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Palm is set to preview this week its latest incarnation of mobile operating system — Nova — in a bid to re-ignite the company as a smartphone leader. Latest developments say that Palm will also release a new device that runs Nova as well. The unveiling is expected during the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2009, which starts on Thursday, January 8 in Las Vegas.

We have information from a trusted source that the latest Palm smartphone running the Nova operating system will be launched Thursday. The new phone will have a full QWERTY keyboard that will slide down under a portrait-oriented touchscreen. We’ll have a mock-up shortly.

The new operating system is described as “amazing” and there will be a full software bazaar on launch. It will have media playback functions along with standard Palm calendar, email, and contact functionality.

As expected, the phone is described as “iPhone-like” and will probably be sourced by HTC like the Palm Pro. The official Palm announcement should happen this Thursday at CES.

With prices of touch screens going down, it is no wonder that there are now touch screen products that make it possible for you to turn your point-and-click netbook into a touch screen one.

If you have time on your hands and $100 to spare, it would be very easy to do this. The very latest in this kind of product is TouchKit, which is manufactured by the Taiwan-based Hoda Technology. The TouchKit allows you to add an interactive touch screen overlay to the LCDs of popular netbooks like the ASUS Eee PC 900/901 series and Acer Aspire One, MSI Wind U100 and the ASUS Eee PC 1000 family.

Installing may seem difficult at first. First you have to remove the screws around the netbook’s LCD housing and the bottom of its chassis. Then you pop off the keyboard and remove the housing below the keyboard. Then you need to find the double-sided tape in the touch screen kit, and put it around the LCD to hold the touch panel in place. Then you have to detach the LCD module from the housing, and detach the Webcam’s cabling harness so you can replace it with the touch screen harness to connect to the motherboard.

Although there is no soldering involved, there are many steps before you get to the point where you can use your netbook as a touch screen, and you progressively expose your netbook’s innards in the process. Read the rest of this entry »