Palm Developer Program: Project Appetite, $1M How App Program, and more

Palm's value proposition at the moment is two-fold: great hardware with great software. Arguably, Palm Web OS is better than Android. I think that the best path for Palm to take right now is to open source their Web OS. There is no downside because people are going to buy Palm devices if they want a good device and I think they have a good shot at taking down Android's marketshare.

The big play right now is a mobile OS land-grab -- Palm isn't even playing.

It should be "Hot App Program" in the headline.

Took me a bit of head scratching to figure out what that meant.

If I was feeling particularly malevolent, I'd create a free WebOS app that offered its downloaders the chance to win up to $50,000. The app would have one field for capturing a user's email address, and the app description would clearly state that I'd split any winnings from this contest with them 50-50.

Who wouldn't download the app?

Heh. I think the <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=849409>; hubbub has had what's commonly called a "chilling effect" for me, when it comes to 3rd-party development on the Palm. Not that it's a field I'm in, anyway.