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Engadget is reporting that mobile user interface designer Matias Duarte, the man who created the highly successful Sidekick and Helio UI / user experiences, left Helio in 2007 and quietly went to work for Palm. Not only did he switch companies, he took his entire design team with him. Their mission? To create the linux-based, much anticipated Palm OS Mark II codenamed Nova. His new title is apparently Senior Director, Human Interface and User Experience, which sounds both important and vague as all good titles should. Engadget contacted Palm, and the company confirmed that Duarte is indeed an employee there now.

What does this mean? Well, first of all if Duarte and his A-Team only came into the project in 2007 it means that likely a few Nova UIs have already been created and scrapped since Palm started work on this project back in, oh, 1956. It could also mean that up until 2007 most of the work was on the Linux based guts of the OS and not so much on the UI. Either way, the past is past and all that should matter to the company is the 2009 roll out of the new Palm OS. I think Duarte’s involvement is an excellent sign that Palm is fully committed to bringing the best people on board for Nova and understand that these days, it is all about the UI. Duarte’s work for Sidekick was highly innovative and definitely blazed a trail that most mobile OS’s have followed since. It also means that it seems Palm gets that this OS may very well make or break the company. They can only take so many Foleos.

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By day a department manager and writer for a major network device vendor...by night Zealot stalks the mean magnetic streets, striking fear into the hearts of bandwidth abusers and theme park mascots. Zealot has been involved with mobile devices for more than a decade now, starting off with dumb phones, moving to PDAs and then to smartphones, notebooks and netbooks with the odd PMP thrown in. Most of his mobile time currently is spent on a Treo Pro, Zune HD, Thinkpad T61, Gigabyte M912M or a Hackintoshed Compaq Mini 704. He proudly groks the Geek community and considers himself a Neo Maxi Zune Dweebie (thanks Will Wheaton!).