Launched at the beginning of February, Palm’s Hot Apps competition promises to award $1 million to the top free and paid apps in the Palm App Catalog. Since then, the competition has chugged quietly along, but today got a boost in the arm from Palm. The newly-launched PalmHotApps.com lets you, me, and anybody else with one of those fancy-pants web browser things hop onto the interwebs and track the competition for themselves.

The website breaks down both halves of the competition, paid and free apps, listing the most-downloaded free apps since the start of the competition (currently lead by MojoJungle’s The Helicopter Game) and the highest-revenue paid apps since up to this point in the competition (YouView’s Visual Voicemail at the front). The site also tracks the progress of apps qualifying for the Hot Apps competition, rating their change in ranking from day-to-day and listing up-and-coming apps.

We also have gotten a better idea of what it’ll take to qualify for a piece of the Hot Apps pie: More than 11,625 downloads for a free app, or more than $513.81 in revenue for a paid app. Of course, that number is bound to rise over the remaining 78 days of the competition, but it seems that the barrier for entry is rather low for the time being.

A Hot Apps refresher: The most-downloaded free app between February 1 and June 30 will win $100,000, the #2-21 free apps will be awarded $10,000, and #22-221 will win $1,000. The highest-revenue paid app will net $100,000 at the end of the competition, while #2-21 will get $10,000, and #22-221 will win $1,000 apiece. That’s $1,000,000 total, split amongst 442 developers.

Oh, and if that June 30 date doesn’t seem right, that’s because Palm has extended the end of the Hot Apps competition from May 31 to June 30!

photo credit: Jon Winters
Die ersten Tage sind rum und ich habe mir einen sehr guten Eindruck vom Palm Pre machen können. Ich sollte dazu sagen das ich schon einen iPod touch besitze, welcher quasi ein iPhone ohne Telefon ist und damit ein Vergleich nicht ausbleibt.
Die Ankunft des Palm Pre und erste Schritte

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Mein ursprünglicher Plan war, einen Artikel zu schreiben, wieviele Minuten – ich dachte so an 15 Minuten – ich brauche, um meinen Palm Pre Start klar zu kriegen und mit meinem Mac zu synchronisieren.
Da die Synchronisation am Mac aber nicht ganz so einfach ist, werde ich mich daher darauf konzentrieren, einen Weg möglichst exakt zu [...]

Back on October 5th, Palm announced their App Distribution Program, slated for a December release.  In that press release were details of how developers can get their applications into the App Catalog, utilize the web distribution platform, and how Palm plans on embracing the open source community. Dieter wrote an interesting editorial – certainly worth a read – but our esteemed editor missed a nice bit of news. Buried down in the bottom of this press release was this little tidbit:

Finally, we would like to take a moment to thank our early access partners and developers who have been working with us to build our platform and program. Today these partners have introduced over 125 applications that have been downloaded almost 8 million times since the first webOS device, the Palm Pre™ phone, shipped just three months ago. It has been great working with you, and we look forward to more!

That’s right – nearly 8 million downloads on a 4 month old platform with only a handful of applications.  Last time we had a solid number (back in August), the download count was about 2.5 million. It’s not iPhone numbers, but we’re ok with that.

With the European launch of the Pre starting in Europe and the Pixi slated for release before the holiday season here in the US, the reach of the webOS platform is growing, and I think we can expect that 8 million number to rapidly grow.

Bringing the total count to a nice round 150 we’re welcoming one new app and three updated ones into the official App Catalog!

New:

• SPIEGEL ONLINE, Free, by SPIEGEL-Verlag Rudolf Augstein: Get the latest news from all across Germany

Updated:

• AccuRadio, Free
• Flixster, Free
• Shortcovers, Free

Well, with the German pre-launch of the Palm Pre happening today with those premier parties, it’s time to make way in the App Catalog for some apps for our friends that sprechen ze Deutsch.

New apps:

• billger.de, Free, by solute gmbh: German price retail shop price comparisons.
• Match ‘Em, $0.99, by Dynaptic: Match pairs hidden under tiles in a race against time. Congrats to Homebrew Graduate RoyS!
• My Loaned Items, $1.99, by MobiChip: Keep track of everything you’ve loaned to friends and family and send out automatic reminders to return your stuff.
• TechTray, $0.99, by KlikTray, LLC: Browse the news feeds of the top 25 news and tech websites. Another Homebrew Graduate, congratulations to cyberprashant!
• The Weather Channel, Free, by The Weather Channel: Location-based weather app with interactive maps and forecasts. Supposedly only works in the US of A, though we’ve received reports that it works up in Canada if you add via GPS.

Updated apps:

• AP Mobile, Free

Strangely, we’ve also gotten some reports of two more German apps that were in the App Catalog, but have since disappeared: VZ-Netwerke and ran, which have since disappeared. This may very well be linked to a statement on O2’s German website, which says that there will be some apps in the German App Catalog that will not be in the US App Catalog, and vice versa (the Weather Channel app’s page states that it is a US-only app).

Thanks to everybody that sent these in!

Klammert man Jailbreak und limitierte Ad-Hoc-Distribution aus, dann führt für (native) iPhone-Applikationen kein Weg am App Store vorbei. Entwickler zahlen jährlich 99 US-Dollar und können dann eine beliebige Menge an iPhone OS-Apps einreichen, die jeweils von Apple geprüft werden, um letztlich (möglicherweise) im App Store zu landen. 70% des Umsatzes verbleiben dem…