If the Best Buy $149 price is still too rich for your wallet, Christmas could come a little early for you this year if you are the lucky one selected to win a Pre from Palm. How do you do it? Just hop over to Palm’s Facebook page right here and post a comment under the section “Win a Palm Pre.” Will just any old comment do? No, not really. Palm wants to know what “top three activity cards that you’ll always have open” on your Pre. Perhaps this is a clever way for Palm to mine some invaluable user data for future webOS development and/or improvements? Whatever their motivation, it sounds like an easy way to qualify to be a lucky winner. Good luck!

source: Palm Infocenter

If you’ve managed to exercise the patience of a monk in order to wait for a good deal on the Palm Pre, this just may be the deal you are looking for. Best Buy is now selling the Pre for $149.99 after a $50 instant rebate. Considering the decent build quality of the Pre and the marvelous webOS operating system, getting a Pre for under $150 is almost too good to pass up. If you’ve been sitting on the fence up until now, does that fence still feel comfortable or is this new deal the tipping point?

source: everythingpre via SlickDeals

Little did you know that you may carry in your pocket or purse, not a Palm Pre, but the all-seeing eye of the HAL 9000. Palm’s location-based advertising patent is very revealing in their plans for serving up advertisements in webOS based on your location, even dipping into your calendar to better customize ads while you travel from A to B. “Stop, Dave. How would you like a nice, refreshing Keva juice before your sales meeting? It’s right on your way.” Here is an excerpt from their patent:

Based upon the location data from the appointment and the location of device 310 (or other alternative location provided by the user), processor 340 may then provide advertisement data (step 386), for example, along the driving route between the location of the appointment and the current location of device 310 within a predetermined distance of the location of the appointment and/or the current location of device 310, and so on.

We always thought the red eye of the HAL 9000 was creepy. Location-based advertising requires mining personal information from your Pre and feels Orwellian. Is this an invasion of privacy or the kind of brilliance that consumers are looking for – advertisements that are more personalized and useful? Tell us what YOU think in the comments!

source: BGR

Sometimes it would be nice to have the option to enter text on the Pre without having to slide out the keyboard, and for those that want to live this dream, the hard-working, creative people at WebOS Internals are making phenomenal progress on developing an on-screen keyboard for the Pre. There are still some bugs to work out, but now it’s easier to download using the Preware app and you can begin using the Pre’s multi-touch screen to it’s fullest. Check out the video to find out where to get it and how to download it.

source: engadget mobile

One of the Palm Pre’s strengths is it’s user-friendliness. It has an intuitive interface and is comparable to the iPhone for being able to pick it up for the first time and start making things happen. However, the Pre is a powerful device and there’s much more than meets the eye – so much more that USA Today personal-tech columnist Ed Baig has cranked out 287 colorful pages and a CD-ROM that promises to transform a newbie to a pro in no time. The book, Palm Pre: The Missing Manual, will be available this week for $24.99 in paperback and $19.99 for ebook. You may be able to save some cash by pre-ordering on Amazon here.

source: Palm Infocenter