Palm Pre Now Has Tool To Build Apps — And Soon, A Place To Buy ‘Em

If you STILL haven't been keeping tabs on CES '09, some of the biggest news came from, of all companies, the once-moribund Palm, whose new Pre smartphone/PDA is the latest — and, of course they hope, greatest — iPhone-killer candidate.

But what's hot hardware without useful software, you ask?  Answer: an expensive, high-tech paperweight.  Over on the Palm Developer Network, the following useful information can be found:

• The application framework for building Palm webOS apps has been dubbed "Mojo."  (Insert sound of Austin Powers going "YEEEEEAH, bay-bee!")  Based on already-familiar HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript standards, Mojo lets develops build applications with gesture-based navigation, transitions, and scrolling, create non-disruptive user alerts, and even migrate data from existing Palm PDB files.
• The Mojo SDK is currently in private prerelease, and will be available
  later this year as a free download from the Palm Developer Network.
• Palm is ramping up its own "on-device application catalog to deliver your apps directly to users."  It's name?  The App Catalog.  (Take THAT, House of Jobs!)