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In her Fox Business Network interview last month HP CEO Meg Whitman all but confirmed that HP would in fact be stepping back into the smartphone market all the while inferring that said smartphone may already be in the pipeline. Despite owning their own mobile operating system - our beloved webOS - nobody assumed that HP would even conceive the thought of giving webOS another go after their floundering attempt the first time around. Instead, the speculation instantly pointed to Microsoft's upcoming Windows Phone 8 operating system, a thought that makes a lot of since given HP and Microsoft's long standing relationship and HP's plans to make Windows 8 tablets in the near future. Then out of nowhere a GLBenchmark log containing a 'bender' device manufactured by 'hp' running Android 4.0.4 hit the interwebs. Of course, those sorts of logs can be easily faked, but it certainly kicked into high gear the speculating about HP's supposed upcoming return to smartphones. Fast forward to this week's HP analyst day. During the meeting, Whitman reportedly admitted that her prior comments in regards to HP entering the smartphone market had created a bit of a ruckus. She then went on to state: "We don't have any plans to introduce a smartphone in 2013, but we've got to start thinking about what is our unique play, how do we capture this element of the personal computing market?" So 2013 won't be the year of the return of the HP smartphone. It'll be the year that they think about the return of the HP smartphone. HP's PC business is continuing to falter, and even in spite of their denials of this becoming the "post-PC era", the company knows that mobile is going to have to be a part of their future. They even created a new business unit just for mobile devices like tablets and smartphones (despite already having one that they're spinning off). The mobile device market is rapidly growing. Things have advanced a long way in the past year, and there's no telling how far forward we'll have moved in mobility by the time 2014 hits and HP's maybe ready to put out a new smartphone. No matter what the operating system HP's new smartphone is destined to run, they'd be well adviced not to take too long before the market gets too far away from them. Also, you know, consider using webOS. It'll cost lots of money regardless of what path HP takes, might as well try a unique one (again). Nudge nudge, wink wink. View the full article

Less than a week ago, HP released the 1.0 version of Open webOS. The updated open source version of webOS wasn't released in a form ready-to-install on any particular device, but the inclusion of OpenEmbedded meant that Open webOS was at least capable of running on a variety of hardware. It only took a few hours for the intrepid developers of WebOS Ports to get Open webOS booted on a Samsung Galaxy Nexus. It wasn't pretty, but it as a proof of concept it was a success. At the time, the code for the Galaxy Nexus port wasn't available publicly, but today WebOS Ports opened the doors to their porting work for the Galaxy Nexus, offering up everything you'll need to get this early attempt at Open webOS up and running on modern hardware. Just as things were last week, there are still some pretty significant holes to be filled before this becomes something you'll want to run on a daily driver device. Important stuff like camera and Bluetooth support are still missing and the video acceleration to have a more smooth operational experience is described as being "pre-Alpha". Even with the current unfinished state of the build we're still psyched to see it made available. Not just for the thrill of booting webOS on new hardware, but also because making it publicly open source in typical WebOS Internals style means that other interested developers are going to be able to pitch in to improve and move along the porting process. View the full article

While fans of webOS might feel they've been slighted over the years, our anguish is a different beast than that of the MeeGo fan. If you're not familiar with MeeGo, or even aware of it, we wouldn't blame you. MeeGo was introduced in early 2010 by Nokia and Intel. It was the combination of Intel's Moblin development efforts and Nokia's Maemo, and it was supposed to represent the future for both companies. A year later, Microsoft and Nokia shacked up together, and where Microsoft's Windows Phone OS took the high- and middle-tiers of Nokia's smartphone strategy, Nokia's old workhorse Symbian retained the bottom tier. MeeGo was unceremoniously put out to pasture, with the too-far-in-development-to-kill Nokia N9 getting released later that year as the world's first and so far only MeeGo device. Thing is, everybody we've talked to who has used an N9 rather liked MeeGo. It's a unique OS and very much gesture-oriented. But having been released on only one device with no fanfare and certainly not much in the way of carrier support, it never took off. But then, it also never got established in the minds of consumers and then yanked as webOS was, thus avoiding being termed a failure (as webOS is so often branded, in spite of the failure being one of patience, not product). Unlike webOS, however, MeeGo has been open source from the start. Earlier this year, a group of former Nokia employees that had worked on MeeGo and the N9 formed a company called Jolla, with the express purpose of releasing a new phone running MeeGo. We've been cheering them on a bit, but in a smartphone landscape dominated by multi-billion-dollar companies like Apple, Google, and Samsung with big players like Microsoft willing to put down their own billions, we weren't ever really optimistic about the chance for little Jolla. read more View the full article

Maybe it's a good thing the webOS GBU is going to be divorcing splitting itself from HP, as the parent company is gearing up for a year that even has pessimistic analysts and investors caught off guard. HP today issued guidance for fiscal year 2013, expecting profits to come it at $3.40-$3.60 a share, which is well under the $4.16 average guesstimate given by the analysts that cover HP. Normally those analysts aren't far off, but a miss this big is cause for alarm - as indicated by the nearly 13% drop in HP's share price today. The drop in earnings is expect to be a "broad-based profit decline", i.e. HP expects a drop in profit across their entire business (enterprise services in particular is expecting the coming year to have revenues lowered by 13% and profits at next to nothing). In a weird statement, according to Business Insider, HP CEO Meg Whitman told investors that the company will be "more contained" in 2013. Whatever that means. By 2016, HP expects their revenues "to be growing in line with gross domestic product" with profits growing faster than that, thanks to "industry-leading margins and disciplined capital allocation." In other words, HP wants to operate on a fiscal sense more like Apple (high margin, low cost), though for that to happen they'll have to continue to make significant changes to the way they do business, starting by making all of their products more desirable. View the full article

This tip should work on any devices running webOS 2.0 and higher If you have been a victim of the "Application database is full" error on your webOS device, you know what a devastating issue this can be. If you have not seen this error, consider yourself lucky. The "application database" that is referenced here is not the USB drive on your device, but rather the internal database that was introduced in webOS 2.0 that manages a lot of data on your device. And if it gets full, there is no place to store any more data. You may get some advance warnings that will tell you to try deleting calendar entries, reducing the number of emails you save and even trying remove music, movies or documents from your USB drive, but most likely none of that will work and you will eventually be alerted that the database is full and you need to restart your device. And unfortunately, it doesn't make it clear that it will essentially perform an "erase apps and data" and log you out of your profile, requiring you to reactivate your device and log back in, also losing your application data and settings. And to add insult to injury, you may log back in to your profile and still get that error once you activate it again. Although there is no official fix from Palm/HP on this, you can always count on the homebrew community to get your back. In this case, it's Donald Kirker, webOS developer and former Intern for both HP and Palm. The problem stems from the fact that the internal partition that the database is saved to is only 135 MB big so it doesn't take a lot of data to fill this up. Donald's solution is to increase this partition by reducing the space available on the USB drive. To ensure that you don't run into this issue again, we will show you how you can extend this partition by 512 MB, but you can adjust that number up or down as needed. But be warned, you are messing around the underlying Operating System here and can cause some major problems on your device if something goes awry . You will also need to have Novacom installed on your computer and be familiar with using the Command Line. If you don’t have the webOS SDK installed on your computer to access the command line, you can always use webOS Quick Install and select "Tools" and then "Linux Commandline" to get access to it. Note that this is has only been tested on a Pre3 (including by this writer), but should work on any webOS 2.x device and possibly the TouchPad. However, before performing any actions, back up all of your data, both on your USB as well as any application data by using Save/Restore. read more View the full article

As many of you may know our dear friend and webOS community member Rich Dunbar was hosting a really sweet raffle last month to raise money for two really great causes. Not only did he auction off his own personal TouchPad Go (one of the rarest mobile tech devices around) but he also sweetened the pot with a cavalcade of other devices courtesy of webOS Developer Relations. As promised the winners of both the large and small pots of webOS gear were chosen yesterday. Rich sent us an email to let us know who won, how much money was raised, and his plans to deliver the funds to said causes. So without further ado we give you Rich Dunbar's message: read more View the full article

It's been over a year since HP discontinued sales, development, and production of webOS devices. There's been no indication for nearly that long that HP intends to produce new webOS hardware, and they've gotten to the point where they're spinning off the webOS group as a separate company. So while it's disappointing, it's not surprising to see that HP has shut down customer support live chat for webOS. The service has proven helpful to a good many of our readers (your dear editor even used it once or twice), so we're sad to see it go. Now anybody visiting the Live Chat page on hpwebos.com is met with a message that "this service has been discontinued" and recommending other ways to get help, including the on-device help app, HP's support forums, and elsewhere on the webOS support website. For visitors to the chat page, the support forums would probably be the best option for getting close to the level of in-depth assistance you could get through chat, but if we're being perfectly honest you should really just come over to the webOS Nation Forums for the best help in all the 'verse. Our tips are a lot more in-depth too. We might be biased, but our community is just more awesome at this. View the full article

Although webOS has officially abandoned Google Maps in favor of Bing maps, the homebrew developer Jan Herman (72ka) has been actively working on a homebrew Google Maps app that not only surpasses the official Bing Maps app in many ways, but also the old Google Maps app that we used to have. One feature of the app is the ability to select different views or layers of information that are visible on the map. If you tap the button on the top of the screen, you get a pop-up to choose between a Roadmap, Satellite, Hybrid or Terrain view, just as you would on the Google Maps desktop app. But that is not all, as you can tap the "More..."option to show some additional options for layers to go on top of the map, including: Night - Switch to a "dark" these for the maps that is better when viewing at night Traffic - Overlays a red, yellow or green identifier over the road to indicate current traffic conditions Transit - Show subway or transit options Bike - Highlight any bike paths on the map in favor roads Weather - Show weather icons and temperature indicators throughout the map (currently only shown in Celsius) Clouds - Overlay current cloud cover over the map, but only available when zoomed out to show a large area of the screen With the different map views, you can only choose one view type to show at any given time. However, you are able to toggle one or more different layers within the app at the same time. A check mark will appear if the layer is selected, and just tap on it again to deselect it Google Maps is available in the webOS Nation homebrew feed in Preware and is compatible with all webOS devices running webOS 1.4.5 or higher View the full article

A month ago, intrepid webOS developer Steven Troughton-Smith got to tinkering with the then newly-released Open webOS OpenEmbedded beta, and managed to get it to boot relatively quickly on his Asus Transformer Prime tablet (a rather hackable piece of Android hardware). Today, with the full 1.0 version of Open webOS OE available to open source, Troughton-Smith went back to his Transformer Prime and worked a little bit more homebrew magic. We don't have complete details on the status of the port, though if it's anything like the Galaxy Nexus Open webOS port put together by WebOS Ports, there's likely still some work to be done. Regardless, we're glad to see it happen, and are already day-dreaming of the day when we'll be running Open webOS on whatever hardware we desire… View the full article

This tip is only for devices running webOS 3.0 and higher Although there are now a few quality file manager apps available for your webOS device, only Internalz Pro by Jason Robitaille has allowed you to have gain full access to all the files on your device, not just within the USB drive. However, Internalz Pro now has some competition. With the latest update to version 1.1 of File Explorer by pcworldSoftware, you can now install the "File Explorer root plugin" from Preware to unlock access to your device. You don't even need to launch the plugin, just close File Exploer (if open) and then install the plugin and you are good to go. Although File Explorer will work on any webOS running webOS 2.1 or higher, this plugin is only compatible with the TouchPad and webOS 3.0 at the moment. For more details about the plugin and a complete step-by-step guide can be found within the app itself by launching File Explorer and then swiping down from the top-left to access the Application drop-down menu and choose "Help" and then select "Enable root access" from within the Help page. The developer also details how the plugin works, so if you can provide any help to getting it to work on webOS 2.x devices, please let him know! File Explorer is available in the webOS App Catalog for $0.99 and is compatible with all webOS devices running webOS 2.1 or higher, although the "root plugin" only supports webOS 3.0 or higher. View the full article

If you were to turn back the calendar eighteen months, you would find yourself in March 2011. It was a heady time for the webOS community. The Pre3, Veer, and TouchPad had been announced just a month earlier, but none of the three were yet available to the public. So while we waited, the head honchos of HP were out in full force, touting the upcoming webOS tablet (and occasionally mentioning the smartphones too). HP recognized that they needed a tablet, a 'post-PC' device, if you will, not just to compete with Apple's iPad, but to have something ready for when HP's computer business wasn't what people wanted anymore.' One of those HP honchos was none other than Todd Bradley, then the Executive Vice President in charge of the computer-making and webOS Global Business Unit-containing Personal Systems Group. Bradley had experience in mobile, having been CEO of PalmOne back in the day. As such, his word carried weight, and at least publicly he was all-in on webOS. Said Bradley at one point, "We're totally focused on the tablet market; totally focused on enabling that with webOS". But if you were to replay that quote for Mr. Bradley today (now head of the merged Printing and Personal Systems division), he'd likely scoff. In an interview with PCWorld this week, Bradley responded to a question about technology being in the 'post-PC era' as such: "Look, it’s just wrong. Just think of the decision when your child is going off to college. What’s a requirement? A PC. Or you run a business and need your employees to be productive. You need a PC. The size of the global PC business is huge, and I think some people are trying to be dramatic. That said, there is a growing role for tablets, and we will absolutely be a significant force in that space." With all that tablets are capable of these days, it's actually perfectly conceivable for somebody to replace their personal computer with a tablet. It's not for everybody, at least not yet, but more and more people are making that switch. A generation is growing up today where tablets will be considered by and large the only computer that they need when they hit the age where they can buy their own computing devices. The 'post-PC era' doesn't completely obviate the PC, but it is on a downward trend, and HP was right to buy Palm to help set themselves up for the future. You know, a future where HP stays committed to their multi-billion investment and doesn't dump it when things don't go as awesomely as you'd hoped. As for HP's position in the "growing role for tablets", they've got their new Mobility Global Business Unit and an upcoming Windows 8 tablet. Oh, and Open webOS too, not that you'd know it if you talked to anybody outside of the webOS GBU. View the full article

If you'll recall, late last month we at long last saw the release of the first public betas for Open webOS. Surprisingly, the open source successor to webOS came in two forms: a version that ran as an app inside Ubuntu Linux, and a multi-processor-compatible version enabled by OpenEmbedded. The only problem with the latter, which is technically capable of running on a wide range of hardware, is that it lacks a user interface. And that presents a problem for an operating system in 2012 - people just aren't as comfortable tooling around in the command line today as they were in 1982 (Mac OS brought the first consumer graphical user interface in 1984). While we wait and hope that the complete 1.0 version of the OpenEmbedded Open webOS due out later this month comes with a complete user interface, the fact that it lacks one hasn't stopped enterprising developers from going full steam ahead with porting Open webOS to their hardware of choice. Case in point, today the Raspberry Pi blog called attention to the work of developer aaa801, who has successfully booted Open webOS on the Raspberry Pi single-board computer. If you're not familiar with Raspberry Pi, it's a fully-hackable credit card-sized ARM-powered computer that sells for just $25. The Raspberry Pi includes a 700MHz Broadcom ARM processor, SD card slot (it has no storage of its own), 256MB of RAM, two USB ports, an Ethernet port, HDMI, 3.5mm audio, and RCA video out, and a handful of other ports meant for developer types to build their own hardware. Spec-wise it's practically an original Palm Pre, though significantly more hackable (and though small for a computer, still notably larger than the motherboard found in said smartphone). At $25 a pop and small enough in size, the Raspberry Pi has proven to be highly popular with hardware hackers, allowing them to build all sorts of contraptions. It's not too surprising to see that somebody's already ported Open webOS to the Raspberry Pi, given the aforementioned popularity of the mini computer. We're still glad to have seen it happen, and expect that it's just the tip of the iceberg as far as what Open webOS can boot on. Though it'll really need a user interface if it's to be useful… video of the oh-so-exciting white block letters of a black background booting process of the Open webOS OpenEmbedded beta on the Raspberry Pi. read more View the full article

When HP bought Palm, the latter company was loaded with talent that the former needed for their grand webOS plans. When things didn't quite pan out, that talent started to flee to greener and less-likely-to-be-swallowed-up-by-the-Earth pastures. Among those that left Palm were Product Line Manager Rob Katcher and hardware engineer Manu Chatterjee. They've teamed up to create a new gadget to aid in the creation and updating of grocery shopping lists called 'hiku', and they’ve taken to Kickstarter to raise fund to get the project rolling. Katcher was with Palm for more than six years, where he, as noted by AllThingsD, was a product manager for products like the Palm OS-powered Treo 700p and Centro smartphones. Chatterjee, meanwhile, is credited as creator of the wildly popular (at least within webOS circles) Touchstone inductive charging dock. Combined, they've concocted Hiku, a rounded white hockey puck-size device that packs a barcode scanner, two-month battery, Wi-Fi radio, and a microphone. What Hiku is designed to do is relatively ingenious: if hooks into a customized cloud service and allows you to either scan the barcodes on things around the kitchen you need to restock (e.g. scan the barcode on the tortillas bag when you're running low) or simply speak into the microphone and have the cloud service transcribe your voice into text and intelligently sort it into categories. All of this ties into Hiku's cloud service, which syncs your scanned and spoken lists down to an iOS app or onto the service's own website. If you're thinking this is the kind of thing you'd buy and then forget to use, they thought of that too. Haiku has a magnet in its back so you can just slap it onto the refrigerator door. Anytime you need it, just grab and scan. Hiku's on Kickstarter right now, hoping to net $80,000 in funding over then next 28 days to drive towards production. For the single ones of us out there Hiku might not be that essential of a tool, but for those with families that tear through refrigerator contents like a grizzly bear in a dumpster, Hiku could prove to be an invaluable kitchen gadget. Plus we're digging that two former Palm guys decided to give their new gadget a name that's homophonic with our favorite kind of poetry. View the full article

Brace for the truth bucket of cold water, folks, for it's coming in hard and fast. It's been a long time since we've had to deal with Taiwanese electronics 'news' outlet Digitimes on our pages here at webOS Nation, but today we find them in our sights. What has brought on the truth bucket this morning? Digitimes published a 131-word piece today that claims Chinese telecom manufacturer ZTE plans to launch an Open webOS-based smartphone in the fourth quarter of this year. Problem is, that's not true in any way, form, or fashion. Well, there is a tiny nugget of truth in the report that snowballed into this wrongness, and it is that ZTE plans to launch a new smartphone on a new operating system in the coming months. Problem is, ZTE's smartphone is going to run Firefox OS, not Open webOS. This news has been widely reported today, and in case you're doubting the report from a reputable organization like Reuters, ZTE cross-posted it onto their own press center website. How did this news turn into a report that ZTE was going to produce a webOS smartphone? Poor machine translation. ZTE Executive Vice President He Shiyou was interviewed yesterday Sohu.com and C114, in which he discussed ZTE's smartphone plans. The problem is that the interview was conducted and published in Chinese, and automated machine translataions still aren't what they need to be to handle transcribed Chinese speech. What we ended up with was multiple mentions of "a web OS", which some - Digitimes included - have taken to literally mean HP's open source project-in-progress webOS. Except that He was talking about Firefox OS as a web-based operating system. Things were further muddled in the machine translation when Sohu's interviewer brought up Palm, HP, and webOS, though He never mentioned our even referred to favored operating system. He did do a lot of talking about how web-based operating systems like Firefox OS (and webOS) have great potential thanks to their open source base on web technologies. But webOS specifically? No, He did not. Firefox OS does look interesting, and it even seems to have brewed in some of the webOS user interface, lifting almost verbatim the card-based multitasking application management scheme introduced and apparently popularized by webOS back in 2009. webOS and Firefox do share commonalities in that they're both dependent upon web technologies like HTML5 and CSS, but the similarities don't extend all the way to the core. Where webOS is build off of WebKit, Firefox OS is based off of Mozilla's also open source Gecko rendering engine. The word of the day is prudence. With outlets like Digitimes it's always beneficial to set aside your excitement and check if there's anything to back up their claims before rushing to re-publish it yourself. Sometimes you just have to go with your gut. In this case, our gut check said "Wait a minute..." and in the end we were able to determine that they got it wrong, misinterpreting the stated facts and public knowledge, resulting in a headline that's just flat out wrong. And that's something we just don't need. </truth_bucket> View the full article

Hate is an incredibly intense emotion. Hate implies that you want to see the object of that emotion ended at all costs, be it the weather, your nemesis, or that untrained dog next door that barks through the night at nothing and everything. Hate is consuming, hate is destroying, hate is by and large wholly counterproductive. Hate is simply not good. It has been thirteen months since HP cancelled webOS hardware development in what we can best describe as a fit of shortsightedness. It was a fit that was utterly destructive to the future of webOS and the community as a whole, and those who work on and with the operating system for a living and those of us who for various reasons care about webOS have spent the last year slowly recovering from that most improvident decision. Heck, HP's been struggling to recover from the decision, having been forced to write down billions of dollars in losses and losing a massive amount of shareholder value in the process. Yet still, well over a year after the ax fell and the planned future of webOS was shunted to the side, I still find on a regular basis hate towards HP. The words still ring out in the comments and the forums, "I hate HP!" and "Damn you HP!" and so forth. HP as a company has changed in many ways since August 2011, not the least of which includes a new CEO in Meg Whitman to replace the failed and disastrous tenure of her predecessor, Leo Apotheker. read more View the full article

There's a lot of goodness happening with LunaCE, but the user-facing features are just scratching the surface. webOS developer ScienceApps has been around the block a few times, including popular apps like Multiple App Launcher and Starter. With LunaCE, ScienceApps is amping up Starter, fixing one of our biggest complaints with the app. The cool part about Starter is that it could launch multiple apps at once. The not-so-cool part was a limitation of webOS 3.x: those apps would all launch as separated cards, even if it would make sense to launch them in a stack. Starter users with LunaCE installed, however, can expect to now be able to launch multiple apps directly into a stack. The feature makes Starter, in our not so humble opinion, eminently more useful. Now you can set up a multiple app launching sequence of, for example, Facebook, Twitter, Messaging apps, all in one neat little 'communicate with your friends' stack instead of having them spread out and needing to manually regroup them on every launch. Video after the break. Starter isn't the only ScienceApps app getting the LunaCE treatment. The developer is currently working on an update to Lithium News HD that will take advantage of the dynamic dashboard height API in LunaCE, finally allowing the TouchPad to display larger-size dashboard notifications of your news stories. The LunaCE-enabled version of Lithium News is still a work in progress, but we're looking forward to its release. LunaCE is currently in beta, though interested users can install it as always via Preware, so long as you've enabled the beta feeds (check out testing.preware.org for info on how to do that). ScienceApps is one of the first developers to take advantage of what LunaCE has to offer, and we hope more webOS app developers will follow down their path. Not all TouchPad users are going to install LunaCE, in fact we'd wager a relatively small portion even know of its existence, but for those that are taking the extra step of pimping out their TouchPad with the help of WebOS Ports, there's more goodness to come. read more View the full article

It's time for a webOS Nation brainstorming session. Late last week we were all some combination of perturbed, disturbed, hopeful, wistful, enraged, or just play befuddled when HP CEO Meg Whitman proclaimed that yes, HP eventually will have to make a smartphone. "But you already did that!" was the cry in all capital letters across the internet, followed by the cacophony of a million techies sighing at once. But it got me thinking - is webOS as it stands right now really capable of standing up to the giants of the current smartphone industry? We all know the merits of webOS - multitasking, notifications, Synergy, Just Type, and so forth, but right now even the Open webOS that's coming up is looking to be seriously devoid of feature updates. So, if somebody - anybody - were to take webOS and make a smartphone out of it, what would it take for somebody to be willing to pick it up instead of the iPhone or Galaxy S or Droid or Lumia sitting elsewhere on the shelf in the carrier store? Let's delve into that, shall we? We'll start with the assumption of webOS 3.0 melded with webOS 2.2.4 as our basepoint. Everything that webOS 3.0 can do, dropped down into the form factor of a webOS smartphone, essentially. Now sit this phone next to the Apple iPhone 5, Motorola RAZR HD, Nokia Lumia 920, and Samsung Galaxy S III. What's missing? We could go on and on about hardware. A modern webOS device would need to have a higher resolution and larger screen (hell, even the iPhone 5 has a 4-inch screen now), an LTE radio, faster processor, more RAM, more storage, a bigger battery, a better camera, and maybe other extraneous bits like NFC, all crammed into an impossibly thin shell to be taken seriously at a glance. This thought exercise is more a matter of software. After all, Open webOS is open source - anybody can take it and put it onto whatever hypothetical hardware they want (with some work, clearly) - so let's focus on how the software can be improved to modern standards. I'll offer up two major points - application selection and camera software. read more View the full article

Are you the type that needs to do things on a schedule, a schedule that's too, shall we say 'odd', for a calendar. As in you need to know how many day's it's been since you last washed the dog? Or how many minutes it's been since you last hiccuped? Or just how many hours have past since you last lost The Game? [editor's note: son of a…] Then sinceWhen+ by penduinbits might be just the app you need. Simply create a note of what event's time-since has passed, log the time, and wait. Events can be given labels, and a complete history of your sinceWhen+ loggings is kept. It's a simple concept, but a rich app at a not-so-rich price of $0.99. But should you happen to want a copy for free, well are you ever in luck - we've got one hundred copies of sinceWhen+ for that very purpose! Contest: We have 100 copies of sinceWhen+ to give away. Just leave a comment on this post to enter. Contest ends next Sunday at midnight US Eastern Time, after which time we will select 100 random entrants to win. Please only leave one comment, multiple entries won’t count. Promo codes are only valid in countries serviced by the App Catalog, and users must be running webOS 2.0 or higher with the latest version of the App Catalog. View the full article

Just Type on webOS has always been a powerful tool. Between universal search of your apps, content, and the web, custom web searches, and quick action shortcuts, Just Type has always had the potential to be incredibly powerful. But it didn't always get there, thanks to the perennially-low marketshare penetration of webOS. But just because webOS has low user numbers doesn't mean there aren't developers out there looking to make there mark. Take Eugenio Paolantonio, an Italian webOS developer who decided he wanted truly custom web search capabilities. So he made his own app: webOS Quick Actions. The app lets you generate a custom Just Type search or launch, so long as you know your way around scripting. It's pretty barebones, but the app itself is just a point in which to enter your scripting and a launching intermediary. So what does this scripting allow you to do? Let's say you want to be able to search a site that doesn't have an OpenSearch plug-in. What do you do? You set up a custom Google search script that includes the site's url, and then all you have to do is plug into just type "sitename searchquery" and hit the Execute Quick Action button under Quick Actions - the app takes your cue (in this case sitename) and performs the appropriate search. webOS Quick Actions also supports opening apps on the device, and if the app supports the ability to open to a specific URL (for example, the web browser and App Catalog do), you can add in arguments to make that happen. Paolantonio's posted a good walkthrough on webOS Italiia, if you're willing to muddle through the auto-translation (or can read Italian) What webOS Quick Actions can do isn't necessarily limitless, but the options are many and only limited by your scripting know-how. Admittedly, our scripting know-how is on the rusty side of "never knew much to start", so while it'll take some studying before we can really make use of webOS Quick Actions, we saw the power user potential in it right away. View the full article

A month ago we broke the news that HP's webOS Global Business Unit would be spinning off as a new company called Gram. The company was said to focus on cloud and user experience, leveraging webOS and Enyo along the way. Nothing new has come out about how exactly they're going to do that or when that's going to start happening - that's what happens when you're in stealth mode (which one could easily argue is in effect an admission that there's nothing more than grand plans to announce right now anyway). We wondered for a short time what URL Gram might secure, as sites like gram.com and gram.net registered as available, but thanks to their actual-word nature would have commanded a high price. So HP turned to Armenia, securing gr.am and shortly thereafter having it merely redirect to the Open webOS project site. That recently changed, however, with gr.am now displaying the looping curvy three-quarters-of-a-butterfly Gram logo on a white background. Nothing else. No links to anywhere, nothing commented out in the code. Nothing. Stealth mode is serious business, it would seem. View the full article

I remember a time when Apple's product announcements were exciting. A time when Apple could announce a product that the entire world hadn't already seen every part of and thoroughly dissected and analyzed before the announcement. A time, apparently, before workers in China realized how valuable the raw parts they had in their hand could be and started sneaking them out of the factory and posting photos of them online. Much to the chagrin of Apple, and to the delight of bloggers starving for anything on the upcoming Apple devices. Except for when it gets announced and we already know practically everything about it, thus making for a relatively underwhelming announcement. Case in point: the iPhone 5 announcement today was unremarkable, as we knew practically everything about the new Apple smartphone, and so the exciting part of the whole event was that Apple unveiled a new widescreen touch iPod Nano to replace the little iPod Shuffle-sized version that came before (R.I.P. Nano Watch). The modern internet news cycle is entirely to blame for this level of disappointment. In the five years since the the original iPhone was announced the blog industry covering the iPhone, and even the traditional news outlets, has exploded and hungers for any scrap of news about the upcoming devices. Apple's covered more aggressively than any other tech company, with only Google even approaching the level of interest from the general public. When the new iPhone gets headline positioning on traditional wide-coverage media outlets like CNN, up there with much more important things like the senseless and galling death of the U.S. Ambassador to Libya amidst the civil unrest spurred on by a purposefully inflammatory amateur video posted online from halfway around the world; the striking teachers union in Chicago and the 350,000 students not in class because of it; and the rhetoric, ideas, and gaffes of the presidential election campaigns (themselves feeding into and thriving off of the high tempo news cycle), perhaps our global obsession with Apple in particular and the latest gadget in general has gone too far. Is the iPhone 5 impressive? Absolutely. It's thinner, lighter, faster, longer-lasting, stronger, bigger, and everything else you'd expect from the latest smartphone. Apple's yet again managed a strong technical accomplishment, making a phone that is better in practically every way than its predecessors. But Apple's competitors have caught up, and they're starting to differentiate in ways that Apple would not, making devices that are equally, if not more impressive. The Samsung Galaxy S III is still an impressive competitor to the iPhone 5, and the Nokia Lumia 920 too looks to be a worthy competitor. Apple's still at the head of the pack, but the competition isn't lagging far behind - if at all behind - these days. And that's a good thing. Personally, as an owner of an iPhone 4S on Sprint, I'm not all that enticed by the iPhone 5. Sprint LTE coverage won't be in my area for some time, and I honestly I've got all the inches I need. If I had an iPhone older than the 4S, or honestly any webOS phone older than the Pre3, I might be seriously eyeing the iPhone 5. As always, the latest iPhone will rarely be a justifiable upgrade for owners of the previous generation, but anything with something older would have a harder time justifying not upgrading - especially as their contracts are coming up for renewal right about now. As for how this compares to webOS? Well, webOS might be lagging on features, even as it makes the transition to open source, but in our opinion webOS still wins on user interface. iOS by its nature cannot match the fluid gesture-based interface of webOS. I've had an iPhone for some time now and I still find myself swiping across the bottom bezel to go back or switch apps. If I could get an iPhone 5 with webOS on it (plus a bunch of the modern software features of iOS 6, Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, and Windows Phone 8) then I'd be a happy, happy camper. View the full article

Earlier this month we saw the debut of new devices from Nokia, Motorola, and Amazon. Well, Sony was in there too, but they failed to impress enough to warrant a mention. Today brings the event they were all hoping to precede, lest they fall short by going afterwards: Apple's iPhone 5 announcement. Honestly, it really doesn't matter how impressive Apple's new iPhone is, it's sure to outsell by a wide margin all of the devices announced earlier this week. That said, this new iPhone does look to be a significant upgrade over the previous model, with a taller 4-inch screen, a thinner unibody metal shell, a new smaller dock connector, new earbuds (whoo), LTE, and the much-improved iOS 6. Plus whatever else the gang in Cupertino pulls out of their hats on stage in San Francisco. It all goes down starting at 1PM EDT (10AM PDT), so just go ahead and point your browser to our everything-i sister site iMore for live coverage of the event. You know you're at least slightly interested, just if so you can tell your friends how much it still sucks, right? View the full article