At the GSMA Mobile World Congress, Adobe today announced Palm is joining the Open Screen Project – a broad industry initiative dedicated to enabling standalone applications and full web browsing across televisions, desktops and mobile devices taking advantage of Adobe Flash Platform capabilities.

The press release states:

"The work of the Open Screen Project will help deliver Adobe Flash Player for smartphones on the new Palm webOS platform. The unique capabilities of the web-centric Palm webOS, combined with Flash Player, will enable webOS device users to benefit from the huge amount of Flash based web content for a richer, more complete Internet experience.

Palm has posted new information about developing for webOS and has announced a new book deal with O'Reilly Media and an upcoming developer webcast. The book is to be the first official resource for programming Palm's new webOS platform. Written by Palm Vice President and Software Chief Technology Officer Mitch Allen and members of the webOS development team the book is called, "Palm webOS: Developing Applications in JavaScript Using the Palm Mojo Framework."

The first chapter of the Rough Cuts Version of the book is now available online for free from the Palm Developer Network. Programmers eager to learn how to develop applications on webOS can literally read the book online as it is being written or download it as a PDF (.pdf link). And with Rough Cuts, readers can participate in an ongoing discussion about the book and technology. The complete book will be published upon release of Mojo, Palm's webOS software development kit (SDK).

Pivotal Labs are a California Bay Area based software development consultancy who've worked with a lot of big names, including Twitter, Best Buy and Salesforce.com. Named by Ed Colligan in Palm's CES presentation as one of the first webOS software partners, they've been working with webOS and the Mojo SDK for some time now, helping other developers for the platform get up to speed on the new tech.

On Friday we had a chance to talk with their VP of Business Development, Christian Sepulveda, who shared some insights about Pivotal's experience with Palm's shiny new toys. Read on for the interview transcript, or to listen to the audio.

Palm has posted a new promotion video on the Palm Pre in the "Meet Pre" section of its website. The video demonstrates some new functionality and shows some unseen screenshots of WebOS in action. It can be found at palm.com and is also embedded after the break.

The 1:44 clip takes a narrated look at checking and changing calendar appointments, viewing upcoming meeting attendees along with a real-time view of who will be present, incoming messages and searching the web. It also shows the simple process of sending a webpage link, which automatically creates an email with the page link and an attached screenshot.

Bell Mobility in Canada, which recently just picked up the Centro, is now rumored to be getting the Treo Pro. A leaked release sheet posted on MobileSyrup claims the device could debut up north before the end of the month. (pictured after the break.)

Their source states the Treo Pro is set to officially launch Thursday, February 26th. Pricing is speculated to be in the $199 CAD range on a 3 year plan.

Palm has announced that the Treo Pro is now available in Brazil through the Claro Network. The Treo Pro now enjoys a wide dispersal in South and Latin America, while it still remains available in the US as an unlocked handset.

The Treo Pro is Palm's latest Windows Mobile powered smartphone. The GSM version is equipped with Tri-Band 3G HSDPA/UMTS (850/1900/2100MHz) support and runs Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional Edition on a 400 MHz Qualcomm MSM7201 processor with a 320x320 pixel flush touchscreen, 256MB memory (100MB user available), microSD expansion (up to 32GB supported), built in Wi-Fi (802.11b/g with WPA, WPA2, and 801.1x authentication), Bluetooth 2.0, GPS and a 2.0 megapixel camera.

Mobile Stream's Card Reader has just been updated. Card Reader allows you to use your Palm powered device's memory card slot as a standard USB card reader for transferring and managing files. The program features a 1200/1100KB/s read write speed, background transfers and a small file size. It even supports the Bluetooth File Transfer Profile for wireless card transfers. Updates include a number of bug fixes, an option to force write protection and a fix for the incomplete folder listing problem with the bluetooth ftp mode.

Card Reader v1.09 is available with a free trial and costs $11.95 to register.

The PalmInfocenter Accessory store has recently added a couple of new Centro cases. The Sena Leather Skin comes in a variety of colors. The form-fitting case is comprised of ultra-thin premium leather to prove a soft layer of "skin" to gently protect devices from scratches. The cases has the usual openings for the display and keyboard area as well as access to the camera, mic, usb and IR ports. It also comes with a removable belt clip. The Centro Leather skin sells for $29.95.

A similar case is the Leather Skin Croco which comes in black and red. This version features a slightly different exterior design and is available for $39.95.

Palm's CEO Ed Colligan made an number of interesting statements about the future of Palm and the highly anticipated Palm Pre at an investor conference earlier today. You can checkout the archived webcast of the event here or read on for some of our (paraphrased) notes of interest from the Q&A session.

Apple patent battle? "There's no issue with Apple over patents right now. There's been speculation but nothing's been done. The whole issue with patents is elaborate... We have a big patent portfolio in mobile computing built over 15 years... we did that to have a defensive position in the marketplace. It's like two porcupines circling around... you don't attack so you don't get stung. If something does happen there we do have the portfolio to defend ourselves. We're going to drive the product out the door."

Making official what has been expected for some time, Palm CEO Ed Colligan remarked today at an investor conference that Palm will not release any more Palm OS based products. His actual words were:

"We will transition to WebOS as our core operating system and will continue to support Windows Mobile products for the enterprise market. "

He also went on to say that Palm wants to focus on "fewer really innovative breakthrough products" in order to innovate better, and he also stated they are working on a robust roadmap of products based on WebOS due in the years to come.

NormSoft has just released a new version of its popular Pocket Tunes music player. Version 5.0 for Palm OS and Windows Mobile adds a lot of new features along with a slew of bug fixes, including podcast subscriptions, Last.fm scrobbling, iTunes sync and WMA Internet radio. New users can purchase the bundle for $37.95, while users upgrading from versions 3 or 4 will be charged $19.95.

PalmInfocenter will take a more detailed look at the changes in the coming days. In the meantime, hit the jump for the full list of version updates.