Information On What's Coming To WebOSInformation On What's Coming To WebOS

The only thing that seems to be making the news lately about Palm is that it is up for sale, it is losing retail shelf space, its stock price is headed back down, i.e. nothing good. Well, some good new did come out of Palm's Developer Day recently that gives us a peek at some of the new features of WebOS by this fall.The event, held April 23 and 24 at Palm headquarters in Sunnyvale, CA, drew about 150 developers for its keynote speech according to PreCentral.net. That seems to be a somewhat low attendance number compared to the likes of Apple and even Microsoft for their mobile platforms, and even compared to Palm OS developer events in the days of yore.

Those that were there though got a first hand glimpse at the next major rev of WebOS. According to PreCentral.net, it wasn't named though, so it could be 1.5, 2.0 or something else.

First off, there are some new APIs coming. WebOS will finally get a microphone that developers can use. There will also be a camera API, which means developers can use the camera for things like reading barcodes or text recognition.

Background services will switch from Java to Javascript, which should greatly speed up data crunching. Apparently some developers have been doing this already with Homebrew, but now they can do it with approved apps. HTML5 support will also be in the next release, though it may not have total HTML5 support in its first incarnation. The App Catalog will also get a refresh.

No dates were given, and specifics on some features were left out but it is clear that WebOS designers are moving forward despite the turmoil around them on the business side of things. I've not seen any leaks on hardware yet, but for any of this to move the needle, some seriously cool hardware will need to accompany all of these OS improvements.

Think this will be enough, or is it a case of too little, too late? I'm not sure myself. I know though that 2010 is Palm's last chance. If there isn't a serious up tick in sales when this ships, I am not sure there will be enough of a business to warrant a Palm Developer Day in 2011.