Palm Dumps Foleo

Stating that Palm needed to focus all attention on a new mobile platform for all their devices, Palm CEO Ed Colligan announced yesterday afternoon that they were dropping the Foleo smartphone companion as it was currently configured and designed. This is surprising, since they were almost ready to ship the device.
If you followed it, the Foleo was going to be basically a 10" notebook that worked with your Palm Treo. With a full keyboard, it would allow you to access email, spreadsheets, documents and surf the web but did not have a hard drive and did not run Windows. Critics questioned the need for such an "in-between" device, more than a handheld but not quite a notebook computer.
The most interesting aspect of this device to me was that it ran Linux, and was instant-on, with no boot-up time. Applications would have been easily developed by third parties just like they have been on the Palm OS. From the Palm blog:

Jeff Hawkins and I still believe that the market category defined by Foleo has enormous potential. When we do Foleo II it will be based on our new platform, and we think it will deliver on the promise of this new category. We're not going to speculate now on timing for a next Foleo, we just know we need to get our core platform and smartphones done first.

read more | digg story