Palm Accidentally Outs The Treo Pro. Again.

Whether or not it was fully intentional or official, the Palm Treo Pro made another appearance this morning, this time on TheNewsMarket.com. The source for the story was accredited to Palm, but it has since been pulled. Palm, first you accidentally leak details on your own site, and then through a media organization. What gives?

Man, how does stuff like this get bungled so badly? I can sort of understand when an employee accidentally posts something to a company Web page that happens to be public. Perhaps that employee thought that was a site only accessible to Palm employees. At least there's a plausible explanation for that.

But firing off a press release through TheNewsMarket.com, which then forwarded me an e-mail with the subject heading "Palm Unveils Treo Pro Smartphone", and then redacting the story? What the?

The e-mail I received from TheNewsMarket.com reads, "Palm has unveiled a new mobile device, the Treo Pro smartphone. The new phone features a one-touch Wi-Fi button, GPS, Windows Mobile 6.1, and a high-resolution flush color touch screen. Available video includes the Treo Pro smartphone and Palm headquarters." Palm is cited by TheNewsMarket.com as the source for the story. Clicking on the link early this morning, I was able to see some video of the new device. As I reported last week, it looks like a good, if incremental, update to the Palm form factor.

I checked back again after a meeting I had this morning, and the story had since been pulled.

Palm, who is in charge over there? If you're going to announce something, announce it. Even if the news wasn't supposed to break this morning, pulling the story just makes you look all the more incompetent. Everyone makes mistakes, but this is one that Palm should have owned.