Going to learn to develop for the palm pre, looking for ideas.

I recently got a palm pre, and absolutely love the device. Anyway, I'm thinking of learning to write apps for the phone, and I'm looking for ideas. Was thinking of maybe a kind of motivational quote a day type thing, just to get started with as something realativly simple to make. After that, I'm wondering where to go next. For those of you out there with an iPhone what are some apps you find useful? And for everyone in general, if there was one app you wish you had, what would it be?

That's great. I was thinking about making some apps for the i-phone but they make it nearly impossible if you don't have a mac. There's some serious money to be made in the mobile app sector for reletivle little work. Sorry I can't be much help but let me know how it works out.

What features does the palm pre have?

Touch screen, physical keyboard, all your basic PDA stuff. It will sync with google calender, you can sync your contacts with a bunch of different sources, and combine duplicates into one main contact. It multitasks fairly well. Bluetooth, wi-fi, gps. It compairs well to the iphone and android phones.

What programming language is the base for the Pre apps? I beleive that the Pre OS is linux based, but idk what programming languages the progrmas on it are done in.

As for as app ideas. Streaming content is huge, stream music from itunes, stream data from Tversity or Twonky, etc.

Id personally like to see a WHS add-in for the pre. similar to this link. 
http://www.wegotserved.com/2009/10/21/add-in-update-whs-mobile-v1-5-3/

I would love to be able to stream music/video/pics from my home computer/network to the pre.

I dont know if its built in, but if not an app that lets your pre act like an external hdd. Just to xfer data.

Again, if its not already built in an RSS aggregator to pull RSS streams into your pre.

All relaviely advanced functions i guess...to begin i think your best bet is like you said, random facts, etc.

What's your level of experience programming? That WHS thing sounds pretty cool but a bit complicated for a first project. How about a unit converter with a few extra features. That shouldn't take any longer than a day.

The webOS platform is programmed using a combination of CSS/HTML/Javascript right now. It's possible they will release a lower level language right now, but they wanted the rapid development this approach allows at launch. It adds some hardware function calls via their Mojo Framework API. As for my coding skills, I'm somewhat familar with C/C++. I'm good with manipulating data, but have little to no experiance developing UI. The most complicated peice of software I ever created connected to an IRC server and hosted stats for a PvP fighting type game. It was a few thousand lines of code. Nothing terribly complex, and it has been quite a while since I've done any serious coding. Just a few scripts to parse txt into different formats here and there.

Yes, the pre is running on top of linux, and it can be used just like an external drive just like any USB drive. Some ppl have even rooted their phones. There is no native RSS app, but a few exist. Streaming media is a pretty popular subset of apps already.

So the apps are written in java scripts for the most part? HTML/CSS are very easy to learn. I taught myself both at the same time in bout 3 months. Java script i know nothing about though, and id assume thats a little harder to learn.

Yea, HTML/CSS isn't that tricky, you just have to know the tags. I'm not very familiar with it but it doesn't scare me. Really when you come down to it, HTML/CSS just define an interface, and nothing more. Kind of supprised application development hasn't been hidden behind it for interface development in other areas besides the web.

As for javascript, it's a C like language. I need to grab a reference book, but I think I could pick it up rather quickly. I had a knack for programming, but was scared away from it as a career choice for a few reasons when I was younger. Obviously, being a "script" language, it is an run time interpreted language, and doesn't even compile into bytecode like java.

Yea the best way to learn HTML/CSS is to just use it, make a simple website. HTML simply contains the data, and CSS handles the presentation of the data. CSS is very useful because it works with basically all web languages.

Java script shouldnt be hard to pick up, given you have a background in programming, just not as easy as CSS or HTML