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A strong part of the foundational awesomeness of webOS is the notification system. Early on it consisted of a notifications bar that would pop up at the bottom of the screen on our Pre and Pixi smartphones and open to a full actionable dashboard with individually-dismissable notifications. With webOS 3.0 on the TouchPad the notifications were moved to a slot in the top bar (no sense in taking up the entire bottom on a screen as big as the one on the TouchPad) and gained the ability to triage through multiple notifications from one app. The only problem with the system (there are ways it can be improved, mind you, but this is more of an "it really should work like this" than "I wish it would do this") was that once you had dismissed a notification, there was no record it was ever there. The slip of a clumsy thumb and *poof*, it's gone, never to be seen again. Or your phone is restarted - something that's not entirely uncommon with webOS - and again, your notifications are gone. There's no way to get around the desire to say "I'll get back to that later, go away," because if you swipe it away, there's no longer a reminder that you need to take care of it. A huge problem? Not necessarily, but an annoyance nonetheless, and occasionally a frustrating case of "I'm sorry, I missed that *grumblestupidphonegrumble*". There was a period of time where I used Preset Reset to reboot my Pre every night for stability, until I became too annoyed by the fact that notifications of emails or Twitter mentions or the like were gone come morning (I had it set to reboot the phone at 4 am - it's very rare I was still awake at that hour). The solution? Badged app icons in the launcher. Yes, I'm proposing directly ripping off iOS here. webOS already has badging built in, at least in a sense - expanded dashboard notification icons get badged with numbers all the time. But the app icon itself? Nope. In practice, it'd be a relatively simple affair, enabled through each app's settings. Show notification icon badge? Yes/No. I'd also suggest the ability to select a color for badging; I'd prefer badging on my missed phone calls/voicemails and alerts from Calendar be more attention-grabbing than, say, how many unread stories I have in my news reader. Have your own thoughts on this or any other webOS Wish List entry? We'd be disappointed if you didn't. That's why we have the comments, it's your place to say how incredibly right (or horribly wrong) we are, plus there's a poll! And we have little doubt you have your own ideas as to what ought be on the webOS wish list, and so there's a forum thread just for that where awesome webOS dreaming is the order of the day. The webOS Wish List: Badged icon notifications View the full article

This tip is only for HP TouchPads running webOS 3.0.5 and LunaCE 4.9.5 or higher When HP released their Open Source "webOS Community Edition" for the HP TouchPad (not to be confused with Open webOS), the group at WebOS Ports was able to package up those changes along with a bunch of enhancements and released it as LunaCE (pronounced lunacy") in Preware. LunaCE is currently in beta so you will need to go through the process to set-up the beta feeds in Preware, which can be found at testing.preware.org. In addition, you will need to have Tweaks installed on your TouchPad to toggle any of the new enhancements. One enhancement that is available in LunaCE is the ability to adjust the Gesture Detection method when swiping in from the bottom of the screen (as long as you have Swipe up enabled on your device) to minimize your app. You have three options that you can choose from by opening up Tweaks and navigating to the Luna section Swipe - You need to perform a fast swipe up from the bottom of the device and the gesture will be detected when you pull your finger up from the screen. If you perform a slow swipe up, nothing will happen. This is the closest option to the stock webOS 3.0.5 experience Slide - No matter how quickly or slowly you swipe up, you just need to swipe up 15 pixels from the bezel of the device. You do not need to even lift your finger from the screen, just swipe past that 15 pixel line and the gesture will activate Fluid - This option provides the most natural option where the device actually tracks your finger and will show the transitional state of the app from active to being minimized. If you pick up your finger before the app is fully minimized, it will snap back to full screen Regardless of your choice, LunaCE does provide one additional major improvement to the webOS experience. On a stock TouchPad, a swipe up from the bottom may minimize your app to card mode, but it will also interact with the app. So if you are reading a webpage it will scroll that page, if you have a drawing app up it may draw a line on your swipe, or if you are playing a game that swipe may cause an unanticipated action. In LunaCE, all swipes from the bezel of the device no longer affect the current app, which is a great thing! View the full article

If you've done any tinkering around with the porting projects of webOS Ports, you've likely noticed the wallpaper they've been making use of. It's an image the sun rising over a foggy and rocky coastline. It's coloful. It's visually pleasing. It's nice. And it's time for it to go. The fine folks at WebOS Ports have decided it's time to replace their choice for the wallpaper, and they want you to submit your images for consideration. Officially the contest is to include the wallpaper on the Galaxy Nexus port, though it's possible the wallpaper could find its way onto other WebOS Ports projects. They're looking for images that are at least 1280px x 1280px (remember, Open webOS can rotate any which way), and of course it has to an image that isn't protected under copyright - i.e. something you've personally produced - and should not include the recognizable faces of people. Apart from that, it's a free-for-all. Instructions on how to submit your image are at the source link below (time to learn how to IRC and how to Wiki), and submissions are open through the end of January. So go ahead, dig up that awesome image of yours and submit it. You never know, it might end up installing along with every Galaxy Nexus Open webOS port. View the full article

We know it's tough being a webOS fan sometimes. You're over on your favorite social network and everybody's got these new iPhones and Nexuses and Lumias and you've still got your Pre and TouchPad. Sure, you want new hardware just as much as the next guy, but it needs that special touch: webOS. Thankfully, the magic of social networks makes it easy to share your love of webOS, and now we're all over Google+ too. That's right, peeps and peepettes, the latest news, reviews, editorials, and other simply amazing content of webOS Nation is now getting a thorough piping over to Google+. How does this magic happen? You can thank dlvr.it's brand-spanking-new support for the brand-spanking-new Google+ API. And a small amount of witchcraft. If you're not already putting webOS Nation in your Google+ circles, now's your chance to do it and have it really matter. And, of course, we're still rocking away on Twitter, going to Facebook to like all of the things, and watching the occasional tumbleweed on App.net. All up in your socials, man. Of course, there's more than just the glorious webOS Nation page on Google+, there are webOS Nation people on the network too. Feel free to draw us into your circles or whatever it is you do with Google+. No promises of activity from Derek (he's an antisocial hermit, ya'know), but everybody else is good for a plus or two. webOS Nation Mobile Nations Derek Kessler Adam Marks Ryan St. Andrie View the full article

Daniel Rubino was too busy brushing his lovely locks to share his links this week so, some older Nokia news did slip in here accidentally as some of you noticed in the intro. It was covered but if you're interested, you can view that story here. Mobile Nations Podcast Feed Mobile Nations on iTunes Mobile Nations YouTube Iterate 37: The future of making and selling apps Iterate 38: Aged & Distilled and Napkin The best calendar apps for Android Samsung 'Galaxy Note 8.0' purportedly outed ahead of MWC reveal Leaks suggest LG 'Optimus G Pro' coming with faster CPU, bigger battery, 1080p screen Rogers BlackBerry 10 training has begun - Slides show off BBM Video, BlackBerry Safeguard and more BlackBerry Z10 hardware shown off once again on video Watch BlackBerry 10 voice control in action Browse the web with stripped-down speed with wInNeR The webOS Wish List: Default Applications Meteroids is Missile Defense on interplanetary steroids Never mind iPhone 6 and iPads next, in 2013 it's all about iOS 7 and iCloud We’re reviewing Mac apps now! Kaleidoscope 2 and Napkin Apple, smart homes, and the connected future Huawei Ascend W1, the cheapest Windows Phone ever? January 31st aiming to be official start of Windows Phone 7.8 update program by Microsoft Microsoft reportedly putting Skype at center of communications for all devices and services View the full article

webOS homebrew developer 72ka - or as the humans say, Jan - has already left an indelible mark thanks to his highly functional and repeatedly improved Google Maps app. But he's not a one-trick pony, nor is he stuck in Mojo like the Google Maps app is. No, Jan can program in Enyo 2, and he's proving his chops with the newly-released wInNeR. The name might not make it immediately obvious what it is that wInNeR does, at least no until you break it down into its origin words, NASA-style: webOS Intelligent News Reader. wInNeR serves as a stripped down web browser that does a lot of stripping down itself, and we're not talking about the kind of stripping that requires platform heels and a pole. No, wInNeR takes the websites you point it towards and strips away all of the formatting, shrinks down the images, and serves it up to you in a compact, easy-to-read format that focuses on the text content. By way of example, a graphics and formatting heavy website like the desktop version of the webOS Nation homepage, which weighs in at close to 3MB, is cut down to 900KB by wInNeR. Granted, the webOS Nation mobile site is far lighter than that, but it doesn't include any images on the main page to achieve that feat. What makes wInNeR really unique is its use of caching; so long as you've got free RAM (which can be a hassle on webOS, we've learned over the years), wInNeR will cache up previously-visited pages, so going back not only doesn't require an additional load as the current crop of webOS browsers demand. So not only to you save precious KBs on your cellular connection, but you get to save that time you would have wasted waiting for a page you've already seen to redownload. That caching also saves your location on said page, dropping you right back where you were in an instant. wInNeR's not perfect just yet - it is a first-release homebrew app, after all - but it's a novel idea with excellent execution. Heck, you can even tweak the text size so it works better on your little smartphone screen. As an Enyo 2 app, wInNeR includes the framework core, so you can install it on any webOS device, even that first-generation Pre or Pixi. No promises about performance, but our testing on a Pre3 revealed a lean and speedy app that does exactly what it promises. So fire up WebOS Quick Install or Preware and give wInNeR a go, you might be surprised. View the full article

Way back with webOS 1.3.1 we got a surprise: the ability to set apps as a default app, letting you use third party apps as your default launcher, mapper, email, and the like. Only problem was, Palm and HP never got around to actually making the API for this public, so any app developers that included the code to allow their app to be listed as a potential default was denied access to the App Catalog. That's a shame, considering there are a lot of apps that could have stood to have been nominated the default app in place of what was built-in on webOS. In fact, we'd imagine that the lack of default app support probably held back some development - why bother making a browser for a small platform like webOS if users can't even set things such that links automatically open it your app instead of the default one? Granted, that didn't stop homebrewers, but they shouldn't have had that roadblock in the first place - especially with a feature whose groundwork was so publicly outed in the Launcher app menu way back in 2009. All we ever officially got? The ability to choose between Maps (be it the original Google or the replacement Bing) and a built-in carrier-driven navigation app if there were one. There are several replacement mapping apps in the App Catalog. There have been replacement browsers. There could be replacement email apps. The Google Voice apps could stand to intercept phone numbers and dial directly through the service. But that's not possible so long as the Default Applications option is locked down, but still peaking around the corner and taunting us with greyed-out options. Have your own thoughts on this or any other webOS Wish List entry? We'd be disappointed if you didn't. That's why we have the comments, it's your place to say how incredibly right (or horribly wrong) we are, plus there's a poll! And we have little doubt you have your own ideas as to what ought be on the webOS wish list, and so there's a forum thread just for that where awesome webOS dreaming is the order of the day. The webOS Wish List: Default Applications View the full article

When your webOS device is set to vibrate-only and a notification comes in, be it a text message, email, or app alert, there is usually no way to distinguish what that alert is for unless you physically look at your phone. There have been patches in the past that changed the length of the messaging vibration alert to a longer preset length, but now you can install a Tweaks-enabled patch that not only allows you to not only set the length of the vibration, but you can also set a vibration pattern. Once you install the "SMS Vibrate" patch by webOS forum member nickpl, just load up Tweaks and go to the Messaging section. There should be a new VIBRATE section with two options. PERIOD: This sets the vibration pattern. The length of time you enter here will be the repeating period between vibrations. If this is set to 1, you get one long vibration DURATION: The total duration time of the vibration pattern. These options use milliseconds to set the length of time. So a value of 1000 is the same a 1 second, 2000 equals 2 seconds, etc. Regardless of your selections, you will still get your standard vibration alert, but it will then be followed by the pattern you assigned above. So if you want a short vibration every second for 5 seconds, you would set Period = 1000 and Duration = 5000. If you want 10 short bursts over the course of 1 second, you would set Period = 100 and Duration = 1000. If you want a single long vibration that lasts a second and a half, you would set Period = 1 and Duration = 1500. Got it? Also, note that unlike many other Tweaks, this does not require a Luna Restart to take affect. Just make your changes, wait until your next text message/IM to come in, and then adjust the settings until you find something you like Note that this patch has only been tested on webOS 2.2.4 and may not be available on earlier versions. Source: webOS Nation forum View the full article

Back in the summer of 2011, Pixilabs Software released a fun, simple, and yet challenging game into the App Catalog called Tap-Tap Rockets. The concept was simple: take the classic missile defense game and wrap it around a rotating planet, and while Tap-Tap rockets was never a smash hit in the App Catalog, it did manage to garner overwhelmingly positive reviews from those who bought it. Fast-forward a year and a half to today, a time when many developers have abandoned webOS, and Pixilabs is back with a follow-up to Tap-Tap Rockets: Meteroids. Operating on the same basic concept as Tap-Tap Rockets, Meteroids places you in command of a rotating planet armed with missiles that you must fire to shoot down approaching asteroids. It's much like the Missile Defense of yore, though more challenging in that you not only have to time your launches so they will intercept with the encroaching space rocks of doom, but you have to deal with the fact that your launch platform is spinning around as you do that. Your little planet is protected by shields, but they can only take so many hits before you die off. For most games, if we told you that it only had nine levels, you'd laugh at the $3.99 asking price. Truth is, it's well worth the money. Meteroids requires some pretty serious coordination, timing, attention, and more than a bit of luck. It took us well over an hour to get a handle on things in order to survive long enough to rack up the one thousand points needed to advance to the second level, and honestly we're having trouble getting past there. We'll give it time. As you advance through the levels you're given more to work with and more to deal with - Meteroids will give you more planets to defend and more rockets to launch, but it'll also throw more at you by making the planets move or lobbing asteroids that take multiple hits to destroy. There's an extra bonus to be considered in that $3.99 purchase if you're all-in on the webOS ecosystem. Unlike with Tap-Tap Rockets where Pixilabs created separate smartphone and tablet editions, the webOS edition of Meteroids plays with one purchase on all webOS tablets and smartphones, even the lowly original Pre and Pixi running webOS 1.4.5. There's also the bonus of gloating - Pixilabs Software's website states that Meteroids will be coming to both iOS and Android, but right now it's only available on webOS. Hours upon hours of gameplay and first launch bragging rights? Suddenly that $3.99 for Meteroids doesn't seem so bad. View the full article

This tip is only for devices running webOS 2.x While GuttenPodder by Walter Koch is the latest Open Source update to the original webOS podcatcher app drPodder, but it's not just a simple clone of the original. It has added in some new tweaks such as new filters to view your podcasts and has fixed the podtrapper search that did not work in webos 2.x.x, but the most recent update to GuttenPodder allows you to add any local sound files--such as .MP3 or .WAV files--to your podcast lists. This is convenient for audiobooks or sound files that are not available as a podcast feed but can be downloaded elsewhere instead. All you have to do is put those sound files anywhere on the USB partition of your device and follow the directions below Open GuttenPodder v0.9.1 or higher Tap the sign on the bottom-left of the main podcast listing screen and choose "Add local media..." from the pop-up menu On the top FILTER line, you can enter in any simple search for the titles/names of the media on your device, although the search will exclude the "/ringtones" folder. If you leave the FILTER blank, it will pull in every sound file on your device It is important to note that this currently performs a case sensitive search of the titles of the media, not the filename itself. We have been told that this will be enhanced in a coming update to also allow searches of the filenames and remove the case-sensitivity. Under TITLE, you can enter an optional title for the "feed". This is what will show up on the main GuttenPodder homescreen. You can also set the icon image by manually typing in the path and filename on the ICON, although a default image will appear if you leave this blank Finally, there is an OPTIONS section you can set the sort order and also determine if you want to include any podcast file downloaded by GuttenPodder or keep the default to exclude those files. Tap the "Done" button This will take you back to the main GuttenPodder home screen. If this is the first time adding a local media feed, you should get prompted to allow GuttenPodder to access your media files. Be sure to answer YES You will notice a new "feed" has been added to the bottom of your podcast listing. It may just show a blank row with a spinning circle. Don't worry about that, and instead tap on that feed to open it up. Then tap on the refresh icon. This should refresh the feed with all the local files that were added to this feed From here, you can listen to any of those files just as you would any other podcast. You can even add the same audio file to any number of local media feeds, not just a single one. Have you added additional files to your device after you set up the feed? Just tap the refresh button again and GuttenPodder will add in those new files. And don't worry about deleting files from the app. Although it appears as if you can delete a file, this only marks it as read within the app; no local file will be deleted by GuttenPodder. So there you have it? You can now use GuttenPodder as a music player, audiobook reader, or just an app to organize your media. GuttenPodder is available in the webOS Nation homebrew App Catalog for free and is compatible with all webOS devices running webOS 1.4.5 or higher View the full article

Mobile Nations Podcast Feed Mobile Nations on iTunes Mobile Nations YouTube From the Editor's Desk: Leaving Las Vegas Qualcomm announces new Snapdragon chips that are fast as hell (Keynote) NVIDIA announces Project Shield Announcing CrackBerry's BlackBerry 10 Launch Campaign Headquarters! Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint confirm their support for BlackBerry 10 QNX unveils new Bentley Continental GT concept car In search of webOS at CES 2013 Russian developer bringing some Android love to webOS Steve Jobs tried to protect HP and Mark Hurd to prevent everything that happened Editor's desk: CES 2013 wrap-up HAPIfork connects your utensils so you can eat less, slower, and better Never mind iPhone 6 and iPads next, in 2013 it's all about iOS 7 and iCloud Nokia aiming for more innovation and greater range of Windows Phones in 2013 Teenagers: Apple no longer cool, Microsoft Surface is in More redirect problems as Google alters Mobile YouTube for Windows Phone View the full article

This tip is only for devices running webOS 2.x One of the most frequently requested features for webOS phones has to be the ability to simultaneously activate your Palm Profile on multiple devices and swap between phones as necessary. This ability was added to webOS 3.0 on the TouchPad, but does not exist for webOS phones. So, if you were ever to activate an existing Profile on a second webOS phone, it will send a wipe command to the original phone and you need to re-activate it from scratch when you want to return to that first phone. You can use some homebrew trickery to prevent the phone from performing a total wipe of the device by removing your profile from it, but what happens if you want to go back to that phone later on? Having to perform a full activation of the device is not a good answer. Thanks to the geniuses as WebOS Internals, you can use those steps mentioned above to prevent your device from being wiped, and then extende it to activate your Profile on multiple devices without requiring the need to erase and re-setup your phones each time you need to swap. It may not be the most elegant solution, but it works, albeit with a few caveats that you should review below. In order to swap profiles between devices, you will need to have the homebrew app Impostah installed on your device and take advantage of two previous PreCentral tips: Bypass Activation [webOS 2.x] and the aforementioned Prevent device wipe when activating another phone. Continue after the break for directions on how to set up your devices and swap your profile between them. read more View the full article

I've spent the entirety of this week in Las Vegas with the Mobile Nations crew covering CES 2013. CES has a special place in the hearts of webOS fans - after all, it was CES 2009 where the Palm Pre was unveiled to overwhelming critical acclaim, and CES 2010 saw the announcement of the Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus. Even after the debacle of the webOS hardware development cancellation, CES 2012 had OpenMobile showing off their intentions to bring Android apps to webOS. CES 2013, on the other hand, was entirely devoid of webOS. It's understandable, though I was surprised that HP didn't even have a space on the show floor (to call what Samsung, Sony, and the others are doing 'booths' would be to call Godzilla a salamander). Then again, Microsoft doesn't have an official presence at CES anymore either. OpenMobile was at CES this year, and this year they were focusing on building yet another Android app store - one that has nothing to do with webOS. If you haven't already, go ahead and check out all of the CES 2013 coverage on our sister sites Android Central, iMore, and Windows Phone Central. I'm going to head back to the convention hall and wander around. Rumor has it that Sprint's booth was constructed entirely of returned original Pre smartphones... My thanks to Android Central's Alex Dobie for helping with filming. View the full article

The story of what happened to HP is a complicated and at times a depressing narrative. Things were going okay until 2010, when CEO Mark Hurd was forced out of his leadership position due to sexytime-driven accounting improprieties. That kicked off the era of Leo Apotheker, a disaster on all fronts for HP and webOS. It's been known for a while that late Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs was a fan of HP as a Silicon Valley institution, and today Businessweek published an extensive piece on HP's fall from grace that included a fascinating nugget: despite HP being a competitor on many fronts with Apple, Jobs personally urged Hurd to reconcile with HP. Jobs went so far as to personally email Hurd within a few days of his departure, asking if he "needed someone to talk to" (Jobs had gone through a similar ouster, though with less sexytimes, from Apple decades earlier). "Hurd met Jobs at his home in Palo Alto, according to people who know both men but did not wish to be identified, compromising a personal confidence. The pair spent more than two hours together, Jobs taking Hurd on his customary walk around the tree-lined neighborhood. At numerous points during their conversation, Jobs pleaded with Hurd to do whatever it took to set things right with the board so that Hurd could return. Jobs even offered to write a letter to HP’s directors and to call them up one by one." Of course, Jobs's motives in talking to Hurd and attempting to smooth the ruffled feathers of HP's board wasn't entirely personal. Jobs believed that a healthy HP was "essential to a healthy Silicon Valley," with HP essentially standing as the founding company of California's technology hotbed. Of course, Jobs was not able to bring Hurd and HP's board back together, and in things unraveled very quickly with the questionable selection of former SAP CEO Leo Apotheker as HP's new chief executive. How different things would have been under Hurd is hard to say, but it's all but certain that webOS would have been given the time and the money it needed to succeed. View the full article

Over the course of the four years since the debut of the Palm Pre, the device menu--that dropdown menu that you get when swiping down from the top-right of the screen--has basically looked the exact same on all phones from the original Pre running webOS 1.0.1 to the Pre2 and Pre3 running webOS 2.2.4. Sure, webOS 2.0 added VPN to the menu and there are numerous patches that will help you customize it, but the basic look and feel of the dropdown menu hasn't changed, even on webOS 3.0 on the TouchPad. Hot on the heels of releasing an alpha version of his UI Scale patch to bring the 4x4 launcher back to the Pre3, homebrew developer extraordinaire Garrett92c (who has also brought us the Glass Effect Suite theme, AIOSettings, Dash Weather and much more) decided that he wanted to give the Device Menu a complete overhaul. Simply named "New Device Menu", his new patch for webOS 2.x phones converts the menu from a long list of vertically-aligned options to a horizontally-aligned set of tabs that split out each section as their own menu. Garrett has scavenged around all the existing patches to bring almost every conceivable option that is currently available (and even some that aren't) to make this the most complete Device Menu patch yet. Some of these options include GPS and Location Services options, a sounds section that gives you quick access to ringtone, media and system volume levels, a brightness level, a flashlight toggle, and a phone menu that adds toggles for the phone radio, data use, network selection and a roam only option. For Pre3 owners who use the "Cycle WiFi" patch, that's even in there, too, by press-and-holding on the WiFi status row. There's even a rotation lock toggle in there, but you need to have xwTweak homebrew app installed for that. This patch is just a few days old and is already fully-functional, but it is still in beta as Garrett has been releasing daily updates for users to test as he continues to add new functionality. The patch isn't in Preware, yet, but you can grab it from the webOS Nation Forums at the source link below. There are also a lot of great ideas that have been suggested to Garrett in our forums and he has been working to add as many of them in as he can, including making it Tweaks-compatible to allow the user to customize it. This patch should work on all webOS 2.x devices, but see the forum thread for devices that have had successful installation reports and note that there are separate patches for US and ROW (rest of world) users. The patch is naturally incompatible with most other Device Menu patches, such as Jason Robitaille's "Device Menu Megamix", sconix's "Advanced Device Menu", or GuyFromNam's "Cycle Wi-Fi in Device Menu" patch, but seems to work with almost all other patches out there, including the rest of sconix's Advanced patches. If you are interested in trying it out, check out the forum thread to grab the patch and use webOS Quick Install or Internalz Pro to install it on your device. Feel free to add your own suggestions to the discussion if you have any great ideas. And don't forget that homebrew developers like Garrett are doing this on their own time because they love webOS and want to continue to support the webOS community. If you like his work and want to show your appreciation, consider sending a donation his way. Details are in the forum thread if you are interested. Source: webOS Nation forums View the full article

The webOS Nation Forums have always been a font of awesomeness, and there's no sign that's going to stop anytime soon. Some of our favorite moments come about when somebody poses an interesting question and the community runs with it. We've been having one of those moments since yesterday, when mattmers asked "Is the OS market too full for webOS?" Matt put together a daunting list. On top of the mobile operating system pile are Android and iOS, with Windows Phone 8 and soon BlackBerry 10 fighting for a distant third place. Then there's the bottom tier, a group of operating systems fighting for recognition from a carrier or manufacturer, let alone sales. They include Firefox OS, Sailfish OS, our beloved webOS, and the recently-announced Ubuntu for phones. In an operating system market with two dominant players and two duking it out for a distant third place, is there really space for four different operating systems to be engaged in a battle royale for the attention of manufacturers, carriers, developers, and users? Compelling reasons to pick from this crop of unloved operating systems are few when there are established options like Android and iOS available for all parties involved. That's not to say that we don't love webOS; we do, but there's no way we could in good faith recommend to a friend that they go seek out a Pre3 or a TouchPad or hack Open webOS onto their Galaxy Nexus (at least not yet…). As Windows Phone and BlackBerry show, there's a question of if there's even a viable third place in this hyper-competitive market. Let alone a fourth, fifth, or sixth player. Apple, Google, and Samsung have succeeded at convincing users, developers, and carriers to go with their hardware and software, and it's increasingly becoming a two-party race in smartphones. The jury's still out on tablets, with Microsoft's Windows 8 and Windows RT still playing out, but with the high turnover and subsidized prices of smartphones it's getting harder and harder to break in with each passing day. Of course, there's a question of if webOS needs the be on smartphones to survive. Despite being on a dozen carriers world-wide for years and carrying the brand power of Palm and HP, webOS never quite took off like we would have liked. There's a multitude of reasons for that failure and we won't bother opening up that wound again, but it's entirely possible that the door has closed on smartphones for webOS. There's still definitely an opportunity for tablets, but things would have to get rolling in the very near future before that door closes too. In all of the rumors and rumblings of what HP/Gram is doing, we've yet to hear a peep about smartphones. In fact, the biggest story of what Gram is working on hasn't been a smartphone or a tablet, but a partnership with LG to produce a webOS-powered smart television. Whether or not webOS will be a good fit for an HDTV, well, we'll have to see it first before we pass judgement, but it speaks to the flexibility of webOS as a multi-purpose operating system. It's entirely possible we'll never see another webOS smartphone or webOS tablet, but that webOS will still live on successfully in other applications. But when it comes to fan bases and communities, that's much harder to maintain when you're talking about televisions or (just ruminating here) automobile nav units or refrigerators. But we'll cross that bridge if an when we get to it. View the full article

When Palm developed webOS, they did a great job of backing up the majority of your settings in the Palm Profile backup, such as your App Launcher setup, your synergy accounts, web bookmarks, contacts/calendar/memos entries to your Palm Profile, and more. As webOS progressed from version 1.0.1 to where it is now, the data that was included in your backup also expanded, now including your Linked Contacts and some application data if an app developer utilizes that functionality in their app. However, there are few big omissions in the Palm Profile backup, such as saved application/game data and homebrew apps/patches. WebOS Internals has helped fill that void with the use of the Save/Restore application and the "Saved Package List" feature in Preware, and we have documented all the steps you can take to successfully backup and restore your webOS data when you swap or Doctor your device in our Definitive Guide to Backing up and Restoring your webOS Device. However, there are a few additional steps that you may want to consider taking when reactivating a device to make the transition easier: App Tuckerbox Before you restore all the packages in Preware's Saved Package List, you should consider installing and configuring App Tuckerbox first. This will add the proper feeds to Preware that will allow you to download any apps from the official App Catalogs that did not auto-download to your device. This will occur if those apps were not compliant with your installed webOS version or were from the beta or web feeds of the App Catalog Use Save/Restore to backup additional system files and images If you have added some of the advanced scripts to Save/Restore to backup some additional system files or images, you will need to be sure to add those scripts back to your new device before running a "Restore applications" from within Save/Restore. Disable or Remove Voice Dial [webOS 2.x] If you had disabled Voice Dial on your old webOS 2.x device, don't forget to disable it again on your new device Restore your Text Assist learned words and shortcuts [webOS 2.x] Unfortunately, neither the Palm Profile nor Save/Restore will restore your learned words or shortcuts that you added to Text Assist on your webOS 2.x or 3.x device, but you are able to get a backup of those settings by using manual command line commands or using Save/Restore. From here, you can manually add that data back into Text Assist on your new device or follow the steps outlined in our Restore your Text Assist learned words and shortcuts tip to use command line to add them back. Reset default Email folders While your Palm Profile backup will restore your synergy email accounts and most settings, it will not restore any default email folders that you set for your Sent, Draft or Trash folders. Reset Just Type and Exhibition Settings [webOS 2.x+] While Just Type and Exhibition mode were two great features in webOS 2.x (and continued in webOS 3.x), their settings were not carried over when you restore your device. Be sure to go into your Just Type preferences to enable your preferred Quick Actions and Launch & Search settings, and open up your Exhibition app to toggle which applications you want visible in Exhibition. Check general settings Just as with your Just Type and Exhibition settings, your Palm Profile will also not restore every setting on your device. So, you may want to open up the various settings apps to make sure that everything is set to your own personal preferences. For example, open up the Screen & Lock app to adjust your screen time-out setting, set a power-on PIN or password, or enable Advanced Gestures to toggle fast-app switching with a full swipe in the gesture area. Or open up the Sounds & Ringtones app and make sure you have the right ringtone set for your device. Continue with the rest of the Settings apps Got any other suggestions not included above that you follow when you restore your profile onto a new webOS device? View the full article

Kevin, Phil, Daniel, and Rene talk about CES 2013, what they expect to see, and whether it's still relevant, then fight about ActiveSync, RIM vs. Microsoft, and what they want to see from Apple, Google, and everyone going forward! Apologies for the video quality, we experienced severe technical problems during the recording of the show, and while we're providing it for those who really want it, we recommend sticking to audio for this episode - check out the swanky new HTML5 player below. type="audio/mpeg"> Our podcast feed: Audio | Video Download directly: Audio | Video Subscribe in iTunes: Audio | Video Subscribe in Zune read more View the full article

If you're like me (and who doesn't want to be like me?), your webOS device is constantly full of multitasking app cards. Some are fleeting, around for until you don't need them anymore and then tossed off the top of the screen like the day's garbage. Others are important, and you keep them around because you don't want to deal with relaunching the app later, need it to be running in the background, or just want to have whatever's in that card available for quick reference later. For that latter category of app cards there's a problem lurking in your quick-gesturing thumb: the inadvertent toss-away. It's too easy, we know. You're busy closing away unneeded cards at the end of the day and before you know it you've tossed away the web browser card with that restaurant address you were going to need later that evening. Curse words fly forth as you're forced to reopen the browser, dig into your history, and find the lost page. But… what if you could lock that card and make it so you couldn't accidentally throw it away? Wouldn't that be grand? Yes, it would indeed be exceedingly grand. But locking a card should be a very deliberate action, something you can't do or undo accidentally. Our simple and straightforward proposal: pull down and hold. The current pull-down behavior in webOS varies depending on the version. webOS 1.x and 2.x treat a pull down the same as tapping on a card, merely maximizing the card. It makes sense - if pushing it away is closing it, pulling it down - towards you - should be the opposite, making the card active. But webOS 3.x left us scratching our heads, as pulling down on an app card instead triggers a slingshot that throws it off the top of the screen, closing any background processes for running built-in apps. Useful, but in no way intuitive. So our proposal is really two-fold. First: restore the pull-down-to-open behavior for cards. Second: add a pull-down-and-hold gesture to trigger locking a card. For a visual cue, add a red glow and a lock icon on activation, and have a translucent lock icon superimposed on the locked app in card view. Swiping up on a locked card triggers a vertical wobble (perhaps with a red glow at the top of the screen), and unlocking is accomplished by the same pull-down-and-hold gesture. Simple, intuitive, discoverable, and it doesn't get in the way if you don't need it. Most of all, it's useful and a life-saver of sorts. Have your own thoughts on this or any other webOS Wish List entry? We'd be disappointed if you didn't. That's why we have the comments, it's your place to say how incredibly right (or horribly wrong) we are, plus there's a poll! And we have little doubt you have your own ideas as to what ought be on the webOS wish list, and so there's a forum thread just for that where awesome webOS dreaming is the order of the day. The webOS Wish List: Lockable Cards View the full article

Open source! Free! Gestures galore! Today brought a surprise from London with Canonical's newly announced Ubuntu for smartphones. We're not going to be too critical of Ubuntu here, after all, we write about webOS here, we don't have many legs to stand on when it comes to mocking other operating systems. So… good luck with that. Canonical's Ubuntu operating system has ben around for years for the desktop and they've recently been making a good deal of noise about extending Ubuntu to other platforms, wanting to get Ubuntu running on screens big, medium, and small with the same general interface. You know, like Open webOS. Where Ubuntu 12 on the desktop is a fairly intuitive and easy-to-grasp user interface that relies on pre-existing interface conventions in common with Windows (pre-Windows 8, that is) and Mac OS X, Ubuntu for smartphones offers a fairly fresh take on the smartphone user interface. One can look at Ubuntu for phones and see where certain parts of the OS may have taken inspiration, with heavy doses of BlackBerry PlayBook and BlackBerry 10 along with measures of Android, Windows Phone, and webOS. Ubuntu for phones is far more reliant on gestures than any smartphone OS to date, perhaps to its detriment. Where gestures in webOS were relatively easy to grasp (swipe back, swipe up, and swipe off), Ubuntu for smartphones is entirely dependent on gestures to to the point that user interface discoverability has all but evaporated. webOS had some small discoverability issues, iOS and Windows Phone have always been perfectly obvious, and Android has greatly improved on the discoverability front. Ubuntu, on the other hand, requires knowing gestures just to get past the lock, er, 'welcome' screen. As John Gruber of Daring Fireball put it, "it’s like a desktop interface with nothing but keyboard shortcuts." Ubuntu for phones also faces the same set of issues as webOS: convincing manufacturers to pick it up and run with it. It's hard to say who has the tougher road here, though the two Linux-based operating systems both have a difficult path to acceptance ahead of them. And hey, they both run on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. That's fun, right? read more View the full article