And yet, the company appears to have lost its primary differentiating factor. On the one hand, it's adding a new market to its offerings. On the other, it's also a very small fish in what's now a much, much bigger pond. Can Palm differentiate itself against other Pocket PC makers?

Had PalmSource still been involved, I would have given an unqualified "Yes". PalmSource's HotSync technology is orders of magnitude less annoying and less problematic than Microsoft's ActiveSync, for example. But Palm just lost much of its software brain-trust. Without PalmSource's developers, can it make the Pocket PC less annoying than it is?

Personally, I'd like to see a far more clearly articulated strategy from Palm. I'd like to see a specific plan for how it's going to court and keep a developer community that's currently in a basic needs survival panic. I'd like to see a specific plan for where it's going with Palm OS-based devices and where its going with Windows Mobile devices. I'd like to see a specific plan that explains how supporting two mobile operating systems is good for its long-term business strategy. And, well, I'd like to see a long-term strategy that makes sense.

And, if I were an investor, I'd really like the only surprises to be how cool the new products are.

David Gewirtz is the author of How To Save Jobs and Where Have All The Emails Gone? For more than 20 years, he has analyzed current, historical, and emerging issues relating to technology, competitiveness, and policy. David is the Editor-in-Chief of the ZATZ magazines, is the Cyberterrorism Advisor for the International Association for Counterterrorism and Security Professionals, and is a member of the instructional faculty at the University of California, Berkeley extension. He can be reached at david@zatz.com and you can follow him at http://www.twitter.com/DavidGewirtz.