A group of mobile software developers in Austin, Texas, have announced the arrival of PreDevCamp, a hacking event centered around software development for the WebOS platform on Palm's new Pre smartphone.
PreDevCamps are taking place in over 60 cities around the world, including Austin, San Francisco and New York. Also on the list are some unsuspecting mobile development hotbeds such as Vietnam, Croatia and Kenya. The event is currently accepting registration and will be held exactly one week after the U.S. release of the Palm Pre — "coming soon" according to the offical Palm Pre website.
PreDevCamp is already generating some excitement on Twitter and among Palm developing groups, some of which weren't seeing much action before the announcement of the Pre at Las Vegas' Consumer Electronics Show, or CES, in January.
The organizers hope the event will mobilize the development community around Palm's web-based operating system, WebOS. The operating system and device is set to compete against Apple's iPhone, Google's Android, Nokia's Symbian and Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating systems. It's selling point is software that incorporates Linux and existing web application technologies, such as HTML, JavaScript and CSS.
William Hurley — more commonly known by his hacker nickname "whurley" — is one of the developers in charge of organizing PreDevCamp. He also had a hand in starting iPhoneDevCamp, a nonprofit meet-up that helped mobilize third-party application development for Apple's mobile. The first two iPhoneDevCamps were considered a success (and the organization continues to hold mini-DevCamps), but according to Hurley, he and his associates were eager to help provide a legit challenge to the iPhone throne.
That is, if Apple doesn't put the kibosh on its competition first. The company is threatening to introduce a number of patent lawsuits in order to challenge Pre's technology before it hits the market. The lawsuits are somewhat limited to certain aspects of the operating system's scrolling and multitouch capabilities.
Regardless, give or take a few features, it is unlikely Apple's actions will hold up WebOS from hitting the market entirely. The next challenge would be to see how it will stack up next to the other contenders such as Google's Android and Nokia's Symbian operating systems. Both systems are being offered as open source, and there is no word yet as to whether Palm's WebOS will follow suit.
"Hardware manufacturers come and go, but the company that controls the smartphone OS market is going to control the market, period," wrote Hurley on his blog. "Watch the developers, they're the key. The largest, most active developer network is going to win, because consumers want applications."
The PreDevCamp is the Pre's first chance at cultivating that community, and thanks to the buzz introduced after Palm's announcement at January's CES, it looks like the event is already getting considerable traction.
To see if the event is happening in your city, check out the PreDevCamp event guide. Registration is handled by the organizer of the event closest to you. If there are no nearby events, the organizers have also made it easy for you to set up a camp in your city.
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