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Mobile Nations Podcast Feed Mobile Nations on iTunes Mobile Nations YouTube Mobile Nations podcasting update: What's new for 2013! ZEN & TECH 53: Fitness month balance special Apple vs. Samsung: Damages cut by $450 Million, new trial ordered HTC user experience director on 'redefining' HTC Sense Where's the 'Wow!'? – Motorola purchase is a long-term plan, Google's CFO reminds OS 10.0.10.672 for the BlackBerry Z10 now available through numerous carriers BlackBerry 10 'will be available across the U.S. in a few short weeks' Why is there different BlackBerry 10 OS updates happening around the world? LG purchasing webOS for smart TVs, HP keeping cloud services, LG committed to open source webOS development Not with a bang but a whimper The Palm Timeline Debug & Iterate team-up podcast: The future of human interface Privacy and security in the age of iPhone mics and cameras HTC learns in 2013 what Apple knew back in 2007: Widgets aren't widely used MWC 2013 Nokia press conference - the Devices Between Windows Phone 8 and Blue lies a path of more frequent updates Nokia Lumia 720 hands-on, the unibody with microSD support View the full article

LG is buying webOS from HP and they've stated their intentions: smart TVs and eventually other things. But those other things don't include smartphones and tablets, no, LG's perfectly happy with the millions of Android devices they've sold. No need to mess with what's working for them. But what about us, the webOS faithful? What about those webOS-powered smartphones and tablets we crave so? Short of storming LG's Seoul headquarters and forcing them to design, produce, and distribute webOS mobile devices (a long term occupation proposition, no doubt), the best we can do is try to make our voices heard. So you can bombard LG with your requests, send them snail mail (don't forget, postage to Korea is going to take a few more stamps), and sign petitions. While it's highly unlikely that any of the above are going to change LG's mind unless they're slammed with hundreds of thousands of messages, it doesn't hurt to affix your name to an online petition, does it? With that spirit in mind, webOS Nation Forum member allen832008 put up a petition on Change.org with exactly that goal in mind. Things have been a little slow, signature-gathering-wise since the petition went up late last month, but as we heard so often with webOS over the past few years - webOS is a marathon, not a sprint. We've just never been clear on what exactly waits at the finish line and just how far away it is… View the full article

Georgia and Rene finish up Mobile Nations Fitness Month by talking about balance. Exercise, nutrition, and sleep are great, but how do you fit them into your hectic work, school, and family life? Find out! type="audio/mpeg"> Subscribe via RSS: Audio | Video Subscribe via iTunes: Audio | Video Download Directly: Audio | Video read more View the full article

Palm Computing > US Robotics > 3Com > HandSpring > Palm > palmOne > Palm > HP > LG To say it's been a long and winding road for Palm and webOS would be an understatment. In the span of two decades the company has changed names and hands at least nine times, as well as been split in two three times (PalmSource, HP engineering, LG) and recombined itself one and a half times. We've put together a timeline after the break that pulls together all of the epic highlights from twenty-one years of Palm history. Join us after the break for a very long walk down memory lane. read more View the full article

Twitter, that lovely place where we all send random 140 character snippets of news, thoughts, and rants. Love it or hate it Twitter is an important part of social networking and has played a very important part in the webOS community over the years. Some of this platform’s first great apps (think Tweed) were Twitter clients. Whether you’re following @webosnation for the latest and greatest in webOS news or one of the many awesome developers out there you probably use Twitter even if it’s just to spectate the conversations. Due to the popularity of this social network within the webOS community we have had the blessing of many truly great third party Twitter clients over the years. Unfortunately due to webOS’ current status of uncertainty developers abandoned our treasured platform in search of ecosystems with a pulse thus abandoning or removing their apps from the webOS App Catalog. As time moved on Twitter slowly changed their API (software components developers use to access services in a nutshell) to “better” their product. When the API changed if a developer didn’t update their app said app’s functionality would break or cease to work altogether. One quick search through the App Catalog for Twitter will result in a graveyard of apps that have been abandoned. Several months back we composed a roundup of fully functioning Twitter clients that could still be had on webOS and unfortunately that list is about to get a bit smaller soon. On March 5th (that’s less than a week away folks!) Twitter will begin what they call “blackout tests” for API v1 and fully retiring @Anywhere API altogether. According to Twitter’s developer site the first test will run from 9:00am 10:00am PST on March 5th. During this test they temporarily retire the old API to let developers know how their apps will be affected. After the first test more tests will be announced before, during, and after each test by @twitterapi. The eventual endgame is to fully retire the old v1 API for Twitter in the near future and apps need to migrate to the new API or they will be forever broken. So what does this mean for us? In a nutshell it means that a lot of our favorite apps that developers have left behind will cease to function. So if you’re still using an app like Carbon, Bad Kitty, or Glimpse to access or interact with Twitter in anyway now would be a good time to move on. We have reached out to several developers on this matter and so far we know for a fact there are a couple of diehard developers that have either updated their app already or have plans to. Here is the short list that we have been able to confirm so far (we'll be updating this list if/when other developers update their apps): Music Player Remix Quick Post Project Macaw phnx sprw (formerly Sparrow) Glimpse Flixi We know that list is small but we are happy to see that there are still dedicated developers for webOS out there that are dedicated to keep their apps up to date after all that this platform has been through. We thank all of them for all their hard work and urge our readers to open up the App Catalog and buy all of these apps if you don’t already have them. If the app is free get ahold of the developer and see how you can go about donating to them or at least give them a huge thank you for their continued support of webOS. View the full article

Leave a comment below telling us what you got out of Mobile Nations Fitness Month and be entered for a chance to win the phone, tablet, or game system of your dreams! It's February and you know what that means? Mobile Nations Fitness Month! That's when we all get together to get in shape, share tips and tricks and recipes for success, review amazing apps and accessories, give away great prizes, and have a ton of fun! This year we're doing it a little differently, though. We're doing weekly themes, and that means every week you'll have new and exciting challenges, and new chances to win! Week 4: Balance! That's right, it's time to bring everything together and work towards a balanced life! It's really hard to eat and sleep well, and exercise regularly, especially with as all the other things we have to do. That's why it's important to not only act healthier for a week or month, but to build healthier habits into your ever day lifestyle. To round out the month, we'll be reviewing a bunch of great apps and accessories that can help you keep it together, and keep yourself on track with your nutrition, exercise and relaxation goals. And we are also going to be doing the mother of all contests. Contest: Win the fitness device of your dreams! Leave a comment below telling us what you've gotten out of Mobile Nations Fitness Month -- how much you've improved or been inspired, what you plan to do to keep it up throughout the year, or even how much you simply sat on the couch and watched it all transpire around you! -- and you'll be entered to win a $400 gift certificate to put towards whatever phone, tablet, or even gaming system will help you keep up with your fitness goals! Be it iPhone or Galaxy Note, Lumia or BlackBerry, Surface or Droid, iPad or Android tablet, Xbox or Wii, we want to help you bring it home! Our usual contest rules apply, and only one entry per person, but you can enter once on all of our sites: Android Central, CrackBerry, iMore.com, webOS Nation, and WPCentral So what are you waiting for? Enter NOW, NOW, NOW! View the full article

Following up on the surprise news this morning that LG is buying HP's webOS division, we were left with questions. How? Why? When? We spoke with HP SVP of webOS Martin Risau and LG North America VP of Smart TV Sam Chang about why LG purchased webOS, what they're planning on doing with it, and what exactly HP is doing here as well. As we reported back in October (much to the chagrin of HP and LG), the two companies were working together for several months to produce a webOS-powered smart TV for LG. Chang said that "during this time we [LG] were very impressed with the technology, but also the people behind it. That's what really drove this transaction." The 'people behind it' are indeed an important part of webOS, and adding them to LG's roster brings a lot of talent and experience with webOS. read more View the full article

This tip is only for HP TouchPads running webOS 3.0.5 and LunaCE 4.9.5 or higher While accessing Just Type to perform a search on your TouchPad is never more than a swipe and a tap away (by swiping up to minimize the current app and then tapping on the "Just type..." search bar), 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)--makes it even easier. LunaCE gives you the ability to add a persistent icon to the status bar on the top of the TouchPad's screen that will give you quick-access to the Just Type search screen from almost anywhere in webOS. If you can see the icon on the top-right of the screen, you can access Just Type and won't even need to leave your current app first. 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 "Enable Search Icon" to YES in the "STATUS BAR" section to activate this feature. View the full article

After today's news that LG is buying webOS from HP, there's been some lingering questions about what all is happening. We finally got a press release from HP, verifying that LG is indeed purchasing the webOS source code, documentations, websites, and the team behind the formerly-mobile operating system to make themselves a fancy new webOS TV. The cloud services team, meanwhile, will be staying with HP and running the App Catalog and backup services for existing webOS customers. Additionally, Veghte told The Verge that HP sees this as "an opportunity to broaden our reach in delivering services to customers on a variety of platforms," and that they "can use this very broadly in our enterprise services organizations." For what it's worth, HP's been talking about utilizing webOS assets with their enterprise division for some time and nothing has yet seems to have materialized from it. Contrary to this morning's report from CNET, HP will not be transferring ownership of the Palm patent portfolio to LG. Instead, LG will be licensing the patents, though unsurprisingly neither company seems prepared to comment on licensing term specifics. Additionally, LG claims to be committed to continued participation in the Open webOS project and open source development, but we'll have to see where that goes when their attention is going to be focused elsewhere (TVs). For their part, LG CT Dr. Skott Ahn told The Verge that "In the short term, we'll apply this to the TV only. But in the future, wherever our plans take us, we'll consider an extension to other devices." Take that with a grain of salt, though. LG's not expecting to unveil their first webOS TV until CES in January 2014, and it could be much longer after that before they opt to bring webOS to other devices in their portfolio, assuming they do so at all. The webOS userbase and app ecosystem have been heavily damaged over the years, and another two or three years of delays will essentially be starting from scratch. Additionally, LG seems to not be intending to offer that expansion into areas currently inhabited by their established Android wares, as in the phones and tablets that we so desperately want to run webOS. Ahn is quoted in the a combined press releases as saying that "the open and transparent webOS technology offers a compelling user experience that, when combined with our own technology, will pave the way for future innovations using the latest Web technologies," a sentiment that we certainly agree with, but it seems to us to be best suited to handheld devices and not larger scale applications like televisions. But we aren't the ones plunking down millions of dollars here. read more View the full article

This morning it was revealed that HP is selling its webOS assets to LG - including the source code, personnel, and patents - and that LG intends to utilize those assets to deliver a webOS-powered smart TV in early 2014. LG has no ambitions or intentions to bring webOS to their mobile space as they're perfectly happy with all of the work they've put into Android over the past few years. To be frank, we would have been more than pleasantly surprised to see anybody take up the mantle of mobile webOS development. And so, the final chapter of mobile webOS began to draw to a close. There's always the work that the fine folks at WebOS Ports are doing bringing Open webOS to devices like the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and Asus Nexus 7, but as we've been saying since the full release of Open webOS 1.0 back in September, the open source release is missing a lot in the way of deep features. While Open webOS Professional Edition was supposed to fix that, at this point the only point we can expect to see Professional Edition is in January 2014 when it's running in some form on an LG television at CES. The team at Palm and HP needed hundreds more working to bring webOS up-to-snuff feature-for-feature with the competition. It's simply wishful thinking to expect that WebOS Ports of any other webOS homebrew project will be able to produce a fully workable port of Open webOS that any sane person would be willing to use as their primary smartphone or tablet. Moreso than HP abandoning webOS for Android, this purchase of all webOS assets by LG represents a significant turning point for this webOS community. Palm and webOS have changed hands so many times it's boggling to think about - in just the past four years, Palm saw a major cash infusion from Elevation Partners, launched a new mobile platform, got bought by HP, launched their first tablet, saw that tablet get brutally canceled, was split in two, shopped around, open sourced, and now sold to Korean electronics giant LG. With LG offering no relief to those craving new webOS hardware, it's time to consider more seriously that this may very well be the end for webOS as we know it. There's no guarantee that webOS on LG TVs will have multitasking cards or rich notifications or universal search or Synergy data unification or any of the much-lauded features that made webOS the operating system that we can't help but adore. We've been suckers for webOS for over four years now, and that's not about to change. No matter what happens in the coming years, webOS will always occupy a significant portion of our gadget nostalgia. read more View the full article

So, LG is buying webOS and putting it on TVs. We're still putting together our thoughts on the matter, but in the meantime we thought we'd go ahead and ask you what you think. So, here's a poll: How do you feel about LG buying webOS from HP? View the full article

Mobile Nations Podcast Feed Mobile Nations on iTunes Mobile Nations YouTube Debug 8: Grant Paul aka chpwn ZEN and TECH 52: Fitness month sleep and relaxation special! HTC One: Your guide to the 2013 Android reboot Android at Mobile World Congress 2013 - what to expect from this year's show Google I/O 2013 registration opens March 13 How to transfer your BlackBerry 7 data to a BlackBerry 10 device using BlackBerry Link Top 10 tips for the BlackBerry 10 calendar Sorry, this Z10 gross margin analysis is totally out to lunch 'Chubby Checker' lawsuit filed against HP over endowment size estimator Enyo 2.2 lands with Windows 8 and BlackBerry 10 support Raspberry Pi used as an Ares 2-Enyo-node.js Server iPad mini: 4 months later Comparing iPhone weather app screens Win a FREE iPad mini in your choice of AnoStyle color! Nokia Music+ goes live in the U.S. Market, let the unlimited downloads begin! Windows Phone Portico update rolling out in new wave, including Verizon’s HTC 8X The 'Spring into TEGRA' Contest: Win a Tegra-powered Windows 8 RT Tablet! View the full article

According to a report this morning from CNET that has since been pulled (though we have independently verified) LG is purchasing the webOS Global Business Unit from HP, including all of its patents, employees, and source code. This news follows our exclusive report in October that LG was working with HP to develop a webOS-powered smart TV. Our sources tell us that LG now anticipates launching their first webOS-powered HDTV at CES 2014. Palm, and by extension webOS, was purchased by HP just under three years ago for $1.2 billion, invested billions in launching new hardware and expanding the reach of webOS to PCs, and then abruptly cancelled hardware development before ultimately opting to open source the operating system. Those joining LG will be positioned under the office of LG CTO President and CEO Skott Ahn and not as part of the television group. The arrangement might be similar to that the webOS GBU was put under in 2010, when they were slotted under HP's Office of Strategy and Technology incubator while the decision of what exactly to do with the OS was being made. The end goal of LG buying webOS like this is the same as their partnership from last year: to make a webOS-powered television to replace LG's aging NetCast smart TV platform. We and CNET have seen no indication that LG intends to use webOS to supplement their Android smartphone business, though with LG coming in at fifth place in the global smartphone share rankings with less than five percent market share, nothing's impossible. LG at the very least has the experience and manpower in mobile they would need to bring webOS up to modern standards. That said, as much as we would love to see webOS for mobile from LG, we doubt that's going to happen. With LG snapping up the majority of HP's webOS programming talent and dedicating it to their smart television endeavours, we would be shocked to see webOS hit LG's other endeavours. Even in fifth place, LG's managed to sell more Android smartphones and than HP did webOS devices. Though, there might be some hope for other webos-powered LG products, as CNET quotes Ahn as saying "It creates a new path for LG to offer an intuitive user experience and Internet services across a range of consumer electronics devices." Read into that what you will, but don't put too much of your money on LG webOS smartphones and tablets. We also would be surprised to see webOS as we know it come from anybody else to mobile. While HP might technically still own the operating system and the code has been fully committed to open source, without the resources of the webOS GBU to assist third parties in the development of webOS hardware (as they did with LG) it's just not all that likely a third party is going to produce webOS hardware. Granted, it wasn't all that likely before, now it's just less so. We still hope that the soon-to-be-LG employees of the webOS GBU will still be assisting the WebOS Ports team in their own efforts to bring Open webOS to more hardware. Those of you with webOS devices, though, CNET says that LG will continue with HP's support commitments, though we have to wonder how long that will last - it's been 18 months since the last webOS device sales, and there's HP's homebrew connections to look after as well. We have reached out to both LG and HP and are awaiting comment. View the full article

We knew it was coming, but it still stings. HP today announced and unveiled at MWC in Barcelona their reentry into the tablet market with the HP Slate 7 tablet. The seven-inch tablet has a 1024x600 screen, a 1.6GHz Cortex A9 processor, 1GB of RAM, and a meager 8GB of onboard storage (though it may be augmented by an included microSD slot). And, in typical HP fashion, it also includes Beats Audio integration and an HP ePrint application. The kicker: it runs Android. And not even the latest version of Android, no, it runs Android 4.1.1, and almost entirely unmodified from stock - the ePrint integration is an app - not the newer Android 4.2 that's been in the public since November 2012 (4.1.1 landed two months earlier than that). The Slate 7 also has no integrated GPS, no NFC, and no cellular radios to speak of. It's also around 11mm thick. The marquee feature of this low-end, moderately chunky (for 2013) disappointment of a tablet? The price: a surprising $169. The Slate 7 compares most closely with the Asus Nexus 7, and though the Nexus 7 is $30 more expensive, it has a much better processor, is thinner, has a better screen, and doesn't depend on HP for updates. The Slate 7 also compares well to the unreleased TouchPad Go tablet, though it had a better rear camera. And a better screen. And wireless charging. And an option for cellular integration. And webOS. Though in the TouchPad Go's defense, it was supposed to come out 18 months ago. If you're wondering if this new Slate 7 might be a tempting target for Open webOS porting, we have but one question to ask you: "With such pathetic specs, why bother?" There's a reason the Slate 7 will retail for $169, and that's because it's not that appealing of a tablet. It's likely the Slate 7 will be plenty open, if HP hasn't gone out of their way to lock it down, so putting Open webOS on it might not be that big of a leap (depending on the manufacturer of the processor and their receptiveness towards open source, that is). But as the WebOS Internals Twitter account pointed out today following the announcement, "With such 2010 specs, why would you bother?" Why, indeed. Our dear friend Phil from Android Central went hands-on with the Slate 7 at MWC, and while he found the specifications and screen of the tablet in person as underwhelming as we have from a distance, he was at least impressed by the industrial design, even if it is a bit on the chunky side (see: price). The Slate 7 is perhaps a look into where HP's industrial design would have taken webOS tablets had HP followed through on their commitment to webOS after purchasing Palm instead of canceling the hardware program in a fit of stupidity. And with that, we're not going to bother discussing the Slate 7 at any more length unless it for some reason is found to be running webOS. The tablet is due on shelves at US retail stores in April, which means we should expect it to be canceled around June anyway. View the full article

While email on webOS has been known to have its share of issues, from the annoying Yahoo Error 1299 or a disruptive message that prevents your email from syncing any more messages, webOS 2.2.4 on phones or webOS 3.0.5 on the TouchPad has been pretty much problem-free. However, this writer's Pre3 has been seeing almost daily situations where the email app just continues to work (as seen by the non-stop rotating dots around email count on the top-right) and while no error message appears, neither does any new email. The good news is that unlike the other issues mentioned above, this one has a simple fix that just requires a reboot of your device. A Luna restart is not enough to fix this, instead you will need to perform a full Device Restart or cycle the power completely off and then back on. Wait the few minutes for your device to load back up and your email should be working again. View the full article

Today it was revealed that HP is working on an Android-powered tablet to be unveiled in the near future and possibly a smartphone for the farther future. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anymore. Despite statements over a year ago from CEO Meg Whitman looking to assuage anxious tech nerds about the future of webOS, HP has never shown any real inclination towards producing new webOS hardware since the cancellation of the last webOS hardware almost eighteen months ago to the day. Even though it's not a surprise in any sense of the word, it's still frustrating. HP has for close to three years owned one of the most highly-regarded mobile operating systems of the modern age of mobile computing, and for lack of a better term they royally fucked it over under the brief and idiotic leadership of Leo Apotheker. But that's in the past, and while it's hard to deal with old festering wounds like that, dwelling on that past isn't going to help one bit. There is of course benefit to examining the past with objective eyes, or at least trying to do so. HP bought Palm three years ago for this very reason - to move into mobile. They didn't like the way Microsoft was going with Windows 8, and though they'd toyed around with Android internally and on printers, they apparently weren't happy with that either. Driven by Personal Systems Group head and former PalmOne CEO Todd Bradley, HP purchased Palm for $1.2 billion so they could chart their own course in the burgeoning mobile world and not be tied to Microsoft or Google or anybody else. That's how it was supposed to work, and as we all know it didn't. There are a number of factors that can be blamed, from boardroom incompetence to poor sales to underwhelming hardware to disappointing advertising (but far from the worst that webOS has seen over the years). As with every multi-billion-dollar decision, there are dozens of contributing factors, though it usually boils down to money and the willingness to spend it or not spend it. read more View the full article

This tip is only for HP TouchPads running webOS 3.0.5 and LunaCE 4.9.5 or higher Although the size of the screen on the TouchPad is much larger than that of any webOS phone, the size of the apps that are visible in the cards and stacks that are shown in card view are no different. This is not exactly an efficient use of screen real estate that should allow you to see more of the apps that are available to you. With the released of the Open Source "webOS Community Edition" for the HP TouchPad (not to be confused with Open webOS), the group at WebOS Ports was able to give you more control over how the cards and stacks appear on the screen as part LunaCE (pronounced "lunacy"), available in Preware. 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. Just as you can adjust the Stack overlap spread amount to view more of the apps within a stack, LunaCE also gives you the ability to adjust the zoom level of the cards and stacks on the screen. Once you go into the "Luna" section of Tweaks and toggle "Card Zoom Gestures" to YES in the "GESTURES" section, you can then perform a two-fingered in or out gesture when in Card View to adjust that zoom level. You can keep the zoom to a level where you only see a sliver of the adjacent stacks to the current one, or zoom out to be able to view up to 5 stacks at once in landscape. The one thing to note is that if you also have the "Stack spread gestures" toggle also set to YES, any time you pinch-in or -out to zoom on a stack with more than one card will prioritize the stack spread gesture and not the zoom amount. You will need to swipe over to a stack with only a single card first and then perform the zoom gesture. View the full article

Less than eighteen months after abandoning the HP TouchPad tablet and webOS smartphone lines, HP is jumping back into the mobile computing game with Android. ReadWrite is reporting that their sources at HP say that not only are they going the Android route for their upcoming tablet, they might even be announcing said tablet 'soon'. It's reportedly powered by a Nvidia Tegra 4 processor, something significantly more powerful than the two-year-old Qualcomm silicon found in the TouchPad (which itself originally was designed to run Android). The tablet's reportedly been in development "since before Thanksgiving". The move by HP to Android is disappointing, but not exactly a surprise. It was nearly a year and a half ago that HP cancelled hardware development of for webOS devices, effectively killing the operating system and leaving it to be resuscitated in the open source community. That all came to fruition at the end of September with the full release of the open sourced Open webOS 1.0. By virtue of the Linux Standard Kernel 3.3 at its heart, Open webOS is fully capable of running on hardware such as the rumored Tegra 4 HP tablet, which we're sure the webOS homebrew community will make happen purely out of spite. A little over a year ago, after HP's decision to open source webOS, CEO Meg Whitman said that HP would "use webOS in new hardware", specifically tablets. We haven't heard much of anything along that line since then, and the revelation that HP is actively working on their own Android tablet (plus the year of silence since that statement) is leading us to conclude that any HP hardware powered by webOS ever coming out would be something of a miracle. Aside from an Android-powered tablet, ReadWrite is also reporting that HP is exploring the possibility of launching an Android smartphone. Late last year Whitman went on the record saying that HP was actively looking at reentering the smartphone space, citing the burgeoning market for smartphones in the developing world, but that a new HP smartphone wasn't likely to be released in 2012. Though we have to say, if HP launches a Pre4 powered by Android, we might just flip several tables in fits of rage. As usual, we're going to point the eyeballs around the conference tables in Palo Alto to that little multi-billion investment they’ve made in Sunnyvale on a mobile operating system that's overflowing with promise and finally has hardware around capable of adequately supporting it. Yes, webOS. We're more than a little biased here about this issue, and it's eternally frustrating to watch HP squander such resources again and again. But HP's spinning of the webOS Global Business Unit as Gram and they've got plans for what they can do with Open webOS to make money. HP bringeth scale and HP taketh away. Perhaps webOS will be better without HP's megabucks. View the full article

February is Fitness Month here at Mobile Nations, and thanks to our Android, BlackBerry, iOS, webOS, and Windows phones and tablets, we have a host of new options for getting in shape and staying healthy. Regardless of your platform of choice, or whether you stick to one type of device or many, there are a ton of great options to choose from now. Georgia is spearheading Fitness Month for us this year, and she's going to show you just 10 of her favorites, and she's going to do it in just 2 minutes. Most of these will work for a variety of different phone and tablet sizes, running a variety of different operating systems and versions. I couldn't find alternatives for all of them, however, so if you know of some, tell us about them! read more View the full article

Attorney Willie Gary of Stuart, Florida, has filed a federal lawsuit in the United States District Court, Florida's Southern District, against HP and Palm on behalf of performer Ernest Evans over the Silicon Valley firms' hosting of an app titled "The Chubby Checker" hosted in the webOS App Catalog. The app, a play on the stage name of Mr. Evans - Chubby Checker, was created by developer Magic Apps, was designed as a calculator for estimating the penis size of a man given the input of his shoe size. The app was downloaded 84 times before being removed from the App Catalog in September of 2012 and no longer available in the store on device or in the App Catalog web listings. "Chubby Checker" is held as a trademark by the Ernest Evans Corporation. The lawsuit claims that HP and Palm's "use of the name 'Chubby Checker' in its app is likely to associate platiff's marks with the obscene, sexual connotation and images," and that Evans has "received no compensation for the unauthorized use of the Chubby Checker name and trademark". Additionally, the lawyers allege that customers that have looked at or purchases The Chubby Checker app "are being misled into believing that the plaintiffs have endorsed the defendant's app." Up to its removal, The Chubby Checker had clocked fewer than 100 downloads. The lawsuit is demanding that HP and Palm cease sales of the app bearing the trademark of or similarity to Chubby Checker and triple damages of the profits HP derived from sales of the app. When listed, The Chubby Checker retailed for $0.99; with sales of no more than a hundred copies and the 30% cut taken by Palm and HP from the App Catalog, damages could total upwards of $90.00. For their part, when contacted regarding this lawsuit, HP provided us with this statement: "The application was removed in September 2012 and is no longer on any Palm or HP hosted web site." read more View the full article

Leave a comment below telling us your Fitness Month goals and be entered to win a Withings Wireless Scale! It's February and you know what that means? Mobile Nations Fitness Month! That's when we all get together to get in shape, share tips and tricks and recipes for success, review amazing apps and accessories, give away great prizes, and have a ton of fun! This year we're doing it a little differently, though. We're doing weekly themes, and that means every week you'll have new and exciting challenges, and new chances to win! read more View the full article

iCalImporter, by MetaViewSoft, is a nifty little application that will allow you to import iCalendar data files directly to your calendar on your webOS Device. iCalImporter supports .ical, .icalendar, .ics, .ifb and .vcs files types, and allows for manual import, import from a URL, or even launching from an email attachment. While the overall process is similar regardless of which method you use, the starting steps are a little different for each Manual Import: As long as an iCalender file is located on the USB drive of your webOS device, you just need to load up iCalImporter and tap the "Local File" on the top-left of the screen. You will be presented with a listing of compatible files on your device and you can either scroll through them or type-to-search to find the one you want. Tap on your desired file Import from URL: Open iCalImporter and tap on the "From URL" button on the top-right of the screen. If you have previously imported a URL, it should be listed here already. Otherwise tap the + button on the bottom-left of the screen. A pop-up dialog box will appear where you can enter the URL address and a title for the import. Tap the "Add URL" button when done to add the URL to the list, and then tap on that entry and select "Use URL" Email Attachment: If you get an email with an iCalender attachment, just tap on that attachment in the email to download it, and then iCalImporter should automatically launch with your calendar entry pre-loaded Once you have an iCalendar file/URL loaded into the app, a count of entries will be displayed along with the details of those entries. You just need to tap the "Update Calendar" button to add this to your calendar. Unfortunately, this will not add the entry to your default calendar, but rather to an "iCalImporter" calendar account. Note that if this is the first time using iCalImporter, you may need to go into the Accounts app and enable the calendar for the iCalImporter account, otherwise the entry will be added to an "Undefined" account. If you then want to add this entry to your default calendar account instead of the iCalImporter account, you can open up that calendar entry and just move it to your desired account. iCalImporter is available in the webOS App Catalog for $1.49 and is compatible with all webOS devices running webOS 1.4.5 or higher View the full article