Palm Pre Apps — A Weekend with Homebrew Titles
On Friday, I pointed out the unofficial Palm Pre homebrew application catalog over at PreCentral. At that time, there were 73 titles and already, more have been added. As I write this on Monday morning, I see 94 applications in the catalog, so developers clearly didn’t take the weekend off. Neither did I as I started installing various applications to try.
I didn’t hit up every single title, but I did download a half-dozen to get started. If you have a Palm Pre and you’re pining for more apps, you’ll want to check out this easy method to add more titles to your handset. Some titles are clearly works in progress, so if you decided to go this route, keep that in mind. But others are very usable and useful.
I’m already using PrePod on a daily basis — this app is a podcatcher that pulls down podcasts for listening on the go. The initial podcast catalog is sparse, but it’s easy to add the RSS feed for any show you listen to, making it simple to subscribe. I started to listen to our latest podcast to check the sound levels and I realized that PrePod saves your spot if you leave the podcast. You can see the blue indicator showing the point that I’ve listened to in episode 179.
dkGoogleVoice is one of those works in progress I alluded to. The software is essentially an unofficial front end to the Google Voice service that I use every day.
The software appeared to be fairly functional in the prior version, but the most current version isn’t working for me at all just yet. I’ll be keeping an eye on it for sure, but for now, I’ll keep using the mobile web version of Google Voice.
BlocknRoll is a nice little Tetris clone that kept me busy for hours this weekend. It took me some time to get used to the controls — you can use either the touchscreen or the keyboard to turn and drop your blocks. I like the idea of using the touchscreen, but in the end, I opted for the keyboard for a faster response. It wasn’t until later that I realized you can shake or tilt the Pre as well. Using the accelerometer was fun for a while but felt too much like playing Wii Tennis. ;)
As I mentioned on Friday, FileCoaster is the first app you’ll want to install. Why? This title lets you untether your Pre for software installations — using it, you can view the entire homebrew application catalog right on your Pre, see screenshots of the titles and install them over the air.
In fact, I’m hitting up FileCoaster right now. I’m expecting some packages to arrive this week and I want to install PrePackage before they get here. No self-respecting mobile tech geek has packages on the way and doesn’t know where they are at all times!
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.
Kevin got me playing with Homebrew Apps too. I also found that dkGoogleVoice wouldn’t work for me so I tried gDial Pro. It works like a champ and I’ve been using it all weekend with success.
I couldn’t get gDial Pro working either this weekend. But since your comment, I figured I had something configured incorrectly. Took a closer look and got it working: turns out that I needed to enable Web Dialing — without that, the app would simply call my GV voicemail, not the person I was trying to call. It’s working now that I made that change and it rocks! Full history of calls, SMS, VM and more. :)
Nice, to see this in the headlines this morning. Filecoaster is an absolute MUST for any Pre owner, IMO!!!
And, oh BTW… it’s up to 96 apps now, LoL!!! They just keep coming!!!
Thanks for covering this event. The idea got me motivated too so I wrote a very important little app for anyone that travels frequently – a Starbucks locator. One click uses your GPS to find the nearest location. When I travel I’m always looking for a place to work, and usually end up at Starbucks.
I’ve already received some useful feedback so a new version will be posted soon, but the current version in the Homebrew catalog works pretty well. Let me know what you think:
http://bit.ly/1601da
Robert, I didn’t know that was your app! I saw it in the catalog, but since I know where all of the Starbucks are within a 30 mile radius of me, I didn’t install it. Now I’ll have to! :)
Yeah, I never had an iPhone to play with (hate AT&T) so I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the Pre to learn about their development tools and the WebOS system.
Have to say, it’s really fun. I’m not much of a programmer, but I learned that beating my head against it long enough usually makes it work (and my head sore). It’s especially fun with limited, and inaccurate documentation :)
You’ll see I threw a bunch of stuff into the Starbucks app just to see how they work. The distance slider. A pop-up type alert for the About Us page. An actual separate page for the Contact page. A pre-populated e-mail form to report problems.
Tweaking little things today so there will probably be a new version posted tonight. Really hope I can get an accurate database with locations, store hours and WiFi availability.
I love the app! It was one of the first ones I installed as I’m always looking for SBUX when I travel. Well done.
PrePod is a nice app
The Palm Pre is the place to be!
If you are looking for a job give my job search application a try called Jobr. It’s the fifth one in the list on FileCoaster.
Over 100 now….PrePod is my fav.
so what happens when WebOs is updated? Does everything need to be reinstalled? Is it the antagonistic Apple thing where Palm hammers the folks who go off the reservation or is there some support for these apps. In the end, I need my phone to work :-) and while I like to experiment, that has gotten me in software/hardware challenges before…color me very interested but hesitant…
I’ve applied two updates while having homebrew apps on my Pre. the only apps that broke were ones from the App Catalog. The homebrew apps (that I use) weren’t affected.
I guess it’s possible though.