Verizon Wireless announced Jan. 25 availability of two modified versions of Palm's WebOS-based smartphones, the Palm Pre Plus and the newly WiFi-enabled Palm Pixi Plus. Meanwhile, Palm announced that its WebOS developer program is now open to all developers, and plans to launch a WebOS plugin development kit, says eWEEK.

Sprint and Verizon Wireless have released Palm's upgraded 1.4 version of the Linux-based WebOS for Palm Pre and Palm Pixi smartphones. Ofering much-anticipated video capture and editing functionality plus improved messaging features, WebOS 1.4 arrives shortly after Palm announced lowered investment guidance due to disappointing smartphone sales.

Palm announced its WebOS Linux platform yesterday, along with a smartphone to run it. To be sold by Sprint in the first half of 2009, the 3G-enabled Palm Pre features a slide-out keyboard, WiFi, GPS, 3-megapixel camera, 3.1-inch touchscreen, and Palm's homegrown "WebOS" Linux phone stack.

To comply with the GPL, Palm has released the source code packages for its Linux-based WebOS used by the new Palm Pre, which has been on sale in the US since the beginning of June.

"Jon Rubinstein just made it official during their financial results conference call, folks: Palm is only going to develop webOS devices from now on. Say goodbye to Palm-branded Windows Mobile Devices..."

From my view in the cheap seats, Palm has come out swinging with its new mobile operating system, webOS.

For me, the story of webOS is, up to this point, a sad tale. But what does Jon Rubinstein, former CEO of Palm and the guy responsible for webOS, think?

Palm revealed the webOS 2.0 SDK beta today and with it, the company gave an outline of the new features expected in webOS 2.0. The Linux-based OS will support multi-tasking through a feature called Stacks, which organizes similar applications into tidy, um, stacks.

Palm is taking a page from Apple's iPhone strategy book when it comes to keeping things quiet regarding its newly-announced Pre smartphone and webOS mobile platform. The two things Palm (NASDAQ: PALM) will say is that it is focused on completing software development and network certification requirements and expects devices to be available by June.