Back in August, while we were in the middle of confirming an exodus of talent from Palm after their acquisition by HP, I specifically asked them about the status of two guys: Ben Galbraith and Dion Almaer. Palm refused to say anything about them. Perhaps now we know why.

As both have confirmed on their personal blogs today, as well as the HP/Palm Dev Center blog, they’re leaving the company as well. This is a big blow to the Palm platform as the two lead the important developer relations team for the company. It was their jobs to get people excited and developing for webOS. Now that task falls to HP.

The two lasted barely a year at Palm. When they were hired last September, it was considered a big coup, as the two are hugely respected in the web development community thanks to their work with Mozilla, and well-known thanks to their involvement with the blog Ajaxian. And the company wasted little time getting them out there on the talking circuit to ramp up interest in webOS.

So why are they leaving? Almaer compares working for a big company to a wedding, and a small company as a first date. As he writes today, “I am not looking to dance down the aisle just yet, no matter how pretty the bride is “. As such, he and Galbraith are starting their own new company. They aren’t sharing too much just yet beyond the fact that they’re interested in mobile, HTML5, JavaScript, and the idea of “open”.

Here’s a key blurb from Almaer’s post:

If you look at our history with mainframes, PCs, and gaming consoles, they have all be closed proprietary systems. As developers we have been beholden to the vendors. When we are both aligned, things can work out, but as soon as the company has a change in strategy and we misalign, developers are often left by the wayside. This mirrors the world of dictatorships. If you could guarantee your dictator is fully aligned with you there is a good chance that the system will be far more efficient than a democracy. History has taught us though that 99.9% of the time this isn’t the case. The Open Web gives us an escape valve. It has its own problems and complexities (just as democracy), but that is all critically worth it.

So who is left of the key Palm team? Pretty much none of the execs beyond CEO Jon Rubinstein. And a bunch of other key people have trickled out over the past few months as well.

Almaer and Galbraith will be consulting for HP as the works continues on webOS. But it’s pretty much a child being raised in a foster home at this point. Sometimes that works out, sometimes it doesn’t. Let’s hope it’s the former in this case.

• Zynga Accuses Playdom of Stealing Trade Secrets; Judge Issues…
• Zune Expands Media Services In Many, Many Countries

In November 2009, Ben Tseitlin was driving along on the 280 highway between San Francisco and Palo Alto when he noticed something weird. There was a Toyota Prius next to him with a weird spolier-like thing on the roof. And on top of that was some sort of spinning contraption. It was weird enough that Tseitlin decided to take a video of it and posted it to his Facebook page, guessing it was sort of test wind-powered Prius. Little did Ben know at the time, it was actually something much more.

What Tseitlin captured, of course, was the Google self-driving car. The secret project, which Google revealed for the first time today, is a combination of different technologies developed by Google that will allow a car to drive itself — yes, even on the highway. Google has disclosed that they’ve been testing these cars “recently“, but they’ve clearly been testing them for longer than that, as Tseitlin’s video proves. The fact that these specially-equipped Priuses (and one Audi TT) have racked up over 140,000 miles (1,000 of while have been completely human-free) on the road, suggests a longer cycle of testing as well.

One of the most interesting aspects of this whole project is that local authorities were fine with Google road-testing these cars. “We’ve briefed local police on our work,” Google noted today and said that human beings are always present in the driver’s seat when the cars are on the road just in case a manual override is needed. The only accident over all these months involved someone else rear-ending one of the cars.

Tseitlin tells us that he’s actually seen the cars around a few other places as well in the past several months. A commenter on his Facebook post notes the same thing.

Google’s secret project has been driving next to many of us all these months and we never ever realized it. That won’t be the case anymore. Watch Tseitlin’s video below.

• “Ask A VC” Guest Swap: Kopelman Out; Hirshland In
• Zynga Investor Calls Scamville Debate Irrelevant And Unfair

The world of media distribution is a bad place to be right now. What with major labels all wanting everything from everybody, people like Apple and Microsoft vying for exclusive content, and a ton of different laws governing all this international trade stuff, I’m surprised anybody gets anything done at all. But Microsoft has put in the work and they’re rolling out their Zune music and video services to a bunch of Europe. International reader, you may be on the list.

Of course, pricing and availability for certain programs and features differs from country to country, because a simple worldwide distribution platform is a fairy tale we tell our children, or a scary tale music execs tell theirs. There are variations.

Continue reading this story…

• Zune HD getting Xvid, Smart DJ, ever more appealing
• Sergey Brin Donates $1 Million To Organization That Helped Him Migrate…

When Blippy was looking for a little help creating an overview video for their service, I recommended that they take a look at Mountain View based Transvideo Studios. I know executive producer Rico Andrade there fairly well and have seen some of the work they’ve done for Gmail (another), Box.net, Facebook, Mint.com (very dramatic) and others. It’s high quality stuff, and can be aimed at users, partners, advertisers, etc. depending on what audience you want.

We’ve ranted before about the power of a good demo video to tell a story. Cash strapped startups can simply do one themselves with screen capture software and iMovie, or whatever. Or you can spend a few thousand dollars and get something professionally done. Either way it’s just a good way to communicate what your startup does.

Here’s the final Blippy video, which makes the controversial service look quite cute and cuddly (see the Transvideo blog for more details):

• Zune Expands Media Services In Many, Many Countries
• Welcome to the next Engadget