webOS Nation

New webOS Meet Ups

Sharon L Copeland — Wed, 16 May 2012 22:31:02 GMT

The forecasters say it’s supposed to be a warmer summer than usual, and it looks like the same for webOS meet ups. Armed with new tools to make developing and porting apps even easier, it would only seem appropriate to share the news with other webOS lovers in your area.There’s a lot to talk about, too. From our new developer leader, Edna McGrath who is actually been with the company longer than some of the CEOs of late, to our own Jason Robitaille joining the Enyo team. And with the news of new developer tools making their way into the webOS developer center, and the tidbits of news streaming in, we can’t think of a better way to celebrate . Hey tidbits are better than none. But there are few other things worth swinging by for…

At selected meet ups there will be drawings for TouchPads, Pre 3’s, Veers and other accessories. Along with good food, friendly banter, and free Wi-Fi to use with your new toy.There will also be promo codes from the best app developers given away, as well as round table discussions and app building techniques discussed. Sounds inviting doesn’t it? You bet it does! So point your mouse to that address bar and head on over to the palm developer center and register to an event in your area and check out the ones below. Come and join the best community anywhere for the fun and prizes.

Sunday, May 20 in Dallas, Texas
Thursday, May 31 in Dillingen, Germany
Sunday, June 3 in Chicago, Illinois
Sunday, June 17 in Nashville, Tennessee

So wake up the wife and kids, bring your laptop cords and ideas. This my friends is just the beginning.

webOS Nation moboot theme now available for everyone

Ryan St. Andrie — Wed, 16 May 2012 19:56:18 GMT

So you've used our awesome how-to and installed Android on your your TouchPad. You may have even spiced up Android by changing the task switcher to the webOS esque WebCM9 mod. Even with all that work done you still have not completely "tricked out" your TouchPad until you have installed our brand new theme for your moboot screen.

Moboot is what the guys on the Cyanogenmod team created that allows TouchPad owners to dual boot their devices. Without this nifty little program you wouldn't have an easy way to switch back and forth between Android and webOS. With as great as moboot is and as much as we appreciate the hard work of the developers we have to say moboot leaves a lot to be desired in the esthetics department! Luckily ReverendKJR on the Rootzwiki forums did a little conversing with moboot creator jcsullins and came up with a way to theme the ugly black screen for moboot.

After reading ReverndKJR's easy instructions on how to build a moboot theme we decided to build our own and share it with our awesome readers. So without further ado we give you the official webOS Nation moboot theme.

Installation

Note: Must be using moboot 0.3.5

The process of installing our theme (or any moboot theme for that matter) is very straightforward. Simply download the zip file we have put together for you onto the root of your device. If downloading from a computer plug your TouchPad into the computer with your USB cable then drag and drop the zip file onto the root of your device. Remember the download location of the zip file to make it easy to find later.

Once you have downloaded the zip file safely to your device boot your TouchPad into ClockworkMod Recovery. After you have ClockworkMod Recovery up use your volume rocker to highlight "install zip from sdcard" and then select it with the back button at the bottom of your TouchPad. Now the first option highlighted should be "choose zip from sdcard" so go ahead and press the back button again to select that option. Once again use your volume rocker to move to the file where you have stored the theme zip file (more than likely the "Download" folder) and press the back button to select and enter that folder. Again using the volume rocker highlight the theme zip and hit the back button to select and install the webOS Nation theme.

After installing the theme you can go back to the home menu screen of ClockworkMod recovery and select "reboot system now" to complete the process. Once your TouchPad has rebooted you should now see our awesome moboot theme instead of the dreadful old black one. If for any reason you wish to go back to the stock moboot theme jcsullins has created a zip that will revert moboot to its original state. All you will have to do is install that zip the same way you installed our theme and everything will be back to the way it was.

State of the Mobile Nations Survey: Phone buying habits

Jerry Hildenbrand — Mon, 14 May 2012 20:15:15 GMT

Help Us Help You! In our ongoing quest to better serve our community, we want to gain a better understanding into your phone buying habits. Are you buying your next phone in store or online? On contract, off contract or pay as you go? Those are the kinds of questions we're asking on this one.

The survey will only take you two minutes or less. Thanks!

Take the Survey!

Monday Brief: More 7" iPad Rumors, BB10 secrets, CTIA recap, and more!

AshleyEsqueda — Mon, 14 May 2012 20:10:29 GMT

webOS Travel Apps

Sharon L Copeland — Sat, 12 May 2012 18:02:31 GMT

It’s the last day of school and all of the youngster's eyes are glued to clock above the blackboard; waiting for that final cue to be released from their teachers grasp. As they wriggle in their chairs, biting on pencils, and twirl their hair with their fingers an old nursery rhyme slips in their precocious minds: No more school, no more books. No more teachers dirty looks. When the final bell rings for dismissal, you can see the glow of joy in their faces. As the kids emerge behind the large metal swing doors, it’s like rain water bursting through flood gates after a storm. Laughing, running and jumping they pile into the iconic canary yellow bus or to the line of sleek SUVs with moms wearing Chanel sunglasses; sipping on a Jamba Juice fruit smoothie. School is over and summer vacation has begun. Are you ready?

Ready for the munchkins begging to go to Disneyworld or are you ready to relax in secluded mountain lodge, away from the hustle and bustle of the city? Summer travel is a must to unwind from school and work and here at webOS nation we have got you covered with the best travel apps.

webOS 3.0.6 is available, but probably not for you

Adam Marks — Fri, 11 May 2012 22:14:00 GMT

We first saw hints that an update for the TouchPad was in the works when app logs started showing devices running webOS 3.0.6, and now we have more concrete evidence that webOS 3.0.6 is real, courtesy of one of our readers who wishes to remain anonymous. His device got an over-the-air update to webOS 3.0.6 this morning, but chances are your TouchPad will not, at least not right now. As it turns out, his device is a TouchPad Go running on Palm's development server, which probably describes only a handful of devices that even exist.

So what goodies does webOS 3.0.6 hold? As it turns out, not a whole lot. In fact, our reader can not find a single noticeable difference between webOS 3.0.5 and 3.0.6, and the onscreen changelog does not provide any further clues aside from mentioning "a variety of software improvements." Is it just under-the-hood enhancements or security fixes, or is there more? Sadly, he did confirm that Twitter synergy integration was not included in the update. We will just have to wait until webOS 3.0.6 is officially released to find out, but at least it's comforting to know that some support will continue for the TouchPad while we wait for the planned September release of Open webOS 1.0. Now let's get that webOS 2.2.4 (or 2.2.5) update for the Veer our as well!

Thanks anonymous!

Check Skype credit balance

Adam Marks — Fri, 11 May 2012 22:12:44 GMT

If you have a webOS phone or TouchPad with a Skype account added to it and you make calls using Skype credit, you can keep track of your current Skype credit balance right from your device. The easiest way to accomplish this is to just load up the Phone app (on phones) or the Phone & Video Calls app (on the TouchPad), swipe-down from the top left to bring down the Phone Application drop-down menu and choose "Check Skype Credit". You will be brought to the Skype account preferences page and you just need to scroll down to the "SKYPE CREDIT" section to see your balance. On the TouchPad, there is also a link here to "Add Credit" that will launch the web browser to the Skype website where you can buy more credit.

Alternatively, you can also select "Preferences & Accounts" from the dropdown (instead of "Check Skype Credit"), scroll down to the ACCOUNTS section and tap on your Skype account to get to the Skype account preferences page, but why take that extra step when you have a direct link option

PreDoodle - Love Hurts

Jason Harrison — Fri, 11 May 2012 20:52:36 GMT

Why do mommy and daddy keep fighting?

HP announces it will be making tablets again, but not webOS tablets

Jonathan I Ezor — Fri, 11 May 2012 19:43:20 GMT

At its Global Influencer Summit this week in Shanghai, China, HP's executives were questioned by several reporters about the company's plans for tablets, a market it has essentially been out of since it cancelled the TouchPad and all other webOS devices last year. In response, CEO Meg Whitman and EVP for Printing and Personal Systems Todd Bradley announced that HP was resuming production of consumer tablets...running Microsoft's upcoming Windows 8 operating system with "cloud-based technology" for shared content across devices. (Given how recent articles have put the blame on the TouchPad's failure on its hardware rather than webOS, we don't expect the upcoming tablets to look like the above.)

Sadly (if not surprisingly) for our community, there were no reported mentioned by Whitman, Bradley or anyone else from HP about the role (if any) HP's Open webOS initiative might play in the revived tablet product line, or otherwise on HP's hardware. We can only hope that, whether by design or through the efforts of our wonderful homebrew/webOS hacker community, we will be able to run Open webOS on new tablets and other devices at some point in the near future.

App Review: QuickChat for Facebook

Adam Marks — Fri, 11 May 2012 18:03:18 GMT

Despite deep Synergy integration between webOS and Facebook in the Contacts, Calendar, Photos and Videos apps, we have yet to see Facebook Chat make its way to the Messaging app without the benefit of any homebrew assistance. Although there are a few instant messaging apps in the App Catalog that includes Facebook Chat, none have the ease and simplicity of QuickChat for Facebook, by pcworldSoftware, nor are any of them built using Enyo to support both the small screens of webOS phones and the larger real estate of the TouchPad. For $2.99 (on sale, normally $3.99), QuickChat for Facebook is available for any webOS device running webOS 2.1 or higher and brings you a dedicated Facebook Chat app that does its best to mimic the stock Messaging app of the TouchPad. Upon launching the app the first thing you must do is log in to Facebook. On the TouchPad, you are then brought to a very familiar looking scene with a panel on the left that allows you to toggle between your online friends or your conversation history, and a larger pane on the right that houses your conversation. On phones, you just view that left-pane by default, and the conversation pane will slide in Enyo-style once you tap on a buddy or a conversation.

As long as the app is open (unfortunately, this is a webOS limitation), it will receive any chats or messages received in Facebook in real-time and even has push notifications to alert you if the app is not the active one. If you know how to use the Messaging App for IM or SMS messages, you will be right at home in this app. It works really well and adds a much-needed piece of Synergy to webOS, although there are a few limitation with how Facebook Chat works with the app, mainly due to the available APIs from Facebook.

Missing conversation history -- While your Facebook chat history will be loaded into the app once you log in, some conversations may be missing. The developer and I troubleshooted this in detail and determined it was actually a Facebook issue and nothing the app had any control over. As a result, this may also cause some conversation history to be lost when you relaunch the app in the future. However, that conversation will still be available on the Facebook website or the webOS Facebook app.
Group chats or messages are not available -- Due to Facebook API limitations, you are only able to send/receive messages/chats from individuals, and the conversation history of multi-person chats or messages will not be shown in the app. If you need to send a group-message, you will need to launch the webOS Facebook app to access this.
Other known issues -- The Developer has a "Known issues" page in the help section of the app that also documents some other issues, such as an occasional disconnect from the Facebook servers or profile pictures missing or not being updated. Once again, these are either Facebook or webOS restrictions, but the developer has work arounds for these built in minimize the impact on your user experience.

With all of these issues or limitations, you may be wondering why you shouldn't just use the messaging section of the Facebook apps for your phone or TouchPad or the web browser itself. The biggest reason for me is the real-time messaging and push notifications built into the app. If you rarely use the chat or messaging features of Facebook, this is proably not for you]. But if you send a lot of messages or even just occasionally Facebook Chat, then you should consider this app. And best of all, a single purchase will allow you to download the app on both your phone and TouchPad (as long as they are on the same webOS profile).

webOS Apps for Unit Converting

Sharon L Copeland — Wed, 09 May 2012 20:25:03 GMT

If there's one thing webOS doesn’t have a lack of is unit converters.The problem here is which one is right for you? From the initial observations of the app catalog it seems to be personality driven. Are you the dark brooding scientist? Are you the perky, verbal mathematician who loves color? Or are you the suited corporate business type, trading currency around the world? Do you like all the bells and whistles, or do you like to keep it simple and streamlined? The following converters have been selected for ease of use, style and ability to hold you attention whilst using them. Well at webOS nation we have found some great converters to suit your personality.

Touchstone-specific Exhibition Mode apps (webOS 3.x)

Adam Marks — Wed, 09 May 2012 20:00:04 GMT

This tip is only for HP TouchPads running webOS 3.0 or higher

webOS 2.1 on phones introduced Exhibition mode to replace the standard lock screen when your phone is on the touchstone charger, providing a unique interactive experience for the user while the phone was still charging. This feature was carried over to the TouchPad and webOS 3.0, even though the phone touchstones were not compatible with the TouchPad and required you to purchase a TouchPad-specific touchstone. And if you have multiple TouchPad touchstones, you can even specify which Exhibition app you want to launch for each touchstone.

Once you put the TouchPad on the first touchstone, just select the Exhibition app that you want to run. When you move the TouchPad to a second touchstone you will notice that it loads up the stock clock exhibition app and not the previously selected Exhibition App, requiring you to choose the Exhibition app you want to run on this touchstone. Once you make that selection, you can move back and forth between touchstones and the TouchPad will remember which app was running on the each touchstone charger.

Read This: Infighting, dysfunction, and the revolving CEO door; Fortune examines HP under Léo Apotheker and Ray Lane

Derek Kessler — Tue, 08 May 2012 23:41:28 GMT

By now you know how we feel about former HP CEO Léo Apotheker and his reign. Many of the major players in the tech industry - Apple, Google, Microsoft - have charismatic CEOs that act as the sole and unchallenged leaders of their companies. HP is a little more traditional in the Fortune 500 sense, with a Board of Directors tries to stay involved in company business, though it seems that having several competing ideas leads to more drama than we had imagined.

Over the past few years everybody in the tech space has seen that HP's board has suffered from no small measure of dysfunction. They've had a revolving door of CEOs - Léo Apotheker's predecessor Mark Hurd had last just five years, and Carly Fiorina before him was forced out after HP's near disastrous merger with Compaq. The board had garnered a reputation of being a leaking sieve to the press, so much so that the chairman had at one point hired private investigators to examine the phone records of other board members and reporters (that ended with a publicly embarrassing trip before a Congressional committee).

But none of that compared to the brief reign of Léo Apotheker. Brought on in November 2010 after Hurd's ouster, Apotheker had no hardware experience and had been fired from leading a German enterprise software firm with revenue a fraction that of HP's. His tenure as HP CEO included the unveiling and launch of the HP TouchPad and webOS 3.0 (a project started by Hurd with the acquisition of Palm)., the cancellation of that very product, an ill-advised "exploration" of spinning off HP's PC division, a catastrophic drop in stock value, and his eventual firing by the HP board just eleven months after being brought on.

Fortune set out to find out just what happened, interviewing dozens of current and former board members, executives, and employees and examining confidential company and legal documents in the process. What they found is a broken company, struggling to repair itself, with a board full of infighting and open challenges and a chairman desperate to maintain his position while burying over the decisions he'd spearheaded.

Not for the first time, the news reached the press before the official announcement. On Sept. 22, Apotheker read that he was being fired and replaced by Whitman. He was flabbergasted. In a meeting that morning, Lane told him that he had lost the support of the board and every single member of the executive team -- including former SAP loyalists such as Homlish. Before the board, Apotheker was subdued, dignified and resigned. But he was incensed. He had fully consulted with the board on everything, he told friends. He'd trusted Lane to make the board a functioning one, but instead Lane had turned it against him.

Lane distanced himself from the disaster, blaming Apotheker. The man who'd been proud of HP's bold moves was now running as fast as he could from the word "transformation." It had, Lane said in a conference call with investors, "been stricken from our language." Asked in a CNBC interview whether the board bore responsibility for HP's chaos, Lane reacted defensively. "I'm going to give you an answer right from my heart, okay? In January, I added five board members to this board. This is not the board that was around for pretexting. This is not the board that fired Mark Hurd. It's just like open season to write about this board. It's not this board. This board did not select Léo, okay?"

It's a massively long read, but for those interested in just how bad HP got, and how far it has to go, we have to recommend that you head over to Fortune and check it out. It's a doozy.

App Giveaway: 50 copies of Pixelism

Derek Kessler — Tue, 08 May 2012 22:31:55 GMT

There are numerous ways to fool around and make art with your TouchPad. One of those ways is a fun app by Phantom App named Pixelism. As you might gather from the name, Pixelism is pixel art of sorts. With the app you can create from scratch or overlay on existing images your own art built from tiny little stamp-like shapes including squares, triangles, and stars - all in any color you so desire. Normally Pixelism would cost you $1.49 from the App Catalog, but thanks to the developer we have 50 copies to give away to you!

Contest: We have 50 copies of Pixelism 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 50 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 3.0.0 or higher with the latest version of the App Catalog.

HP looking to hire more webOS team members

Arthur Thornton — Tue, 08 May 2012 21:55:41 GMT

HP is looking for several new webOS team members ranging from software engineers to visual designers to user experience experts according to job listings on HP's Taleo job site. While we are hesitant to take this as signs of things drastically changing for the better on the inside we can't help but feel good knowing that HP is looking to hire some people into the organization after all of the drastic staff cuts in recent months. The job openings come after a hiring freeze was put in place in August immediately following the decision to stop the manufacturing of webOS hardware.

HP has exactly twelve job postings live at this time. Four of them are internships, one for the Enyo team, one product management internship, and two user experience design internships. There are also eight other job openings that include two senior interaction designers, two senior visual designers, one network engineer, one senior product manager, one in quality assurance, and one senior cloud services architecture role. A couple of these openings appear to be for the Enyo team, specifically the interaction designers, as they are based out of the San Francisco office where the fine Enyo folks work.

We hope the listings continue to expand, especially given the vast number of employees who were laid off. The more employees they have on the team the faster they should be able to get Open webOS out, and the better it should be when it becomes available in September. We do know one of those listings will be coming down fairly soon given that the Enyo team has already hired one of the smartest minds in webOS homebrew, Jason Robitaille, as an intern, unless the Enyo team is actually hiring multiple interns which could certainly help the framework grow to be even bigger and better.

HP updates webOS Developer Center, adds reporting graphs and app privacy policies

Arthur Thornton — Mon, 07 May 2012 22:38:07 GMT

HP updated the webOS Developer Center today to add in sales reporting graphs, a move presumably brought on or sped up by the planned shuttering of Metrix last month, as well as adding more compliance with state and federal laws requiring developers to provide privacy policies when their apps access certain user data which has been an issue on iOS and Android over the past few months.

The App Catalog was updated in weeks prior to allow users to see the app's privacy policy but developers were unable to actually add one in until this past weekend. This new functionality allows a developer to provide a privacy policy for an individual app or a company-wide policy. This should add a bit of reassurance to every user knowing that they should soon see a privacy policy for most, if not all, apps that are required to provide one under applicable state and/or federal laws.

The other major update of the day is the addition of sales data in the form of graphs. Earlier today the data was available but many a developer tweeted back to the developer relations team to let them know the displayed numbers were horribly off. I personally noted a nearly twenty-fold increase in numbers under "active users" versus actual download numbers.

This is a welcome change, of course, because developers have been asking for an integrated solution for some time now. This does not yet not replace Metrix or true analytics systems, however, because while it does provide some information such as active users and download statistics it falls short of providing detailed user data such as device type, the version of webOS being used, screen resolution, and the language of the users. That data is critical to developers and we hope HP adds at least some of it in to the developer portal, even if it requires an extra Enyo or Mojo library be added to the app.

webOS apps for Twitter

Ryan St. Andrie — Mon, 07 May 2012 20:02:25 GMT

If you were to ask any of the webOS faithful what they used their devices for the most you would more than likely hear Twitter from a fistful of them. Outside of our forums here at webOS Nation, Twitter is how most of us keep in touch with one another. We debate, give virtual high fives, discover cool new apps, and keep track of news with Twitter. To say that is important to us would be understating just how much we depend on the popular micro-blogging service.

Once upon a time the webOS landscape was full of third party Twitter clients. We never let a little thing like not having an official app stop us because at any given moment we had a multitude of choices to keep us tweeting 'till our hearts content. Over time interest in webOS dwindled and many developers either pulled their apps or abandoned them altogether. The most recent loss was developing house dots and lines pulling their powerhouse Twitter clients Carbon and Graphite.

After the initial shock of losing two of the greatest Twitter apps to ever grace our platform we composed ourselves and ventured off to the App Catalog to see what we could find. This journey turned out to be quite an eye opener for us as it was brought to our attention that good Twitter apps are hard to come by on webOS these days. A quick search of the App Catalog will bring you a fistful of results however with a little research we discovered many of these apps have been rendered useless by Twitter's various API changes over the years.

So in the spirit of saving our readers time and money we decided to put together a quick roundup of great Twitter apps. It should be noted that this list contains apps that work as advertised and can be found in the App Catalog. This article is also not intended to compare these apps as we just want to give our readers a quick heads up on what options they have available.

Set Internalz Pro as your default Text Editor

Adam Marks — Mon, 07 May 2012 19:59:32 GMT

Although all webOS devices have a built it Memo app, it wasn't until the TouchPad that any of them had a built in app (Quick Office HD) to actual edit local text files. Not willing to let this oversight stand, prolific developer (and soon-to-be Enyo intern) Jason Robitaille decided that he would build his own text editor into his Internalz Pro file manager homebrew app. With Internalz Pro, you can now open up any type of text file (not just .txt files, but any plain text file) right on the device, even choosing if you want the text file to have Windows, Mac OS X or OS 9, or Linux line endings. However, this text editor may not be activate by default, so follow the steps below to set up Internalz Pro as your default text editor:

Ensure Internalz Pro is installed, using any valid homebrew method
Open Internalz Pro, swipe-down from the top-left and select "Preferences" from the Application dropdown menu
Scroll down to the "TEXT EDITOR" section and ensure that the "Register as file handler" is set to ON
Make any additional settings updates, as required, based on how you want to use the text editor
Swipe-down from the top-left and select "Close" to return to Internalz Pro (you can also swipe back on webOS phones)
Now you need to update the Default Applications for your device by opening up the "Device Info" app, swiping down from the top-left corner of the screen to bring up the Application dropdown menu and select "Default Applications"
Scroll down to find a file type that has Quick Office shown in black text (as opposed to gray), and then choose Internalz Pro.
Swipe-back on phones or tap the "Back" button on the TouchPad to return to Default Applications listing
Repeat for all text file types
The next time you try to open any text file, it should now open up in the Internalz Pro text editor.

Note that you can also follow these similar steps to set up Internalz Pro to be the default applications for images or IPK files, as long as the "Register as file handler" is set to ON in their respective section of the Internalz Pro preferences page.

Monday Brief: The Galaxy S III Unveiled, BlackBerry World Conference, and more!

AshleyEsqueda — Mon, 07 May 2012 13:48:31 GMT

Jason Robitaille to join Enyo team for summer internship

Arthur Thornton — Sun, 06 May 2012 00:37:07 GMT

Homebrew extraordinaire Jason Robitaille, the creator of webOS Quick Install, Comic Shelf (and its big sibling, Comic Shelf HD), Internalz, Internalz Pro, and many other apps, dozens of patches, and several homebrew services, will soon be joining the Enyo team in sunny San Francisco for the summer as their intern, he announced today on his Twitter account. The move is unsurprising, given his active participation in the community and numerous recent contributions to the open source Enyo project.

Jason's ability to work with the Enyo team came following the herculean recruiting efforts of Matt McNulty, the Senior Director of Frameworks and Tools at HP, more simply known as the head of the Enyo team. As a Canadian citizen, Jason required more than just the typical human resources visits to hire. McNulty did everything he had to do to ensure that Jason would be able to get the necessary documents from the US State Department to work and live in California, which is neither trivial nor quick.

Jason has told us that he will be starting later this month, May 14th to be precise, and that his internship will last roughly three months, ending in early August. We look forward to seeing what contributions he can make to Enyo 2.2, which is currently scheduled for release in July. We wish him the best of luck and we hope he can take with him some great knowledge, excellent memories, and perhaps even an offer for a job after he graduates. We expect he will enjoy working with the great group of folks over in the Enyo team and home he enjoys his time in San Francisco - after all we could use a guy like him at HP helping mold Enyo into a better framework and Open webOS into a better operating system with the community truly in mind.

webOS developer relations head Fred Patton leaving HP, Enda McGrath taking interim lead

Derek Kessler — Fri, 04 May 2012 22:34:18 GMT

He hadn't held the job for very long, but today HP has told us that veteran Palm employee and webOS Developer Relations head Fred Patton is departing the company for the ever vague "opportunity outside" of HP. Here's the official (and brief) statement on the matter:

"Fred Patton is leaving HP to pursue another opportunity outside the company. Enda McGrath will lead the developer relations team on an interim basis as we continue our work with the community on Open webOS."

Now, you might be thinking, "Hey, didn't Patton just get that job a few weeks ago?" You're right, it was unofficially unveiled six weeks and one day ago that Patton had taken the head position of webOS Developer Relations. Patton had stepped in after the departure of veritable rock star developer relations VP Richard Kerris in October. And if you'll flashback with us to that tumultuous time in late October, you'll find similar wording of "to pursue an opportunity outside of the company." Kerris, of course, ended up landing at Nokia where he's been working to build up the Windows Phone catalog of apps, along with a handful of former HP webOS developer relations staff.

For his part, Enda McGrath is an eleven year Palm veteran, having worked in technical and developer support functions over the past decade. Yeah, he's been with Palm for a while - all the way back to the days of Palm OS 5.0 and the Tungsten line of PDAs (ah, those were the days). We'll admit we're not super familiar with McGrath, though we hope that we and the community will get to know him a bit better until such time that HP decides on a permanent lead for developer relations.

We're hearing that HP's wanting to work on expanding their developer relations beyond app developers contributing to the App Catalog; they're hoping to bring in a wider community of open source developers to help contribute to Open webOS. The help facilitate this goal, HP's looking at its own employees and possible external hires to fill the vacancy on a more permanent basis. All we can hope is that they manage to pick somebody good who can stay on for a while... just when we feel like we're getting to know somebody they're whisked away to corners unknown.

PreDoodle - Just Borrowing Ideas

Jason Harrison — Fri, 04 May 2012 22:14:09 GMT

Come on guys! You can't just "borrow" ideas like that...

Rotate Image Worker Pro to portrait orientation

Adam Marks — Fri, 04 May 2012 22:13:38 GMT

Image Worker Pro, by MetaViewSoft, is an app that will allow you to edit your photos directly on your webOS device, giving you the ability to resize, crop, rotate, adjust brightness, and so much more (check out our review of IW Pro, although note that MetaView is actively updating the app and there may have numerous enhancements and bug fixes since our review). One of the updates to the app has been to change its rotation so that it's always in a landscape mode. While this works better on the TouchPad, you may prefer the app to work in a portrait orientation on a webOS phone. Although there is no preference within the app itself to change the rotation, MetaView added a homebrew solution for you to manually adjust it. The easiest way to do this is by using the text editor within the homebrew file manager app Internalz Pro and following the directions below:

Close Image Worker Pro, if opened
Open up Internalz Pro and navigate to /media/cryptofs/apps/usr/palm/applications/de.metaviewsoft.printimagepro/
Find the prefs.txt file, tap on it, and select "Open" to open up the text editor.
Towards the bottom of the file, find the row that says "ORIENT=".
Update the row to say "ORIENT=1"
Swipe down from the top-left to reveal the Application dropdown menu and select "Save File".
Close the file
Next time you open the app, it will now be in portrait mode

Note that you may need to make this change every time MetaView updates the app (which is rather often).

Image Worker Pro is available in the webOS App Catalog for $1.99 and is compatible with all webOS devices running webOS 1.4.5 or higher

ToodleTasks hops, skips, and jumps onto webOS smartphones and Android

Derek Kessler — Thu, 03 May 2012 22:51:14 GMT

The joy of the Enyo application framework is that apps can be easily built not only to work on webOS smartphones and tablets, but across platforms. We've seen plenty of apps take advantage of this cross-platform nature, including Exhibition-emulator Dock, Flashcards to Go, and Instapaper-reader Paper Mache. Now, one of our favorite apps for task management - ToodleTasks - is making that same jump.

ToodleTasks HD, built by ProdiSoft on Enyo, has been available for some time on the TouchPad. The toodledo client for webOS recently made the jump not only to webOS smartphones, but to Android smartphones and tablets. For smartphones, there's ToodleTasks Phone Edition for webOS ($3.99) and Android ($2.99), and for Android tablets you can download ToodleTasks Tablet ($3.99). And, of course, there's still the original ToodleTasks HD ($4.99), with the same sliding Enyo panels interface and feature set as the other three versions. That's the power of Enyo, baby.

Samsung introduces the Galaxy S III, with a riverstone shape and wireless charging

Derek Kessler — Thu, 03 May 2012 22:08:34 GMT

What do you get when you mix together a 4.8" 720P AMOLED screen, 8 megapixel camera, quad-core processor, a 2100mAh battery, a smooth riverstone-inspired shape, and a wireless charging system? The Samsung Galaxy S III, of course. Yeah, those latter two could have been said about the original Palm Pre as well, and we'll admit we take issue with Samsung's misleading "first wireless resonant charger", which we have no doubt the uninformed will take to mean "first wireless charger", even though Palm crossed that bridge more than three years ago. It's like Christopher Columbus discovering the Americas... centuries after the Vikings.

Disgruntled grousing aside, the Samsung Galaxy S II and Samsung's latest implementation of Android 4.0 and TouchWiz do qualify as impressive. It's a high-powered device that serves as an effective counter to HTC's recently unveiled One series of smartphones. We're also pleased to see a greater focus on software over specs, with the Galaxy S III packing new features like WiFi direct, a camera that can tell if you're looking at the phone (and turns the screen off when you're not), facial recognition for social networks, picture-in-picture for videos while using apps, a Siri competitor dubbed "S Voice" (how original), and much more.

The Samsung Galaxy S III is dues to come out later this month, hitting the US in June, in both HSPA+ and LTE variants. Presumably it'll hit most, if not all, US carriers, hopefully without the increasingly silly default email signatures we've been watching our Android brethren cope with over the past few years.

Check out Android Central for all the latest on the Samsung Galaxy S III.