Josh On Design

The webOS auction has ended successfully. Every item sold, some for far more than I thought they would. Combined with some anonymous donations we raised over 6000$ for the Hill Family. I am overwhelmed and incredibly grateful. I knew the webOS community was passionate but I had no idea. We couldn’t have done this without your support. Thank you so much!

My name is Josh Marinacci. I used to be in the webOS Developer Relations team at Palm. I'm auctioning off all of my webOS devices and swag that I've collected over the years, including some very rare items, to help my brother in law fight cancer.

One last update before the auction begins. I'm labeling everything and checking that all the devices charge. No bum-devices here. I can't vouch for the never been opened vintage PalmOS devices but everything that is open will charge.

Thank you for helping me Bridge The Gap, a webOS auction to help my brother in law fight cancer. Your support means more to me than I can say. I'm constantly amazed by the passion of the webOS community. I have some new updates to share with you.

I'm not sure I'll ever be ready to tell everything about my time at Palm. Certainly not now. Perhaps in a novel or an 8bit video game, one day. I don't know. I really enjoyed my time there and made wonderful friends. It was also two straight years of frustration. For now I suggest you read The Verge's excellent in-depth article on the 31 months from Palm's 2009 CES debut to the end of the platform (and possible rebirth?). After you read it come back to compare notes. Below are some inaccuracies or clarifications based on my own recollection of events. Think of it as directors commentary if the director was forced to sit in the back and watch through a 3 inch screen.

As you know, I've been doing a lot of ebook prototyping lately. Ever since the iBooks 2 announcement I've had this idea stuck in my head that we can make rich interactive ebooks using nothing but web technology. That lead to the toolkit I've been working on, now open sourced on github. As the first thing written with that toolkit I'm proud to announce my first interactive book: HTML Canvas, a Travelogue.

The past two years have been a hell of a fun ride, but alas it must come to an end. It is with sadness but no regret that I must announce Friday will be my last day at HP / Palm. This was a very difficult decision to make. I have enjoyed my time here and after seeing the webOS roadmap I'm very excited for it's future, but it is time for me to do something else.

As I write this I'm flying home from New York City where we (Palm) threw an event known as the webOS Developer Day NYC. Really, we should have called it a party, due to the extreme fun and exhaustion we all experienced. But this post isn't really about the event, it's about the webOS developer community.