palmOne transmogrifies into Palm, Inc today, following an announcement on May 24 that the company had acquired unencumbered rights to the Palm brand after buying out the share of the brand formerly controlled by PalmSource, Inc.
“I’m confident we’ll build our momentum even faster now that we can use the same term consumers and business people have always used for our products – PALM,” frothed Ed Colligan, Palm president and CEO.
“And while a lot has changed – our name, ticker, logo and headquarters – our vision remains the same. We believe the future of personal computing is ‘mobile computing,’ and we aim to deliver superior hardware and software solutions so that we can continue to set the bar in the industry.”
Clearly dizzy after overdoing the double Caramel Macchiatos, Palm talks lovingly about its new logo, claiming that it “builds upon the strong brand equity already established in the former blue Palm circular medallion, but the updated typeface suggests the trend toward digital content and an orange gradated background evokes energy.”
Page Murray, Palm vice president of marketing, was also in a state of ecstasy over the new design: “Our new logo takes advantage of the high brand awareness we’ve built over time through award-winning and commercially successful handheld computers and smartphones,”
Getting carried away on a wave of hyperbole, Murray waxed lyrical about the new logo: “It balances the past with the future, and signals to customers that they can expect to see a lot more of the name ‘Palm’ going forward in exciting mobile-computing products.”
Palm have a bit of a history with faffing about with their name. palmOne was created in October 2003 when the earlier Palm, Inc. spun off PalmSource and acquired Handspring, Inc.
The Palm brand was then shared between palmOne and PalmSource, but Palm claim that customers have come to identify the name Palm more with physical products than with the operating system that powers it.
We wish that they’d spend less time messing about with pretty logo redesigns, and got around to doing something useful – like creating the Wi-Fi drivers for the Treo phone promised months ago.
We wrote to them two months ago asking for a Palm Treo 650 to review and for information about the Wi-Fi drivers.
We’re still waiting for a reply.
We had a report from a reader today that he’d been … ehm, carrying out tests on his content filtering service. This entailed going to sites with photos of naked bodies – purely to test that the content filter blocked his access to them you understand. One of first sites he went to was the well known UK tabloid, The Sun. 
The piece in the Gizmo section of the site and paper features BT’s new model to promote BT Communicator, Michelle Marsh. 
It’s been a long time coming, but Orange have finally announced that their Windows Mobile-powered SPV C550 smartphone will go on sale later this month 
Songs downloaded through the phone’s Music Player software are DRM-protected, although the built in Fireplayer application will let punters remix their fave tunes into ringtones. 
Matthew Kirk, Director of Devices at Orange was ready and willing to spin out the PR schmooze: “Since the launch of the first SPV handset three years ago, Orange has led the development of smartphones and provided its customers with a choice of the latest and most powerful devices. The Orange SPV C500 was the world’s smallest smartphone and today its successor provides the first realistic alternative to carrying around a separate MP3 player, phone and PDA.” 
Two users of the same online bulletin board were in the same carriage of a London Tube train that was involved with the blast last week. 
Without the discussion boards on urban75 or the Internet, the likelihood of two people caught up in the explosions meeting again, is highly unlikely. 
‘The Man’ in the form of the EC wants to introduce regulation to the Internet by bringing in controversial rules to cover television online, according to a report in the Times. 
Internet-delivered TV is currently unregulated in the UK, so there is no compulsion for Web broadcasters to respect rules governing accuracy and impartiality or taste and decency that apply to all other analogue and digital channels. 
The growth of photo and video-capable phones has resulted in news agencies sourcing more and more content from members of the public who have used their mobiles to record disaster scenes. 
Jonathan Klein, CNN’s U.S. chief believes this “citizen journalism” will become a more important part of coverage in major news events. “No question about it,” he said. “There’s been a lot of talk in terms of the increased democratization of the news media relating to blogs and the like. This is another example of the citizen journalist.” 
The UK record industry trade association the BPI has revealed that download sales in 2005 have raced past the ten-million mark – almost twice the amount for the whole of 2004. 
Illegal music downloads remain a thorn in the side of the industry, but the growth in legal downloads now outstrips the growth in dodgy file sharing with Jamieson adding, “The battle against illegal files-haring will continue, but we are delighted to have hit this milestone so soon”. 
The resurgence of vinyl has been attributed to British indie and rock acts love affair with their near ancient format, with bands like Iron Maiden’s, Libertines, Babyshambles, Kaiser Chiefs and Franz Ferdinand all releasing songs on vinyl. 
Yahoo! UK and Ireland have launched a handy new mobile search service which allows consumers to check the prices of goods via Yahoo! WAP services when they’re out and about. 
A result screen then displays images, pricing and product information, providing users with the low down about the cheapest prices around. 
However, if you persevere and click through to the next results page, a ‘compare’ link should magically appear under some products and this will let you access its full details. 
The European Commission announced yesterday that it wants to give a boot up the backside of the European market for online music services by making it easier for new providers to get licences to flog songs over the Internet. 
Mobile phone networks in London were overwhelmed for several hours following a series of terrorist blasts across central London. 
As with 9/11, many people turned to the Web for news and updates, resulting in major news sites struggling with the enormous surge in traffic.