Regular readers will know that we were fairly taken with the Palm Pre handset when it debuted to great fanfare at CES in January. It's a touch screen device crammed with sensible features that uses Palm's innovative new operating system, Web OS. In kinder economic times, it would be a sure-fire winner and enough to re-establish a once great brand.

But in spite of those green shoots you keep hearing about things are still brutal, especially in the smartphone market, and Palm has probably left it too late. There's an interesting post in WallSt, a respected US financial blog, today that highlights 12 brands that won't make it through the next 12 months. There's good news - apparently Crocs, makers of those hideous plastic shoes, are on their way out, but the worst news of all for us techies is that Palm should in theory be toast by the end of the year.

Sure, it is only one blog's opinion but, without the Pre and the recent injection of $100 million capital, the company would have disappeared anyhow. Its trading position is awful with the company only selling 482,000 handsets in its last quarter, down 42% from the same quarter the year before.

Can the Pre save the day? Well it has mountains to climb and here's why...

Ok, so we have just about got over the initial excitement of Steve Jobs's speech, and now it is time to dig deep into the specs. And while there are loads of good things about the new iPhone - 3G, GPS, top battery life etc., we have found a few reasons to be a little disappointed.

1.) Still rubbish camera - Jobsie didn't mention it so we assume it is still a 2.0-megapixel camera. We have had those in the UK since 2003. For many Brits taking snaps with their mobiles a decent snapper is a huge thing and Apple has missed a huge opportunity here.

2.) No over the air 3G music downloads - Of course we want to download the new Coldplay single via iTunes on the bus. I am guessing it won't be far away, but come on Apple sort it. (Ed's note - errr, maybe not Coldplay...)

3.) Same storage of 8GB and 16GB - Sorry, but I won't be trading my classic iPod for an iPhone until we get comparable storage. It is a bit sad that the new versions have the same rather paltry storage as the old ones. 32GB, anyone?

4.) No MMS - Not everyone in our address book has email on their phones. It would be nice to have seen this added.

5.) No front camera for video conferencing - I was going to say who cares about video conferencing, but it would work well on that amazing screen, wouldn't it? And there were so many rumours about iChat AV, too...

Hate to admit it, but it is still a pretty impressive looking phone. Wonder what the Nokia Tube will have to offer?

Apple

Ok, so we don't take as gospel everything TechCrunch UK says, but they have it on, ahem, good authority, that the 3G iPhone will be available free to O2 customers. Apparently it will ship on July 12th and will come gratis with an 18 month contract. No word yet on minimum monthly fees yet.

Apparently existing iPhone owners will be able to upgrade for £100, which sounds in principle like a fair deal to us. The irony is that it does make those who stumped up £300 for the initial batch look a tad hasty.

Come on O2 let us know for definite!

You may have heard of the US mobile company Qualcomm, but chances are you aren't really sure quite what it does. Well you are in good company. I am in San Diego at the Brew conference (Brew is Qualcomm's mobile phone developer platform) and after several keynotes, roundtables and one to ones my head is spinning at the breadth of products the company offers.

So while it has been hugely successful in making the chips by which a large percentage of the world's mobile phones run on, it also has its own mobile TV platform, MediaFLO, is working on e-commerce via handsets and is trying to shape the future of social networking on mobile. And that's only part of the story. CEO Paul Jacobs assures me that 'there might be a lot of innovation at Qualcomm, but there is a common thread to it all. It is not disconnected.'

In working in so many mobile areas and given its close relationships with networks like Vodafone and Verizon Qualcomm is in a unique position to offer a perspective on how the future of mobile devices is shaping up.

Here then is Qualcomm's take on the how mobile phone technology will develop in the next few years as delivered to the press and delegates at Brew. In some areas it is pioneering applications. In others, like mobile TV, it faces some pretty stiff competition.

It has been very noticeable how slow the big mainstream laptop makers have been in responding to the phenomenon that is the Eee PC. You would have thought that given the speed of the Eee Pc bandwagon it would have been prudent to hitch a ride.

Apparently not though. In Paris today Toshiba is giving us the lowdown on the design attributes of its laptops but is adamant that it won't be launching an ultra small laptop any day soon.

Head of Product Marketing for Toshiba Systems Europe, Emily Shirley admitted that she has been impressed by the Eee Pc and its various clones, but stressed that for Toshiba building laptops was all about choosing the 'right components and at the moment the component choices in this sector don't match the product direction of the company.'

Off the top of my head I guess she is talking about the operating system and the lack of a hard drive, but who knows...

Imagine having an older sibling with similar tastes to you who can keep you up to date about the best music and movies. Well that's kind of the premise for an online tool brought to you by Eden Ventures (whose backers include Peter Gabriel).

TheFilter, which is still in beta and invite-only, uses a series of systems to enable you to build a profile of stuff you like. It then suggests stuff you might get into based on things like rating, purchasing and stuff you have chosen to listen to. Basically it is like amazon.com's recommendation system on steroids.

News prediction online is a real web hot spot at the moment with sites like The Industry Standard (yep the place which once housed the website of the innovative online magazine) now giving users the chance to say how they think the tech world will look tomorrow.

Hubdub the brainchild of Nigel Eccles, is by some distance the best so far in that it covers a lot more areas. So if you are a news junkie, love predicting sports results or just like guessing how long it will be before Britney has her next spell in rehab, you need to be here.

There's a lot of discussion online at the moment about which are the best starts ups in the UK. Number one, goes without saying is of course Shiny Media, publishers of this blog. But as for the rest well there are some amazing new web based innovations currently coming out of the UK. There's a list of 100 here.

The big issue almost all of them face is establishing themselves in a tech world that seemingly is so focussed on Silicon Valley. Some might move out to the valley to increase their chances of establishing themselves. Others will remain wedded to the UK. After all a London base didn't stop the founder of Last FM from creating a company that sold for hundreds of millions of pounds.