GPS obsessed

Developers fortunate enough to get their hands on Palm’s Mojo SDK, the application development kit for Palm’s upcoming webOS and Palm Pre smartphone, are impressed.  While press event demos of the Palm Pre and webOS operating system have looked impressive, some developers have expressed doubt that the use of HTML, CSS and Javascript as mobile application development languages will be successful.  The crux of the matter is that the three development languages, long the basis of web development, aren’t compiled, executable languages–meaning, some say, they don’t result in true ‘applications’ and may not have the quick performance of say, an app developed for the iPhone.  But as internet radio service Pandora’s chief technology officer, Tony Conrad, told Network World, “They’ve really moved the state of the art along in terms of browser and JavaScript technologies.  I think everyone’s [performance] concerns are going to be answered. It feels just like using a set of native [compiled] applications, from a performance or any other standpoint.”  I, for one, can’t wait to see how true this is.

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