Updated: Yep, the floodgates have well and truly opened: id's second revolution in shooters, Quake, has now been ported to the Pre courtesy of the new SDL library cooked into webOS. The current release isn't playable: it crashes once you try to load a new game, and there are no key bindings to let you control it anyway. But the developer, dtzWill, has already fixed the issue and plans to push out a playable release soon. A fully-functional version is now available in Preware!

In the meantime, you can feast your eyes on the demo video after the break...

Since its initial release less than two days ago, development has proceeded apace on the webOS port of classic FPS DOOM. The latest news, however, has implications beyond just this particular port itself. For starters, the game no longer requires any fooling around in the Terminal to get it started: you can now load it from an icon in your launcher, just like any other app. You can also fire up multiple instances of the game in multiple cards - possibly useless in of itself, but it's great for that geek cool factor.

The technology being employed to make all this possible is the interesting part. WebOS Internals is now piggy-backing on Upstart (the Ubuntu startup manager, included with webOS) to allow webOS apps to punch in (via pre-defined scripts installed by signed, trusted apps) Linux commands on their own, which is how the Terminal has been bypassed. This new method will also enable dependencies in Upstart scripts, which will help homebrewers save precious memory on their webOS devices by not requiring all the back-end services to be running all the time. But the real kicker is that this now paves the way for all manner of SDL applications to be ported to webOS with very little effort at all - and there's hundreds out there... not to mention it can also be used to control the 1600+ Optware command-line applications available for Linux.

Happy New Year! Taking a time out from fireworks and festivities, Palm has cleared an arbitrary numerical milestone: one thousand apps are now available in the (U.S.) webOS App Catalog. Not a bad number at all, especially considering that webOS devices have only been available to the public for six months. And, of course, that's not counting the numerous homebrew applications out there in the unofficial distribution channels...

So what was that thousandth app? No less than Engadget's new webOS app, a well-crafted little piece of software that lets you browse through the popular gadget blog with a flick and a swipe in a very mobile-friendly format.

Congratulations Palm - here's to thousands more apps in 2010!

My oh my. There have been many hints and clues in these closing weeks of 2009 that GPU support for the Palm Pre is much, much closer than expected, but until now there's been nothing in the way of concrete proof. That all changed with the recent release of webOS 1.3.5, which zsoc (of Precorder fame) and destinal (who made the webOS Terminal) from WebOS Internals have been poring over today. And what they've discovered is starting to give us a pretty good idea of what Palm has planned for their upcoming 2010 CES appearance: hardware-accelerated graphics for webOS, via SDL.

What's SDL? It stands for Simple Directmedia Layer, and as the website will tell you, it's a cross-platform software library that enables low-level hardware access - which as of version 1.3.5 appears to have been baked into webOS's Luna framework. And what better way to test this new functionality than with a port of iD's seminal shooter, the legendary DOOM? zsoc was able to throw together a webOS port of the game today, and although it currently requires a bit of Terminal trickery to get it running, the proof is in the pud: behold the screenshot after the break! DOOM, running within a webOS Mojo-ized card and fully controllable via the keyboard. Brings a tear to the eye, it does.

Updated with video after the break!

Here's two tidbits on the upcoming Verizon webOS debut for you, one surprising and one not-so-surprising. Under the latter category, The Boy Genius Report today reports that the Pixi is "100%" locked in for Big Red along with the Pre, and will also be adding a "Plus" to its title. BGR also claims that the hardware specs are identical "in terms of size", so those hoping for a memory upgrade may be disappointed. (Your correspondent, however, has heard differently on this matter - although whether the Pre Plus is the proper second-generation model I've been told about is still unconfirmed.)

Far more tantalising is this screenshot from Verizon's internal database, leaked to PreCentral, which has an intriguing little "Y" in the voice dialing column. As they note, carrier spec sheets - especially pre-release ones - frequently get these kind of small details wrong, so it's hardly a guarantee. But it is interesting, nonetheless, and if true raises the question: would Palm really deny a software feature to the rest of their userbase just to please Verizon?

It's all in the headline, baby: both Palm's Mojo SDK and oh-so-useful webOS Doctor repair tool (for Sprint users, at least) have now been upgraded to the latest webOS version 1.3.5. What's new in the SDK? Here, have some bullet points:

• Apps are now installed on the media partition, allowing available space to be used for apps
• The emulator enables keyboard shortcuts to simulate device orientation changes and shake events
• Palm has released an API to request high-frequency accelerometer events
• Numerous developer-reported issues have been addressed

Point 3 is especially interesting, given that one of the bigger complaints about webOS development was the low frequency of accelerometer polling, essential for some high-performance apps. Full release notes for the SDK after the break. Or are they? Much like Schrodinger's famous feline, you'll only know once you look inside the box...

There's always a bit of a mad flurry amongst the Palm community whenever a new webOS update is pushed out, as the techies and uber-fans dig deep and try to discover every little change. Rod Whitby of WebOS Internals tweeted out a particularly interesting observation: two new binary packages have appeared in webOS as of the latest version 1.3.5: opengles.ipk and opengles-omap3.ipk.

What does this mean? It means that GPU support is inching ever-closer for the Pre. As a famous philosopher or something once said: sweeeeeet.

Further to this morning's news, webOS 1.3.5 is now officially available for Sprint Palm users and the full changelog has been posted on Palm's support pages (Pixi here, Pre here). No GSM or Bell love yet, so far as your correspondent can discern. Thanks to Palm's use of a new compression method, it weighs in at a tiny 13mb and now has a new "unpacking" step when installing.

The most interesting fixes? Posted after the break, along with the Pre changelog.

If you believe the "last updated" section of Sprint's Pre support page, it's apparently been public knowledge that webOS 1.3.5 is arriving today (December 28th) since Tuesday last week (the 22nd), so this may not be news to some of you. But for the rest? webOS 1.3.5 is coming to Sprint today! What goodies does it bring to the table? Try these on for size:

• Improvement in battery life optimization when in marginal coverage areas.
• QCELP capability fix to allow play and audio of video sent via MMS.
• Launch Google Maps or Sprint Nav when tapping an address from contacts.
• Minimized package of MR size through binary difference. Customers can now download over 2G connections if necessary.

Fingers crossed that other carriers are not far behind.

Exactly one month to the day after having (accidentally) locked us out of the App Catalog, Palm has an early Christmas present for importers of the unlocked German Pre: we're once again able to access it. The fix? As we suspected, it was an oversight on Palm's part in implementing the latest version of the Catalog, which didn't know how to recognize phones that had been activated on unapproved carriers. The glitch appears to be in the process of being tucked into bed, although the "unavailable" message still occasionally pops up in seemingly random places - for instance, whenever I try to update an already-installed app.

Following up on the other side of webOS geo-restrictions - namely, the way the number of apps available to non-U.S. users was summarily cut in half recently - we got a brief quote from Developer Community Manager Chuq von Rospach on the subject:

We're continuing to work to bring paid apps to all geographies and are working with the developers to make sure their apps get distributed to all regions where it's appropriate.

It's just a question of patience, wethinks...

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