Palm Inc. has announced that the company will be hosting a Developer Day on April 23-24 at its Sunnyvale, CA headquarters. The two day session will include developer focused presentations and tutorials around webOS. A $25 preregistration fee includes all sessions, meals, and a commemorative gift. Registration for the event will begin April 5th.

Join us for the first in a series of Palm Developer Days and get world-class training on developing applications for the Palm webOS platform.
This is your chance to learn from and exchange ideas with the Palm developer team, including engineering, marketing, and management. Sessions will cover everything from the basics of webOS architecture to creating 3D games.

Verizon is running yet another promotional price drop on its line of webOS devices. Surf on over to vzw.com for a freshly discounted $49 Palm Pre Plus or a $29 Pixi Plus. In addition to this sale, the devices still qualify for Verizon's buy one, get one free offer.

At this point it is unclear if this promotion represents the new permanent price points or is a temporary sale. This also marks the third price drop for the devices in less than two months of availability on Verizon. The Pre and Pixi Pluses originally debuted at $149 and $99 after mail-in rebates, which have also been dropped along the way.

Verizon has apparently dropped the service fee's for its webOS 3G Mobile Hotspot service. The service is now a free download for new and existing Verizon Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus users. Prior to today, Verizon billed customers an extra $40 a month for the mobile hotspot capability.

Engadget was able to get a statement from Verizon to confirm the service change:

"Customers who purchase or upgrade to a Palm Pre and Palm Pixi will get the Mobile Hotspot for free. Existing customers who already have the service will find charges on their next bill will be $0.00."

The FCC has given its regulatory stamp of approval to the P101UNA aka the AT&T version of the Palm Pre Plus. Interested users can check out the related OET Exhibits List doc's over here, but most of the goodies (i.e. pictures, manuals, test reports etc) are on a confidential hold for 180 days.

In another sign of progress on the domestic GSM front, Engadget has received word that AT&T store managers are now receiving their "practice" Pre Plus units. These demo models are likely intended for employee familiarization and training ahead of the launch. Still no update or even credible rumors on a real release date other than Palm's previous "in the coming months" statement.

Palm has begun to push out a new webOS build to European Palm Pre users today. webOS 1.4.1 most significant contribution brings support for paid applications in the Palm App Catalog outside of the US. European users should now be able to access and purchase a wider variety of applications.

The update also includes a number of minor changes (posted after the break), which are detailed in the release notes at Palm support. Also with this update, users on O2 Germany (and possibly other carriers) can now download and use the Palm mobile hotspot application.

Update: The update (listed as webOS 1.4.1.1) is now available for Sprint devices via the on device updates application as well.

A group of webOS hackers has publicly released tools and details for overclocking webOS devices. The group has released a set of specially modified webOS 1.4 kernels (GSM and CDMA versions) with clock speeds of 720 MHz and 800 MHz, a significant bump from the factory set 600 MHz. For now, the files are specifically designed for use with the Palm Pre and come with detailed installation instructions.

A video demo of the new overclock patches in action is posted after the break. The video shows a dramatically faster webOS experience on the current Pre hardware with little noticeable side effects. While the group has done some limited testing on the overall effects of the mod, and they claim the initial data "shows good safety", there are still a number of risks involved with the process. Palm itself has issued a statement on the matter, discouraging its use and stating it will "likely result" in a voided warranty.

StyleTap has released a version of its StyleTap Platform for the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch devices. StyleTap is a Palm OS emulator that allows users to run original Palm OS applications on a "jailbroken" iPhone OS device.

StyleTap Platform for iPhone supports standard features that include TCP/IP networking, audio recording and playback, the ability to use the multi-gigabyte storage as a virtual memory card, and cut/copy/paste of text between native and Palm OS applications. It also provides innovative capabilities such as giving Palm OS applications access to the iPhone GPS by providing location information in standard GPS NMEA format.

StyleTap will run most Palm OS apps in a 320 x 320 display mode and should be compatible with most apps written for Palm OS 5.2. StyleTap also supports Palm OS programs that use native ARM code (PNOs, often called "ARMlets"). For button functionality a series of four virtual function buttons are provided as well as an onscreen virtual keyboard and directional pad.

In what is the first hands-on with "new" Palm handhelds since the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus launched with Verizon two months ago, Engadget has posted pictures and impressions of their first encounter with the AT&T 's first WebOS devices direct from CTIA.

In a nutshell, very little has changed from the recently-launched Verizon versions. Engadget reports the performance of both version, including the usually sluggish Pixi , as being "relatively zippy". No word if this is due to the speed boost received from webOS 1.4 or a newer build on these GSM variants. In fact, Engadget does not even mention which build of WebOS was on their demo units. None of the images in Engadget's photo gallery showcase any of the new AT&T specific software found on these new devices, as we learned yesterday.

AT&T and Palm Inc. officially announced the upcoming launch of the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus on AT&T Wireless this morning. While no specific date was mentioned aside from "the coming months", pricing and device specifics were thankfully discussed in the initial press release.

For starters, the Pre Plus will retail for $149.99 after the usual $100 mail-in rebate and 2yr contract. The Pixi Plus will ring in at $49.99 under the same terms. Both devices will be full UMTS/HSDPA/GSM/EDGE compatible but otherwise offer identical hardware to their slightly older Verizon siblings. The only hardware change of note is that a blue Touchstone back available for the Pixi Plus. The new devices otherwise look identical to the existing "Plus" variants.

The highly-respected Ars Technica, a website not known for hysteria or sensationalist journalism, has posted its take on the current plight of Palm in the form of a new editorial entitled "RIP Palm: it's over, and here's why".

In the Ars piece, author Jon Stokes pulls no punches and paints an extremely bleak future for the smartphone maker. Stokes surmises that one of only two fates remain for palm: an acquisition or insolvency. This article is already must-read for its general content but Stokes makes a masterful claim suggesting Palm has been suffocated by their very own cloud.

The article goes on to list a number of six primary causes (though arguably not all the reasons) for Palm's current woes and the lukewarm market reception of WebOS and its accompanying devices. For brevity's sake I'll skip re-listing those reasons here as they have frequently discussed elsewhere and are quite commonly-known by now.

Despite the recent cavalcade of dreary Palm news, Palm's favorite private equity partners continue to stand behind the company. Contacted by Reuters for an article the firm has released another statement of support for the crew in Sunnyvale.

"Jon and his team have built the best mobile operating system available today and they are now working through short-term execution challenges with Elevation's complete support," Elevation said through a spokesman.