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Just two weeks ago LunaCE was released by WebOS Ports in alpha status. The homebrewed improvement to the LunaSysMgr that was released as part of HP's webOS Community Edition project brought a number of enhancements to willing testers, including tabbed card stacks and app switching gestures. After a bunch of testing, bug fixes, and a few improvements, LunaCE is graduating up to the beta feeds in Preware. The set-up process for getting into the beta feeds is almost identical to that for the alpha feeds, so if you're interested in trying out the LunaCE beta, you can head over to testing.preware.org for instructions. It's important to note that LunaCE alpha testers will have to delete the Alpha from their TouchPad before attempting to install the beta. That said, our caveat from before - how you should tread carefully with alpha software - can be lightened a bit in this newfound beta status. Showstopping bugs should be squashed, and while everything's not necessarily perfect, LunaCE is by-and-large in the ironing out wrinkles phase and ready for wider-spread deployment. As before, if you've got something you think should be added to LunaCE, there's a place for that, and there's also a place for you to log and track any bug reports with the software. Speaking of wrinkles, there's a new little feature that's been added to the LunaCE beta: you can now turn off the not-that-iconic-but-it's-always-been-part-of-webOS ripple tap indicator. You know, that little ripple overlay that briefly appears on the screen when you tap on anything? Yeah, that thing. If that's the sort of thing that bothers you (after three years of webOS usage we've stopped noticing it), then the LunaCE beta now adds an option in Tweaks for you to turn the ripple off, no Luna restart needed. View the full article

Touchpad owners who use Google Voice received a treat last month when SynerGV 2 was released into the App Catalog with synergy integration of Google Voice messaging and voicemail transcription within the stock webOS Messaging app. But webOS phone owners were still left using the original SynerGV app without the synergy integration service due to differences between webOS 2.0 and 3.0. With its latest update to version 2.0.8, Eric Blade, the developer of SynerGV 2, has now begun to add support for those messaging plug-ins for phones running webOS 2.1 or higher. Unfortunately, you won't find SynerGV 2 in the App Catalog just yet because the app itself isn't yet ready for webOS smartphones. The messaging plugins may work, but the app isn't formatted correctly and you can't access critical areas of the functionality. Just because you can't load up SynerGV 2 in the App Catalog on your phone doesn't necessarily mean that you can't partake in its goodies. If you have a TouchPad to purchase the app and know how to homebrew, you can use Preware and App Tuckerbox to install it on your phone. Once installed, just open up the Accounts app and you should have an option to add a "SynerGV Google Voice" account using your Google email address and password. Be sure to allow the account to use both Contacts and Messaging when prompted. Once synced up, you will be able to use send and receive messages through Google Voice and get your voice transcriptions without the need of any third party app. Just as with the synergy service on the TouchPad, there are still a few limitations. While sending messages are instantaneous, there is no push service for receiving messages. Instead, it pulls down the messages based off a time period you set in the preferences section of the SynerGV 2 app (that part of the app still works). To combat this, you may still want to use Google's official SMS notifications of new messages and then just respond using the SynerGV plugin service. In addition, while you can send a new message through Google Voice to any number that you manually type in, you will only be able to search for your Google Voice contacts by name, including via Just Type. If you have all your contacts already in Google, this is a non issue. But if you rely on your webOS profile or Facebook for your friend's numbers, then you are out of luck unless you manually type in their number or they initiate the conversation first so you just need to respond within that conversation. If you decide to load up SynerGV 2 on your phone, remember that you are installing an app and service that is not officially released for your device. You are essentially a beta tester of the service until the time that the developer decides to release it into the App Catalog. However, if you are a Google Voice user and have either already purchased SynerGV 2 for your TouchPad or have $4.99 to spend, you may want to give it a shot. Even with it's shortcomings, having Google Voice messaging and voicemails integrated directly into the stock webOS messageing app is worth it. View the full article

Music Player (Remix), by Hedami Software, is a significant upgrade over the stock music play for either webOS phones or the TouchPad. While the TouchPad player has some additional features, such as the ability to create playlists, Music Player (Remix) has a lot more. One such feature is the ability to create favorites that show up on the app's homepage for quick access. These favorites can point to a single song, an entire album, an artist, a genre or even a playlist. Whenever you see an icon, that means you can pin that selection to your homescreen. All you need to do is tap that icon to access a pop-up menu and choose "Fave it!". A banner notification will appear confirming the selection, and then all you need to do is tap on that favorite on the homescreen the next time you want to play the song or songs. If you want to add only a portion of an album or artist or genre, the best way to do that is to select "Add to a flylist" instead of "Fave it!" to create a playlist with all the songs you want. Then back on the homepage, select "Flylists" from the choices on the right and then select the playlist. You can swipe-to-delete specific songs or reorder the playlist to get just the way you want it. Then, you can choose to favorite that Flylist from the Flylist listing.. Want to delete or reorder your favorites on your homescreen? It works the same as updating a flylist. Just swipe-to-delete the items you don’t want, or press-and-hold and then drag an item to rearrange. Music Player (remix) is available in the webOS App Catalog for $3.99 and is compatible with all webOS devices running webOS 2.0 or higher View the full article

A few days back Google made a change somewhere along the line that kicked webOS users back into the horrid days of WAP browsers. It was a change that shook us to our core as we were reduced to a wholly unacceptable three search results at a time and Google's sad attempts to give us mobile-formatted pages that required another tap to get to the content we wanted (as we type this we realize how spoiled we must sound). Never fear, for while it took Google a few days to come around to their senses and fix whatever coding travesty that brought forth this reign of terror, they have fixed it. So your TouchPads and Pres and Veers and Pixis can all safely waltz about the Googles, getting their ten results and tabbed headers and everything else Google to which we've grown accustomed. It works both in the browser's search bar and Just Type/Universal Search, with no workarounds needed on your end. Additionally, Google's actually improved things a bit. It seems this episode prompted them to actually pick up a webOS device and see how things worked on it. While the TouchPad has by-and-large received the full Google desktop experience (sans page previews) across all of the various avenues of search (everything, images, news, YouTube, etc), the version of Google served up to smartphones has been tweaked. If there was one saving grace about getting kicked back to the old-style search, it was that Google Image Search worked. With the last update to Google mobile search the image search function received a mobile-optimized formatting with an even grid and full-screen previews before sending you to the actual page or image. Problem is, it never worked fully right on webOS, and then at one point it stopped working all together, not allowing webOS smartphone users to view anything more than the grid of thumbnails. The old-style image search reverted to a less-organized set of thumbnails, displaying images at their original aspect ratio instead of perfect squares, but at least you could tap on them to view the image or the site. The updated back-to-the-new Google search on webOS smartphones melds in the old Google Image search with the rest of the new Google search, letting you finally get back to viewing the images you want. And if you're on a TouchPad you've got the full Google Image search experience, down to specifying image sizes, content, and coloration. It's good to be back. View the full article

August 15, 2012 was the last day the webOS App Catalog successfully received new or updated apps. That's nearly two weeks ago at the point that we published this post. The newest apps were Mobile1UP's Caveman apps, on both the TouchPad and webOS smartphones, themselves having received updates of an unspecified nature. After the app push of August 15th, the App Catalog went silent, with no new apps appearing for a few days, and then a week. The App Catalog going quiet isn't anything new, it's happened before, but with the current state of webOS we can't help but get a little twitchy any time things slow down on the App Catalog. Then a few days ago a massive app dump appeared, throwing thirty new and updated apps into the App Catalog. Excited, we tapped on one and after a tantalizing glimpse at the app page loading we were instead presented with a warning that "This is not a valid HP webOS application." We stammered back, "But, but it is. I have it. I installed it from this very App Catalog. I don't understand…" Assuming it was a temporary glitch, we moved on and hoped that things would get better. At least apps that have only had metadata updates, like the price changes for 10tons' app sale, seem unaffected. That was four days ago. Those thirty apps still display a warning of not being a valid app, despite the fact that many of them are heavy-hitters in the App Catalog, like MyQ for Netflix and Splashtop Remote Desktop. There are even some new apps we'd like to check out, such as Astraware Word Games and 2012 Football Score Predictions, but we can't. We can't even view their online App Catalog listings, as all the apps updated in the failed batch are displaying as broken online too. Yes, webOS is going through a transition right now. With the move to open source and the spinning off of the webOS GBU as kind-of-independent Gram, there's a lot going on. But for Gram to supposedly be focusing on the cloud and user experience yet having the App Catalog fail so miserably here isn't filling us with warm feelings. Come on, HP, let's get this together. Update: Literally as we published this post, HP's @webOSdev Twitter account woke up to reply to a selected backlog of complaints on this very issue, stating that "We are aware of the issue and are working on a resolution. I will update everyone when the issue is resolved." Which hopefully won't be too much longer now that we've made a big (and hopefully unneccessary) fuss about it. Update 2 [8am, Thursday]: Everything seems to be back up and running now. Let's hope it's a good long while before we have to do this again. Actually, how about never? View the full article

If you've been wandering about the App Catalog looking for a way to entertain yourself, you might have noticed that webOS games tend to be a bit on the pricey side, at least as far as tablet-based gaming is concerned. Much of that is due to economies of scale - there aren't as many webOS users to offset the cost of development as there are for the iOS (Android tablets might be another story). Looking to offer a refuge from the higher prices, webOS game developer 10tons Ltd. is for the next week offering their entire selection of webOS games at half price, brining the most expensive game down to a palatable $2.49 (really, the $4.99 full price isn't that bad). If you want to see the full list of what 10tons has to offer, we recommend just opening up your webOS device's App Catalog and searching for 10tons. There you'll find apps like Sparkle HD for $2.49 or Puzkend down to $0.99. In all there are sixteen excellent games in the 10tons webOS catalog, so you've got plenty to pick from for some savings. If you're the type that owns multiple webOS devices, say a Pre and a TouchPad, then there's some additional good news for you: some of 10tons' games work on both large- and small-screened webOS devices. Azkend 2 at $2.49, Joining Hands at $1.49, and Puzkend at $0.99 work on all manner of webOS devices all the way back to webOS 1.4.5, with full-size graphics for your TouchPad. So buy once and play everywhere, which is a perfect recipe for killing all of the available free time we have (which happens to be not a whole lot). The 10tons sale on webOS games is expected to run for about a week, so if you want some half-price but full-value webOS games, head on over to the App Catalog and buy now. View the full article

On this third birthday of WebOS Internals' homebrew app Preware, we found it fitting that we give you a Preware-related tip today. Preware is a amazing app that will allow you to search for and install patches, apps, themes and more, and when combined with App Tuckerbox you can access the official webOS App Catalog to expand it even further. Even though the app catalog may only be a fraction the size of its competitors, there is still a lot of junk in there that will diminish your browsing experience. Luckily, Preware has a "blacklist" functionality that will prevent those packages from showing up that can be set based on the title, maintainer (developer), package id, app description or category of the package. To add or edit your blacklist: Open up Preware Swipe down from the top-left to view the Application dropdown menu and select "Preferences" Scroll to the bottom of the preferences screen to the BLACKLIST section and tap the "+ Add" row to add a new entry On the Add Blacklist screen, there are 2 fields that you need to fill out: "FIELD" determines how what to "search in" to indentify the blacklisted packages "SEARCH FOR" determines the value that you want to search for. For example, to remove any app by "Applible LLC", you can choose Field = Maintainer and Search For = "Appible", or you choose to search "Package Id" for "com.appible" When done, tap the green "Save" button. Back on the preferences screen, swipe-back on a webOS phones or scroll back to the top of the screen on the TouchPad and tap the back arrow on the top-left of the screen Go back to the main Preware homepage and you should get a pop-up asking you to reload the package list. Choose "Do It Now" to reload the feeds From here on out, any package that meets the blacklist criteria above will no longer show anywhere in Preware. If you ever need to edit or delete the blacklist, go back to the preferences screen and either tap on the entry to edit it, or swipe-to-delete it from the screen and confirm the deletion. Be sure to always refresh the feeds any time you make a change to the blacklist View the full article

Mobile Nations Podcast Feed Mobile Nations on iTunes Mobile Nations YouTube Introducing ZEN and TECH Parenting Samsung Galaxy S3 Jelly Bean update to bring new TouchWiz features Google goes after Apple via Motorola patents Black Galaxy S3 coming in October with 64GB of storage, says retailer Who should Research In Motion get on their Board of Directors? 10 questions with the beautiful and BlackBerry-addicted Sons of Anarchy star, Winter Ave Zoli RIM standardizing screen resolutions for BlackBerry 10 webOS GBU to become quasi-independent cloud and UX company: meet GRAM HP unfazed by Microsoft's Surface tablet, have their own Windows 8 plans The "Open webOS on my TouchPad" Contest winner! iPad mini won't be much smaller, but will be a lot narrower, thinner, and lighter Siri OS: Could natural language be Apple's next big leap forward? What's the best iPhone app you ever bought? Nokia and Microsoft holding joint press event in NYC on September 5th Nokia Windows Phone 8 - Images of another new screen bezel leak out Location, Windows Phone 8 and Nokia’s plan to be the ultimate “where” platform View the full article

August 17, 2011 was a weird day. The day prior the HP Pre3 became available in the UK with nary an announcement to herald its arrival. The 17th saw the surprise release of the white 64GB TouchPad in France, again with no announcement, not even a press release. If was a confusing day, but a pretty good one once HP figured out what was going on in Europe. The next day was devastating for the webOS community: HP CEO Leo Apotheker announced plans to explore splitting HP into two companies, one focused on enterprise services and the other on less-profitable consumer hardware, and that just 49 days after the HP TouchPad had launched the entire webOS product line was being cancelled. Unsurprisingly, the webOS community took the news poorly. Our favorite mobile operating system, one that had been purchased by HP as part of Palm by just over a year prior, was in effect snuffed out with a press release by the company that was supposed to save webOS from oblivion, the company that was supposed to enhance webOS and spread it across a multitude of platforms. We raged, we vented, and a year later that day is still referred to as the Leopocalypse. The move was a punch in the gut to not just the webOS community, but the mobile community at large. While Android and iOS kept chugging along, the fact that a deep-pocketed technology behemoth like HP was unable or unwilling to put up with the costs of developing and maintaining its own mobile operating system and hardware sent chills through the community. If HP couldn't do it, what chance did any other upstart operating system have? We knew at the time that HP's decision to kill webOS hardware was incredibly shortsighted and driven by risk-averse corporate leadership. It was, to put it bluntly, one of the greatest blunders in the short history of mobile technology. HP squandered an opportunity to secure the future of their business, and now, even under the leadership of new CEO Meg Whitman, HP continues to pay the price on both the stock market and in retail for the disastrous leadership of Apotheker. As for webOS, it took another four months for a plan to be announced. After exploring the possibility of selling the assets of webOS for upwards of a billion dollars, HP found nobody willing to buy at their desired price, and opted instead to open source the operating system. It's taken several months to get to this point, with the first beta of the refreshed Open webOS due out later this month. A year after webOS took a bullet to the head at the hands of Apotheker, the operating system is still facing a murky future. Open webOS will be fully open source and available to all to install, but at this point it's unknown what devices will be able to run the OS and its advanced Linux kernel. It's unknown what HP intends to do with the spin-off of the webOS Global Business Unit as a new cloud- and user experience-focused company named Gram. And it's unknown if HP, or anybody else, will ever take a gamble at making new webOS devices. A year later, the webOS community is likewise still damaged and confused. We've all seen it on the webOS Nation forums and across the web and social networks - people are leaving webOS and talking about it less and less every day. Only a dedicated corps of users are the type willing to buy a device with the sole intent of installing an unsupported operating system on it, and that's not a big enough group to sustain webOS as a legitimate contender in the mobile space. Developers likewise have moved away from webOS, with fewer new apps joining the App Catalog and existing apps being left to languish on the vine. It's been one hell of a year for webOS and we're leaving this year with more questions than we entered. We don't know what's coming up, and with the way things have been so far we're hesitant to even hazard a guess. The one thing we can be sure of is that the webOS community will still endure. We hear it all the time from those that have moved on to other devices - they still miss webOS and wish they could install it on their iPhone or Galaxy or Lumia device. webOS continues to be a unique gem in the mobile operating space. It's still forward-thinking in many ways and still has, in our not that humble opinion, the best multitasking and notifications interfaces on the market, 1317 days after it was first revealed with the Palm Pre and 365 days after the entire webOS world was turned upside down. View the full article

Almost exactly a year after HP announced the cancellation of all webOS hardware development, kicking off a fire sale of the remaining devices and an exodus of high- and low-level talent within the webOS Global Business Unit, the Palo Alto technology giant is giving things in the mobile space another go. According to an internal memo obtained by The Verge, the Printing and Personal Systems Group (PPS - the result of the merger of the Personal Systems Group and the Imaging and Printing Group) head Todd Bradley has created a new Mobility Global Business Unit to "reinvest in mobility via dedicated leadership, focused research and development, amazing new products, and a growing suite of applications and services." The new Mobility GBU will be headed by seven-year Nokia veteran executive Alberto Torres, who is joining HP as a Senior Vice President. The upcoming Slate 8 tablet, however, will stay under the Computing GBU with the notebook team that helped to build it. What exactly HP intends to do with the Mobility GBU isn't entirely clear, though we have little doubt their focus will be on tablets and not smartphones, and it's all but certain Windows 8 will play a major role going forward. What sort of role webOS will play is a big unknown at this point, though with HP spinning off the webOS GBU as a separate company, we can't be certain of anything at this point. The wording of the memo, specifically the word 'reinvest', doesn't exactly have overtones that we find encouraging for webOS with the Mobility GBU. read more View the full article

Ensuring that your phone or TouchPad's data is backed up to the webOS servers is important to ensure that you will be able to recover in case you lose your device, it gets damaged, or you just need to swap devices. Backing up your profile data is a pretty easy task, although be aware that it does not back up all your application data and many system settings, but you can use the Save/Restore homebrew app to fill the majority of that gap. You should always be aware of the last time that your device performed its automated backup because sometimes things can go wrong and the backup does not occur. This can happen because of backup server issues or because something on your device became corrupt. Either way, the sooner you identify the problem, the better the chance that you will be able to recover with only minimal--if any--data loss. To check when your last backup occurred, open up the Backup App () and the "Last backup" date should appear on the top-left. Note that it may take a few seconds before it appears. If the date is not within the last 24 hours, the first thing you should do is tap the "Back up now" button on the bottom of the screen to initiate a manual backup. If you run into additional errors or notice that your backup is not occurring on a regular basis, check out our Backing up your Palm Profile data tip with some additional steps and support options to fixing this issue. View the full article

HP released the webOS 3.0.5 LunaSysMgr component to open source back in late June and worked with webOS homebrew pioneers WebOS Internals to put together the WebOS Ports group to guide development of the Community Edition project. We've seen plenty of what webOS developers have been able to hack into the open source component, but something that normal people like you and me could install wasn't yet available. Technically speaking, what we have now is something that normal people could install, but it's not something that normal people should install. At least not yet. After two months of work the first alpha releases for the WebOS Ports version of the Community Edition LunaSysMgr have been released as the new LunaCE package that incorporates some of what we've seen unveiled and some new things too. There's something very important to note: it's an alpha release, so it's guaranteed neither stability nor functionality. We installed it on one of our TouchPads to give it a test drive and it's generally pretty smooth, though it has some quirks (like odd spacing in the dock and issues with PIN locks). If you depend on your TouchPad, it's not something we'd recommend installing just yet, just to be safe. Plus it's good to be able to contribute to the process if you're going to install the LunaCE alpha - it's known to have some bugs, but there are likely others, and the WebOS Ports team needs some first-level testing to make it happen. Don't feel bad if you think you should wait for the beta version, or the release version; there's no shame in that. So what all does LunaCE offer at this point? Infinite card cycling (reach the end of your spread of multitasking cards, swipe again to jump to the far end), tabbed card stacks (swipe from the edge in a stacked card to see a column of mini cards in that same stack to quickly switch), edge bezel card switching (swipe, slide, or drag in from the bezel to move to the next card - pictured above), and a universal search icon in the title bar, among other things. All of these features are controlled through the latest version of Tweaks, which adds a new section for Luna options. LunaCE is installable through Preware, but you'll need both access to the alpha feeds and the newest alpha version of Preware. Getting yourself set up in the alpha feeds requires terminal access on your TouchPad (either by hooking up through WebOS Quick Install or using Xecutah) and following the instructions at testing.preware.org. Once you're set up with the alpha feeds, installing LunaCE is a simple matter: bring it up in Preware, tap install, and then performa a Luna Restart. Hope into Tweaks to turn things on or off and you're ready to rock on the bleeding edge of homebrew. There is, of course, the unaltered Palm LunaSysMgr available to install in LunaCE's place should things not be to your liking. We'll be keeping an eye on LunaCE as it progresses, it's am exciting homebrew project and we're glad that we've got WebOS Ports and WebOS Internals on the job with the support from HP. View the full article

A good web address is a hard thing to come across. That's a lesson we learned when we were figuring out the identity for this site when we realized that PreCentral just wasn't going to cut it anymore; webOS.com is owned by HyperOffice (the true cloud and mobile operating system), webOScentral.com is owned by HP (who weren't willing to consider transferring the domain to us), and others. Thankfully, we were able to secure webOSnation.com and that's where we are now (and not planning a Gram-related rebrand anytime soon). So with the recent revelation that HP would be spinning off the webOS Global Business Unit as a new company named Gram, we pondered about and tried to figure out what website they'd go with. Gram.com is being squatted upon (money grams, instagrams, and weighting, it seems), as is gram.org (buy gold now!), gram.net is somebody's website filled with baby pictures, and so forth. So HP thought outside the box for their domain registration for Gram and turned to Armenia's top-level domain and got their website: gr.am There's nothing at gr.am right now, nor would we expect there to be, considering that HP hadn't planned to unveil the new name and company just yet. So sit tight, keep your eyes on webOSnation.com and gr.am for whatever they announce whenever they announce it. View the full article

Well folks, it's all come down to this. After taking hundreds of haiku entries and having the wider webOS Nation community to vote on the finalists, the time has come to reveal the winner. And it is… Define irony: HP's tablet runs Android, But not webOS This poignant haiku was penned by mgbmusic, who you might also know as @DeadTechnology from the Twitters. Asked what non-webOS device he'd like, he took some time to weigh his options and in the end landed on the Android-powered Samsung Galaxy S III for AT&T. While this was all good venting fun, our hope is that HP got the message and will reconsider their decision to not support the existing webOS userbase with an update to the upcoming Open webOS. This community is passionate about and dedicated to and borderline crazed about webOS. They've for years put up with buggy devices and unending turmoil all to live and hope for the vision of webOS. They deserve better consideration than this. In the meantime, we'll write woeful poetry about the situation. View the full article

HP's charging ahead with their Windows 8 tablet plans, and they're not going to let anyone, least of which OS-supplier and OEM competitor Microsoft hold them back. HP's also not letting the debacle that befell the TouchPad a year ago slow them down. HP's teased the Slate 8 tablet a few times in their new advertising campaign, and they've already said that they're going to go with Intel for their first Windows 8 tablet (and thus doing a Windows 8 tablet). We'd speculated that Microsoft OEMs like HP would be perturbed by Microsoft's entry into the manufacturer space, and while Acer's CEO might be unhappy, it seems HP isn't too upset by the Surface. Said John Solomon, HP SVP for America sales in the Printing and Personal Systems Group, to CRN: "I believe Microsoft was basically making a leadership statement and showing what's possible in the tablet space. Our relationship has not changed at all due to Microsoft's announcement. In fact, I applaud it -- I think it's great that they are getting out in front and [showing] what's possible." This stands in stark contrast to Acer CEO JT Wang, who said Microsoft should "think twice" about their intentions for Surface and how it could affect relations with OEMs like his company. HP for their part is putting on a smiling face, at least for the public. HP has massive reach and scale in the retail space, and so long as Microsoft's pricing for Surface isn't insane, HP shouldn't have many issues selling copies of their Slate 8 tablet, assuming that people want them. Of course, what we really want is a new webOS tablet, and we have no idea if that's anything HP's interested in doing at this point. And they wouldn't have to worry about competing with Microsoft for the same customers… View the full article

This morning I had a meeting at HP's webOS campus with Enyo framework members Gray Norton and Kevin Schaaf and head of webOS Developer Relations Enda McGrath. Leading up to tomorrow's Enyo Hackathon, we talked a lot about what HP has accomplished with Enyo and where they hope to go with the open source application framework. (full disclosure: HP is paying for my flight and hotel for this trip) Enyo was first previewed to the public back in November 2010 at the New York Developer Day. The framework was designed to follow up on the fully web-based Mojo app framework and featured modularity as one of its hallmark features, while still staying true to its web tech roots. At the time Enyo was demoed at smaller smartphone sizes and a bigger tablet-like size, demonstrating the flexibility of the modular design. In February 2011 developers got their first taste of working in Enyo after the Think Beyond event. A year later, following easily the most insane year in webOS' history, HP made the decision to open source webOS and the Enyo framework. Immediately, the open sourced Enyo was available on multiple platforms - practically anything that supported HTML5 would support Enyo, and many mobile platforms additionally supported on-device web-based apps. Enyo 2.0 also began an open source public beta that lasted several months, finally reaching the final release version in just the past few weeks. The new version of Enyo is designed to run on all manner of devices and desktop web browsers of all stripes. read more View the full article

Remember that gut wrenching feeling we all had when the sad news came that our beloved TouchPads would not be receiving any Open webOS love? Well don't be too down because there is a little ray of sunlight shining on TouchPad owners this week, and it's coming from the Android crowd, of all people. It seems that Android hacking guru James Sullins has leaked an early build of CyanogenMod 10 for the TouchPad. That's right boys and girls! You may not get the latest and greatest of webOS on your TouchPad but you will definitely have the most recent version of Android (aka Jelly Bean) to help keep your tablet from collecting dust. Right now this is a very early build of CM10 and the list of things not working is almost as long as the list of things that do work. Currently sound, mic, camera, and video acceleration are not working at all. On top of that there is a fistful of apps that force close or don't work altogether. With that said, this build does show promise and cool features like Google Now seem to be working fine. We do not recommend any of our readers install this unless you are of the adventurous type and just want to experiment. In which case you can click on the source link below and have some fun. As soon as a stable build hits the interwebs we will have all of you covered with a full how-to on updating your device as well as a spiffy video showcasing CM10. In the mean time check out this video put together by REVTV showing off the sweet taste of Jelly Bean for the TouchPad. read more View the full article

Everyone remembers playing with marbles at a young. We reminisce, looking with wide eyes at the bright jeweled orbs that take us back to a simpler time. We pretended they were tiny planets in the palm of our hands. Time shifts, rapidly going forward and it’s twenty or thirty years later and our kids have a new game. It still has those jeweled tiny balls of fun, but in a digital fashion, with the traditional game of marbles having been juiced up for big screens. When Spinballs entered the App Catalog, we could help but be intruigued. read more View the full article

While digging through the code released with Open webOS, some have noted that there's at least one device codename listed that we didn't know about to this point: "Chile". It's not a device we've heard of before, and an anonymous source has chimed in to let us know what this Chile device with its 800x480 landscape screen and headset switch was all about. Back in the early days of HP's acquisition of Palm, the webOS team at Palm set out to show the HP board that yes, they could in fact make tablets. So they sourced eight 7-inch tablets directly from a Chinese OEM and installed webOS on them. According to our source they weren't ever intended to be a release product, they were just for internal demonstration purposes. Good thing too, as apparently the tablet was of such poor quality that after three weeks only two of the original eight still worked (though it's worth noting they weren't likely in mass production by the OEM at that point). The tablet's screens were also noticeably crooked behind the bezel and it required a pin to trigger the reset button (ah, that brings back memories). That could have been the end of it, but in the end this tablet actually did see a public release. Except it wasn't Palm or HP that put it out, it was ViewSonic (better known for their monitors). The "Chile" was announced in August 2010 as the ViewSonic ViewPad 7 and released by the end of that year. It packed a 7-inch 800x480 screen, 512MB of storage (though with a Micro SD slot), a 600MHz Qualcomm processor, an unlocked GSM radio, a 3MP rear camera, and a 3240mAH battery. Oh, and it ran Android 2.2, barely modified by ViewSonic. All things considered, the ViewPad 7 was a seriously underwhelming tablet when it was publicly unveiled (HP announced the 10-inch TouchPad a few months later), and decided to do much better when approaching the 7-inch size point with the TouchPad Go. But even so, this Chile tablet is a little interesting bit of webOS history. View the full article

Yesterday's announcement of HP's intentions to not create a build for Open webOS for the TouchPad made us sad. When we're sad, we express ourselves in haiku form. Don't judge us, we know we're weird with our meter-driven ways. Enough with your judging eyes of judgement! Anyway, once we managed to push through our haiku-addled haze of disappointment, we decided it was time to harness that creative energy and put it to good use: we want you to send a message to HP, and we want you to do it in haiku form. So here's the deal: we're having a contest! In the comments of this post, submit your haiku entry (we'll be sticking to the tradition 5-7-5 syllabic meter) explaining to HP why they should reconsider their decision to not make Open webOS compatible with the venerable HP TouchPad. Or you can just express your woe and angst over the decision, or what it'll make you do. We want your take on the news, but in haiku form. And just to make things interesting, the winner's going to receive a prize gadget of their choice, as long as it doesn't run webOS. Yeah, it's a little unorthodox, but it's also to spite HP a bit - if they don't want to give us the update, then we'd be stupid to at least not be looking over our other options. We can only handle this sort of neglect for so long before our friends stage an intervention (again). Get cracking on those haikus, people! We'll take entries through Tuesday, August 7, and after that we'll post up a poll of the top entries so you all can pick the winner. Everybody's a winner when there's haiku involved, right? View the full article

Tomorrow, I, your fearless Editor-in-Chief, will be boarding an airplane bound for Salt Lake City. From there, I will board an airplane bound for San Jose, California. And from there, I will get in a car and drive to Sunnyvale to pay a visit to the Palm Campus and the Enyo Hackathon on Saturday. (full disclosure: HP is paying for my flight and hotel for this trip) No doubt I'll be running into all sorts of people on this trip, including members of the Open webOS organization at HP and plenty of webOS and Enyo developers as well. Being the social butterfly that I am (well, if you knew me you might contest that), I'm going to try to talk up as many of these charming, sophisticated, and doubtlessly dashingly handsome individuals as I can. As the head of webOS Nation, I like to think I'm representing all of you who won't be able to make this trip. If I'm going to be your representative, I need to know what you want to know. So hit up the comments with your questions for HP and the developers for the Enyo Hackathon. I can't guarantee I'll ask them all, let alone get answers you'll like (or answers at all), but if you don't tell me what you want to know, I'll never be able to ask. View the full article

With the on-again, off-again relationship between webOS and Evernote many webOS faithful ditched the popular online note service in search of a good alternative. However, in their search most webOS users came to the realization that there is really only one great alternative to Evernote which is SpringPad. Unfortunately, there were no apps available to access that service on webOS until developer Sven Ziegler dropped his awesome SpringPad client MeOrg! into the webOS App Catalog. Many of us here at webOS Nation took to the app like a fish to water and we even gave it a favorable review back in April. Despite the great review we still found a couple areas where the app fell short of being perfect. Instead of coming up with excuses why his app had a proverbial hole or two Sven took our critique as a challenge and has been coding like a mad man to flesh out his already awesome SpringPad client. When the dust settled he presented an app to us with enough enhancements to garner a new name, OrganizeMe! Upon initially opening the app, the additions Sven has made become immediately apparent. Little tweaks like being able to login (on the welcome page) and navigate with the "enter" key thru the fields for username, password and validate the account are very welcome additions. The developer has also made several UI changes like the new right panel detail view that looks worlds better than the app's previous implementation. One of our favorite new features found in OrganizeMe! is the ability to add alarms, reminders, and events to the webOS calendar. That feature alone warrants a purchase of the app if you have yet to download it! Of course there are several other bug fixes, tweaks, and additions that we will leave to our readers to discover (hint hint) for themselves. Overall the app has seen such a significant overhaul that we felt the need to give our readers a heads up on it. We would still like to see features like cross-app launching baked into OrganizeMe! in the future but for now we are more than happy with the app's progress. So, if you're in the market for a good alternative to Evernote check out OrganizeMe! today. The app can be picked up in the webOS App Catalog for the paltry sum of $2.99 or if you just want to see what all the hoopla is about you can try the trial version free of charge. View the full article

So with today's news that HP's not going to make Open webOS compatible with existing webOS devices, what devices can we expect to get support? As they said in their announcement today, HP is "aiming for support on future hardware platforms" with support for the Linux Standard Kernel 3.3 and a full complement of compatible open source drivers. The key word in their statement is 'future', and right now the answer as to which devices currently fit that mold is… none. The Linux Standard Kernel 3.3 is relatively new and no devices have yet been certified for 3.3. Right now, all Android OEMs are on version 3.1, despite the fact that version 3.3 has support for ARM processors going all the way back to Cortex-A8 (the original Palm Pre ran one of TI's ARM Cortex-A8 processors). Future devices will no doubt eventually have the kernel module (a closed-source bit for the processor) to support 3.3, but right now there aren't any that do and we don't know when that will happen. Historically speaking, Texas Instruments and Intel have been very good about providing documentation, adopting the latest Linux standards, and being general good supporters of the open source community. Qualcomm, Samsung, Nvidia, and the rest… not so much. Narrowing down our options [note: this is not a suggested purchases list, we don't recommend you buy a device on the chance that it might someday run Open webOS] to the most likely candidates among currently available devices are two: the Android-powered Samsung Galaxy Nexus and the Nokia N9 running Meego. read more View the full article