Taking credit for killing the Palm Foleo
By Keith Shaw on Wed, 09/05/07 - 12:58pm.
You may have heard that Palm has scrapped its Foleo "mobile companion" project, which was taking a beating in the technology blogosphere for distracting Palm from focusing on its smart phone devices and next-generation operating system.
More important, everyone's lining up to take credit for the Foleo killing – from Engadget, which wrote an open letter to Palm about its troubles last month (Palm president Ed Colligan even wrote a thank-you note blog post to Engadget), to Gizmodo (well, at least one of the commenters is claiming that Gizmodo killed it). The Wall Street Journal's "All Things Digital" Web site, which hosted the event where the Foleo was announced, posted the original Foleo interview video where Jeff Hawkins talked about the new device (although they didn't trash the device as much as other sites did, you gotta respect the D conference for at least posting the original video for people to see on the day of its demise).
So since it's the vogue thing to do this week, I'm throwing my hat into the "taking credit for killing the Foleo" ring as well – here's my Cool Tools column from May 30, which comments about the muddy waters that Palm was entering with its device.
Thank you, thank you, no thanks are necessary (although Ed Colligan, if you want to write me a thank-you note, that's fine too).
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Actually.....
Actually, in the first line of my post about Palm's decision, I make it clear that we absolutely do not take credit for this decision. I'm sure this is something they'd been considering for at least the past several weeks. We definitely suggested very strongly that they kill the Foleo, but I think it's highly unlikely that what we wrote played any role in their decision and we certainly don't even pretend to take credit for that.
You say potato...
The first line of the post says "We are seriously not going to take credit for this, but holy crap, Palm just cancelled the Foleo, just like we asked them to!" Having the second part of the sentence (the clause that starts with 'but') implies that you are taking credit for it. The first part of the sentence is like a "wink, wink". If you seriously didn't want to take credit for it, you wouldn't have written the second part.
Seriously, you should take credit for this -- getting the head of a major vendor to send you a letter and then canceling a project like this awesome.
I see what you're saying, but...
Well, I wrote that line because I saw it as more of a happy coincidence than a direct cause and effect; like we had predicted its demise, not caused it. And I was definitely happy to have been vindicated in my position. As flattering as it is to think that we have that sort of impact, I'm realistic about how these things really work, and I imagine that this was something there were considering for weeks before we posted our letter.
Either way, it's nice to see Palm devoting itself to improving the Treo.
Surplus units?
Next time I'm in the valley area I'm going to make a run to HSC and WeirdStuff to see if they have any of these. They look like they'll make a good bathroom reader now that all the IT publications are getting rid of their print editions.