Developers keeping on top of the first Palm's official WebOS programming book can now find chapter 8 of the Rough Cuts version online. Chapter 8 offers developers a look at the System and Cloud services contained within WebOS and is available for electronic viewing from Safari Books Online. Specifically this latest installment covers using Mojo to access to location services, connection status, alarms, sounds, power management, properties and time services.

The book is published by O-Reilly Media and is written by Palm's Vice President and Software CTO Mitch Allen along with Palm's WebOS Development Team. The book has also now received a firm release date of August 15th, according to Amazon's pre-order page.

A new Forbes article takes a look at Sprint's extensive preparations and plans for this weeks upcoming Palm Pre launch. Sprint has outfitted each store with specially trained employees, and will have Palm reps and extra employees on hand in many stores come launch day and beyond. The carrier will even have a "War Room" situational center setup in order to monitor the launch, and provide rapid support and tech consultations when needed.

Extra employees will be on hand to manage crowds, says David Owens, Sprint's director of devices. Sprint is also borrowing manpower from partner Palm, which will dispatch representatives to more than 100 Sprint stores across the country. The additional help will stick around for two months, Owens says.

The organizers behind the preDevCamp group have announced a major reorganization. Most importantly, the date for the planned worldwide event has been moved to Saturday, August 8th.

preDevCamp is an independent not for profit group that aims to help facilitate developer coding sessions and meet and greets about the Palm Pre and WebOS. The event is currently being planned in over 60 cities around the planet. The group has also announced a change of management after the recent fracas.

Access has released a new update to its Palm OS Garnet VM for Nokia Internet Tablets running Maemo. Garnet VM Beta 4 (v1.03b) is mainly a maintenance release that includes some stability improvements and minor bug fixes.

The Garnet VM is a virtual machine that essentially acts as an emulator with the ability to run native Palm OS applications on the Nokia N770, N800 and N810 devices. It supports over 30,000 native software applications written for the Palm OS, including some of the most popular mobile applications on the market, such as Google Maps, Bejeweled, SnapperMail and Sudoku.

Amidst claims from its two chief competitors that too they plan to offer the Palm Pre, a Sprint spokesperson has publicly reaffirmed that the company will remain the exclusive carrier for the Pre through 2009.

"We have the Pre through 2009," said [Sprint] spokesman James Fisher.

Palm shares popped nearly 10% yesterday on word that the Verizon Wireless CEO remarked that they plan to offer the Palm Pre smartphone in six months. AT&T's chief also made similar comments on Wednesday.

Palm, Inc. today announced that Treo Pro is now available on the Telecom New Zealand XT Mobile Network.

Treo Pro is an easy-to-use smartphone for businesses that want to simplify their IT infrastructures and lower costs, and for users who want to stay on top of their professional and personal lives. With its streamlined design and Palm innovations layered on Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, Treo Pro is a unique combination of sleek simplicity and robust productivity.

The D All Things Digital site has posted video of highlights from the Jon Rubinstein and Roger McNamee interview and Palm Pre demo today.

In the nine minute video Jon and Rodger talk with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher at the last day of D7. They discuss the new Palm Pre as well as give a demo of the new smartphone. The video is also embedded after the break.

Today at The Wall Street Journal's D: All Things Digital conference, Palm, Inc. introduced attendees to the latest features of the Palm webOS platform, including Palm media sync, the integration of Twitter in universal search, and a beta version of its App Catalog. Jon Rubinstein, Palm executive chairman, and Roger McNamee, Palm director and co-founder of Elevation Partners, debuted the new webOS features, which will be available on the new Palm Pre phone when it launches June 6 on Sprint.

Palm media sync is a feature of webOS that synchronizes seamlessly with iTunes, giving you a simple and easy way to transfer DRM-free music, photos and videos to your Palm Pre. Simply connect Pre to your PC or Mac via the USB cable, select "media sync" on the phone, and iTunes will launch on your computer desktop. You can then choose which DRM-free media files to transfer.

Jon Rubinstein and Roger McNamee are currently on the stage at the D7 conference going on this week in Carlsbad, CA. The D All Things Digital site is currently live-blogging the event and posting highlights from the interview. Engadget is also posting pics and live updates.

In addition, the site has posted a video clip featuring McNamee and Rubinstein in a faux-commercial series for the Palm Pre made for the event. The entertaining clip makes light of McNamee's bold claims on what the Pre can do. You can also check that out embedded after the break.

Comments today from Lowell McAdam, Verizon Wireless's President and CEO, seem to the carrier is eager to offer the Palm Pre once the Sprint exclusivity contract expires. Reuters is reporting that Mr. McAdam made comments during a webcast today that:

"Verizon Wireless plans to start selling Palm Inc's Pre and a new version of the touchscreen BlackBerry Storm in about six months"

Rumor: Another interesting, new Pre factoid is making its way round the 'sphere this morning. Fortune's Apple blog is reporting that the Palm Pre will sync with Apple's iTunes software quite effortlessly out of the box. The post claims the Pre will behave just like a standard iPod or iPhone. Of course, Palm OS devices have been able to do this for years with third party apps such as PocketTunes, however the Pre seems to have this nice bit of functionality baked in.

Plug a Pre into a Mac and it syncs, seamlessly, with Apple's (AAPL) iTunes. In fact, the iTunes Store treats the Pre just as it would an iPod or an iPhone with one exception: it can't handle old copy-protected songs.