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Foleo Whiff Clouds Hawkins' Future

In the wake of the humiliating cancellation of the Foleo, which got an overwhelming razzberry after its debut onstage at Walt Mossberg's "D" Conference, most observers are asking "What does this mean for the future of Palm?" My question is, "What does this mean for the future of Jeff Hawkins?"

The inventor of both the original Palm Pilot and the flagship Treo mobile handheld device, Hawkins can claim large credit for having shaped the mobile computing industry as we know it today. He staked his considerable reputation on the Foleo, calling it "the most exciting product I've ever worked on." Now, he's suffered the most visible setback of his storied career – it's like Derek Jeter pulling a Bill Buckner.

Unsurprisingly, Hawkins is unavailable for comment today, but Palm has made it clear that his position at the company will be unaffected. In announcing the Foleo throwaway, Palm CEO Ed Colligan went out of his way to say, "Jeff Hawkins and I still believe that the market category defined by Foleo has enormous potential." At least one observer, New York Times Silicon Valley reporter John Markoff, believes that the Foleo was a flawed harbinger of a powerful new class of wireless, hard-disk-free computers called "Cloudbooks."

I've interviewed Hawkins a couple of times, and he's the prototypical Silicon Valley visionary, a brilliant guy who truly believes in the potential of the products he designs to change people's lives (as opposed to the legions of tech executives who say that while keeping one eye on the stock ticker). He could be off designing a new sailboat (one of his other passions). My bet is he's going to hang in not only at Palm but at Numenta, his offshoot venture that last week released the Windows version of its leading-edge product "NuPIC" (Numenta Platform for Intelligent Computing, which is based on the way the brain acquires and processes information.)

(An aside on Numenta: in today's edition of his Strategic News Service newsletter, which doesn't mention Hawkins or Numenta, seldom-off-the-mark tech pundit Mark Anderson writes, "I believe that the study of biology will inform future engineering designs of all technology disciplines, including (and not limited to) computer design, chip design, and software design.")

That being said, things don't look too rosy at Palm for the founder. Not only was Foleo a major whiff, but the restructuring of the board – bringing on three new directors including Roger McNamee of new primary investor Elevation Partners and the former hardware design maven at Apple, Jon Rubinstein – is a clear signal of a reduced role for Hawkins. Wall Street applauded the eight-sixing of the Foleo, and Colligan is surely right when he says that Palm must concentrate on its new platform in order to become a player again in the fast-moving mobile-computing market.

You could look at it this way: Hawkins is still two out of three on industry-changing products, and Numenta may yet bring him to three of four. But whether he'll get another at-bat (Editor's note: Enough with the baseball metaphors!) at Palm is doubtful.

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