6:22PM - Wow. Well, that was kind of amazing, and I don’t say that very often. Yes, we are lacking a LOT of really important details, but there’s little doubt that Palm is back in a big way, and that this OS and device has the potential to make up for many of their missteps over the last five years. Can’t wait. (Photos by Veronica Belmont.)

6:08PM - We very much appreciate your being here!

6:08PM - I want to thank Jon and the entire Palm team watching from Sunnyvale… big applause. Jon: I can’t tell you how proud I am with the team at Palm. We’re just getting started, I know you’ll love the things we’re working on.

6:08PM - One more thing I wanted to mention — all those apps you saw were developed in js, CSS, and HTML — we’re eating our own dogfood here, and any web developer could make one of these apps. We think Palm’s human centered design philosophy is the thing that really sets us apart.

6:07PM - We’ve shown you quite a lot today… let me just recap. A pretty amazing new platform. We’ve shown you the Pre, the phone that thinks ahead!

5:55PM - The Pre is just great design. But what I really like is the fact that it has touchscreen for easy navigation, but it has that physical QWERTY keyboard. … Gizmodo did their ‘Pepsi challenge’ and who was number one in download speeds? Sprint.

5:54PM - Dan’s spouting off on how great Pre is… feels like using a desktop in a phone, yeah yeah. Price? Release? Let’s hear it!

5:52PM - It wouldn’t be possible to do a great product like this without great partners. We have an exclusive launch partner: Sprint. Please welcome Dan Hesse to the stage.

5:52PM - I love Touchstone, it’s so cool! You might be wondering how does pre fit into the marketplace? How does it compete? We think it’s perfectly balanced… it’s not just for work, not just for play, it’s the one phone that you can use for your entire life. We think it’s first device that will help you automatically navigate around the web.

5:51PM - Magnets hold it in place horizontally or vertically.

Let’s recap: breakthrough UI, cards, Synergy, universal search, unobtrusive notifications. We have a couple more things we’d like to tell you about… Ed!

5:50PM - This is Touchstone — wireless inductive charging base.

5:49PM - Jon: THAT, was spectacular. That demo just scratches — or should I say, touches — the surface. I have one more thing: many of you know I’m a huge component of ecosystems. So we’ve been working on a variety of accessories… I’d like to show you a couple.

5:49PM - “webOS gives you so much control and power with UI that’s almost invisible. I’d like to invite Jon back on stage to take it from here…” Big applause, Matias is off.

5:47PM - Showing the music app and notification / dashboard integration. Open design — devs can do stocks, weather, RSS… “This principle of control is so important we apply it to even the most urgent alarms. Palm will never cut off what you’re doing.” Urgent notifications resize your app, but doesn’t move you away or pop over.

5:45PM - Any time webOS needs your attention — IM, email — it pings; act on or dismiss them with taps or gestures (like swiping it off the screen).

5:44PM - webOS has a notification bar at the bottom, not dissimilar from Android. Yes!

5:44PM - The browser cards are equal citizens of other cards; the cards rotate into widescreen as well, depending on the phone’s orientation. “webOS lets you work how you want to. But there is a dark side… the more connected I am, the more other people are bugging me!”

5:42PM - We allow you to have as many web browser cards open as you want. Open a new one — you’ll notice it’s not a blank card. Sites like this have a lot of text, sometimes you want a wider view (tilts it — it goes widescreen). “Joy of Vole Sex” on screen — laughter. “There’s some good articles on this site!” Woops!

5:40PM - I don’t think about finding apps or which apps to find, I just type. We made sure webOS would have a terrific browser, you can see pages the way they were intended. We make it really easy to zoom in and focus on what you’re interested in. Gestures a lot like mobile Safari — looks amazing!

5:39PM - Typing — bl showed Bluetooth, blu expanded contact “Michael Bluth” intelligently. So hot! Since the OS didn’t find “blue man group” it’s going off device and onto the web.

5:37PM - Not everything can be solved by a flick or a gesture — sometimes you need some input. The amazing keyboard is good for more than just typing, you can also use it to navigate.

5:37PM - Conversations flow between IM and SMS!

5:33PM - Exchange OTA sync — it’s got Exchange!

5:33PM - Okay — pause for a mid-show thought: the stuff Palm is showing so far is REALLY exciting. It’s a little early to call this, but it seems pretty clear: Palm is back.

5:30PM - Contact cards show multiple contact sources; all the information is brought into one place for your convenience, but the data is kept separate, as it should be.

Showing calendar now. Looks really nice, definitely a great mobile calendar UI.

5:29PM - Palm webOS is more than just how you flow between activities. … new technology: Synergy. “With Synergy, we bring all your information into a single place.”

5:28PM - All your changes are saved automatically — focus on what you’re trying to do, not on running programs or saving files. It’s so simple and direct, there’s almost no need for UI. How’s that for some REAL new-ness, hm? Applause.

5:26PM - “What we need is the kind of flexibility of a desktop computer — where you can flow from one app to another. We need a new metaphor. We imagined a deck of cards you can shuffle and sort even in one hand.” It’s kind of like the browser ‘tab’ switching mode in mobile Safari.

5:25PM - Drag up from gesture area, you get a quick-launch “wave” — damn! Release and switch to another app instantly. “This is the kind of ‘new-ness’ you were hoping to see here today, right?” Applause.

5:23PM - All basic navigation is gestures — flick, tap, swipe, no buttons cluttering up the screen. Intended for one-handed usage. Somewhat familiar looking Palm launcher — three columns.

5:22PM - Flick-scrolling — very iPhone like. Interface looks pretty damned nice, but still vaguely Palm-reminiscent. This is definitely NOT a disappointment so far.

5:20PM - The device I’m going to show you is live. Demo time!

5:20PM - We’d like to show you how it works — I’d like to introduce you to Matias Duarte. They’ve done an amazing job creating our new platform, would you come on up and show us how it works! Applause.

5:19PM - Those cheesy virtual keyboards just won’t cut it… so we gave you a great slide-out keyboard. It’s got a beautiful ergonomic curve, fits great in your hand. It works a s a phone either open or closed. Let’s compare the size — the engineering team did a phenomenal job squeezing it all in here.

5:17PM - Gorgeous 3.1-inch, 320 x 480, multi-touch display. Extends down below into the “gesture area.” Variety of sensors.

5:16PM - EV-DO Rev. A, 802.11b/g, 8GB storage, GPS, Bluetooth stereo (A2DP). Pre is the first smartphone with TI’s latest processor — “laptop-like performance.”

5:15PM - It will help you live your life effectively. It’s so much in sync with you, sometimes it feels like it’s thinking ahead for you. It’s beautiful.

5:15PM - It’s my pleasure to show oyu the new Palm Pre.

5:14PM - No new languages to learn, period. But you want to do the right device the first time, we wanted to build the right phone, because that device should be really killer.

5:13PM - It was built with developers in mind — on industry standard web tools. If you know HTML, CSS, and javascript, you can develop apps for this platform!

5:13PM - It’s called the Palm webOS, and we’re very, very excited to show it to you today.

5:12PM - How are we going to do that? We had to start with a new platform. It will redefine the center to your access point to the internet. The default thinking isn’t to hook up to your desktop PC - it’s to connect to the cloud.

5:10PM - We don’t live our lives in a modal way of organizing our information. The ironic thing is that people want to simplify their lives, but they like to keep things siloed, too.

5:10PM - How can we simplify the technology on the go? How can we make it invisible?

There’s another reason Palm is the right company — mobile is in our DNA. We don’t do computers or big screen TVs, we do mobile. And that’s ALL we do.

“I want to take you back to our roots a bit.” He’s talking about the old school Palm Pilot — “It was a compelling people that changed peoples’ lives.”

Today we have a new twist to an old problem — all of our stuff is on the internet. Our lives live in a lot of different places on the net.

5:10PM - Sorry everybody, Sprint is, yet again, crapping out on us here.

5:04PM - Thank you everyone, wow, this is so exciting. I’m so glad you could be here with us today. I know some of you are wondering what I’m doing here with Palm — I used to work for this cool company in Cupertino, but I wanted to take a break. So we packed up — me, the wife, the dogs — and moved to Mexico. So the phone rings one day — it’s Elevation Partners.

So they sent this guy Ed Colligan to meet me on the beach. … I left behind all those other things and joined Palm. … The next wave is mobile devices. I’m a product guy.

5:04PM - Rubinstein is up!

4:43PM - No sight of Colligan or Hawkins so far, but pretty much every old school Palm and mobile blogger I know is present for the occasion. I have to admit, I’m kind of nervous for Palm.

4:35PM - I’m in! This is a pretty well put-together event. Little tables with water and chocolate for press — gotta keep that blood-sugar level up!

4:34PM - The line was building up pretty fast. It’s pretty clear that this is going to be THE event of CES 2009.