News Reporter

Well, this is all together something unexpected. If you point your browser to palm.com, which you might do for nostalgia's sake from time to time, no longer are you redirected to the HP webOS museum website. Instead it, along with every other palm.com address, now redirects to "mynewpalm.com". After years of languishing away under HP, something's happening here. Digging in with the handy tools at domain name service Whois reveals that mynewpalm.com was registered by the blandly-named company "Corporate Service Corporation". On their website they advertise as being a "Digital Brand Services" company, specializing in digital brand protection. One may think that'd mean doing things like registering potential mis-typings of web domains (go ahead and type gooogle.com with three 'o's into your browser and see where that takes you). Okay, that's interesting. But dig a little further and look at the most-recent website associated with HP and webOS: gr.am. And, yep, it turns out that the domain name of the short-lived/never-born Gram subsidiary was also registered by CSC. Huh. So what's the plan with mynewpalm.com? Could HP be resurrecting the Palm brand? After all, the sale of webOS to LG was only of the OS assets and employees — HP kept the Palm branding. It's been a full three years since HP pulled the plug on webOS devices, but even then the Palm brand only held equity among its fans, and for a lot that equity was in nostalgia. HP's current handheld strategy has been a disappointing line of oversized Android deviced destined solely for developing markets like India. Perhaps the Palm brand could see a revival, but we hope that if HP's planning on doing such a thing, they give the name the justice it deserves. We are, after all, talking about a brand that ushered in the PDA, smartphone, and seamless multitasking eras. What do you think HP has in store with mynewpalm.com? It's gotta be something, right? Thanks to Remy X, Preemptive, and lc_lol in the webOS Nation Forums! View the full article

Well, this is all together something unexpected. If you point your browser to palm.com, which you might do for nostalgia's sake from time to time, no longer are you redirected to the HP webOS museum website. Instead it, along with every other palm.com address, now redirects to "mynewpalm.com". After years of languishing away under HP, something's happening here. Digging in with the handy tools at domain name service Whois reveals that mynewpalm.com was registered by the blandly-named company "Corporate Service Corporation". On their website they advertise as being a "Digital Brand Services" company, specializing in digital brand protection. One may think that'd mean doing things like registering potential mis-typings of web domains (go ahead and type gooogle.com with three 'o's into your browser and see where that takes you). Okay, that's interesting. But dig a little further and look at the most-recent website associated with HP and webOS: gr.am. And, yep, it turns out that the domain name of the short-lived/never-born Gram subsidiary was also registered by CSC. Huh. So what's the plan with mynewpalm.com? Could HP be resurrecting the Palm brand? After all, the sale of webOS to LG was only of the OS assets and employees — HP kept the Palm branding. It's been a full three years since HP pulled the plug on webOS devices, but even then the Palm brand only held equity among its fans, and for a lot that equity was in nostalgia. HP's current handheld strategy has been a disappointing line of oversized Android deviced destined solely for developing markets like India. Perhaps the Palm brand could see a revival, but we hope that if HP's planning on doing such a thing, they give the name the justice it deserves. We are, after all, talking about a brand that ushered in the PDA, smartphone, and seamless multitasking eras. What do you think HP has in store with mynewpalm.com? It's gotta be something, right? Thanks to Remy X, Preemptive, and lc_lol in the webOS Nation Forums! View the full article

Well, it was bound to happen eventually, and now we know exactly the day when HP will flip the switch on the webOS cloud services servers: 15 January 2015. Just barely six years after the Palm Pre was introduced at CES 2009, HP plans to shut off their last remaining expenses related to their disastrously-managed webOS experiment. The date also falls just short of two years after HP sold off their webOS assets to LG. It's a sad, but not unexpected day. And when the 15th of January does come, all webOS cloud services will go offline. What all does that entail? Here's what you won't be able to do on a webOS device come January 15th: Backups Restore New device set-up Password recovery App Catalog app downloads App Catalog app updates App Catalog app restores webOS system updates (you know, if you've for whatever reason not updated in the past three years...) It's unsurprising to have this come to pass, and we're at least thankful that HP is being forthright and transparent about it. As they say in the FAQ: Shutting down webOS cloud services is part of an orderly end of life program. HP announced the end of webOS devices (phones and tablets) over 3 years ago but the services were kept running to allow customers to continue to have a richer user experience. The user count has dwindled to the point where it is no longer viable to keep the services running. It's a sad day, and it'll be a sad day yet when the 15th of January comes and those servers go dark. But in the meantime, the webOS Nation App Gallery is still up and running. Yeah, we know, we're still here. Any developers interested in moving their apps over to the App Gallery are welcome to do so and can request access to submit apps here (select "Submit Homebrew App" as the category). We know it's not the same as the App Catalog and we don't have a system in place for payments, but what have you got to lose at this point? For those of you that are wondering how you'll manage in a post-App Catalog world, check out our guide for installing Preware on your webOS device. Source: HP webOS Developer Center View the full article

Well, it was bound to happen eventually, and now we know exactly the day when HP will flip the switch on the webOS cloud services servers: 15 January 2015. Just barely six years after the Palm Pre was introduced at CES 2009, HP plans to shut off their last remaining expenses related to their disastrously-managed webOS experiment. The date also falls just short of two years after HP sold off their webOS assets to LG. It's a sad, but not unexpected day. And when the 15th of January does come, all webOS cloud services will go offline. What all does that entail? Here's what you won't be able to do on a webOS device come January 15th: Backups Restore New device set-up Password recovery App Catalog app downloads App Catalog app updates App Catalog app restores webOS system updates (you know, if you've for whatever reason not updated in the past three years...) It's unsurprising to have this come to pass, and we're at least thankful that HP is being forthright and transparent about it. As they say in the FAQ: Shutting down webOS cloud services is part of an orderly end of life program. HP announced the end of webOS devices (phones and tablets) over 3 years ago but the services were kept running to allow customers to continue to have a richer user experience. The user count has dwindled to the point where it is no longer viable to keep the services running. It's a sad day, and it'll be a sad day yet when the 15th of January comes and those servers go dark. But in the meantime, the webOS Nation App Gallery is still up and running. Yeah, we know, we're still here. Any developers interested in moving their apps over to the App Gallery are welcome to do so and can request access to submit apps here (select "Submit Homebrew App" as the category). We know it's not the same as the App Catalog and we don't have a system in place for payments, but what have you got to lose at this point? For those of you that are wondering how you'll manage in a post-App Catalog world, check out our guide for installing Preware on your webOS device. Source: HP webOS Developer Center View the full article

If you can dream it, you can do it. Source: The Verge View the full article

If you can dream it, you can do it. Source: The Verge View the full article

September 9th, 2014, marked 15 years since the Mobile Nations story began, with the launch of Visor Central. A lot has changed in mobile tech in the years since, but one thing definitely has not — the passion of this great community. The response to our anniversary article was fantastic, and I want to thank each and every one of you for the congratulations and support you shared. It truly means a lot. We celebrated the day by recognizing our ten longest, still-active members and also by holding a contest where two members from each of our active communities could each win a $150 gift card to be used towards the purchase of their next phone. And the usernames of the lucky winners are.... read more View the full article

September 9th, 2014, marked 15 years since the Mobile Nations story began, with the launch of Visor Central. A lot has changed in mobile tech in the years since, but one thing definitely has not — the passion of this great community. The response to our anniversary article was fantastic, and I want to thank each and every one of you for the congratulations and support you shared. It truly means a lot. We celebrated the day by recognizing our ten longest, still-active members and also by holding a contest where two members from each of our active communities could each win a $150 gift card to be used towards the purchase of their next phone. And the usernames of the lucky winners are.... read more View the full article

On September 9th, 1999, the origin story for Mobile Nations began when VisorCentral launched from my student apartment at University of Florida. Immediately the website became a fixture of the Handspring Visor online community by delivering high quality and reliable news, articles, reviews, and an active forum. While today the Visor is a relic — *I'm sure many of our younger readers have never even heard of it before* — 15 years later we are stronger than ever delivering the same experience that made VisorCentral a success. Over the years we have navigated the many shifts in mobile platforms, with sites like TreoCentral and webOS Nation (formerly PreCentral) following VisorCentral as Palm ushered in the modern smartphone era. Today, Mobile Nations reaches over 32 million readers every month through Android Central, iMore, WPCentral, CrackBerry and our newest site, Connectedly. read more View the full article

If you create or edit documents with your webOS devices, you have a few third party applications available to you over and above the stock Memos app. One of these options is TapNote by One Crayon that will give you a single app solution that will work on any device running webOS 1.4.5 or higher (including the TouchPad) and will even sync your documents across all your webOS devices providing that you have a Dropbox account. If you have Dropbox sync enabled, you may unfortunately find yourself opening TapNote one day and find none of your documents are listed, nor are you unable to create new ones. Before you get worried that the app is broken and email the developer or give it a poor rating, know that this may occur simply because the connection with Dropbox got corrupted or your connection tokens expired. The good news is that this can be easily fixed First, open up TapNote and swipe down from the top-left corner of the screen and select "Preferences" from the Application Dropdown menu. You should see that "Sync with Dropbox" is set to ON and there will be a "Disconnect From Dropbox" button just below that. Tap that button and "Sync with Dropbox" will turn OFF. Toggle that switch back to ON and you should immediately get an opportunity to log into Dropbox and allow TapNote to access your account. Tap the green "Allow" button and you should be good to go. If the steps above did not work or if you were not even presented with the opportunity to log in to Dropbox, there is just one last option for you. You will need to completely delete TapNote from your device and then reinstall it from the App Catalog. Once back on your device, follow the steps above to connect it to Dropbox and all of your articles should reappear and you will once again be able to create new documents. TapNote (all devices) is available in the webOS App Catalog for $5 and is compatible with all webOS devices running webOS 1.4.5 or higher. You can also try TapNote Lite for free to try out the app, but will have some limited functionality. View the full article

Given the chance to do things over again, former Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein would not have sold the company to HP. When asked by FierceWireless about whether he would have done anything differently, Rubinstein said that he wouldn't "have sold the company to HP. That's for sure. Talk about a waste." Quite. We're still rather bitter about the abrupt cancellation of webOS, so it's no surprise that the man who dedicated years of his career and his reputation to webOS would also be unhappy with how things turned out. But as we've seen time and time again, Palm was often a victim of circumstance and political carrier games. The first step down the road to perdition for Palm was their launch partner: third place US carrier Sprint. Said Rubinstein: "We almost had deals with Verizon and with Vodafone, and in the last minute both of those guys decided not to go through with the deal, so we had a deal with Sprint," saying that it was "the best deal we could get at the time." But all of that is in the past. What's Rubinstein up to these days? As we've previously reported, he's joined the boards of both Amazon and Qualcomm, which Rubinstein says are "uniquely positioned for the future of where things are going." He also spends some of his time helping out some 'small companies'. And, of course, taking time off and relaxing at his Mexican villa from where Ed Colligan lured him away years ago. And as we've all noticed, a lot of what we love about and was pioneered by webOS has found its way into its former competitors, including yesterday's reveal of iOS 7. Rubinstein listed a number of features, including notifications on Mac OS X, multitasking cards (on, well… everything), Synergy contacts and messaging melding, over-the-air updates, and so much more. Alas, if wishes were horses we at webOS Nation have a cavalry that would make General Washington proud. At the very least we can feel validated that our mobile operating system of choice was in fact years ahead of the curve, perhaps too far ahead. View the full article

If you've been watching the webOS Nation Forums or the webOS community on Twitter, you may have seen the troubling reports that a vital "root certificate" on webOS devices is due to expire on July 23, 2013. This certificate is responsible for ensuring secure access to HP's webOS cloud services, including backup and the App Catalog, and once it expires, there's no accessing those services. It's a problem, a ticking time bomb, if you will. We've been wondering if or when HP was going to fix the issue, and indeed had heard rumblings that a fix was in the works and due - wait for it - in the coming weeks. Today we got word from HP that the fix is indeed coming. In fact, it's due today, and it's coming in the form of an update to the the webOS App Catalog. Updating one app to update a part of webOS isn't something new to HP. Back in 2011 they issued an update to the Maps app on webOS smartphones, that in addition to switching the mapping service from Google Maps to Bing Maps also installed Enyo framework support on the device. Granted, this isn't as much of a stealth update - the sole purpose of this update to the App Catalog is to install a new, later-expiring root certificate. The App Catalog update is for webOS 2.1 and higher devices only. For those running older versions of webOS, you'll have to go into the App Catalog and manually download the HP App Catalog Update app. Seeing as the update is to replace the certificate that expires on July 23, you'll need to do this before July 23. If you don't, it's still possible, but you're going to have to trick the system by setting your device clock back to before July 23, 2013 and then downloading the update. Once you've updated with the new certificate things should continue to work for quite some time. In fact, we'd expect a shutdown from HP's webOS servers before the new certificates expire. So you should be prepared for that too. View the full article

The email app on your webOS smartphone does not offer you a lot of options on how to customize it to your liking, with your only options available are to set your notification sound, set an email signature or reply-to address, adjust your sync and retention timeframe, or choose your default mail folders. However, thanks to the webOS homebrew community you now have some additional ways to adjust your email app experience. Homebrew developers Momouton and anseld1986 have released the Email Mega Mix as a Tweaks-enabled patch that took many of the best email-related patches available and then improved on it even further. While there are a variety of enhancements available in this patch, one section that you may find useful is the "Compose View Options." In this section, you can adjust six different tweaks for when you are writing or replying to an email. Three of the tweaks allow you to display or remove buttons on your email, while the other three will give you a pop-up confirmation screen depending on the action you want to perform. To activate any of these, just install the Email mega Mix patch (available in Preware or webOS Quick install) and then open up the Tweaks app on your device. Navigate to the Email section and find the "COMPOSE VIEW OPTIONS." Choose any or all of the following: Display Priority Button: Add a "!" button to toggle the importance level of the email, thereby marking it as "urgent" to the message receiver Display Discard Draft Button: Add a "trash can" button to quickly discard the current email, instead of having to needing to swipe down from the top-left corner to bring up the Email Application drop-down menu and select "Discard Message" or using the Meta-tap D shortcut Display Save Draft Button: Add a save button (it looks like an old school floppy disk) to save the current email draft. This just saves the current progress while still leaving the email up for editing Require Send Confirmation: Add a confirmation pop-up after you hit the "send" button to confirm that you would really like to send the email Require Save Confirmation: Used in conjunction with the "Display Save Draft Button" above, you can add a confirmation pop-up asking if you would like to save the draft. Require Discard Confirmation: Used in conjunction with the "Display Discard Draft Button" above, you can add a confirmation pop-up asking if you would like to discard the email when you tap the trash button. Once you toggle any of these tweaks, you will need to close and then re-open the Email app for them to take effect. There is no need to restart the whole phone. View the full article

RSVP right now to reserve the hottest ticket in tech! ** TICKET UPDATE ** We have maxed out our RSVP limit for today. Please come back to the site tomorrow at 12 Noon ET and we will be releasing a second wave of tickets. They're going fast, so if you missed out today be there tomorrow at 12 Noon ET. Can't wait to see you in NYC! Mobile Nations, iMore, and the entire network have just announced Talk Mobile 2013 and while that's exciting, this might just be even more exciting -- we're throwing a giant launch party in New York City on Thursday June 6 and we want you to be there! This is it, Mobile Nations, it's meet up time! I'll be there along with Georgia, as well as Kevin, Phil, Daniel, Marcus and a bunch of other Mobile Nations luminaries, and our special guests Cali Lewis and John P of GeekBeat.TV, and we want to see you there! DJ MIA MORETTI will be supplying the music, and we'll be supplying an open bar (meaning this one's 21-and-up), snacks, and all the fun you can handle! Tickets are free, of course, but there is one catch... They're going to go fast. Super fast. So fast that if you want to come, you really need to RSVP now as in NOW! Seriously, you don't want to miss this! http://talkmobile2013.eventbrite.com/ Not in the NYC area but still want to attend? If you're not in NYC, we have a contest happening right now where you and a guest can win a trip for two to NYC to attend the event. All you have to do is jump over to talkmobile2013.com and enter your email address to sign up for updates. That's it. We need to get the winner booked this weekend, so the deadline for the contest is this Friday night at Midnight PT. View the full article

Come June 3, we're changing the smartphone conversation Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. Mobile Nations is proud to present Talk Mobile 2013! Yes, the almighty #tm13 finally gets a name. And a few faces. And, more important, a voice. Several voices, in fact. Actually, millions of voices. Our voices. Your voices. We're going to do this together. Talk Mobile has been a long time coming, and for good reason. Just watch the trailer above, this post'll still be here when you're done. Born out of the old Smartphone Round Robin, in which we'd borrow each other's smartphones and write about our experiences, Talk Mobile expands on the principle that there's so much more beyond any one phone or tablet -- or beyond any one platform, for that matter. And so for the next several months, we're going to change the conversation a bit. You'll be hearing from the fine folks at our sister sites Android Central, CrackBerry, iMore and WPCentral. You'll be hearing from our peers, our colleagues, and other industry experts. And, yes. We'll be hearing from you. Come next week -- June 3, actually -- when we roll out the first of the weekly discussions, you'll be as much a part of the conversation as we are. We've built a new commenting system for Talk Mobile that will span all of our sites and promote and recognize the best comments, so your voice will be heard across the entire Mobile Nations network. So stay tuned. Next week, it begins. Point your browser to any of our four sister sites for posts each day for great conversation on the things in mobile that really matter. Hint: it's not specs. And we're kicking things off with a launch party in New York City, open to the public, on June 6. Be sure to swing by TalkMobile2013.com to sign up, as we're giving away one trip to the Big Apple to hang with us for the night. (If you've already signed up, you're good to go.) And be sure to follow @TalkMobile on Twitter. And we've got a fancy press release if that's your thing. Let's get the conversation started! read more View the full article

Mobile Nations Podcast Feed Mobile Nations on iTunes Mobile Nations YouTube Iterate 46: Beck, Ohms, Urbanick, and Press Megapixels and Ultrapixels: The Galaxy S4 versus HTC One camera shootout Welcome to the all-new Android Central app! Sony Xperia ZL review From BlackBerry Live, It’s CrackBerry Live! BlackBerry Z10 or Q10? The CrackBerry Vodcast Gesture tutorial video for the rumored BlackBerry R10 Jon Rubinstein returns: Former Palm CEO joins Qualcomm's board How Apple can stop Google from taking over the iPhone. Again. iPhone 5 vs HTC One: Camera shootout Creative Cloud crossroads: Will Adobe users flee in droves? Dev update: Itsdagram, the full Instagram app for Windows Phone 8, gets notifications, more Microsoft wants an iTunes Windows 8 app but Apple isn't liking the idea The Nokia Lumia 928 - the Lumia 920, a bit better and on Verizon View the full article

Maybe it took us a while to get this one judged. But we got it done! There were a lot of really really great entries for our 60 seconds for a Verizon HP Pre3 contest, which made judging who deserved to win one of these rare brand-new webOS smartphones more difficult than we'd anticipated. After sleeping on it for a while, it's time to announce the winners! You can check out the winning video entries after the break… read more View the full article

If you've been waiting to get Android apps running on your webOS-powered HP TouchPad (without having to actually install Android, that is), then you might just be one step closer to your desired future. Two weeks ago, webOS upstarts Phoenix International Communications partnered with OpenMobile to launch a Kickstarter campaign to finance the completion and release of the Android Compatibility Layer for TouchPad. The ACL's purpose is straightforward: to enable the running of Android apps on the TouchPad. The Kickstarter goal was $35,000 - not ambitious by Kickstarter standards. Two weeks later, that $35,000 funding goal has been met and surpassed, with more than 575 contributors offering an average of $62.39 towards the project. 74 have pledged what amounts to a donation - less than $30 (though some pledge levels do promise swag like a Phoenix-branded LED keychain flashlight), while the rest pledged at least the $30 needed to secure a copy of the ACL on release. Sixteen others have pledged a backing of at least $90, securing access to the ACL one week earlier than lower pledges, 5 offered the $150 required for two weeks of early access, four are putting up $250 for the privilege of being a beta tester (paying to help sort bugs, really?). Beyond that, a single donation of $500 secured a copy of ACL on a CD with a pack of swag, $600 for the swag pack and a new TouchPad with ACL, and one very dedicated soul pledged a whopping $7500 for a flight to New York, dinner with the Phoenix team, and a rare white 64GB TouchPad along with the requisite ACL and swag pack. Now that the funding goal has been met, the pressure is really on for the Phoenix team. They've committed to an estimated delivery date of July 2013 for the ACL, and though the funding release for the Kickstarter campaign is still ten days away, we hope they're already hard at work on getting the ACL ready for release. Of course, Kickstarter in no way guarantees the success if any project financed on their platform, so it's going to be up to the webOS Nation community to hold Phoenix to their commitments. After all - it's your money. Having met that funding goal, Phoenix has laid out their plans for the future of the ACL. Funding in excess of the $35,000 goal is intended to go to developing the ACL's next versions, including an update to replace the current Android 2.3 back-end with something based on Android 4.x instead and plans to release the ACL for the HP Pre3. We also hope they're planning on an Open webOS-compatible version of the ACL - as much as we love our old webOS hardware, the future lies with new hardware powered by the open source version of webOS, not in squeezing more life out of our beloved but aged webOS tablets and smartphones. View the full article