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In a world where unlimited data plans are no longer available and everyone is watching their data usage, having a way to keep track of your data usage on the device has become increasingly important. While other platforms have a native way to track this, even showing you daily data usage or usage by app, webOS has no such functionality. Most cellular carriers have codes your can dial to check (e.g. *3282# for AT&T), but even that will only show your cellular data usage. Instead, you can install the homebrew app Netstat from either Preware or webOS Quick Install that will track your Wi-Fi, Cellular, and Bluetooth data separately. The app even has preferences to allow you to set cellular data Traffic Limit and specify what day of the month you want the app to reset your data. So, if you need to keep track of your cellular data usage, or are just curious how much data you use across both Wi-Fi and your cell network, check out Netstat. And for those that are worried, there has been no noticeable impact to battery life while using Netstat View the full article

There has been some exciting chatter coming out of the internet tubes and pipes involving Enyo development and the community. Thanks to our friend Ben Stern (aka @webOSdealer) and others in the community, we have ourselves a nationwide Hackathon on the horizon! This is certainly not going to be you grandma’s hackathon. You know, if your grandma had a hackathon and all. On Sunday, March 4th the New York City webOS Developer and Enthusiast meetup will be hosting a Virtual Hackathon between 12pm and 6pm. In addition to the New York meetup , Other meetups participating in the hackathon include San Diego, Indianapolis, and Dallas. There are 3 ways those who are interested will be able to participate: Attend one of the local participating webOS meetups. Gather with a few of your local devs and register as a team. Register as an individual At the start of the event there will be an Introduction to Enyo and presentation by HP webOS Developer Platform Architect Ben Combee via Ustream. Ben will also participate in a Q&A session half way through the event. Not content at offering just hackathon prizes, there will also be a raffle for a UK QWERTY Pre3 that is open to anyone in the world. There isn’t any word yet on what will be worked on, but things are shaping up to be an event not to miss. Those that are interested—honestly who wouldn’t be—should make their way over to EnyoHackathon.com to register. Enyo developers, it is time to get your game face on! Source: Enyo Hackathon View the full article

webOS has had a few hackathons in its history, but not many in the modern Enyo era. With Enyo 1.0 fully open source and Enyo 2.0 almost there, it's time to bring back the hackathon! We're pleased to report that the New York, San Diego, Indianapolis, and Dallas webOS meetups are going to all be participating in a cross-country Enyo hackathon on 4 March 2012 between 12pm and 6pm Eastern time. And you don't really even have to go to one of the events - you can participate as a virtual entity right from your living room. What exactly they'll be working on hasn't been made public yet, but the whole thing comes with the support of HP, with webOS Developer Platform Architect Ben Combee appearing via the Ustream at all four events and participating in a live Q&A session in the middle. Interested developers should head to EnyoHackathon.com to register their teams. That's right - there's going to be some competition here to make this happen. And what's competition without prizes? Yep, there are prizes too. So go and register, dear Enyo developer, and prepare to hack! View the full article

One of the biggest challenges facing us for Mobile Nations Fitness Month is just getting our behinds up off the couch and exercising. Be it doing pushups during commercial breaks of going out for a run, getting off that couch is the first step. But what's step #2? That's what Infinite Appz's so aptly-named Couch to 5K aims to answer. Couch to 5K provides a three-days-a-week for nine weeks program designed to get your from nothing to being able to run a full five kilometers (3.1 miles) nonstop. Sound impossible to do in just nine weeks? It's not as hard as you might think, and the simplicity of Couch to 5K will make it easier. The app provides a evolving routine each day, starting with twenty minutes of alternating between jogging and walking on week one, day one to twenty minutes of jogging on day three of week five, finishing with a 30 minute jog set at the end of the nine week course. You're presented with a basic and linear interface that updates with the new day's course (assuming you finish the previous one) with a big countdown time in the center with a Start/Pause/Resume button below. Hit Start and you're prompted by a disembodied male voice with a neutral American accent to begin your warm-up with a five minute countdown. Once the initial warm-up countdown concludes, Couch to 5K automatically moves to the next stage of the day's workout: "Jog Now." For the first few weeks you'll alternate between jogging and walking, with the voice offering audible prompts as you go. As you progress through the program the jog periods grow longer and the walks shorter and less frequent, until you reach the point where you're just running non-stop. Which is the goal, no? read more View the full article

If you've been looking for a way to get Netflix support onto your HP TouchPad, listen up. It takes some doing, but the homebrew CyanogenMod 9 project to port Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich to our favorite webOS tablet has seen a bump up to Alpha 2 status. So while there's still plenty of work to be done, there's also plenty of progress being made. As note on our Android-loving sister site Android Central, CM9 Alpha 2 for TouchPad brings improved video support to the table, including HTTP livestreaming for apps like Netflix. We're not likely to get a webOS Netflix app anytime soon, so if you want Netflix, here's your best option. View the full article

App: Archive Manager Developer: pcworldSoftware Price: $1.99 Archive Manager is a long-awaited app for webOS. I know many people who have been waiting on an app that will archive (and un-archive) zip and tar files especially. I love this app, and love the idea. And at $1.99, it really isn’t all that expensive for what you get. Let’s get into the review. Initial Setup The initial setup of the app is pretty straight forward. You just click the nice little button that says, “I’ve read this.. Stop annoying me”. Ahh, you have to love the humor that a developer has when creating his app. UI The UI is also pretty straight forward. If you’ve used pcworldSoftware’s FTPit!, then the scenes will look very familiar to you. As soon as you open the app, you are presented with a filepicker. From the filepicker scene, you can either enter a folder, chose a folder to be archived, chose some files to be archived, or un-archive an already archived file. The archiving scene is also very nice and well laid out. It has a very nice and easy to understand UI. I knew how to work the app the first time I picked it up. Function This app fills a big void in the webOS users life (for those of us who deal with archives on a daily basis). It has the ability to extract and create ZIP, RAR, 7z, tar, gzip, bzip2, ISO and many more archive file types while on the go. I can now send someone a zip file of 30 pictures and not have to chose each picture from a list in the email app on my phone! The developer is looking at creating a homebrew service that will allow entire device access including files and folders. Pros Supports multiple file types (e.g. ZIP, RAR, 7z, tar, gzip, bzip2, ISO and many more) Not super expensive Active developer who responds quickly Cons Didn’t come sooner Bottom Line The bottom line is, if you use archives, even just every once in a while, I would buy this app. Show your support for future development, and get a very nice tool as well. At only $1.99, it won’t break the bank purchasing it either! View the full article

We've for the past several hundred years lived and worked globally under a seven-day week system. We've even adopted a typical calendar layout of seven columns across and engrained the week concept in our minds. That layout has extended to webOS in the Calendar app's month view. But there's an instance that we use much more often across the entirety of webOS that's lacking that handy grid view: the date picker. Go ahead and open up calendar and create a new event. Now try to change the date. You can easily pick the year and month from a vertical scroller - that makes sense. But what stops making sense is the vertical scroller for picking the date. When you have between 28 and 31 days, and when the 5th can fall on a different day of the week every month, a simple list of dates is really not adequate. So let's go back to basics. Let's go back to the calendar of the classic Palm OS. Let's go back to the grid date picker. It'll show us what day of the week the 5th is. It'll make things faster. It just makes sense. Have your own thoughts on this webOS Wish List entry? Of course you do - the comments are below. Surely you have your own ideas as to what ought be on the webOS wish list, and so we've created a forum thread just for what has proven to be an awesome discussion. View the full article

Ah, this takes us back. If you've been around webOS long enough, you might remember the brouhaha of November 2009. Yes, two years back, back when you could get a Palm Pre or a Palm Pixi, on Sprint and only Sprint, the webOS world was rocked by the news that Palm Profile backups were becoming corrupted on the server and the data was rendered inaccessible - a problem for those that had elected to store years of accumulated Contacts, Calendars, Memos, and Tasks in their Palm Profile. Some users were able to get their data restored by Palm going back to their backups of the backups, but others were just plain lost, and the users understandbly upset. Thus was born the class action lawsuit of Standiford v. Palm, Inc. and Sprint Spectrum, L.P.. The parties involved today announced that they have reached a settlement and will be going before the United States District Court for the Northern District of California for final approval on May 31 of this year (two-and-a-half years after the backup failure was uncovered). Being that this is a class action suit, you, the webOS smartphone owner, could sign on as a plaintiff. The only criteria you need meet are having created a Palm Profile on a webOS smartphone between 1 June 2009 and 26 January 2012 and having experienced permanent or temporary loss of access to your data stored in your Palm Profile account. If your claim submission is deemed valid, you could stand to receive a substantial settlement. How substantial? How does up to three Alexander Hamiltons sound? That's right, $30 could be yours. Except it's not a cash settlement, no, that would be too easy. If you suffered a permanent data loss due to a Palm Profile backup failure, you'll be able to choose from a $30 HP Online Store credit (not an App Catalog credit - this is for printer ink or a mouse pad) or a $30 Sprint bill credit. And if your data loss was temporary and you're still seething about it thirty months later, you could get $20 - again for the HP Online Store or your Sprint bill. The settlement is still pending approval at a fairness hearing, but considering that iPhone users disgruntled over their iPhone 4 antennae performance were offered a bumper case or $15, we'd guess this one's heading for approval. In the end, you get $30 and your contacts are still gone, while the lawyers make out with a briefcase full of cash. If you're interested in signing on to the class action suit, hit up the source link below. Full details in press release form can be found after the break. read more View the full article

It didn't take long for the big privacy brouhaha to turn out some results, eh? Today the State of California announced that they have brokered an agreement with Amazon, Apple, Google, HP, Microsoft, and Research In Motion regarding the disclosure of privacy policies in mobile apps. The agreement is meant to allow customers to check out an app's privacy policy before downloading an app, and if the app doesn't comply with the stated privacy policy, the developer could be prosecuted under California law. How exactly HP and the others will implement this policy is unclear at this point. While Google currently prompts an app buyer to confirm their agreement to privacy policies for individual apps (this app can access your contacts, photos, etc), the only exception that the webOS App Catalog currently calls out is for location services. The way the agreement is worded, HP, Apple, and the other companies not currently as aggressive in privacy clearance as Google would be able to provide a link to an app's privacy policy "in a consistent location" within the apps' store listing. While HP hasn't had to endure as much of a media firestorm as Apple has with unintentional location tracking and most recently overlooked contacts uploading, customers should remain always vigilant. The problem is that vigilance with regards to app privacy is that how an app works behind the scenes is not a clear and understandable thing to most users. While plenty of outrage was directed at Apple and developers over the failure to disclose contact uploading, the "why" for these apps uploading contacts wasn't fully explored, nor the security of that information once it's in the developer's hands. Either way, we're glad to see that this issue has been addressed, even if by just the state of California (as usual they've done their best to preempt the federal government while Congress dillies around with lawyer-driven hearings on the matter). View the full article

The past year has been a tumultuous one for HP, and though things are starting to settle down in Palo Alto, the company's Q1 2012 earnings report doesn't bode well. HP brought in $30 billion of revenue (down 7% from the same quarter last year), from which they netted a profit of $1.5 billion (down a staggering 38%). The computer-producing Personal Systems Group (which also previously built webOS devices) saw a 15% decline in revenue, with desktops and notebooks dropping 18% and 18%. Imaging and Printing also isn't looking good, with a 15% drop for HP's typically reliable revenue and profit center. It's brutal, but at least HP managed to bring in some profit and meet their own projections, and they're taking steps to do better going forward. Said CEO Meg Whitman, "We are taking the necessary steps to improve execution, increase effectiveness and capitalize on emerging opportunities to reassert HP's technology leadership." How webOS will factor into that strategy, well, even Whitman admits that will take years to play out. Press release and full financial statement is after the break. read more View the full article

This tip is only for TouchPad's running webOS 3.0.5 and higher With the latest webOS 3.0.5 update for the TouchPad, it is easy to determine which of your Skype contacts are available for a video call directly from the Phone & Video Calls app and then quickly initiate that call. Once within the Phone & Video Calls app, switch to the "Video" tab on the top of the page. If you are not already logged in to Skype, you will be prompted to "Sign In". Otherwise, you will see a list of all your contacts that are able to accept video calls and you just need to tap on one to call them. If you want to log off of Skype once you are done with your video calls, you can not actually do that from within the Phone & Video Calls app. You actually need to update your account status from the Messaging app . View the full article

We have been waiting for Alpha 1 since Alpha 0 was released. Well, wait no more! As of 9:47 PM last night, alpha 1 was released to the public! This release is still *alpha* and should be treated as such. This still carries all the warnings that the last 3 releases had. But this version also carries a lot more features that we have been waiting for, like HD video playback. It still does not support Netflix streaming yet, but they are certainly making some amazing progress! See below for the changelog, links, and more info. Hardware video decoding support. As a result, Youtube HD and 720p and 1080p local media will now be playable. Netflix does not work yet. Includes touchscreen improvements by Dees_Troy Now able to enable use of 2D companion core to offload composition And below are the release notes. We finally have hardware video decode working largely thanks to some help from yjwong. This release is primarily just to get hardware decoding out for folks to enjoy while other work continues. This build does not work with Netflix yet. However, hardware accelerated video decoding does work for Youtube HD and playback of local media. This build still uses the 2.6.35 kernel. The 3.0 kernel is still being heavily worked on and is also the primary focus for development. Don’t expect hardware video decoding to be perfect yet. Its half a miracle it works at all on our current kernel. Similar to the last build I will provide flashable zips to make it easier to switch to lcd density 120 with proper launcher layout. The hardware video decoding will not make it into the nightlies for a few days. There is still some work to do in order to get it merged into repositories and ensure it doesn’t break other devices. You can find the download links here. Source: RootzWiki Forum (thanks for the tip @webosdealer) View the full article

Every platform suffers from abandonware - apps that are released, do well, and then aren't updated to reflect changes in user expectations, device APIs, and back-end services. Platforms like webOS and BlackBerry suffer from a rather high rate of abandonware thanks to the turmoil that has enveloped each platform. Developers have to put food on the table, so if they're not making money making apps for a specific platform, we can't say we blame them for moving on to greener pastures. But February is Fitness Month here on webOS Nation and the Mobile Nations network of sites, so we're taking a look at fitness apps new and old, good and bad. We already looked at JogStats, a rather basic and straight-forward run-tracker, and today we're going to put what should be a powerhouse app - SmartRunner - under the review microscope. read more View the full article

I an increasingly digital world, there's one part of our financial lives that doesn't seem to have made the leap to ones and zeroes as effectively as online banking and credit cards: the check register. We're stuck, day-in, day-out, logging by hand on a little slip of paper the checks we cut, and that's just not right. Checkbook HD by GlitchTech Science aims to bring your checkbook and all the rest of your financial world into the digital age. With support for multiple accounts, transaction, expense, and transfer logging, and Google Spreadsheets backup, Checkbook HD turns your TouchPad into the most powerful check register you've ever seen. Normally Checkbook HD would cost you a trip to the App Catalog and $1.99 of your money, but no need to cut that check just yet - we've got 100 copies to give away! Contest: We have 100 copies of Checkbook HD 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 3.0.2 or higher with the latest version of the App Catalog. View the full article

If there's anybody close to as embarrassed as HP is by how things have gone with regards to the TouchPad, it's got to be the partners they dragged up on that stage at Think Beyond last year. One such partner was Time, Inc., with their then Chief Digital Officer Randall Rothenberg spending a good amount of time on stage talking about and demoing Time's new apps for the TouchPad. Shortly after launch, apps for Time Magazine, People, Sports Illustrated, and Fortune all landed in the App Catalog, bringing the full magazines and a suite of interactive content plus online subscription options to TouchPad owners. Fast forward seven months and things have changed, with Time giving warning that they're pulling the plug on all four of their TouchPad apps. That means that the Time Magazine, People, Sports Illustrated, and Fortune apps are all due to go dark. The end-of-days date for these apps? March 10, less than three weeks from today. Time plans to refund users for issues they won't be able to download, and we see no indication that Time's magazines won't be available through other channels (such as Zinio). For now the apps all work, but that won't be the case for long. We're guessing Time hasn't had the same uptake with their subscription service as other free news providers have had on the TouchPad. But that's okay, you'll still be able to use the Time app on iOS, Android, BlackBerry, and Bada. Wait, Bada? Really? View the full article

Due to the resolution differences between the Pre3 and all other Pre phones, you may often see a black or flickering bar on the bottom of the Pre3's screen that appears where the notification dashboard would be, even if there are no dashboard icons shown. If you are a Pre3 owner and user of an app such as the twitter app Carbon for webOS or the homebrew Internalz Pro, you have probably noticed this before. While we are hoping for updates to some apps to fix this issue, some developers may no longer be supporting their apps and we may never see a fix. However, you can try to make the update yourself using the text editor within the homebrew file manager app Internalz Pro to see if the directoins below will fix the app (your milage may vary, as this is not guaranteed to work with all apps). Also note that the fix below only affects Mojo and hybrid apps, so this fix will not work on PDK apps (like Angry Birds). Determine the App ID of the application you need to update. The easiest way to do this is to load up Prehware, search for the app, and find the App ID on the app's description page Open up Internalz Pro and navigate to /media/cryptofs/apps/usr/palm/applications/[APP ID] Find the index.html file, tap on it, and select "Open" to open up the text editor. Towards the top of the file, find the first "html" tag Directly after that, insert a new line and put this text in there: <meta name='viewport' content='height=device-height' > Swipe down from the top-left to reveal the Application dropdown menu and select "Save File". Close the file The next time you open that app, the black or flickering bar on the bottom should be gone. Note that if the app does receive an update in the future, but this fix was not included, you may need to add this back in. View the full article

Exhibition is really one of the under-appreciated features of webOS, despite the power of glanceable information it brings to bear. The big limitation is that it's confined to the Touchstone charger, which it need not be. Particularly with smartphones we've taken to them as glanceable information devices - What time is it? Do I need to look at that email? But it could be so much more, and with the framework for Exhibition already in place, making it so much more wouldn't be that much of a leap. The time has come for Exhibition to make it to the lock screen, both in the form of built-in customizable modules and from third party apps. It can even tie off the same settings from Exhibition on Touchstone, so you get the same view when charging and when glancing. Apart from an Agenda view, clock, and photos, what else could lock screen Exhibition bring to bear? Oh, just the most recent posts on Twitter or Facebook, glancing over stock feeds, a few of the latest news headlines, expanded weather forecasts, and upcoming calendar appointments, just to name a few. And with Exhibition already an option available to developers, we can imagine plenty more taking place on the lock screen. Have your own thoughts on this webOS Wish List entry? Of course you do - the comments are below. Surely you have your own ideas as to what ought be on the webOS wish list, and so we've created a forum thread just for what has proven to be an awesome discussion. View the full article

App: Super Ads XL Developer: AClass Apps Price $2.49 intro sale $1.49 For many, the Super Bowl is a time to gather around the tube in anticipation of watching the year’s two best teams go head to head. For others, it’s a time to checkout the latest of what has become a tradition itself: the Super Bowl Ads. Now thanks to AClass Apps, we are able to enjoy the collection of Super Bowl ads from the past right on our TouchPads, and soon across a variety of other devices thanks to the power of Enyo! At the time of this writing Super Ads XL has already made its way into the Google Chrome web store. For this review, we are focusing on the TouchPad app. Setup The setup could not be easier as there is nothing to it. Simply download the app, open it, choose your ad, and enjoy. As soon as the app is installed you are instantly able to checkout and watch the ads that are available from a number of Super Bowl games. UI The UI for the app makes use of the normal sliding panels we all know and love on the TouchPad and other Enyo apps. Each pane makes use of a styled background that is representative of a football field. The left pane displays the groups of ads, sorted by games, along with an option to view your favorite ads. After selecting a game, the list of ads are displayed on the right pane where you can click to view the ad or click the large star to make it one of your favorites. Each video is displayed in a popup window that houses an embedded YouTube player. Clicking the button on the bottom right corner brings up the full-screen mode just like any other YouTube video. Exiting the full-screen mode is done by clicking the center home button. The only feature I felt was missing was a way to share ads via email or other social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. Luckily, a share feature is said to be included in a future release. We are also told there are plans to include a Villo chat room in the app, which should round off the social side of the app in coming updates. Function This app is perfect for people who enjoy the Super Bowl ads, more than the game itself. It’s a fun way to pass some time, and the ability to look back at past videos is great. There were many great ones that I simply forgot about. Currently, the app is limited to the past four years of ads, however we are told that more ads will continue to be added as they are found and the app is updated. Pros Price (introductory sale currently!) Simple to use Enjoying the ads all over again Cons No sharing ability currently (said to be in future update) Currently limited the past 4 years worth of ads Bottom Line Who doesn’t love watching the Super Bowl ads? For $2.49 (currently on sale for $1.49) you can easily browse and watch the ads on TouchPad at any time. Super Ads XL Demo & FAQ View the full article

Feeling like spreading some open-source love to the webOS community, HP posted information regarding the Isis Project on February 14th. This project includes the open-source release of the Isis browser. Additionally, this is the announcement of HP’s progress in incorporating the latest web technologies such as QtWebKit and JavaScriptCore into webOS. Info on the Isis Browser and features, along with the source code can be found on the project’s site isis-project.org and github. What this means is that HP is holding true to continuing development on driving webOS towards their commitment to the open-source community. Additionally, QtWebKit promises to bring cutting edge support for the latest web features and standards, something that the current web browser has certainly been a bit behind on. QtWebKit was originally developed and has since been open-sourced by Nokia, and has been powering other mobile browsers on various platforms. This also marks the first release of any open-source components from the webOS platform itself after originally announcing the plans and releasing the EnyoJS open source dev framework. Furthermore HP goes on to clarify that UI Enyo widgets will be released by the end of February. In related news, we have also heard that WebOS Internals are in discussions to incorporate a “tech preview” release for the TouchPad via Preware. This package is said to include the new QtWebKit package and allow it to run along side the current stock browser. Once released, this preview should allow anyone to easily download it via Preware to test out some of the improvements and features of this new framework. If you are like us and love all the work WebOS Internals has put into the community, feel free to donate to their cause. Source: HP webOS Developer Blog View the full article

In celebration of President's Day you can save 15% on all your TouchPad and webOS smartphone accessories at store.webOSnation.com. To get your 15% discount, be sure to use the coupon code pres12 during checkout. This offer is not valid with any other coupon and expires tonight Midnight PST Monday 2/20/2012. Don't forget about our Fast Free Shipping on US orders of $50.00 and higher! So go ahead, grab that extra charger, a screen protector, and a slip case - George and Abraham would want you to have them. Enjoy the Presidential Savings! Start your Shopping Now! View the full article

Mobile Nations Podcast Feed Mobile Nations on iTunes Mobile Nations YouTube Android app permissions - How Google gets it right Editorial: Why is the stylus coming back? Google counting down, building up to Mobile World Congress New pre-release BlackBerry 10 OS images surface BlackBerry Wireless Media Server - Stream content from your BlackBerry Start Building the Love. It's time to setup a BlackBerry USA division CrackBerry Podcast 082: Back on Track Whitman: Google+Motorola could lead to closed source Android, drive manufacturers to webOS Open webOS governance model modeled after the Apache Way HP releases Open webOS' new browser Isis, JavaScript core, and Enyo UI widgets Back to the iPad: What Apple should take from OS X Mountain Lion and give to iOS 6 It’s time for AT&T to stop aggressive unlimited data throttling, or stop the unlimited plans Verizon and AT&T might be getting a 4G LTE iPad 3, but what about the rest of the world? Microsoft in talks with record companies for new music service? Bing Search updates for Windows Phone detailed Palringo IM hits beta in the Windows Phone Marketplace. We try it out View the full article

Interval training is defined as physical training that alternates between high-intensity work and periods of low-intensity work. For maximum effect the high-intensity workout is supposed to be near maximum exertion, while the low-intensity recovery period should be much toned down, even to the the point of complete rest. An example of interval training would alternating between sprinting for a full minute and light jogging for a minute. The idea behind interval training is to boost cardiovascular strength and aerobic capacity, making for stronger, faster, longer-lasting athletes. You may not count yourself among the ranks of "athelete", but interval training can be of use to you as well. Thanks to SpeedyMarks' $0.99 Workout, you too can try out interval training. Workout is about as basic as an interval training app can be, and it doesn't need to be much more than what it is. Upon launch you're presented with three fields, a feedback selection, and a start button in a purple box. The fields let you set your work and relax period length (in seconds) as well as how many times you want the cycle to repeat. Feedback can sound a chime at each interval or be silent. Hit the start button and the purple turns a pulsating red, ordering you to work. Your position in the current cycle is listed at the top of the red with a period countdown time below. A trio of Skip/Pause/Stop buttons at the bottom let you slow things down or speed them up, depending on how the workout's going. Once your work period is up, the block turns red and advises you to relax. Each switch between Work and Relax is accompanied by a high-pitched chime sure to cut through your labored breathing. Workout is somewhat ambiguously named, being that it's an interval trainer and nothing more. But it does what it's supposed to do, and it does it with minimal fuss. Workout by SpeedyMarks is available now in the webOS App Catalog for $0.99 for all devices. View the full article

We've all got a few. Even the most physically-fit and mentally-sound among us carry a few around with them every day. They're bad habits, and the science of understanding the formation of habits and what it takes to break them has been the subject of intensive studies by both academic and corporate interests for many years. Academics want to know for the purposes of understanding how habits are formed and what it takes to break them, while corporate interests are interested in how they can predict and take advantage of them. The New York Times last week published a fascinating look into corporate data collection that reveals the equal parts impressive and disconcerting efforts put into and results of shopper data collection, in particular the work done by US retailer Target. So how does this factor into habits? Target's analytics work indicated that shoppers fall into very strong habits with regards to their shopping patterns and it generally takes a major life-changing event (moving to a new city, a divorce, having a baby) to put those habits into flux. By analyzing the shopping patterns of their clientele, Target was able to identify female shoppers who they suspected to be pregnant, and within a few-weeks range how far into the pregnancy they were. By knowing this, Target could target specific advertisements (coupons on receipts, mail-delivered flyers) to those shoppers with subliminal hints that they should do their baby shopping, and eventually other shopping, at Target - identify the pattern and manipulate the habit formation. We all have many habits that aren't bad. Times author Charles Duhigg acutely points out that we learn habits as "chucks" of tasks in response to an input. For instance, backing a car out of the driveway or even a parking spot is a habit. Remember the first few times you tried that? Never-wracking, wasn't it? Heck, the second time this blogger tried he backed his father's car into a ditch (as you might imagine, Mr. Kessler was none too pleased). Brushing your teeth after breakfast is a habit. Reaching for your phone after hearing a tone or feeling the vibration is a habit, even if you aren't waiting for a message you can't help but wonder what came in. read more View the full article

Way back in the day when you went for a run, you just ran. Then came the Walkman, which brought music. Pedometers gave us our first logging capabilities, but that was fairly rudimentary. In recent years you could go with a fairly rudimentary and exceedingly expensive GPS-based tracker, but the user experience of those almost always left something to be desired. Fast forward to today, a time where every smartphone platform has multiple inexpensive apps that not only can track your run live, they log it with more information and analysis at your fingertips than we've ever had before. One such app for webOS is JogStats, a $3.49 creation by Rusty Apps. JogStats brings a level of polish and webOS-ness that some other run tracker apps lack, and has the added bonus of being mostly functional. Unlike some other run trackers, JogStats does not have a cloud backend, which while this means you can't automatically backup your runs and look at them from other devices, it also means (1) you don't have to deal with needed a data connection (GPS tracking is going to drain your battery fast enough) and (2) you don't have to futz around with online systems that change while the webOS app is left abandoned. The question is how willing you are to live without web access to your logs. read more View the full article

We'll make this work... View the full article