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Really, guys? Really? Since when did Touch-to-Share allow sharing of anything other than URLs, let alone ambiguous media? And when did the Palm Pixi Plus get updated to webOS 2.0? And isn't it a little disengenuous to be claiming the Palm Pre Plus got 2.0 when only one country in Europe got the update, and they had to download the webOS Doctor to install it? And how did we miss that the HP Veer got an updated that enabled Touch-to-Share functionality? And weren't the Pre3 and Veer HP-branded, not Palm? HP, this is silly. You probably should have just gone with an automatic redirect to openwebosproject.org instead of building what amounts to a depressing animated (via HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript!) graveyard of webOS hardware past and even more past. And way to not touch on anything that makes webOS unique. Like, you know, web technologies, unobtrusive and interactive notifications, Synergy data unification, the multitasking… oh screw it. View the full article

It was a little over two years ago that HP hired former SAP chief Leo Apotheker to be the Palo Alto tech giant's new CEO. Apotheker came from a short tenure as CEO of German enterprise software firm SAP, from which he'd been forced out after poor performance during an admittedly poor economic environment. At the time, we expressed our misgivings over the pick; Apotheker was an enterprise software guy through-and-through, having spent twenty years at SAP (which is small in comparison to HP). Sure, enterprise services were a profitable and growing portion of the HP business, but HP also still had a massive and dominating consumer hardware enterprise and had just months prior completed its acquisition of Palm to further expand that consumer hardware portfolio. We all know what happened next: within a year HP launched and then cancelled a new generation of webOS hardware, announced a plan to split HP into separate consumer and enterprise companies, and purchased UK-based enterprise software company Autonomy for $10.2 billion. A month later, Apotheker's embattled term as HP CEO came to an unceremonious end as he was dumped in favor of former Ebay CEO Meg Whitman, who has since spent the past year struggling to clean up the mess Apotheker created. Today, in conjunction with announcing their fiscal year 2012 results, HP declared an $8.8 billion write-down loss related to the purchase of Autonomy. Specifically, the charge is related to the revelation that "members of Autonomy’s management team used accounting improprieties, misrepresentations and disclosure failures to inflate the underlying financial metrics of the company" before HP's purchase. In other words, they lied about how much Autonomy was worth and how much money it could make for HP, leading to HP overpaying by billions of dollars for the company (The purchase price at the time was more than 80% higher than Autonomy's stock price; when HP bought Palm they paid a mere 23% premium over the trading price). After writing down $3.3 billion a year ago after Apotheker's cancellation of webOS hardware and $8 billion more a few months ago related to a failure to actualize the value of their 2008 purchase of enterprise services company EDS, the last thing HP needed was another multi-billion write-down. But here we are, bringing the one-year write-down total to over $20 billion. Without the EDS and Autonomy write-downs, HP actually would have only suffered a loss of $600 million for the year, which while not great, looks downright rosy given the situation HP found itself in a year ago and the $12.7 billion paper loss now on the books. Understandably, HP's not happy about this debacle, and make no mistake, this is a debacle. HP says that they have contacted both the US SEC Enforcement Division and the UK Serious Fraud Office for "civil and criminal investigation". And not wanting to leave it up to the feds, HP's also "preparing to seek redress against various parties in the appropriate civil courts to recoup what it can for its shareholders." In other words, "We'll see you in court." read more View the full article

Quick Keys Keyboard, by D Gardner, is an app that you can purchase to give you access to a virtual keyboard on any webOS device from the original Palm Pre to the HP TouchPad. It has some limitations due to the nature of webOS, but it will still give you the ability to type out a quick message without having to slide open your phone to access the keyboard. In addition being a virtual keyboard, it also allows you to define up to 57 "Quick Keys" that gives you quick access to those pre-define responses. There are two ways to add/edit the Quick Keys. The easiest way is to open up the Quick Keys Keyboard app, scroll down to the "Edit Quick Keys" button and then add or edit any of the 57 numbered options. Just back-swipe when you are down to save your updates. Another option is to open up the "App-Mode" keyboard by tapping on the icon on the keyboard, typing in your text in the textbox and then tapping the icon to save your text to the next available Quick Keys slot. Once you have your Quick Keys define, now you need to know how to paste them in to webOS. All you need to do is activate the virtual keyboard and then tap the icon. The keyboard will be replaced with a number keyboard from 1-28, along with a few additional icons. From here, you can: Tap on a number to paste in the respective Quick Keys (unfortunately, you have to remember what each one is, as there is no onscreen indicator) Tap on the to return to the virtual keyboard Tap on the to paste in the current date and timestamp Tap on the to dismiss the virtual keyboard Tap on the to toggle between quick keys 30-57 or back to 1-28 (note that #29 seems to be missing from the options) Note that you can also set the "Enable Launch to Q.K." preference within the app to default to the quick keys responses instead of the keyboard when you launch it. Quick-Keys Keyboard is available in the webOS App Catalog for $1.25 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 The Verizon Droid DNA has arrived! Android Central review of the LG Nexus 4 Samsung Nexus 10 review RIM introduces BBM Voice - Make calls to BBM friends free over Wi-Fi First BlackBerry 10 smartphones suggested to start arriving in February BlackBerry L-Series gets sized up next to the iPhone 5 The Waiting Game Quick-Keys virtual keyboard updated for better performance and customization Use Nokia's Here mapping service on your webOS smartphone, thanks to homebrew Why Apple couldn't make the iPad mini with a Retina display Exclusive first look: 1Password 4 for iOS The future of Siri and Apple's services New podcast! Debug 1: Loren Brichter talks all about Apple, Tweetie, and Letterpress Nokia Lumia 920's Camera - A Second Look T-Mobile Nokia Lumia 810 unboxing and video tour Windows Phone 7.8 features confirmed in leaked Nokia presentation slide View the full article

Click the image below to jump over to the official contest thread and leave a comment on that post for your chance to win! Remember, leaving a comment to this post won't get you entered... click the image above to head to the contest post and leave a comment there. Good luck! The Contest ends at 12 Noon PT on Monday, November 19th, 2012, so HURRY UP AND ENTER! View the full article

Mobile Nations Network Movember Funds Raised so far: $9358 (USD) Is this a new boyband, or the MO-bile Nations crew in Winnipeg? Welcome to our third Mobile Nations Movember update. We're be bringing you these updates every Sunday throughout the month of Movember (formerly known as November) as we grow out our moustaches and raise awareness and funds for prostate cancer research and men's mental health issues. When we embarked upon our Mobile Nations Movember mission I thought it would be great if we could raise $10,000, and we're almost there! There's still a lot of Movember left, and we've already raised over $9,300. Maybe it's time to up our goals to $15k? The facial lip growth is really starting to blossom now, so hopefully we'll see the 'staches and the fundraising continue to accelerate right through to the end of the month. If you haven't donated yet, we'll love you forever if you do. Donations can be made easily over the web. Simply jump over to our Mobile Nations Network page, click on the name of any of the inidividuals listed as part of the network, and hit the donate button. All funds donated to an individual will pass through to the network total. Keep reading for more on Movember and to see some great moustache photos from the team! read more View the full article

In this year of two thousand twelve, we've reached a point in our modern society where waiting is considered a bad thing. Patience runs thin. We don't tolerate lines, nor are we accepting of slow downloads. We get irritated if we have to wait for what we perceive as being too long for food in a restaurant, the arrival of a delivery, or for that idiot driver up ahead to make up their mind about how fast they're going to drive. All of this makes being a webOS fan an excruciating exercise in patience. It's one thing to be waiting for a device to be released after its announced. You have a general idea of when it's going to come, even if it's something vague like "first half of 2011" or "late summer". You have a time frame. Right now, as we wait on whatever's happening with Open webOS to, well, happen, we have no time frame. At least with the open sourcing process for webOS we had a roadmap. Now that the roadmap was more-or-less fully executed upon at the end of September, we've ended up in a holding pattern here in the webOS community, waiting for something - anything - to come our way. Three months ago we broke the news about HP spinning off the webOS Global Business Unit as a sort-of-independent company to be called Gram. Two months ago they moved out of the old Palm campus into a newly renovated space. And today the company still hasn't been announced, let alone discussed what they're going to do. For three months now, employees have been stuck in this sort of limbo where they can say they work for Gram, wear Gram shirts, and carry around Gram bags, but can't talk about what Gram is going to do. So we wait for Gram to become official. And we wait for the webOS-powered LG TV (maybe - maybe - seeing a debut at CES this coming January) and for webOS Professional Edition and for the Android Compatibility Layer and for… anything. read more View the full article

Earlier this week, Nokia rebranded their pretty-darn-good Nokia Maps as 'Here' and launched their maps outside of Microsoft's Bing and Windows Phone platforms (and Nokia's own much-maligned Symbian platform). What made the rebrand/relaunch interesting was that Nokia will be launching apps for Here on iOS and Firefox OS in the near future, with Android support on the horizon. Here also debuted a new online webapp so you can check out and use the service in your browser, even on smartphones. Unless it's a webOS smartphone, that is. It's not that they're deliberately dismissing webOS, no, it's that the webOS browser just isn't up to snuff anymore. Thankfully, webOS itself can handle the service, so long as it's packaged as an app. That's exactly what lauded homebrew developer 72ka decided to do. If this sounds familiar, that's because 72ka is the force behind the all-too-awesome homebrew Google Maps app. He seems to have a thing for maps apps, and considering that we're otherwise stuck with a sub-par Bing Maps app on webOS, we're okay with him having a thing for maps apps. 72ka describes the Here maps app as a "simple webview container to allow user interactions", circumventing the webOS browser's inability to permit user interactions with the Here website. And just too tickle our awesome bone a little bit further, he's planning to offer the app for free through the webOS Nation Homebrew Gallery (installable via webOS Quick Install and Preware) and it's available under the Apache open source license. There are still some things to work out - 72ka says it's an alpha at this point - including support on webOS 1.x (currently the app won't load) and fixing an awkward half-loading problem on the TouchPad. But even then, this webview container of an app is a stopgap measure. When Nokia announced Here, they said they would be releasing an API for the maps next year, which 72ka hopes to use to build a native app for webOS. But until then, if the Bing apps map doesn't do it for your and you're just sick of Google, check out Here. View the full article

With webOS synergy you can have up to 16 different email accounts loaded up on your webOS device. Choosing which email account to send a message from is only a tap away, but did you know that you can control the name (if any) that shows up on other people's email program that is attached to your email address. In most cases when communicating with friends or business associates, you probably want your actual name displayed alongside your email address. But if you are replying to a mass email with people you don't know, entering an email-based contest or sending a note to a random business/website you are not familiar with, you may not want your real name disclosed to them. Unfortunately, this change requires more than just a tap to update, but it's still pretty easy to do and can be assigned per email account, similar to how you set a reply-to address. To change your email account's "From" name: Open the Email app Swipe down from the top-left to access the Application drop-down menu and select "Preferences & Accounts" Scroll down to the ACCOUNTS section and tap the account you want to update Scroll down to the FULL NAME section and name that you want people to see when you send them an email Swipe back (on phones) or tap Done (on the TouchPad) to return to the Preferences screen If necessary, repeat for any other email accounts you want to update Swipe back (on phones) or tap Done (on the TouchPad) again to return to the email app Note that if you are listed as a contact in the recipient's email program, their name for you may override any setting that you make here. Thanks to webOS Nation reader pro2 who posing this question in our comments on a previous tip View the full article

So far, only Microsoft seems to be really interested in Windows RT. Seeming as they're the ones that are making the ARM-compatible version of Windows 8 you'd expect them to be interested, but their OEM partners? Microsoft's decision to go it alone and make their own hardware with the Surface RT tablet could be construed as indicative of the state of Windows RT, but we'll just let HP Executive Vice President and head of the massive Printing and Personal Computing division Todd Bradley say it in his own words: "It tends to be slow and a little kludgey as you use it. I just don't think it's competitive. It's expensive. Holistically, the press has made a bigger deal out of Surface than what the world has chosen to believe. If you want to go to any of the 30 Microsoft Stores in the United States to buy one, I think you should probably do that." Big words, coming from the man in charge of the then-Personal Systems Group when it launched the webOS-powered HP TouchPad more than a year ago, didn't sell it very well, and then saw it get cancelled just 49 days later. One could say that not only has Bradley soured on mobile-based operating systems (Windows RT can't run traditional Windows apps, while Windows 8 can - yeah, it's poor marketing) and maybe even ARM processors thanks to his experience with the TouchPad, but we'd say that's shortsighted. It's not in the cards right now that HP's going to produce a webOS tablet in the future, let alone the near future, but as the iPad line and a whole manner of Android-powered tablets have shown, devices with ARM chips at their core aren't a bad concept. In fact, they're a great concept. Considering how late Intel has been to the tablet-ready processors game, right now ARM's pretty much the only concept. So much so that we wouldn't be surprised if in a few years we're talking about ARM chips eating into Intel's stranglehold on the traditional PC computing market. For their part, HP's got a few Windows 8-running Intel x86-powered tablets on the way, and for Bradley's sake we hope they're not slow and kludgey - expensive wouldn't surprise us, though. And unlike Microsoft's Surface you'll probably be able to buy HP's tablets from the likes of Amazon and Best Buy, though we can't really say that's a better experience than Microsoft's dedicated retail stores. Oh, and Todd, if you want to show Microsoft what an ARM-powered tablet can do with a proper tablet operating system, don't forget what you spent a lot of money on a while back is still there, waiting for some hardware... View the full article

With webOS synergy you can have up to 16 different email accounts loaded up on your webOS device. If you are viewing an email message or browsing the listing of messages from within a folder of a specific account, when you go to create a new message or reply to an existing one the sending email account will be the one that is currently up on your device. Alternatively, if you create a new message through Just Type or tap on an email address elsewhere in the device, the email will be automatically set to be sent from you default email account. But what if that wasn't the email address you wanted to send them message from? Well, to send the email from a different account, all you need to do is tap the email address on the "FROM" row on the top of a new email message to change the sending address. There are two main reasons why you would want to use this functionality. First, as mentioned above, if you are using Just Type to being a message but don’t want to use your default email account, you can easily change it. Second, if you received an email message to one account, but wanted to reply using a different account, you don't need to jump through any hoops or find any workarounds to move the message between accounts. Just tap reply and then change the "FROM" address. This tip works on all webOS devices and versions, from the original Pre to the TouchPad. View the full article

Performing a search in webOS for a business is one of the easiest tasks, simply by performing a google search right from Just Type or by using a variety of apps that have Just Type integration. You can quickly get an address, phone number or even the hours of operation, but once you navigate off that search results page, the data is gone and would require you to perform another search in the future. While that isn’t a difficult task to repeat, some of those apps will give you option to save the result to your contact list so you can bring it up again in the future, even if you don't have a network connection. While there are quite a few apps that allow you to save a business search result as a contact, there are two that we find to work best: WhitePages and Jan Herman's (72ka) Google Maps homebrew app. WhitePages wins out in pure speed to bring up your search query, and also includes residential (people) searches as well as business searches. We have found that the Google Maps app takes a little extra time to load up before you can search, but you are rewarded with additional information in the contact record, such as hours of operation and website address. In both cases, the contact record will be added to your default synergy account To add a contact from White Pages, just perform a search, select on the result you want and then tap the button on the bottom of the screen. You will then have the option to add the phone number and address to an existing contact or create a new one. To add a contact from the Google Maps app, you also start by performing a search (from within the app, tap on the "Google Maps" section of the header bar to bring up a search box). Find the result on the map and tap the icon to bring up an additional pop-up, then select the "Info" option to view a detailed results page. Then all you need to do is tap the icon on the bottom right and choose the "Add to contacts" options in the resulting pop-up. Unlike in the WhitePages all, the only choice you have to is create a new record. WhitePages is available in the webOS App Catalog for free while Google Maps is available in the webOS Nation homebrew feed in Preware or webOS Quick Install. View the full article

Login to webOS Nation and leave a comment to this post to be entered to win a Wildcard webOS Prize Pack! Last week we rolled our new Mobile Nations Passport account system, which makes it easy for any member of webOS Nation to also participate across our other sites. With Passport, you have one account and to rule them all! In honor of the successful roll out of Passport and thanks to our awesome friends at Gogo, we're celebrating with an amazing cross site contest. Each of our sites is running a contest giving away an Ultimate Prize Pack for their platform. And thanks to Passport, you can easily enter for a shot at winning each prize pack on each site. read more View the full article

Mobile Nations Network Movember Funds Raised so far: $6,639 (USD) Welcome to our second Mobile Nations Movember update. We'll be bringing you these updates every Sunday throughout the month of Movember (formerly known as November) as we grow out our moustaches and raise awareness and funds for prostate cancer research and men's mental health issues. Our Mobile Nations effort has grown to 95 individuals from around the world taking part and together we have already raised over $6,000 for the cause. We want to end the month with over $10,000 raised, so while we are on track we still need your support! Donations can be made easily over the web. Simply jump over to our Mobile Nations Network page, click on the name of any of the individuals listed as part of the network, and hit the donate button. All funds donated to an individual will pass through to the network total. We're now 11 days into Movember, which means for most of us our moustaches have sprouted nicely, but are still a long way off from that luxurious full bloom look we seek. Some of us are having more success than others. For myself, my moustache is still looking pretty pathetic, so just yesterday followed Nick Offerman's How to Grow a Moustache Advice (and Derek Kessler's dare) and ate a raw onion to fuel my moustache growth. Watch the video at the link above to see how that all played out. Keep reading for more on Movember and to see some great moustache photos from the team! read more View the full article

Mobile Nations Podcast Feed Mobile Nations on iTunes Mobile Nations YouTube LG Nexus 4 review HTC One X+ review Should I upgrade? Galaxy Nexus versus the Nexus 4 BlackBerry 10 receives FIPS Security Certification before official release BlackBerry Beta Zone now available in 43 additional countries! 'We realised we can’t go on with a 15-year-old BlackBerry OS' - Thorsten Heins HP gives half a million bucks for platinum status with the Linux Foundation KeyiCam to use Open webOS for automated key duplication kiosks Galaxy Nexus Open webOS port goes hi-res iPad mini review and iPad 4 review The best voice recorder, weather, calculator, and stocks app alternatives for the iPad mini and iPad 4 iMore show 324: Reorganized with Ryan Block Nokia Lumia 920 Review HTC 8X Windows Phone from AT&T Unboxing What you need to know if you’re upgrading from Windows Phone 7 to 8 View the full article

Earlier today, my boss, Kevin "CrackBerry Kevin" Michaluk asked the world, "What's the best food to eat to make your moustache grow faster? Liver and Onions?" To which I, in my eternal snarkiness, flatly responded, "Raw onions, a dash of garlic." And, Kevin, being the nutcase that he is… ate a whole raw onion. In Kevin's defense, this was for a good cause, even if it was a horrible idea. I promised Kevin a $50 contribution to his Movember campaign, and because I'm a man of my word, a $50 contribution was made. All for facial hair and raising awareness of men's health issues. Just know, in this relationship, Derek wears the pants. The evil, evil pants. View the full article

Back in August, TouchPad hacking mastermind James Sullins released a really early build of CyanogenMod10 for those of us daring enough to try something that is far from stable in the Android-on-your-TouchPad world. At the time this early ROM worked but was missing several key elements like sound and hardware acceleration. Despite missing some fairly important things for the typical daily driver, James' early build showed a bunch of promise and oozed the buttery smoothness that is a staple point of Android 4.1 (aka Jellybean). However, after the initial release James disappeared, leaving us all craving for some more Jelly Bean action. After several months we were starting to think the project was dead. Then, out of seemingly nowhere, a new build of CM10 hit the interwebs and to our surprise it's amazingly stable, despite being carrying an experimental pre-alpha build label. So what has changed? First and foremost, CM10 now has sound and hardware acceleration, so Netflix and YouTube lovers will be happy with their video framerates and, well, having audio. This build also has working microphone functionality, which has been a sore spot for CyangenMod 9 TouchPad users due to the proprietary drivers needed for our beloved tablets. During our testing we have found that mic functionality is a bit finnicky, especially when trying to use Google Now. It's still pre-alpha, so take that performance with a grain of salt. Outside of that, almost every app we tried from simple Twitter apps to graphically-intensive games all worked without a hitch. With all this goodness in tow you are probably wondering why this hasn't been released as an alpha or an official nightly. Well, that's because there are several kinks that still need to be ironed out. For example, many people from the various forums following this build have experienced several different battery and charging issues. During our testing of James' newest build from November 8 we experienced fantastic battery life in comparison to what we've experienced with CM9. That said, our TouchPad on this CM10 alpha wouldn't take a charge without turning on USB debugging in Android's developer options. Don't ask us why this managed to fix the issue, but it did. In addition to battery and charging issues, users may also experience the occasional force close of an app and no camera support (no surprise on that one, and not a great loss considering the quality of the TouchPad's lone front-facing camera). Outside of the above-listed issues we have found this build of CM10 to be pretty darn stable. So much so that we probably won't be moving back to CM9 anytime soon for our Android needs. But that's only because we've already got it installed - like all things experimental (see the Open webOS porting process onto the Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone), we aren't yet ready to suggest you dive in with CM10 as a daily driver operating system. But if you are the adventerous type, just hit up the source link below for more info. As soon as something more stable is released, be prepared for full walkthrough on how to get your TouchPad up to date with CM10. If you have yet to take the plunge and dual boot your TouchPad with webOS and Android 4.0, be sure to check our our great how-to on installing CyanogenMod9 on your device. View the full article

While we've been watching with glee the progress of WebOS Ports's port of Open webOS to the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, there was a part of us that cringed when we installed the phone-sized version on our Galaxy Nexus. See, the phone has a delightful 1280×720 pixel 4.65-inch screen with a beautiful 316 pixels-per-inch resolution. The webOS phone user interface images dredged up and implemented by Josh Palmer, however, were made for the 320-pixel-wide screens of every webOS smartphone debuted since 2009, excepting the HP Pre3 (itself 480 pixels across). If you're amazing at math like we are, you've likely already figured that the UI images we're talking about here (the dock background, rounded corners, etc) are less than half the size than would be required for a screen of the Galaxy Nexus's caliber. Thankfully, we've got guys working with WebOS Ports like Seth "Appstache" Goodell and Duncan "Isandunk" who are willing to step up and rebuild the graphical interface items in the proper resolution. The clunky scaled-up resolution of the UI items in question here wasn't too evident in the video we posted last week of the progress made on the Galaxy Nexus port (in truth we really just wanted to check out the keyboard), the pixelation that comes from scaling up an image by 225% was too much for our fastidious eyes and persnickety interface tastes. So the full-resolution interface elements concocted by Goodell and Duncan are visual music to our sight-spheres. There's still a lot of work to be done to make the Galaxy Nexus port truly useful, but that they're sweating the small stuff so that it looks awesome when it is ready makes us happy campers. View the full article

Announcing the winners of the Mobile Nations 2012 Halloween Costume Contest! The judges worked long and hard going through the hundreds of submissions in this year's Mobile Nations Halloween Costume Contest, and they have finally narrowed it down and chosen 10 winners! There were so many incredible entries, from funny to scary with everything in between, and all of them were super creative, so this was a really hard contest to judge! We appreciate all the pictures that were submitted, and hope that you all had as much fun entering as we did getting to see everyone. You can watch a video of the entries above, and check them all out in a gallery at the link below. (If you don't see your picture in the photo gallery or video, it's likely because it didn't have a tablet or phone in the picture. Gotta follow those rules!) Winners are posted below, with description/back story if it was included in the email . If you were one of the chosen winners, watch your email later this week for details on what you've won! Congrats everyone, see you back here next Halloween! Check out the full gallery of entries read more View the full article

Easily access all of Mobile Nations, all with one account! You can now also register and login via Facebook, Twitter, Google and Microsoft! Your most-requested feature is finally here! Instead of having to maintain separate account logins and passwords for each and every one of our five communities -- Android Central, CrackBerry, iMore, Windows Phone Central and webOS Nation -- with Mobile Nations Passport you can now access all of your favorite sites with one easy login. Now, don't worry! Even though we've unified our account management, we know and love the unique identities of each of our sites as much as you do, and we're not changing that. The power to control which sites you want your account to be associated with is still all in your hands -- we're making it easy, not automatic and certainly not mandatory. We're also maintaining your individual post history and forum profile on a site by site basis, so you get the recognition you deserve for each and every platform. The video above will give you a quick, two-minute run-down of how Mobile Nations Passport works. Watch it, and then register or, for existing members, simply login to activate your Passport now! View the full article

When you're HP, you've got money to play around with. Sure, you're not making a much money as you used to, but there's still cash sitting around with which you can do things. You can spin the webOS Global Business Unit off into a new company that's still going to rely on you for [even more] money, and you can plunk down half a million dollars to become a Platinum member of the Linux Foundation. That cool $500,000 was enough to lift HP out of their previous Gold level membership, lofting the Palo Alto company to the ranks of Fujitsu, IBM, Intel, NEC, Oracle, Qualcomm, and Samsung. Making this investment also gives HP a seat on the Linux Foundation Board of Directors, giving them a direct voice in how they want to see Linux evolve in all sorts of manners, especially with respect to HP's own businesses. While Open webOS was not explicitly (or implicitly) mentioned in the press release announcing HP's ascension to Platinum membership within the Linux Foundation, we can't help but think that this could prove to be a good thing for our favorite mobile operating system. webOS has from its start been based on Linux, and the new Open webOS version makes use of the Linux Standard Kernel. While up to this point HP has taken and integrated Linux code into Open webOS, going forward they'll have the ability to influence how Linux evolves in ways that may be beneficial to Open webOS. Money buys influence, influence gets you what you want. read more View the full article

Mobile Nations Podcast Feed Mobile Nations on iTunes Mobile Nations YouTube The Nexus Phone family: Four generations of Android Who needs a Nexus 4 (and why)? Why you shouldn't worry about Android 4.2 updates What does it mean for RIM to be in carrier lab testing with BlackBerry 10? Here's another BlackBerry L-Series image to remind us it's not yet Q1 2013 WHAT IF BlackBerry Messenger had gone cross platform? Checking out the Galaxy Nexus Open webOS port virtual keyboard Enyo 2.1 app framework lands with improved theming and globalization support Galaxy S3 gets the cleanest Touchstone mod yet Tim Cook's Apple iPad mini unboxing and hardware hands-on and iPad 4 unboxing and hardware hands-on iPad buyers guide (Late 2012) and iPad mini vs. Nexus 7: Which should you get? Verizon finally shows off Windows Phone 8 with new tagline WSJ now reporting on a Microsoft branded Windows Phone Overview and review of Windows Phone 8 View the full article