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Google announced the 2.2 update to their Android Mobile OS this morning. Codenamed Froyo this update brings a major feature along with it, full support for Flash.

When Steve Jobs let loose his rant on Flash earlier this month he challenged the community on the existence of Flash on a mobile device. Not just the existence, but a stable and good existence:

We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it.

Ginny Mies of PC World had a chance to play with the new version of Android and had some experiences with the Flash player. Some were good and some were just what we feared:

I tried playing a couple of beloved Flash games that aren't optimized for mobile and was disappointed that I couldn't play some of them without a keyboard. For example, with Dino Run, I had to press the "space" bar to do a certain action, but I couldn't access the touch keyboard (the keyboard only comes up when you're in a typing field).

So games are out, but Flash is all about video and the "full Web". How does Hulu fare on Froyo?

Missing from all of this Flash action, of course, is Hulu. I was really disappointed when I tried-and ultimately failed-to watch an episode of "30 Rock" on the Nexus One. According to Adobe, Hulu does not own distribution rights for their content on mobile devices and therefore cannot stream video to smartphones.

So the device is capable of delivering the "full web" but the full web cannot deliver itself.

What this means for flash on mobile devices has yet to be seen. This is one story that will not go away

According to the New York Times, Hewlett-Packard has agreed to acquire Palm for a sum of $1.2 billion.

“We’re thrilled by HP’s vote of confidence in Palm’s technological leadership, which delivered Palm webOS and iconic products such as the Palm Pre,” Jon Rubenstein CEO of Palm

I'm sad to see this happen as I think it spells the death of Palm and their innovation. I had looked at the Pre and Web OS as a real rival and inspiration for Apple and the iPhone. HP has a very poor track record for innovation and building inspiring products.

I bought my first Palm, the Palm III just out of college and I loved it. I had a few Treo's prior to the iPhone as well.

A sad day indeed.

Pop-Sci explains in detail what happened a decade ago when a NASA plane flew through a plume of volcanic ash.

Eyjafjallajökull has grounded planes across Europe, but most of us don't understand what the issue is.

After all, planes fly through lightning storms, heavy fog and the occasional flock of geese and come out fine on the other side with amazing consistency. But a volcanic ash cloud presents it’s own unique set of problems, particularly to an aircraft engine’s working parts.

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