News Reporter

TCL is resurrecting the Palm brand with a brand-new Palm, Inc. based in California. As we reported last week, TCL purchased the Palm brand from HP late last year, although at the time it wasn't clear what the company had planned. It's not at all clear what TCL intends to do with the Palm brand, although they seem to recognize the history that the brand carries. Says TCL: Palm has always carried a lot of affect and emotions. That's why TCL has set the direction to rebuild the brand involving Palm's very own community, making it the largest scale crowd-sourced project ever seen in the industry. Where TCL's Alcatel Onetouch has long produced entry-level and mid-tier smartphones, and it seems that TCL wants Palm to be a division that produces "a more-advanced device", with "breakthrough innovations" across the hardware, software, and even sales models. TCL's full weight will be behind Palm, touting 5000 engineers and 7 research-and-development centers around the world. When we'll see more from TCL and Palm isn't clear, but we do know one thing: Palm is coming back. The story of Palm is a twisted one, with Palm being founded as an independent company in 1992, being bought by US Robotics in 1995, and then 3Com in 1996, being spun off in 2000, split in half in 2002 and renamed PalmOne, merged with Handspring in 2003, rebranding as Palm, launching webOS in 2009, selling to HP in 2010, getting canceled in 2011, webOS getting open sourced in 2012, and the remnants of the Palm company (minus the branding) being sold to LG in 2013. It's rare that a company receives a second life as Palm did, and rarer still to be revived after being left for dead. Regardless, the Palm brand carries a lot of emotion for many, so it's good to see it coming back and we hope TCL produces a phone that's worthy of the name Palm. read more View the full article

TCL is resurrecting the Palm brand with a brand-new Palm, Inc. based in California. As we reported last week, TCL purchased the Palm brand from HP late last year, although at the time it wasn't clear what the company had planned. It's not at all clear what TCL intends to do with the Palm brand, although they seem to recognize the history that the brand carries. Says TCL: Palm has always carried a lot of affect and emotions. That's why TCL has set the direction to rebuild the brand involving Palm's very own community, making it the largest scale crowd-sourced project ever seen in the industry. Where TCL's Alcatel Onetouch has long produced entry-level and mid-tier smartphones, and it seems that TCL wants Palm to be a division that produces "a more-advanced device", with "breakthrough innovations" across the hardware, software, and even sales models. TCL's full weight will be behind Palm, touting 5000 engineers and 7 research-and-development centers around the world. When we'll see more from TCL and Palm isn't clear, but we do know one thing: Palm is coming back. The story of Palm is a twisted one, with Palm being founded as an independent company in 1992, being bought by US Robotics in 1995, and then 3Com in 1996, being spun off in 2000, split in half in 2002 and renamed PalmOne, merged with Handspring in 2003, rebranding as Palm, launching webOS in 2009, selling to HP in 2010, getting canceled in 2011, webOS getting open sourced in 2012, and the remnants of the Palm company (minus the branding) being sold to LG in 2013. It's rare that a company receives a second life as Palm did, and rarer still to be revived after being left for dead. Regardless, the Palm brand carries a lot of emotion for many, so it's good to see it coming back and we hope TCL produces a phone that's worthy of the name Palm. read more View the full article

We've been wondering for a while what is up with Palm.com domain, and it's looking more and more certain that HP sold the brand and trademarks to Alcatel Onetouch. The first hints of this came from the teaser when the website started redirecting to mynewpalm.com, with a looping video of the Palm logo with the text "coming soon" and "smart move" beneath. "Smart move," as it would be, is the slogan of Chinese smartphone manufacturer Alcatel Onetouch (a brand of Chinese electronics firm TCL). That's not exactly a lot to go off of though, but it was enough to raise suspicions. That's where webOS Nation Forum member Ederic Eder comes into play. He did a bit of diging and found that on October 31st Palm, Inc (still technically a subsidiary of HP) transferred ownership of the Palm name, trademarks, and logos to Wide Progress Global Limited. The transfer was executed on the Palm side by Rishi Varma (HP SVP Deputy General Counsel) and Wide Progress Global Limited was represented by Nicolas Zibell. We wouldn't expect either of those names, nor Wide Progress Global Limited to be familiar to you. It doesn't take much research to find that Wide Progress Global Limited is what's called a "shelf company", a corporate entity that's created and the tucked away for the day somebody needs to do something without exposing who's really behind that something. It's different than a shell company in that it was created with no intended purpose — it's "put on a shelf" until it's needed. A quick search revealed that the Palm trademarks are the only trademarks currently held by Wide Progress Global Limited. Nicolas Zibell is, according to the trademark transfer, a VP at Wide Progress Global Limited. But that's nothing — Nicolas Zibell is also President, Americas and Pacific, of Alcatel Onetouch and TCL. Alcatel Onetouch isn't a huge brand, though they have sold well over 300 million handsets. The company's strongest positions are in Asia, with very little presence or brand recognition in the US. So we have HP transferring the Palm trademarks to a shelf company that just so happens to be led by the same guy who is in charge of Alcatel Onetouch America. Interesting, no? We reached out to Alcatel Onetouch and Nicolas Zibell directly, both neither have responded to our requests for comment. If we assume that the trail of crumbs to this point is correct (and we see very little reason to assume otherwise), then the real question is this: what is Alcatel Onetouch going to do with the Palm brand? There are a couple of approaches to consider. The most basic is that Alcatel Onetouch has in the past produced phones with a model name of Palm, and they just are working to protect their own branding. Though why that would necessitate a shelf company transfer maneuver, we couldn't tell you. The more intriguing option is that Alcatel Onetouch plans to use the Palm brand going forward, either as part of a line of phones, or as their own brand. While an Alcatel Onetouch Palm line of smartphones seems like a reasonable proposition, Alcatel Onetouch America rebranding as Palm (or perhaps even all of Alcatel Onetouch) would be a very interesting move. Like we said, Alcatel Onetouch has very little brand recognition in the US, while the Palm name has significant recognition and customer goodwill. What was probably a few million dollars to buy the Palm trademarks (perhaps several million, though we have no way of knowing right now) brings instant brand recognition that would cost far more in advertising dollars. Of course, Alcatel Onetouch as Palm would still have to follow up with an advertising campaign for "The new Palm" (see the new URL at play there, eh?) as well as delivering quality products. The most impressive smartphone that Alcatel Onetouch offers right now is the Fierce 2 on T-Mobile. It's a rather unimpressive slate-style Android 4.4-running smartphone with a 5-inch 540x960 display (220ppi — the HP Pre 3 of 2011 had a pixel density of 260), octa-core Samsung Exynos 5 processor, 5MP rear camera, 1GB of RAM, and 4GB internal storage. It doesn't even have LTE. It's primary redeeming factor is its price, at just $126 off contract on T-Mobile (or just $50 on MetroPCS) Palm was something truly impressive. They pioneered the PDA and the smartphone. Palm webOS revolutionized the way we approached multitouch user interfaces so thoroughly that you can pick up literally any smartphone made in the past few years and find something that was lifted from webOS. Alcatel Onetouch has carved out out a comfortable little niche for itself serving the lower end of the smartphone market. We hope that if they're truly planning to go full bore with the Palm brand that they start producing hardware that's worthy of the name. Source: USPTO; Via: MakaPalm View the full article

We've been wondering for a while what is up with Palm.com domain, and it's looking more and more certain that HP sold the brand and trademarks to Alcatel Onetouch. The first hints of this came from the teaser when the website started redirecting to mynewpalm.com, with a looping video of the Palm logo with the text "coming soon" and "smart move" beneath. "Smart move," as it would be, is the slogan of Chinese smartphone manufacturer Alcatel Onetouch (a brand of Chinese electronics firm TCL). That's not exactly a lot to go off of though, but it was enough to raise suspicions. That's where webOS Nation Forum member Ederic Eder comes into play. He did a bit of diging and found that on October 31st Palm, Inc (still technically a subsidiary of HP) transferred ownership of the Palm name, trademarks, and logos to Wide Progress Global Limited. The transfer was executed on the Palm side by Rishi Varma (HP SVP Deputy General Counsel) and Wide Progress Global Limited was represented by Nicolas Zibell. We wouldn't expect either of those names, nor Wide Progress Global Limited to be familiar to you. It doesn't take much research to find that Wide Progress Global Limited is what's called a "shelf company", a corporate entity that's created and the tucked away for the day somebody needs to do something without exposing who's really behind that something. It's different than a shell company in that it was created with no intended purpose — it's "put on a shelf" until it's needed. A quick search revealed that the Palm trademarks are the only trademarks currently held by Wide Progress Global Limited. Nicolas Zibell is, according to the trademark transfer, a VP at Wide Progress Global Limited. But that's nothing — Nicolas Zibell is also President, Americas and Pacific, of Alcatel Onetouch and TCL. Alcatel Onetouch isn't a huge brand, though they have sold well over 300 million handsets. The company's strongest positions are in Asia, with very little presence or brand recognition in the US. So we have HP transferring the Palm trademarks to a shelf company that just so happens to be led by the same guy who is in charge of Alcatel Onetouch America. Interesting, no? We reached out to Alcatel Onetouch and Nicolas Zibell directly, both neither have responded to our requests for comment. If we assume that the trail of crumbs to this point is correct (and we see very little reason to assume otherwise), then the real question is this: what is Alcatel Onetouch going to do with the Palm brand? There are a couple of approaches to consider. The most basic is that Alcatel Onetouch has in the past produced phones with a model name of Palm, and they just are working to protect their own branding. Though why that would necessitate a shelf company transfer maneuver, we couldn't tell you. The more intriguing option is that Alcatel Onetouch plans to use the Palm brand going forward, either as part of a line of phones, or as their own brand. While an Alcatel Onetouch Palm line of smartphones seems like a reasonable proposition, Alcatel Onetouch America rebranding as Palm (or perhaps even all of Alcatel Onetouch) would be a very interesting move. Like we said, Alcatel Onetouch has very little brand recognition in the US, while the Palm name has significant recognition and customer goodwill. What was probably a few million dollars to buy the Palm trademarks (perhaps several million, though we have no way of knowing right now) brings instant brand recognition that would cost far more in advertising dollars. Of course, Alcatel Onetouch as Palm would still have to follow up with an advertising campaign for "The new Palm" (see the new URL at play there, eh?) as well as delivering quality products. The most impressive smartphone that Alcatel Onetouch offers right now is the Fierce 2 on T-Mobile. It's a rather unimpressive slate-style Android 4.4-running smartphone with a 5-inch 540x960 display (220ppi — the HP Pre 3 of 2011 had a pixel density of 260), octa-core Samsung Exynos 5 processor, 5MP rear camera, 1GB of RAM, and 4GB internal storage. It doesn't even have LTE. It's primary redeeming factor is its price, at just $126 off contract on T-Mobile (or just $50 on MetroPCS) Palm was something truly impressive. They pioneered the PDA and the smartphone. Palm webOS revolutionized the way we approached multitouch user interfaces so thoroughly that you can pick up literally any smartphone made in the past few years and find something that was lifted from webOS. Alcatel Onetouch has carved out out a comfortable little niche for itself serving the lower end of the smartphone market. We hope that if they're truly planning to go full bore with the Palm brand that they start producing hardware that's worthy of the name. Source: USPTO; Via: MakaPalm View the full article

What. Is. Happening? Two weeks ago we found out that palm.com was redirecting to mynewpalm.com. It was weird to see activity on the old domain after so many years of silence, and now thanks to a heads-up from @LuneOSfans we've seen another update: the orange globe palm logo. There was plenty of speculation about what was going on here, with nothing really concrete. The domain was registered by the same company that registered by the same company that managed the registration for gr.am. But what was going on with the Palm redirect? Perhaps somebody had purchased the Palm name and was setting it up for their new ocean-view condominiums or something. But now if you visit, you get a Palm logo with the cycling text underneath of "Coming soon" and "Smart move" (set in the Copperplate font, so sorry about that). It's a repeating mp4 video (here's the file) and nothing more right now (there's nothing hiding in the source that we can see). It's worth noting that this is the second-to-last Palm logo. They dropped the circular orange background and went with just the angular wordmark from inside well before the HP purchase. But maybe that old logo's being used for nostalgia's sake, to tug at our heartstrings. Either way. What. The. Hell? View the full article

What. Is. Happening? Two weeks ago we found out that palm.com was redirecting to mynewpalm.com. It was weird to see activity on the old domain after so many years of silence, and now thanks to a heads-up from @LuneOSfans we've seen another update: the orange globe palm logo. There was plenty of speculation about what was going on here, with nothing really concrete. The domain was registered by the same company that registered by the same company that managed the registration for gr.am. But what was going on with the Palm redirect? Perhaps somebody had purchased the Palm name and was setting it up for their new ocean-view condominiums or something. But now if you visit, you get a Palm logo with the cycling text underneath of "Coming soon" and "Smart move" (set in the Copperplate font, so sorry about that). It's a repeating mp4 video (here's the file) and nothing more right now (there's nothing hiding in the source that we can see). It's worth noting that this is the second-to-last Palm logo. They dropped the circular orange background and went with just the angular wordmark from inside well before the HP purchase. But maybe that old logo's being used for nostalgia's sake, to tug at our heartstrings. Either way. What. The. Hell? View the full article

Well, this is all together something unexpected. If you point your browser to palm.com, which you might do for nostalgia's sake from time to time, no longer are you redirected to the HP webOS museum website. Instead it, along with every other palm.com address, now redirects to "mynewpalm.com". After years of languishing away under HP, something's happening here. Digging in with the handy tools at domain name service Whois reveals that mynewpalm.com was registered by the blandly-named company "Corporate Service Corporation". On their website they advertise as being a "Digital Brand Services" company, specializing in digital brand protection. One may think that'd mean doing things like registering potential mis-typings of web domains (go ahead and type gooogle.com with three 'o's into your browser and see where that takes you). Okay, that's interesting. But dig a little further and look at the most-recent website associated with HP and webOS: gr.am. And, yep, it turns out that the domain name of the short-lived/never-born Gram subsidiary was also registered by CSC. Huh. So what's the plan with mynewpalm.com? Could HP be resurrecting the Palm brand? After all, the sale of webOS to LG was only of the OS assets and employees — HP kept the Palm branding. It's been a full three years since HP pulled the plug on webOS devices, but even then the Palm brand only held equity among its fans, and for a lot that equity was in nostalgia. HP's current handheld strategy has been a disappointing line of oversized Android deviced destined solely for developing markets like India. Perhaps the Palm brand could see a revival, but we hope that if HP's planning on doing such a thing, they give the name the justice it deserves. We are, after all, talking about a brand that ushered in the PDA, smartphone, and seamless multitasking eras. What do you think HP has in store with mynewpalm.com? It's gotta be something, right? Thanks to Remy X, Preemptive, and lc_lol in the webOS Nation Forums! View the full article

Well, this is all together something unexpected. If you point your browser to palm.com, which you might do for nostalgia's sake from time to time, no longer are you redirected to the HP webOS museum website. Instead it, along with every other palm.com address, now redirects to "mynewpalm.com". After years of languishing away under HP, something's happening here. Digging in with the handy tools at domain name service Whois reveals that mynewpalm.com was registered by the blandly-named company "Corporate Service Corporation". On their website they advertise as being a "Digital Brand Services" company, specializing in digital brand protection. One may think that'd mean doing things like registering potential mis-typings of web domains (go ahead and type gooogle.com with three 'o's into your browser and see where that takes you). Okay, that's interesting. But dig a little further and look at the most-recent website associated with HP and webOS: gr.am. And, yep, it turns out that the domain name of the short-lived/never-born Gram subsidiary was also registered by CSC. Huh. So what's the plan with mynewpalm.com? Could HP be resurrecting the Palm brand? After all, the sale of webOS to LG was only of the OS assets and employees — HP kept the Palm branding. It's been a full three years since HP pulled the plug on webOS devices, but even then the Palm brand only held equity among its fans, and for a lot that equity was in nostalgia. HP's current handheld strategy has been a disappointing line of oversized Android deviced destined solely for developing markets like India. Perhaps the Palm brand could see a revival, but we hope that if HP's planning on doing such a thing, they give the name the justice it deserves. We are, after all, talking about a brand that ushered in the PDA, smartphone, and seamless multitasking eras. What do you think HP has in store with mynewpalm.com? It's gotta be something, right? Thanks to Remy X, Preemptive, and lc_lol in the webOS Nation Forums! View the full article

Well, it was bound to happen eventually, and now we know exactly the day when HP will flip the switch on the webOS cloud services servers: 15 January 2015. Just barely six years after the Palm Pre was introduced at CES 2009, HP plans to shut off their last remaining expenses related to their disastrously-managed webOS experiment. The date also falls just short of two years after HP sold off their webOS assets to LG. It's a sad, but not unexpected day. And when the 15th of January does come, all webOS cloud services will go offline. What all does that entail? Here's what you won't be able to do on a webOS device come January 15th: Backups Restore New device set-up Password recovery App Catalog app downloads App Catalog app updates App Catalog app restores webOS system updates (you know, if you've for whatever reason not updated in the past three years...) It's unsurprising to have this come to pass, and we're at least thankful that HP is being forthright and transparent about it. As they say in the FAQ: Shutting down webOS cloud services is part of an orderly end of life program. HP announced the end of webOS devices (phones and tablets) over 3 years ago but the services were kept running to allow customers to continue to have a richer user experience. The user count has dwindled to the point where it is no longer viable to keep the services running. It's a sad day, and it'll be a sad day yet when the 15th of January comes and those servers go dark. But in the meantime, the webOS Nation App Gallery is still up and running. Yeah, we know, we're still here. Any developers interested in moving their apps over to the App Gallery are welcome to do so and can request access to submit apps here (select "Submit Homebrew App" as the category). We know it's not the same as the App Catalog and we don't have a system in place for payments, but what have you got to lose at this point? For those of you that are wondering how you'll manage in a post-App Catalog world, check out our guide for installing Preware on your webOS device. Source: HP webOS Developer Center View the full article

Well, it was bound to happen eventually, and now we know exactly the day when HP will flip the switch on the webOS cloud services servers: 15 January 2015. Just barely six years after the Palm Pre was introduced at CES 2009, HP plans to shut off their last remaining expenses related to their disastrously-managed webOS experiment. The date also falls just short of two years after HP sold off their webOS assets to LG. It's a sad, but not unexpected day. And when the 15th of January does come, all webOS cloud services will go offline. What all does that entail? Here's what you won't be able to do on a webOS device come January 15th: Backups Restore New device set-up Password recovery App Catalog app downloads App Catalog app updates App Catalog app restores webOS system updates (you know, if you've for whatever reason not updated in the past three years...) It's unsurprising to have this come to pass, and we're at least thankful that HP is being forthright and transparent about it. As they say in the FAQ: Shutting down webOS cloud services is part of an orderly end of life program. HP announced the end of webOS devices (phones and tablets) over 3 years ago but the services were kept running to allow customers to continue to have a richer user experience. The user count has dwindled to the point where it is no longer viable to keep the services running. It's a sad day, and it'll be a sad day yet when the 15th of January comes and those servers go dark. But in the meantime, the webOS Nation App Gallery is still up and running. Yeah, we know, we're still here. Any developers interested in moving their apps over to the App Gallery are welcome to do so and can request access to submit apps here (select "Submit Homebrew App" as the category). We know it's not the same as the App Catalog and we don't have a system in place for payments, but what have you got to lose at this point? For those of you that are wondering how you'll manage in a post-App Catalog world, check out our guide for installing Preware on your webOS device. Source: HP webOS Developer Center View the full article

If you can dream it, you can do it. Source: The Verge View the full article

If you can dream it, you can do it. Source: The Verge View the full article

September 9th, 2014, marked 15 years since the Mobile Nations story began, with the launch of Visor Central. A lot has changed in mobile tech in the years since, but one thing definitely has not — the passion of this great community. The response to our anniversary article was fantastic, and I want to thank each and every one of you for the congratulations and support you shared. It truly means a lot. We celebrated the day by recognizing our ten longest, still-active members and also by holding a contest where two members from each of our active communities could each win a $150 gift card to be used towards the purchase of their next phone. And the usernames of the lucky winners are.... read more View the full article

September 9th, 2014, marked 15 years since the Mobile Nations story began, with the launch of Visor Central. A lot has changed in mobile tech in the years since, but one thing definitely has not — the passion of this great community. The response to our anniversary article was fantastic, and I want to thank each and every one of you for the congratulations and support you shared. It truly means a lot. We celebrated the day by recognizing our ten longest, still-active members and also by holding a contest where two members from each of our active communities could each win a $150 gift card to be used towards the purchase of their next phone. And the usernames of the lucky winners are.... read more View the full article

On September 9th, 1999, the origin story for Mobile Nations began when VisorCentral launched from my student apartment at University of Florida. Immediately the website became a fixture of the Handspring Visor online community by delivering high quality and reliable news, articles, reviews, and an active forum. While today the Visor is a relic — *I'm sure many of our younger readers have never even heard of it before* — 15 years later we are stronger than ever delivering the same experience that made VisorCentral a success. Over the years we have navigated the many shifts in mobile platforms, with sites like TreoCentral and webOS Nation (formerly PreCentral) following VisorCentral as Palm ushered in the modern smartphone era. Today, Mobile Nations reaches over 32 million readers every month through Android Central, iMore, WPCentral, CrackBerry and our newest site, Connectedly. read more View the full article

If you create or edit documents with your webOS devices, you have a few third party applications available to you over and above the stock Memos app. One of these options is TapNote by One Crayon that will give you a single app solution that will work on any device running webOS 1.4.5 or higher (including the TouchPad) and will even sync your documents across all your webOS devices providing that you have a Dropbox account. If you have Dropbox sync enabled, you may unfortunately find yourself opening TapNote one day and find none of your documents are listed, nor are you unable to create new ones. Before you get worried that the app is broken and email the developer or give it a poor rating, know that this may occur simply because the connection with Dropbox got corrupted or your connection tokens expired. The good news is that this can be easily fixed First, open up TapNote and swipe down from the top-left corner of the screen and select "Preferences" from the Application Dropdown menu. You should see that "Sync with Dropbox" is set to ON and there will be a "Disconnect From Dropbox" button just below that. Tap that button and "Sync with Dropbox" will turn OFF. Toggle that switch back to ON and you should immediately get an opportunity to log into Dropbox and allow TapNote to access your account. Tap the green "Allow" button and you should be good to go. If the steps above did not work or if you were not even presented with the opportunity to log in to Dropbox, there is just one last option for you. You will need to completely delete TapNote from your device and then reinstall it from the App Catalog. Once back on your device, follow the steps above to connect it to Dropbox and all of your articles should reappear and you will once again be able to create new documents. TapNote (all devices) is available in the webOS App Catalog for $5 and is compatible with all webOS devices running webOS 1.4.5 or higher. You can also try TapNote Lite for free to try out the app, but will have some limited functionality. View the full article

Given the chance to do things over again, former Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein would not have sold the company to HP. When asked by FierceWireless about whether he would have done anything differently, Rubinstein said that he wouldn't "have sold the company to HP. That's for sure. Talk about a waste." Quite. We're still rather bitter about the abrupt cancellation of webOS, so it's no surprise that the man who dedicated years of his career and his reputation to webOS would also be unhappy with how things turned out. But as we've seen time and time again, Palm was often a victim of circumstance and political carrier games. The first step down the road to perdition for Palm was their launch partner: third place US carrier Sprint. Said Rubinstein: "We almost had deals with Verizon and with Vodafone, and in the last minute both of those guys decided not to go through with the deal, so we had a deal with Sprint," saying that it was "the best deal we could get at the time." But all of that is in the past. What's Rubinstein up to these days? As we've previously reported, he's joined the boards of both Amazon and Qualcomm, which Rubinstein says are "uniquely positioned for the future of where things are going." He also spends some of his time helping out some 'small companies'. And, of course, taking time off and relaxing at his Mexican villa from where Ed Colligan lured him away years ago. And as we've all noticed, a lot of what we love about and was pioneered by webOS has found its way into its former competitors, including yesterday's reveal of iOS 7. Rubinstein listed a number of features, including notifications on Mac OS X, multitasking cards (on, well… everything), Synergy contacts and messaging melding, over-the-air updates, and so much more. Alas, if wishes were horses we at webOS Nation have a cavalry that would make General Washington proud. At the very least we can feel validated that our mobile operating system of choice was in fact years ahead of the curve, perhaps too far ahead. View the full article

If you've been watching the webOS Nation Forums or the webOS community on Twitter, you may have seen the troubling reports that a vital "root certificate" on webOS devices is due to expire on July 23, 2013. This certificate is responsible for ensuring secure access to HP's webOS cloud services, including backup and the App Catalog, and once it expires, there's no accessing those services. It's a problem, a ticking time bomb, if you will. We've been wondering if or when HP was going to fix the issue, and indeed had heard rumblings that a fix was in the works and due - wait for it - in the coming weeks. Today we got word from HP that the fix is indeed coming. In fact, it's due today, and it's coming in the form of an update to the the webOS App Catalog. Updating one app to update a part of webOS isn't something new to HP. Back in 2011 they issued an update to the Maps app on webOS smartphones, that in addition to switching the mapping service from Google Maps to Bing Maps also installed Enyo framework support on the device. Granted, this isn't as much of a stealth update - the sole purpose of this update to the App Catalog is to install a new, later-expiring root certificate. The App Catalog update is for webOS 2.1 and higher devices only. For those running older versions of webOS, you'll have to go into the App Catalog and manually download the HP App Catalog Update app. Seeing as the update is to replace the certificate that expires on July 23, you'll need to do this before July 23. If you don't, it's still possible, but you're going to have to trick the system by setting your device clock back to before July 23, 2013 and then downloading the update. Once you've updated with the new certificate things should continue to work for quite some time. In fact, we'd expect a shutdown from HP's webOS servers before the new certificates expire. So you should be prepared for that too. View the full article

The email app on your webOS smartphone does not offer you a lot of options on how to customize it to your liking, with your only options available are to set your notification sound, set an email signature or reply-to address, adjust your sync and retention timeframe, or choose your default mail folders. However, thanks to the webOS homebrew community you now have some additional ways to adjust your email app experience. Homebrew developers Momouton and anseld1986 have released the Email Mega Mix as a Tweaks-enabled patch that took many of the best email-related patches available and then improved on it even further. While there are a variety of enhancements available in this patch, one section that you may find useful is the "Compose View Options." In this section, you can adjust six different tweaks for when you are writing or replying to an email. Three of the tweaks allow you to display or remove buttons on your email, while the other three will give you a pop-up confirmation screen depending on the action you want to perform. To activate any of these, just install the Email mega Mix patch (available in Preware or webOS Quick install) and then open up the Tweaks app on your device. Navigate to the Email section and find the "COMPOSE VIEW OPTIONS." Choose any or all of the following: Display Priority Button: Add a "!" button to toggle the importance level of the email, thereby marking it as "urgent" to the message receiver Display Discard Draft Button: Add a "trash can" button to quickly discard the current email, instead of having to needing to swipe down from the top-left corner to bring up the Email Application drop-down menu and select "Discard Message" or using the Meta-tap D shortcut Display Save Draft Button: Add a save button (it looks like an old school floppy disk) to save the current email draft. This just saves the current progress while still leaving the email up for editing Require Send Confirmation: Add a confirmation pop-up after you hit the "send" button to confirm that you would really like to send the email Require Save Confirmation: Used in conjunction with the "Display Save Draft Button" above, you can add a confirmation pop-up asking if you would like to save the draft. Require Discard Confirmation: Used in conjunction with the "Display Discard Draft Button" above, you can add a confirmation pop-up asking if you would like to discard the email when you tap the trash button. Once you toggle any of these tweaks, you will need to close and then re-open the Email app for them to take effect. There is no need to restart the whole phone. View the full article

RSVP right now to reserve the hottest ticket in tech! ** TICKET UPDATE ** We have maxed out our RSVP limit for today. Please come back to the site tomorrow at 12 Noon ET and we will be releasing a second wave of tickets. They're going fast, so if you missed out today be there tomorrow at 12 Noon ET. Can't wait to see you in NYC! Mobile Nations, iMore, and the entire network have just announced Talk Mobile 2013 and while that's exciting, this might just be even more exciting -- we're throwing a giant launch party in New York City on Thursday June 6 and we want you to be there! This is it, Mobile Nations, it's meet up time! I'll be there along with Georgia, as well as Kevin, Phil, Daniel, Marcus and a bunch of other Mobile Nations luminaries, and our special guests Cali Lewis and John P of GeekBeat.TV, and we want to see you there! DJ MIA MORETTI will be supplying the music, and we'll be supplying an open bar (meaning this one's 21-and-up), snacks, and all the fun you can handle! Tickets are free, of course, but there is one catch... They're going to go fast. Super fast. So fast that if you want to come, you really need to RSVP now as in NOW! Seriously, you don't want to miss this! http://talkmobile2013.eventbrite.com/ Not in the NYC area but still want to attend? If you're not in NYC, we have a contest happening right now where you and a guest can win a trip for two to NYC to attend the event. All you have to do is jump over to talkmobile2013.com and enter your email address to sign up for updates. That's it. We need to get the winner booked this weekend, so the deadline for the contest is this Friday night at Midnight PT. View the full article