Fast forward to today and the Smartphones we’re using in our everyday life – Blackberries, Pres and Pixies, iPhones and N900s. What’s the biggest part in that whole cellular phone market that changed since the mid/end 90s? Of course, it’s the phone’s technology and the features they provide nowadays. But what’s more important, the whole accessories-ecosystem around those phones actually changed. Today, you see people buying additional battery-packs for their Blackberries, since the phones are already that “Smart” that you’d actually need a constant power-source to make them last for more than a couple of hours of heavy usage. When people buy a mobile phone, they also typically throw some on-the-go charger into the bucket. And maybe also some docking-station for the desk, or even equipment for attaching it to their car’s windshields.

Now the whole accessory-ecosystem goes that far, that people even buy overpriced socks or pieces of silicon formed as protection-sleeve for their Smartphones. Especially within the iPhone user-groups you can see such protection-cases being very popular. But let us look from another perspective at especially those accessories.

When someone buys an iPhone, of course, he’s interested in the phone’s features and probably likes the way the phone integrates with the rest of his personal infrastructure, like laptops, computers/Macs, etc. But of course, only a few people really go for the features-pack only. Probably 90% of the iPhone customers look forward to have a phone that’s so exclusive and so beautiful that you’d hardly like to take it out of the showcase. And exactly at that point, all third-party manufacturers of iPhone accessories come in handy. So, people go and get their iPhones, take them out of the packing and lock them right into some ugly silicon, acrylic, plastic or whatever kind of case to protect their beauty against scratches, dirt and other natural enemies of the glossy piano paint. Sure, I mean, they paid and ass full of money for a brick that blinds you by its glint, so why should these people not try the best to protect it the best they can?

Well, sure they can do that – but where’s the point? I think I can talk for everyone that has ever searched for an iPhone case when I say that 99% of them are ugly as hell and not worth the package they’re shipped in. So, why do people then actually buy an iPhone for its cool look, when they “protect” it most of the time with such a case where the phone’s actual look does not matter anymore? For what? So they can slide it out when they’re feeling lucky and show it to everybody for one blink of an eye and then pack it back into its sleeve?

Of course, you can’t blame the people for that. I mean, why can’t accessory-manufacturers produce electro-magnetic protection shields that build an own atmosphere around the iPhone that does not allow anything else to come through than the owner’s washed hands to touch the touchscreen? I mean come on, that’s what people are waiting for! F*ck invisibleSHIELD, f*ck the pseudo translucent plastic shields that doesn’t absorb hits that could cause the iPhone’s screen to break into million small pieces. The people want cases that doesn’t even allow the iPhone to fall down the stairs or into water!

Yeah, right. Now I can definitely remember those days when I got my first Bosch 509 and protected it with one of the dozen plastic-sleeves against the cruel reality.

Think different, people.

So, what’s new in 0.3? Well, just about everything. I’ve renamed the bundle (at least its metadata), since webOS is not just limited to the Pre and I’ve modified the shortcuts of existing features to fit TextMate’s styling guidelines a bit better. I’ve also created some snippets which can be used for faster code-writing now and in addition to that, I’ve implemented a very own language for the bundle, which can’t be found in the document type picker named as “Mojo”. “Yeah baby!”, as Austin would say now. Actually, yet it’s just a copy & paste of the JavaScript-language implementation in TextMate, but I’m planning to extend it to fit the Mojo-framework even better.

The TextMate bundle is now also available on GitHub, for everyone who can’t wait for me packaging the releases and releasing them here. If you have any ideas for improvement, feel free to contact me by mail or just leave some lines here on my blog.

Enjoy!

Download: Palm_webOS-Bundle-0.3

Download: Palm_webOS-Bundle-0.3

Palm Pre Development Bundle 0.2

Yes, after not even four hours I’ve already finished building the 0.2-release of my Palm Pre Development Bundle for TextMate. In case you’re wondering what weird stuff I’m talking about, please read my previous post first.

However, this second release includes a lot more features than it had before, plus I’ve made use of the CocoaDialog now. Let me describe the new features from the top to the bottom of the screenshot on the left site.

First of all, there’s “Generate New Project”. This lets you execute a palm-generate with all important attributes and opens the created project afterwards using the “mate” terminal-command, which needs to be available for this to work. All you have to do then is simply to save the TextMate project right into your generated project-directory.

Next, we still have “Generate New Scene”. I’ve enhanced the feature now, so that you’ll get a cocoa dialog asking for the scene’s name. Beware: The generation usually works as it should, the only problem is the TextMate project-drawer, which doesn’t seem to refresh by itself. A workaround: Cmd+H to hide TextMate and then click on its Dock-icon to make it appear again. Then all newly generated files should be visible in its drawer.

The next three features work just as before, no enhancements at all. On the fourth, the “Launch Project in Debugging-Mode” feature, I’ve implemented a palm-launch with debugging options, that can be run on an existing, packaged and installed project.

Next, there are ways to close and remove installed Projects. “Close running project” of course only works, when the App is actually running and “Remove installed Project” removes the App from the device. As device for all those commands the first device found by the Palm toolset will be taken – so if you would like to use the Emulator, better disconnect your real device and vice versa.

I’ve also built-in two features that let you simulate test calls and SMS on your Emulator, if you changed from password authentication to SSH public key authentication. You can do this either manually or try to use the feature at the menu’s bottom named “Auto-install SSH-Pubkey on Emulator”. Depending on your SSH-key-setup it works out or… not.

The other seven features allow you to simulate GPS drives on the Emulator – again only if you’ve set-up SSH-Pubkey authentication.

I hope you enjoy this release of the Palm Pre Development Bundle for TextMate!

Download: Palm-Pre-Bundle-0.2

UPDATE: There’s a newer version available! Get it here. Or use GitHub.

The scene generation works like this: You implement your this.controller.pushScene(“Main”);-statement, select the scene’s name (Main, without the quotes!) and select the scene-generation command from the bundle’s menu. The command will immediately generate you a new scene named just the way you chose to name it.

The other three commands can be ran by pressing the keys Fn+Ctrl+F5/F6/F7. Attention: The bundle only works with TextMate Projects! Generate your Palm Pre project like you always do, by using the following command:

palm-generate -p “{ title:’ProjectName’, id:com.my.ProjectName, version:’1.0.0′ }” ProjectName

Then, create a new TextMate Project and drag&drop the folder palm-generate created for you (“ProjectName”) into the Project’s drawer. Save the project within your Project-directory (“ProjectName”) and then run the commands.

This is the very first version of this bundle and I’ll keep constantly improving it with other features that help me and hopefully others on the development of Palm Pre Web-Apps.

Enjoy!

Download: PalmPre-Bundle-0.1

UPDATE: There’s a newer version available now! Get it here.