Jonathan's Card : A social experiment

So, Jonathan Stark made this cool app that gave away free coffee at Starbucks.  He took an image of his Starbucks gift card, and told people use it or reload it as they saw fit.

Some people gave away money.

Others got free coffee.

Still others (like me) made smartphone or web apps based on the image and API.

One dude decided to siphon money from the account and brag about it on his blog.

This card has its own Twitter and Facebook pages.

Alas, it wasn't meant to last.  Jonathan's Card was deactivated on August 12, 2011.

The time has come for this wonderful experiment to make a transformation. Starbucks has informed me that they will be shutting off the card at 10pm ET tonight (Friday, August 12, 2011).

At least it was fun while it lasted.

EDIT:

As far as I can tell, there are five competing services that have sprouted up after Jonathan's Card was deactivated:

• Adam's Card
• Craig's Cup
• Paying it Forward
• DC Cup of Joe
• Don's Bin

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Adams-Card/179071545494267
http://www.facebook.com/Craigscup
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Paying-it-Forward/118578998240458
http://www.facebook.com/dccupofjoe
http://www.wireshout.com/dons-bin

I'm not seeing any tracking options like Jonathan's Card, but I'm trying to pay attention to this.

WebOS developer tutorial videos: Give Enyo a try!

Youtube user natemcintyre was nice enough to post up some developer tutorial videos for webOS 3.0, as the 3.0 has recently been publicly released.

Check it out:

New Linux Journal Article: WebOS 2.1 - Give It a Spin with Emulation Through the WebOS SDK!

The kind folks at Linux Journal have published another article that I've written. Hooray! This article is about installing the HP/Palm WebOS 2.1 SDK for the purposes of trying out the operating system in Ubuntu.

HP may be on to something with WebOS, but the only way to figure that out is by having more people interact with it and figuring out if it is worth spending time using. Give it a whirl. If you like it, great! If you don't, that's cool, too.

HP's WebOS "Think Beyond" and "HP Summit" Video

Here is HP's WebOS big technology reveal event (from Feb 9th, 2011):

Any opinions??
I really want to be excited.  I really do.  It seems like HP is trying to simultaneously get me excited about their products whilst ignoring all other similar products on the market.  Time will tell if these products have the staying power that they need to survive and thrive in the current tech environment.  I hope they do, since there are some really cool features here.

Here is the March 14th keynote video from the HP Summit:

This seems a little better. An HP public cloud, eh? That might be interesting.

Installing WebOS SDK in Ubuntu 9.10

Installing WebOS SDK in Ubuntu 9.10:

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EDIT (03/22/10): Make sure that you go to the updated WebOS installation page and get updated versions of the WebOS SDK and novacom packages before using the statically linked packages listed in this article. They are no longer up to date.

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It appears that the Palm Pre WebOS SDK/Emulator no longer installs properly in Ubuntu 9.10, though it worked fine in Ubuntu 9.04.
I attempted to follow my own WebOS HOWTO from Linux Journal, but I ran into some issues.
After installing the two current SDK packages and typing palm-emulator, I was met with the following error message:

For those that can't read the image, it says:

"Novacom Not Running
In order to install or debug applications in the Palm Emulator, the novacom service must be running on your desktop. Please verify that you have the latest Palm SDK installed correctly."

As I had just finished installing both the novacom (palm-novacom_0.3-svn196852-hud21_i386.deb) and the WebOS SDK (palm-sdk_1.2.0-svn202408-sdk77-pho33_i386.deb) packages, I was a little discouraged by this message. I know that I need the novacomd daemon running, but apparently I wasn't successful in getting it going. I checked the Palm SDK install page, but was unable to get novacomd up and running given their suggestions. When I tried sudo stop palm-novacom and sudo start palm-novacom
I got the error message:
start: Unknown job: palm-novacom
I figured that novacom must not have been installed in my $PATH.

I logged out and logged back in, just in case the novacomd daemon was already configured to start at boot and was simply waiting for me to reboot. No luck. It was here that I stumbled upon the problem. The release notes for Ubuntu 9.10 indicate:

/etc/event.d no longer used

The version of upstart included in Ubuntu 9.10 no longer uses the configuration files in the /etc/event.d directory, looking to /etc/init instead. No automatic migration of changes to /etc/event.d is possible. If you have modified any settings in this directory, you will need to reapply them to /etc/init in the new configuration format by hand. (402759)

I then looked in /etc/event.d on my system, and what did I find? Well, I found the palm-novacomd upstart file! That explains why novacomd isn't starting at boot like it did for Ubuntu 9.04!
If you want to start it up without having to reboot, you can manually start novacomd by typing:
sudo /opt/Palm/novacom/novacomd
and then starting palm-emulator in a different terminal. A screenshot of the Palm WebOS emulator is below (the output of novacomd is listed in the terminal behind the emulator):




EDIT:
I figured out a way to get novacomd going at startup with minimal fuss.

• Go to System --> Preferences --> Startup Applications
• Choose to add a new application.

• Enter /opt/Palm/novacom/novacomd-upstart as the command.
• Fill in an appropriate name and comment.
• Save the startup program.
• Log out, and log back in.

novacomd should now be running, and you can start the palm-emulator command without any of the extra fuss that I mentioned above.

Linux Journal article- Android OS and Palm Pre WebOS virtualization

Today, I was published on the Linux Journal website with an exclusive (two part) Tech Tip. The first Tech Tip describes how to get Google's Android OS easily running as a virtual appliance. The second Tech Tip will focus on getting Palm's WebOS running, which you may find out to be easier than you think. Part two is now out, as well. Enjoy!