PalmGear to Host Palm's Software Connection

On March 14, PalmGear will become the exclusive host of the Software Connection on the Palm website. This means anyone on the the Palm site who clicks on the Software Connection link will be taken to a site hosted by PalmGear. The site will be served by a high-capacity Tier 1 provider to ensure that it is capable to handling the demand put on it.

Unless requested not to, all software on PalmGear will be available on the new site. However, Palm is cracking down on companies and individuals that it believes are violating their trademark. Therefore, all software and companies that use the word "Palm" in their names will not be displayed on the new Software Connection site.

The exception to this is Palm will allow software to have "for Palm OS" in its title. The example they use is an application called "PalmCheckers" and any application from a company called "Palm Software" will not be displayed on Palm.com, while an application called "Checkers for Palm OS" will be displayed.

All of this comes from an e-mail sent today to all developers registered with Palmgear. The e-mail goes on to say that Palm is planning a marketing drive to raise awareness of the third party software that is available. They are also going to add a shopping cart to the site and introduce a wireless interface in a few weeks.

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Like Tier 1 is going to help

I.M. Anonymous @ 3/9/2001 10:34:43 PM #
PalmGear uses ColdFusion. Running an enterprise website in ColdFusion means that it doesn't have enterprise traffic.

The only Palm site slower site than PalmGear, I know is PalmLounge (which also uses ColdFusion).

Copywrite?

atrizzah @ 3/9/2001 10:45:03 PM #
I already hate the slowness of Palm Gear, despite the fact that it has the most apps. Its really gonna suck when palm makes them remove all files whose company/title have the word palm in them.

Peace Out
Alan
RE: Copyright?
I.M. Anonymous @ 3/10/2001 7:59:11 AM #
Is there a way to do an online copyright search. I read somewhere that Palm doesn't really have a copyright on the word "Palm", they just claim they do.

RE: Copywrite?
atrizzah @ 3/10/2001 10:29:17 AM #
Claim or not, if they're gonna control PalmGear, then they'll enforce their "copyright" anyway

Peace Out
Alan
RE: Copywrite?
I.M. Anonymous @ 3/10/2001 11:33:38 AM #
Well Now...

Interesting how the a company called "Palmgear" will not be alowed to post apps who use the word "palm" in their name.....

Seems that they too would also be in violation of the alleged copyright that Palm now wants to enforce.

Maybe they'll be required to change their name to "Gear for Palm OS" :^)

Regards


RE: Trademark
Ed @ 3/10/2001 12:29:06 PM #
I just did a search of the U.S. government's Trademark database and I didn't find any entry that showed that Palm Inc. had the word "Palm" trademarked. Lots of variations, like "Palm Powered" and "Palm III" but I didn't see just "Palm". I'm no expert but how can they legally try to enforce a trademark they don't have?

http://www.uspto.gov/web/menu/tm.html

BTW, I found where they had "Palm IX" and "Palm XI" trademarked. I guess these were going to be the future models before they changed the naming scheme.

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Plenipotentiary
Palm Infocenter

PalmGear is slow...

GregGaub @ 3/10/2001 12:56:42 AM #
...but last I heard they were gearing up (hehe) for a total rebuild of the back-end to speed up the site and search functions and everything. It's not going to stay the way it is, I don't think.

RE: PalmGear is slow...
I.M. Anonymous @ 3/11/2001 5:10:11 AM #

I think it will remain slow as long as they are using WinNT/2000 - you can't host enterprise-level stuff on a poxy 4-6 processor box, even if it's being load-balanced at the front. And WinNT/2000 has doesn't scale particularly well beyond that either, notwithstanding the fact that any else higher than that is too exotic for proper maintenance anyway.

Look forward to more IIS errors from dodgy ASP scripts that don't handle errors well.


The Name Changing Begins

Ed @ 3/11/2001 3:56:38 PM #
There are already a couple of announcements on PalmGear from companies changing their names and their product's names. PalmStats is becoming ProStats, for example.

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Plenipotentiary
Palm Infocenter
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