Palm Reorganizes Marketing Execs

Palm has filled a new 8-K statement with the SEC today. The statement details a change in Palm's marketing executives including the "termination" of the senior VP or Product Marketing, Brodie Keast and the announcement of his replacement.

According to the filling, Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein has reorganized the company's marketing organization to bring more focus to both product marketing and corporate branding, creating two new executive marketing roles that will report directly to him. Kathleen C. Mitic has accepted the product marketing role and, on Monday, June 29, 2009, joined Palm as its Senior Vice President, Product Marketing.

Virtual Piano for Palm OS Updated

Thuliumware has updated its Virtual Piano software for Palm OS devices. Virtual Piano was designed as a music companion and features a full 72 key layout. It has a very authentic piano sound with digital samples from a Steinway Grand Piano in a real concert hall. The software allows you to jam on the go, record compositions and can capture and playback songs as well.

Virtual Piano v1.70 is available now for Palm OS devices running 5.2 and higher. It sells for $9.95 and comes with a free trial period. It can also run on the Palm Pre via Classic. You can catch a video demo of it in action after the break.

Resco Explorer Lite Released for Palm OS

Resco Software has released a new "lite" version of its Explorer application. This Lite version includes the most popular features from its Explorer 2009 application and is optimized to run on the Palm Pre via Classic as well. The toolset includes a file manager, zipper, image and text file viewer, launcher, backup tool, ftp and network explorer in one product.

Resco Explorer Lite for Palm OS v5.03.1 is available now for $9.95. A free trial period is included and customers can take 20% off via the "CLASSIC" discount code through July 4th.

Palm Making a European Announcement Soon?

Rumor: A couple of new reports from the other side of the Atlantic seen to indicate that Palm may be getting ready to make some kind of announcement next week. The UK newspaper, the Guardian, is reporting that Palm will confirm that it has signed a deal with O2 to sell the Palm Pre smartphone in the UK. Brit gadget site T3 separately claims the official word could come as soon as next week as well.

This is the latest report to confirm earlier rumors from March and May that indicated that Telefónica and its brands O2 and Movistar would exclusively offer the Pre in Europe.

PlayStation, MAME Emulators Debut on Hacked Pre's

Two new emulators have debuted on hacked Palm Pre's. Homebrew programmer ZodTTD has successfully ported over a version of his Sony PlayStation emulator. This early version is more of a proof of concept at this point, as it requires a rooted Pre and a technical install process. The author says it runs well, even bettering a iPhone 3GS in performance. The keyboard is supported at this point, though it currently lacks sound and screen scaling.

Another developer has released a MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) emulator as well. This app emulates thousands of classic arcade games and more. Like the PS1 app, it is in its very early stages and requires some hacking to run. Video's of both in action are embedded after the break.

GSM Palm Pre Spotted in Vietnam

While Palm has acknowledged that a GSM/UMTS version of the Palm Pre would be released since CES, sightings of said device have been few and far between. The last time the illusive GSM Pre was seen was at the Mobile World Congress back in February. Now it has made a another appearance, strangely enough, on a Vietnamese mobile enthusiast forum.

A poster going by username dihuta has posted a series of high resolution shots of a GSM Pre on the Tinhte forum. The pictures show, in great detail, a GSM sporting Pre running on "VN Mobifone" along with a number of shots of the back cover and SIM card tray. There is also a seven minute YouTube video clip as well, which is embedded after the break.

Mac Version of the webOS Mojo SDK Leaked

On Saturday we told you about the Windows version of Palm's early access Mojo SDK being leaked. Today brings word that the Mac version has also been let loose.

The download includes a desktop webOS emulator and tools to help build webOS applications. It is marked as (sdk47) and is a 159 MB installer. The download link can be found here. [RapidShare link] The Mac version also requires the use of Sun's VirtualBox x86 virtualizer.

Additional webOS Rough Cuts Chapters Posted

Chapters 10 and 11 of Palm's official, yet work in progress, webOS programming book are now available. Chapter 10 deals with background applications and notifications, while chapter 11 deals with localization and internationalization aspects.

The book is published by O-Reilly Media and is written by Palm's Vice President and Software CTO Mitch Allen along with Palm's WebOS Development Team. The book is due out on dead tree's on August 15th, according to Amazon's pre-order page.

Analyst Estimate: 300k Pre's Sold So Far

With Palm being deliberately coy over its actual Pre sales figures, analysts estimates are the only thing we have to go by until the quarterly overall unit numbers hit. The latest guesstimate as to how many Pre's have sold comes from Charter Equity Research analyst Ed Snyder.

Mr. Synder says that his 'channel checks' suggest that Palm has sold above 300,000 units so far and Palm is still trying to catch up with demand. He thinks that Palm sold at least 120k during launch weekend alone. He further goes on to speculate that Palm is producing 15k units a day and will likely reach 1 million sold by years end.

webOS 1.0.4 Update Released

Palm has released another update for the Palm Pre. This latest webOS build comes only 10 days following the previous release. Pre users can manually check for the new version via the built in update app.

The update weighs in at 12 MB. Palm's support document states this release contains several security updates. Forum users at Palm.com are reporting that the update patches the recent homebrew application install method, whereby users were able to side-load unofficial third party apps via an email link.

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