us in the near future. Or, as Dion says, ‘really really soon.’

Part 2 Coming Soon

For the entire second half of the event, Dion spoke in great detail about the future of the mobile web, some new projects that Palm has been working on to make database management and development easier for developers, and a few other topics that will be interesting for anyone who wants to see the web become more ‘open.’

Check back here in a bit for the next article. Until then, what are your thoughts on what Dion had to say about HP and Palm?