I’m really impressed with Palm’s partnering of late. I have a Treo 700p. I’ve been thinking traitorous thoughts because the recent switch (with the p in 700p) to a new kernel for the OS (I think), the device has begun to exhibit icckkkyyy behavior. For instance, some software is getting the processor so occupied it misses keystrokes when I’m typing. The device misses maybe 2-4 keystrokes out of every 100 or so. That doesn’t sound bad, but it means I have to review my emails in detail because the email might get so mangled, it means something completely different and potentially very bad. If you can’t trust your device to capture every keystroke, you can’t trust your device.That OS glitch combined with the really lousy state of Good Software’s GoodLink (which provides Exchange synchronization for email and calendar on the Treo 700p) is really challenging to a sensitive user like myself. For instance, Good recently upgraded its system. Along with the upgrade came the charming bug that, when you search on a name, you can only select that name on the touch screen. Something happened to the keyboard-driven cursor in the upgrade. What a monumental pain for an action I take 10-20 times a day!But Palm is making it really hard to think traitorous thoughts by partnering with other companies to make the device incredibly useful. First of all, the 700p is an EV-DO device so web browsing and searching is actually useful and functional on this device. That’s the first time I’ve ever been able to say that. So I’ve been using Google Search on the web browser since I discovered how fast it is.Recently, I heard about Google Maps for Treo, which is a client program for the Treo that let’s you do Google Map searches but customized for the smaller screen. Very very useful for walking around and finding your way to an address!

Today I discovered Yelp Mobile. It’s a customer version of Yelp tuned for the Palm browser. Very very very useful for last minute searches for restaurants and other local services. (Yelp is really winning my heart, even over old favorite Chowhound.)

This is the point of partnership development. You use other company’s development to help you get through hard times. And Palm is having a hard time getting its OS up to snuff before someone else (RIMM? Microsoft?) figures out how to build a device that’s as easy to use and well integrated….