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This tip is only for webOS phones running webOS 2.1 and higher Whenever you tap a phone number within webOS, be it from a contact record, a missed call notification or the call log, the phone app will automatically load up and dial that number for you. While this may be a convenient feature to quickly dial that number, it can also lead to some accidental (and potentially awkward) situations for when you didn't intent to call that person. Luckily, homebrew developer Herrie has created a trio of patches that will interrupt this process and instead of actually dialing the number, it will just prefill the number into the dialer. You will still need to press the big dial button in the Phone app to initiate the call, and you can even edit the number before calling if you need to. Just install any or all of the "No AutoDial from Contacts", "No Missed Call Callback" or "No Autodial from Call Log" patches from Preware or webOS Quick Install and you should be good to go. Just remember that any time you try to dial a number, even if it's from a Just Type search or by using speed dial, you will still need to press that call button. That extra step takes some getting used to, as you will find yourself immediately putting the phone up to your ear after tapping a phone number and realize that your ear or cheek has continued to dial additional numbers. View the full article

If you're looking to cut costs on your cell phone contract and maybe upgrade from a beaten old Pre or Pre Plus, you might want to turn some attention to Best Buy and Verizon, as they have a Verizon Palm Pre 2 available contract-free for Verizon's prepaid system for the low low price of just $51.99. That sort of rock-bottom pricing doesn't come around often, even for two-year-old long-canceled smartphones like the Pre 2. There's no immediate indication that this Pre 2 is locked into only Verizon's prepaid service. Verizon actually allows you to bring any Verizon device onto prepaid, and there's nothing about this phone that says it wouldn't work the other way around too. Considering that these Pre 2 smartphones are likely excess stock that Big Red has been trying to unload for the better part of a two years, there likely hasn't been any reprogramming to lock them onto prepaid either. Verizon just wants them out of the warehouse, and Best Buy is all too happy to oblige. Prepaid service for a smartphone like the Pre 2 through Verizon will run you $60 a month for unlimited talk and text with 500MB of data, while another $10 will net you a 2GB data allotment. Not only is the $51.99 Pre 2 through Best Buy the cheapest smartphone offered for Verizon prepaid, it's a damn good price if you were looking to pick up a spare device or two should things go south with your current webOS smartphone. We'd actually say, if not for the fact that it comes with minimal support from HP and app developers, it'd qualify by far as the best smartphone offered on Verizon prepaid, either directly from the carrier or Best Buy. The other smartphones? The Samsung Illusion, running Android 2.3 under curved glass (while the Pre 2 went away from curved surfaces); the HTC Rhyme, notable as HTC's edearingly foolish attempt to create a smartphone "for women" with a silly "Charm Call indicator" meant to hang out of your purse and flash purple when you've got alerts, and the not-that-old-but-still-old-school BlackBerry Curve 9310. Against this motley crew, the Verizon Palm Pre 2 almost stands out as a value superstar. View the full article

Don Melton, former Engineering Director of Internet Technologies at Apple, talks to Guy and Rene about assembler on the Apple II, open-sourcing Mozilla, building Nautilus, creating WebKit and the Safari browser, teaching bears to dance, and cleaning cusses from code bases. type="audio/mpeg"> Subscribe in iTunes Subscribe in RSS Download Directly Show notes Bitsplitting Podcast Episode 1: Guy English Code Rush documentary Nautilus file manager WebKit.org Safari Keeping Safari a secret Safari is released to the world Why I retired from Apple Regarding fake projects and loyalty tests Guests Don Melton of donmelton.com Hosts Guy English of Kicking Bear Rene Ritchie of iMore.com Feedback Yell at us via the Twitter accounts above (or the same names on ADN). Loudly. View the full article

This tip is only for the HP TouchPad running webOS 3.0 or higher The Messaging app on the HP TouchPad allows you to consolidate all your instant messaging needs into a single app, even including text messages received from a paired cell phone. As you would expect, any time you receive a new message that TouchPad will notify you, either by a vibration or by playing a sound, depending on your sound or notification preferences. However, there is one annoying quirk of the app in that any time you send a message, it will also make a vibration or a sound. There is really no good reason for this, as you would already know that you were sending a message and wouldn't need an alert for it. In typical webOS community fashion, the homebrew community--specifically homebrew-extraordinaire Jason Robitaille--created a simple patch to prevent the TouchPad from alerting you whenever you send a message in the Messaging app. Just install the "No vibrate or sound on messaging send" patch from Preware or webOS Quick Install and you will never be annoyed by those unnecessary alerts again! View the full article

Mobile Nations Podcast Feed Mobile Nations on iTunes Mobile Nations YouTube Debug 10: Tammy Coron of Nickelfish and the iMore app Iterate 42: Marcus Adolfsson, David Lunblad and CrackBerry 10 HTC One Review Eric Schmidt: Chrome and Android to remain separate Note taking app Google Keep now available in Google Play and on the web CrackBerry video interview with BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins! The first ten things to do with your new BlackBerry Z10 BlackBerry Travel now available for BlackBerry 10 Switching to iPhone? Here's how to make it more like webOS Infinite card cycling with LunaCE Swinging for the stars: On Apple's hiring of Kevin Lynch How to enable two-step verification for your Apple ID WTF does Eric Schmidt want us to "ask Apple" about Google Now for iOS? iMore show 341: Boring, still a phone (with Clayton Morris of Fox News) Pandora for Windows Phone 8 is now available and we go hands on Upcoming AT&T Nokia Lumia 920 firmware update shows up on Navifirm, preparing for launch Sprint launches Windows Phone 8 landing page, signs of what's yet to come View the full article

As much as we love webOS, we know there's plenty of reason to move on to other platforms. Progress on the webOS Ports porting to other devices is going to be slow by the very nature of the open source work, and we have no guarantee that LG's ever going to bring webOS to smartphones or tablets again. Eventually our Pres and Veers and Pixis will stop working, eventually HP will shut down the cloud servers, eventually we'll have to start looking at what the other options are out there. When it comes to the multitasking prowess of webOS, there's still no equal, in our less than humble opinion. So what if you're looking at an iPhone? Is double clicking the home button to see the icons of your running apps really going to do it for you? We think not. Thankfully, webOS Nation Forum member i_maq dug through the iOS jailbreak scene (jailbreak? how sad they have to call it that) to find all the additions you'll need to make iOS look and behave more like webOS. i_maq found a number of useful installs, including enabling webOS-style app cards, gestures to switch between apps, a JustType kinda-sorta-clone, individually-dismissible notifications, and even rounded corners! Of course, if you're going to jailbreak your iPhone you're going to have to know how to do that. Thankfully, our friends over at our iPhone-obsessed sister site iMore know all about that and have detailed how-tos that explain exactly what you need to know and need to do. We know that many of you have switched to iOS already (your friendly neighborhood editor-in-chief actually has an iPhone on one of his lines - don't judge). Those of you that have, did homebrew spoil you to the point where doing this was but a foregone conclusion? And those that are considering a switch - does this sway you in any way? Sound off in the comments. View the full article

In the wake of the news that Google intends to shut down one of our most beloved services in the form of Google Reader this summer. We're as devastated as you are. While a number of outfits were quick to state their intention to pick up the mantle and run with it in one for or another, getting them to make a webOS app is another matter. But… there are already apps for webOS that will let you get your RSS on. One such app - Headlines 2 by The CodingBees - brings you your RSS feeds and includes handy features for TouchPad users like background syncing, offline article caching, optimized reading modes, and more. Plus we've got 100 copies to give away, all you have to do to have a chance at winning is submit a comment after the break! Contest: We have 100 copies of Headlines 2 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 3.0.4 or higher with the latest version of the App Catalog. View the full article

This tip is only for HP TouchPads running webOS 3.0.5 and LunaCE 4.9.5 or higher Using cards in webOS has always been a great way to multitask on a mobile operating system and works just as well on the TouchPad as well. However, if you have a lot of cards or stacks open, you may find yourself doing a lot scrolling to find that app you want. If you have installed LunaCE--the homebrew update for the TouchPad by WebOS Ports based off the Open Source "webOS Community Edition" (not to be confused with Open webOS)--you can enable mini-card view or set your own card zoom level to see more open cards at once. Another option that LunaCE gives you is the ability to loop through your cards, so you can keep scrolling when you get to the last card to bring up the first card. It also works in reverse, where you can scroll continue to scroll to the right after you have reached the first cad and it will bring you to the end of the list. Note that LunaCE is currently in beta so you will need to go through the process to set-up the beta feeds in Preware, which can be found at testing.preware.org. In addition, you will need to have Tweaks installed on your TouchPad to toggle this new feature. Once you have both of them installed, you just need to go to the "Luna" section of Tweaks and toggle "Infinite card cycling" to YES in the "CARDS" section to activate this feature. View the full article

Mobile Nations Podcast Feed Mobile Nations on iTunes Mobile Nations YouTube Iterate 41: Doug Russell and accessibility Samsung Unpacked / Galaxy S4 Google I/O 2013 Tickets sell out in less than an hour Andy Rubin leaving the Android team, Chrome boss Sundar Pichai to take over BlackBerry Partner Purchases One Million BlackBerry 10 Smartphones WhatsApp for BlackBerry 10 now available Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile ready for the Blackberry Z10 Preware Enyo alpha hits Preware feeds WebOS Quick Install 4.5.0 goes open source Get real-time Twitter updates in exhibition mode with Flixi The "iPhone 5S" problem iPhone 5 vs HTC One iPhone and iPad new user guide iMore show 340: Nerd Talking Windows Phone 9 in testing with Nokia, HTC and Qualcomm hardware Microsoft rolls out Flash and firmware update for Windows 8, Surface devices Galactic Reign becomes the first 'universal' Xbox game for Windows Phone and Windows 8 View the full article

Saint Patrick's Day falls on a Sunday this year, so we're going to celebrate all weekend long here at webOS Nation with a webOS Nation Store sale!! Until Sunday, Midnight PST, you can save 15% on ALL accessories by using coupon code shamrocks at checkout. Take me to the webOS Nation Store View the full article

This tip is only for devices running webOS 2.0 and higher 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. It also takes advantage of Just Type Quick Actions (requires webOS 2.0 or higher) that allows you to create a new document directly from Just Type. While document sync and Quick Action support are not unique to text editor apps, TapNote appears to be one of the only document editing apps that will allow you to append text to an existing document from Just Type. So, if you already have a document created and synced on your device, you can simply add to that document by typing in your text entry in the Just Type bar and then selecting the Tap Note "Quick Note..." Quick Action, providing that you had previously added TapNote as an available Quick Action . A pop-up screen will appear that will allow you create a new document with that text or "Append to" an existing one. On phones, you need to tap the "Append To Document..." button to be given a list of available documents, while the TouchPad will already display the list of available documents. Once you choose the document, it will open up with the next text added to the bottom. As mentioned above, in order for this to work the document needs to have already been created or synced to the device prior to adding to it. If you created or edited it on another device, you will need to open up the full TapNotes app and perform a sync to download it to the device before you can append text to it. 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

The long-awaited Enyo rewrite of Preware is here, at least in an alpha form. Version 2.0.1 of Preware has landed in the WebOS Internals feed alpha feed in Preware, offering an Alpha look of how Preware will look and operate as an Enyo app. The old Mojo-based version of Preware launched more than three years ago and despite numerous upgrades never moved away from that legacy codebase. With Open webOS no longer support the old Mojo framework, the time was now to rebuild Preware with Enyo. Right now the Preware 2.0.1 alpha works in the most basic of senses. As developer Josh "shiftyaxel" Palmer points out, the alpha currently supports the installation, updating, removal, and launching of apps, patches, themes, everything else Preware has traditionally supported and not much more. Being an alpha, it's still in need of testing, so if you're trying out the Enyo Preware you're encouraged to share any bugs you encounter with the WebOS Ports bug tracker. Being an alpha release, you'll need to enable the testing feeds in Preware (if you're going to turn on the alpha feeds you might as well hit the beta feeds while you're at it). And, as always, we'll encourage you if you haven't recently to consider making a donation to WebOS Internals and WebOS Ports - these organizations are dependent on your generosity to bring the webOS homebrew works you love to life. View the full article

This tip is only for HP TouchPads running webOS 3.0.5 While dashboard notifications have always been a hallmark feature of webOS, the ability to stack notifications in webOS 3.0 on the TouchPad was a great enhancement because it allowed you to do things like view and dismiss one email at a time instead of all the new emails that recently arrived. Unfortunately, you still needed to view the email notifications in the order they arrived so there was no way to keep a notification in the dashboard while still moving to the next email. Your only choices were to leave all the remaining notifications in the dashboard, dismiss one email notification, or dismiss them all. But, as is another hallmark feature of webOS, the homebrew community created a nice workaround for this issue. If you install the Cycle Email Notifications patch by GMMan, available in Preware or webOS Quick Install, your email notifications will automatically scroll from one message to the next every 5 seconds or so. They will cycle while you are working on the TouchPad, in exhibition mode, or even on the lockscreen. While it may take a little bit of time if you have a lot of notifications, this will at least allow you to keep or dismiss only the email notifications you want. View the full article

The founding utility of the webOS homebrew scene has gone open source. WebOS Quick Install was first released by Jason Robitaille back in 2009 and it has served as the backbone for homebrew app installations ever since. The robust Java-based desktop app runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux, installs apps, themes, kernels, and patches from multiple homebrew sources, and with the latest update to version 4.5.0 has gone open source for the masses. Open source seems to be all the rage these days. Despite its vital function in the webOS homebrew and open source development scene, WebOS Quick Install to this point has been a closed source application. 4.5.0 changes that, open sourcing both Quick Install and the webOSLib Java library. By open sourcing webOSLib, developers will be able to utilize the library to install Novacom drivers (open sourced by HP), list connected webOS devices, transfer files, execute shell commands, install apps and patches in compliance with webOS homebrew standards, and more. Both webOSLib and WebOS Quick Install are up on GitHub now in full open source. You can download and compile yourself, make and submit improvements, or even fork it off into your own webOS homebrew project. Whatever floats your metaphorical homebrew boat. And, as always, if you find yourself appreciating the work Robitaille's done, hit up the source link below to offer up a donation of thanks. View the full article

This tip is only for the HP TouchPad When Exhibition mode was introduced with webOS 2.1, it gave developers the ability to create whole apps or just a subset of features without the typical concerns like power consumption. If you had an app that required updating every few seconds or minutes, such as stock quote or sports score app, you would eat through your battery life extraordinary quickly. However, if you were to know that the device would always be charging on a touchstone with the screen on, you would have a lot more freedom in what you could do. This can be extremely beneficial for social networking apps that require a real-time feed for updates, such as Twitter or Facebook. In the case of an exhibition-based Twitter app, your best option is Flixi by Under Clouds Games, available in the HP App Catalog for $2.99 and recently updated for the Twitter 1.1 APIs. Flixi is not technically a twitter client, but rather a multi-purpose screensaver app that gives you the ability to view multiple types of information on the screen at the same time. This can include the weather, a RSS news feed, the time, your Google calendar, a twitter feed, or more, and can be arranged in one of 17 pre-arranged layouts. Once you open up the app or switch to it in Exhibition Mode (make sure you have already added it to your list of active Exhbition Apps), just tap the settings icon and set up your dashboard as required, selecting Twitter for at least one of your panels. Once logged on to Twitter, you will see an almost real-time update of your Twitter feed in the app. There is no action needed to refresh the feed, it will do all the work for you. But be advised that Flixi is not a full-scale Twitter app. You can only see the latest 40 or so tweets, but you can not reply to tweets in the app itself, nor get access to the history view of a twitter "conversation." While you get quick at-a-glance updates to twitter and even load up a website with an in-app browser, you will still need a full Twitter app or go to Twitter.com to post new or interact with any tweets. Flixi is available in the webOS App Catalog for $2.99 and is compatible with all webOS devices running webOS 3.0.2 or higher View the full article

Back in December the WebOS Ports team hosted a virtual hackathon to bring a number of popular and vital webOS homebrew utilities up to modern Enyo 2 standards. Things have been pretty quiet on that front in the intervening month, but last night WebOS Ports developer Josh "@shiftyaxel" Palmer took to Twitter to share screenshots of the progress they've made since. In short, it's Preware, but built with Enyo. It installs homebrew apps from the webOS Nation Homebrew Gallery and WebOS Internals' own feeds, just as you'd expect. The difference is that by being built with Enyo 2 the app now has a more flexible layout. Typical of the Enyo user interface is the display of multiple columns, with a list of apps on the left side and the selected app's info on the right. Overall it looks to operate in a similar manner to the Preware we know and love, though Palmer did note that right now Preware 2 will only support Enyo apps on Open webOS installs, as Open webOS doesn't currently offer support for PDK or hybrid apps. That's not to say that Preware 2 can't support PDK-based apps, an IPK is an IPK is an IPK, after all, and older version sof webOS will support PDK and hybrid app installs just fine. Prompted by former webOS developer relations employee Donald Kirker, Palmer pondered that it would be "feasible" to move app installation to a background tasks in Preware 2, conceivably enabling a user to continue browsing apps while installing apps. Consider that more a possibility for future releases, not a promise. Thanks to its Enyo 2-based status, installation of Preware 2 on varying webOS hardware shouldn't be an issue. Even on older webOS smartphones, the Enyo 2 framework can be packaged with the app at a size under 25KB while still giving cross-platform compatibility and speed. For his part, Palmer's screenshots were taken on a TouchPad running webOS 3.x. Preware 2 is still in pre-alpha stages and not publicly released, though once they're far enough along the app will be released into the alpha testing feeds in Preware. When that will happen… well, WebOS Ports is very clear on their ETA policy: there are no ETAs - when it's ready, it's ready. So hold on, check out the screenshots after the break, and dream of someday going all Enyo for your homebrew fun. read more View the full article

Mobile Nations Podcast Feed Mobile Nations on iTunes Mobile Nations YouTube Debug 9: Matt Drance, the Apple Outsider LG Optimus G Pro mini review AT&T HTC One X finally gets Jelly Bean Alleged U.S. model Galaxy S4 screenshots emerge BlackBerry Z10 - One month later WhatsApp for BlackBerry 10 coming this week! Introducing the New CrackBerry! Think you can convince LG to make webOS mobile devices? Here, have a petition. The webOS Survival Kit: everything you need to know should webOS doomsday come Sprint's totally cool with you using your old Pre on one of their MVNOs iPhone 5S planned for August, next iPads may debut as soon as April Switching to Android. Or not. Introducing the new iMore for iPhone 2.0 app, with comments, landscape, favorites, video podcasts, and more! Disqus releases exclusive Windows Phone app, beats out iPhone or Android Microsoft and Nokia are already beta testing GDR2 Windows Phone 8 OS update Nokia releases #2InstaWithLove social app to put some pressure on Instagram View the full article

You always want to make sure that you have a backup of your critical data that you keep on your smartphone or tablet, and your contact list should be towards the top of your priority list when to comes to ensuring you have recent backup. If you use cloud-based synergy accounts for your contacts like Google Contacts, Facebook or Yahoo, you are probably less worried about having a backup since you can always go back to the source data and pull it down again. But if you use the Palm Profile or a different "local" account for your contact data, the only way to access your data is on the device itself. If that device gets lost or your backup gets corrupted, you run the risk of forever losing that data. There are a few methods that you have to back up your contracts, with the easiest being just dialing a simple code into the phone dialer to create a .vcf (VCard or "Virtual Business Card"). In order to perform the steps above, though, you need a working touchscreen to activate a few of the on-screen buttons. So what happens if your screen is cracked or the touchscreen in unresponsive? Thanks to webOS forum member gizmo21 we now have the ability to export your contacts via command line so you can just plug your device into a computer to export your contacts. One prerequisite for this process is that your device must already be in Developer Mode, as explained in our guide to Getting Started: Homebrew Apps, Patches, and Themes with WebOS Quick Install Once your device is in Developer mode, just plug it in to your computer. If you have the webOS SDK installed, you can directly open up a Linux Command Prompt, but an easy way to do that is to open up WebOS Quick Install and select "Tools" and then "Linux Commandline". Once the command prompt appears, type in the follow command, depending on your webOS version. read more View the full article

Fitness Month is over here at Mobile Nations for another year. Health and fitness should be a year-round commitment, and it's never too late to start so if you missed out during February be sure to check back through the blogs and forums for content you may have missed. Hopefully you found some apps or tips to help you meet your fitness goals, or maybe even found some moral support in the community to help keep you motivated. All throughout the month each site was giving away prizes for participation. We announced some winners mid-month, and below are the final results from the remaining contests from across Mobile Nations. If you were participating in the forums or on the blog contests, be sure to look below and see if you're a winner! read more View the full article

UberCalendar is an extremely powerful patch in Preware for both webOS phones and the TouchPad that will greatly enhance the capabilities of stock calendar app. Among those enhancements is the ability to configure a new calendar entry but using the Just Type functionality of webOS. For those that remember Quick Event for webOS 1.x devices, UberCalendar works very similarly. Just by entering text in the format of "Subject ; Date/Time ; Location" and then tapping the "New Calendar Event" Quick Action in Just Type, an new calendar event card will appear for you to add any additional details before saving. Note that you need to use a semi-colon (";") between the three options, and the date/time and the location are optional. It is important that you know exactly how to enter a proper Date/Time format in to the Just Type event. It is based off the Datejs format, which is an open-source JavaScript Date Library, and offers a lot of flexibility for you. In addition to include specific dates and times like "3/14 1:59pm" or "2013.3.13 13:59", you can also use keywords like today, tomorrow, Monday, and last Wedneday, next April, +5days or +1month. If you want to try some dates out or get more details, you can check out http://www.datejs.com/ and enter some sample text under the "Mad Skillz…" box. Note that if you enter a date or time incorrectly, the entire input text will just be entered as the subject of the calendar entry and you will need to manually set it in the entry. Source: webOS Nation Forums View the full article

Got an old Sprint Palm Pre or Pixi or FrankenPre sitting around that you'd like to put to work on another network? Turns out that even though, according to the Librarian of Congress' interpretation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act the unlocking of cellphones is illegal without carrier approval, Sprint is totally on the side of giving you said approval. Sprint announced today in a press release that they have no problem with you using your old Sprint phone on another network - so long as it's one of Sprint's own MVNOs (Mobile Virtual Network Operator). In essence, you can use your old Sprint phone on any network, so long as it's Sprint. The list of MVNOs that ride on Sprint's network is actually more than twenty operators long and includes popular names like Virgin, Boost, and Republic. Sprint's touting the option to use your old Sprint smartphone as the "Bring Your Own Sprint Device" program, taking the initiative to lower "the number of inactive phones in the market, diverting phones from landfills." Also, Sprint gets another paying customer without having to deal with the costs of subsidizing a new phone. A growing portion of the customers on Sprint's networks are on these MVNOs, which typically are of the pre-paid no-contract variety as opposed to the traditional post-paid contract system on which Sprint's network was built. It's worth noting that Bring Your Own Sprint Device, as the name says, only applies to Sprint devices. And that's not just because Sprint hates that Verizon Pre Plus you happen to have sitting in a drawer. While it might be technically possible given the right proprietary bits to reprogram a Verizon phone to work on Sprint or vice versa (we may or may not have be done so with regularity back in the heady day of the Palm Treo), it's a much more difficult endeavour these days. Besides, Sprint wants you to use their phones. View the full article