In case you missed it over the weekend, Bloomberg recently interviewed Elevation Partners co-founder (and Palm Director) Roger McNamee on the day of the Palm Pre's UK debut, delving into the usual range of topics that are covered whenever the sometimes over-enthusiastic investor rears his head: what makes Palm a good investment, how the company can survive in a space competing with the likes of Apple and RIM, and what's up with those financial forecasts?

McNamee navigates the minefield with his usual aplomb, repeating his usual talking points: Elevation is in this for the long haul, and it's not about the individual devices, it's about the webOS platform as a whole: "Palm isn't the Pre, and it isn't Pixi. It's webOS." The video is embedded after the jump.

Updated: The Meta-Doctor Is In! Bypassing needless carrier activations for off-contract devices is all well and good, but a brand-new use for the whitehat WebOS Internals Meta-Doctor tool has just presented itself: remapping the QWERTZ keyboard of the "unlocked" German Palm Pre to the more-familiar QWERTY layout. Putting his own imported Pre on the line in the name of science, Rod Whitby has come up with an ingenious method to permanently fool webOS devices into loading the keymap of your choice: QWERTY, AZERTY or QWERTZ - and the mod will not be undone by future OTA updates, as it replaces a software token buried deep within the hardware.

The Meta-Doctor, for those not in the know, is Rod's own personal creation, which allows one to modify the webOS Doctor specific to their device to do things it otherwise wouldn't normally do: things like bypassing carrier activation, resizing the storage partitions and enabling developer mode by default. The tool is not for the faint-of-heart: it requires an Ubuntu Linux host to run, and is command-line only at this point in time. Rod will be releasing the full instructions in a day or two, but the important take-away is this: keyboard remapping is both possible and coming real soon Full instructions posted after the break. Time for a celebratory drink, fellow importers.

After months of back-and-forth rumors, speculation , and unofficial commentary from no less than the Verizon Wireless CEO himself, webOS hopefuls on Verizon can finally rest easy.

Verizon's official Twitter account has confirmed that the Palm Pre will arrive "early next year". The Boy Genius Report also provides confirmation of this story.

So, you're the proud owner a shiny new UK or German GSM Palm Pre, eager to start personalising and tweaking your latest toy. As you may or not be aware, the version of webOS that has initially shipped on GSM devices is 1.1.3, not the latest 1.2.1 that has recently debuted on CDMA devices. Thus, if you're planning on applying any homebrew patches, you're going to need 1.1.3-compatible versions. Enter (as usual) the ever-amazing WebOS Internals group, who've begun the thankless task of back-porting their webOS patch catalogue so that Pre owners all around the globe can customise freely.

So far, 17 patches have been back-ported, with more on the way. The new 1.1.3-compatible feed has yet to be added to Preware, but if you're feeling adventurous you can manually add the 1.1.3 feed URL to the /var/etc/ipkg/webos-patches.conf file. Otherwise, sit tight: it's coming soon. Hit the the jump for the full list of ported patches.

The Palm Pre is now available in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Palms first webOS device make its debut across the Atlantic today on the O2 Network.

Haven't seen much in the way of blogophere launch coverage of yet (please post anything relevant in the comments), however the Beeb is on the scene with a brief interview with Palm CEO John Rubinstein and O2's Matthew Key.

Further to yesterday's story regarding the SIM-unlocked German Palm Pre's problems with international carrier settings, your correspondent decided to go digging into webOS' guts to see for himself which networks the phone should work with. Lo and behold, contained within the /usr/lib/luna/CarrierNetworkSettings.db3 database is a comprehensive listing of global cellular network settings.

We've posted the full list of all 240 carriers (excluding duplicate entries) named in the database in the PalmInfocenter Forums. If you've imported a German Pre and had problems, let us know - is your carrier on this list? And if so, the question then becomes: what will it take to enable these settings?

If you're like me and trapped in a country where Palm has yet to offer the Pre, then you're no doubt thinking quite intently about purchasing a German GSM unit, which is not SIM-locked as the UK and Irish Pres are. However, there are different kinds of restrictions on the device: first, the network settings are apparently only pre-configured for a smattering of German mobile providers. So while you'll be able to drop in any old SIM card and make voice calls internationally out-of-the-box, you won't be able to use carrier network services like mobile Internet or MMS until Palm or O2 provides an update which allows you to enter such details manually. In the meantime, it looks like we'll be resorting to some light hacking.

Second, and a little more annoyingly, the device apparently needs to be activated via the O2 network before you can use it. While tools exist that allow you to bypass activation - such as the WebOS Internals Meta-Doctor - savvy buyers may want to ask their importers to activate the device at the O2 store before sending them on.

Sometimes you just go "huh". In the wake of the epic fail that was the Microsoft/Danger Sidekick PIM disaster, Palm Infocenter thought it would be interesting to query Palm on their own backup/security policies for the webOS Palm Profile data, which is similarly stored up in the clouds. A little disconcerting, all we got was a canned response:

We don't currently have a response other than what's contained within our privacy policy.

And that policy says? In a nutshell: "We guarantee nothing." How... comforting. The relevant quote is after the break.

One of the key pieces that's been missing from the webOS puzzle is document editing capabilities. We've known since the January announcement of webOS that Palm and DataViz have been working together on this, and the OS already features simple document viewing. Unfortunately, it seems we may all have to hold our mobile-office horses for a little bit longer: DataViz have let us know that it's looking likely that the release may in fact be delayed until early 2010.

While the company had been hoping to push their webOS version of Documents To Go out the door by the end of this year, coordination with Palm on a potentially-necessary ROM update for webOS may hold up the whole shebang. Godspeed, Dataviz. We're counting on you. Interested users can sign up to notified of further information here.

With the release of Classic 2.0 and a sexy new (old) feature in HotSync support - amongst other goodies like a full-screen mode and reduced idle power consumption - MotionApps have let it be known that those who previously trialled the Palm OS emulator will now be able to retrial it at no charge. If the previous free ride wasn't to your tastes, you now have another ten days' grace with which to make up your mind.

Classic is downloadable via the webOS App Catalog. More info is available from MotionApps' website.

Palm Inc.'s official blog just posted word of Palm and O2's UK launch party for the Palm Pre. The event was held in London last night on a rooftop at the Shoreditch House in London's East End.

Artists such as VV Brown and the Danish band Alphabeat performed on stage and Palm's blog is keen to highlight the various "Euro-celebs" in attendance. A couple of photos can be found on the corporate facebook page. A video of the event (embedded after the break) features an overview of the party scene along with brief interviews from Palm and O2 execs and other people in attendance. O2's actual launch date for the UK is this Friday, Oct 16th.