Palm Launches New Mobile Portal Page
A new version of Palm’s Mobile Portal for Palm devices utilizing the Blazer web browser quietly went live over the past weekend. Logging on to the mobile.palm.com default home page in the evening of Sunday the 4th, revealed a face lifted Palm mobile portal. I was using on a Verizon 700p with Blazer 4.5.
Aesthetic-wise, the portal has received a makeover with a wide Palm orange bar running the full width of the screen. The page’s fonts have been slightly enlarged with redundant site names (for example, ending in ',com') having been cleaned up. The Google search box is still present at the top of the screen but its width has been increased to facilitate easier search queries. The overall page is about 1/3 longer than previously, so a bit more scroll will be required.
As far as content, several new categories for content have been added: “Food”, “Transit”, “Reading”, “Shopping” , and “People”. The ambiguous “Extras” category has been omitted. The earlier categories are still present and, in several cases, have been updated and expanded. The Email category, for example, now has four sites linked on the main page with the inclusion of the ever-helpful mail2pda.com site. In addition, the “Travel” category is now complimented by “Transit”. The page overall seems to be a bit snappier to load than previously.
Overall, the changes are quite eye-catching and the added content is a definite improvement. Unfortunately, Palm seems to be tailoring the version of the home page to the particular Blazer or device version being used. A quick check of the mobile portal with my trusty Palm TX handheld running Blazer 4.3 brought up the old version of the portal, another discouraging sign that Palm is intentionally moving away from their remaining PDA user base.
The new version can be accessed directly at:
http://mobile.palm.com/ or http://mobile.palm.com/us/centro.epl
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Ugh
Actually, Palm doesn't "get" either the wireless mobile side of the experience nor, as evidenced by the horrible neglected state of Palm Desktop (especially in regards to Vista & newer variants of XP such as MCE), do they get the desktop side of the experience.
I wonder how many legitimate sales Palm is losing out on by not offering the latest versions of Blazer/VersaMail to users of the TX/E2/LD/650/700p...probably a fairly considerable amount.
If Palm's going to neglect stuff like PalmDesktop and the forever-in-beta MyPalm portal, they should at least try to beef up the # of links contained within their own Mobile Portal and/or patner up with someone like Kinoma to add at least a handful of solid, Blazer-friendly streaming media & interesting content sites.
Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P
RE: Ugh
I held out on color for a long time but now I do not know if they even sell a gray screen only unit but Palm I beleive was the last to the table. I have been loyal to Palm for a number of years starting with the IIIx but I do not think Palm is in my future.
Keith
RE: Ugh
Palm hasn't produced a greyscale-only device since the Zire 21 of 2003.
Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P
RE: Ugh
Blazer 4.3 on TX
RE: Blazer 4.3 on TX
Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P
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Blazer 4.3
In terms of their mobile "portal", Palm needs some online "services" for Palm users instead of a bunch of crappy links. Here's an example of a crappy link: I bought the Palm bluetooth keyboard, forgot the driver CD at work, used Blazer to connect to the Palm support pages via the mobile portal but COULD NOT download the keyboard prc because Blazer couldn't get past the "I Agree" page to kick off the file download. Palm just doesn't "get" mobile computing.