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I've spent the entirety of this week in Las Vegas with the Mobile Nations crew covering CES 2013. CES has a special place in the hearts of webOS fans - after all, it was CES 2009 where the Palm Pre was unveiled to overwhelming critical acclaim, and CES 2010 saw the announcement of the Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus. Even after the debacle of the webOS hardware development cancellation, CES 2012 had OpenMobile showing off their intentions to bring Android apps to webOS. CES 2013, on the other hand, was entirely devoid of webOS. It's understandable, though I was surprised that HP didn't even have a space on the show floor (to call what Samsung, Sony, and the others are doing 'booths' would be to call Godzilla a salamander). Then again, Microsoft doesn't have an official presence at CES anymore either. OpenMobile was at CES this year, and this year they were focusing on building yet another Android app store - one that has nothing to do with webOS. If you haven't already, go ahead and check out all of the CES 2013 coverage on our sister sites Android Central, iMore, and Windows Phone Central. I'm going to head back to the convention hall and wander around. Rumor has it that Sprint's booth was constructed entirely of returned original Pre smartphones... My thanks to Android Central's Alex Dobie for helping with filming. View the full article

The story of what happened to HP is a complicated and at times a depressing narrative. Things were going okay until 2010, when CEO Mark Hurd was forced out of his leadership position due to sexytime-driven accounting improprieties. That kicked off the era of Leo Apotheker, a disaster on all fronts for HP and webOS. It's been known for a while that late Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs was a fan of HP as a Silicon Valley institution, and today Businessweek published an extensive piece on HP's fall from grace that included a fascinating nugget: despite HP being a competitor on many fronts with Apple, Jobs personally urged Hurd to reconcile with HP. Jobs went so far as to personally email Hurd within a few days of his departure, asking if he "needed someone to talk to" (Jobs had gone through a similar ouster, though with less sexytimes, from Apple decades earlier). "Hurd met Jobs at his home in Palo Alto, according to people who know both men but did not wish to be identified, compromising a personal confidence. The pair spent more than two hours together, Jobs taking Hurd on his customary walk around the tree-lined neighborhood. At numerous points during their conversation, Jobs pleaded with Hurd to do whatever it took to set things right with the board so that Hurd could return. Jobs even offered to write a letter to HP’s directors and to call them up one by one." Of course, Jobs's motives in talking to Hurd and attempting to smooth the ruffled feathers of HP's board wasn't entirely personal. Jobs believed that a healthy HP was "essential to a healthy Silicon Valley," with HP essentially standing as the founding company of California's technology hotbed. Of course, Jobs was not able to bring Hurd and HP's board back together, and in things unraveled very quickly with the questionable selection of former SAP CEO Leo Apotheker as HP's new chief executive. How different things would have been under Hurd is hard to say, but it's all but certain that webOS would have been given the time and the money it needed to succeed. View the full article

Over the course of the four years since the debut of the Palm Pre, the device menu--that dropdown menu that you get when swiping down from the top-right of the screen--has basically looked the exact same on all phones from the original Pre running webOS 1.0.1 to the Pre2 and Pre3 running webOS 2.2.4. Sure, webOS 2.0 added VPN to the menu and there are numerous patches that will help you customize it, but the basic look and feel of the dropdown menu hasn't changed, even on webOS 3.0 on the TouchPad. Hot on the heels of releasing an alpha version of his UI Scale patch to bring the 4x4 launcher back to the Pre3, homebrew developer extraordinaire Garrett92c (who has also brought us the Glass Effect Suite theme, AIOSettings, Dash Weather and much more) decided that he wanted to give the Device Menu a complete overhaul. Simply named "New Device Menu", his new patch for webOS 2.x phones converts the menu from a long list of vertically-aligned options to a horizontally-aligned set of tabs that split out each section as their own menu. Garrett has scavenged around all the existing patches to bring almost every conceivable option that is currently available (and even some that aren't) to make this the most complete Device Menu patch yet. Some of these options include GPS and Location Services options, a sounds section that gives you quick access to ringtone, media and system volume levels, a brightness level, a flashlight toggle, and a phone menu that adds toggles for the phone radio, data use, network selection and a roam only option. For Pre3 owners who use the "Cycle WiFi" patch, that's even in there, too, by press-and-holding on the WiFi status row. There's even a rotation lock toggle in there, but you need to have xwTweak homebrew app installed for that. This patch is just a few days old and is already fully-functional, but it is still in beta as Garrett has been releasing daily updates for users to test as he continues to add new functionality. The patch isn't in Preware, yet, but you can grab it from the webOS Nation Forums at the source link below. There are also a lot of great ideas that have been suggested to Garrett in our forums and he has been working to add as many of them in as he can, including making it Tweaks-compatible to allow the user to customize it. This patch should work on all webOS 2.x devices, but see the forum thread for devices that have had successful installation reports and note that there are separate patches for US and ROW (rest of world) users. The patch is naturally incompatible with most other Device Menu patches, such as Jason Robitaille's "Device Menu Megamix", sconix's "Advanced Device Menu", or GuyFromNam's "Cycle Wi-Fi in Device Menu" patch, but seems to work with almost all other patches out there, including the rest of sconix's Advanced patches. If you are interested in trying it out, check out the forum thread to grab the patch and use webOS Quick Install or Internalz Pro to install it on your device. Feel free to add your own suggestions to the discussion if you have any great ideas. And don't forget that homebrew developers like Garrett are doing this on their own time because they love webOS and want to continue to support the webOS community. If you like his work and want to show your appreciation, consider sending a donation his way. Details are in the forum thread if you are interested. Source: webOS Nation forums View the full article

The webOS Nation Forums have always been a font of awesomeness, and there's no sign that's going to stop anytime soon. Some of our favorite moments come about when somebody poses an interesting question and the community runs with it. We've been having one of those moments since yesterday, when mattmers asked "Is the OS market too full for webOS?" Matt put together a daunting list. On top of the mobile operating system pile are Android and iOS, with Windows Phone 8 and soon BlackBerry 10 fighting for a distant third place. Then there's the bottom tier, a group of operating systems fighting for recognition from a carrier or manufacturer, let alone sales. They include Firefox OS, Sailfish OS, our beloved webOS, and the recently-announced Ubuntu for phones. In an operating system market with two dominant players and two duking it out for a distant third place, is there really space for four different operating systems to be engaged in a battle royale for the attention of manufacturers, carriers, developers, and users? Compelling reasons to pick from this crop of unloved operating systems are few when there are established options like Android and iOS available for all parties involved. That's not to say that we don't love webOS; we do, but there's no way we could in good faith recommend to a friend that they go seek out a Pre3 or a TouchPad or hack Open webOS onto their Galaxy Nexus (at least not yet…). As Windows Phone and BlackBerry show, there's a question of if there's even a viable third place in this hyper-competitive market. Let alone a fourth, fifth, or sixth player. Apple, Google, and Samsung have succeeded at convincing users, developers, and carriers to go with their hardware and software, and it's increasingly becoming a two-party race in smartphones. The jury's still out on tablets, with Microsoft's Windows 8 and Windows RT still playing out, but with the high turnover and subsidized prices of smartphones it's getting harder and harder to break in with each passing day. Of course, there's a question of if webOS needs the be on smartphones to survive. Despite being on a dozen carriers world-wide for years and carrying the brand power of Palm and HP, webOS never quite took off like we would have liked. There's a multitude of reasons for that failure and we won't bother opening up that wound again, but it's entirely possible that the door has closed on smartphones for webOS. There's still definitely an opportunity for tablets, but things would have to get rolling in the very near future before that door closes too. In all of the rumors and rumblings of what HP/Gram is doing, we've yet to hear a peep about smartphones. In fact, the biggest story of what Gram is working on hasn't been a smartphone or a tablet, but a partnership with LG to produce a webOS-powered smart television. Whether or not webOS will be a good fit for an HDTV, well, we'll have to see it first before we pass judgement, but it speaks to the flexibility of webOS as a multi-purpose operating system. It's entirely possible we'll never see another webOS smartphone or webOS tablet, but that webOS will still live on successfully in other applications. But when it comes to fan bases and communities, that's much harder to maintain when you're talking about televisions or (just ruminating here) automobile nav units or refrigerators. But we'll cross that bridge if an when we get to it. View the full article

When Palm developed webOS, they did a great job of backing up the majority of your settings in the Palm Profile backup, such as your App Launcher setup, your synergy accounts, web bookmarks, contacts/calendar/memos entries to your Palm Profile, and more. As webOS progressed from version 1.0.1 to where it is now, the data that was included in your backup also expanded, now including your Linked Contacts and some application data if an app developer utilizes that functionality in their app. However, there are few big omissions in the Palm Profile backup, such as saved application/game data and homebrew apps/patches. WebOS Internals has helped fill that void with the use of the Save/Restore application and the "Saved Package List" feature in Preware, and we have documented all the steps you can take to successfully backup and restore your webOS data when you swap or Doctor your device in our Definitive Guide to Backing up and Restoring your webOS Device. However, there are a few additional steps that you may want to consider taking when reactivating a device to make the transition easier: App Tuckerbox Before you restore all the packages in Preware's Saved Package List, you should consider installing and configuring App Tuckerbox first. This will add the proper feeds to Preware that will allow you to download any apps from the official App Catalogs that did not auto-download to your device. This will occur if those apps were not compliant with your installed webOS version or were from the beta or web feeds of the App Catalog Use Save/Restore to backup additional system files and images If you have added some of the advanced scripts to Save/Restore to backup some additional system files or images, you will need to be sure to add those scripts back to your new device before running a "Restore applications" from within Save/Restore. Disable or Remove Voice Dial [webOS 2.x] If you had disabled Voice Dial on your old webOS 2.x device, don't forget to disable it again on your new device Restore your Text Assist learned words and shortcuts [webOS 2.x] Unfortunately, neither the Palm Profile nor Save/Restore will restore your learned words or shortcuts that you added to Text Assist on your webOS 2.x or 3.x device, but you are able to get a backup of those settings by using manual command line commands or using Save/Restore. From here, you can manually add that data back into Text Assist on your new device or follow the steps outlined in our Restore your Text Assist learned words and shortcuts tip to use command line to add them back. Reset default Email folders While your Palm Profile backup will restore your synergy email accounts and most settings, it will not restore any default email folders that you set for your Sent, Draft or Trash folders. Reset Just Type and Exhibition Settings [webOS 2.x+] While Just Type and Exhibition mode were two great features in webOS 2.x (and continued in webOS 3.x), their settings were not carried over when you restore your device. Be sure to go into your Just Type preferences to enable your preferred Quick Actions and Launch & Search settings, and open up your Exhibition app to toggle which applications you want visible in Exhibition. Check general settings Just as with your Just Type and Exhibition settings, your Palm Profile will also not restore every setting on your device. So, you may want to open up the various settings apps to make sure that everything is set to your own personal preferences. For example, open up the Screen & Lock app to adjust your screen time-out setting, set a power-on PIN or password, or enable Advanced Gestures to toggle fast-app switching with a full swipe in the gesture area. Or open up the Sounds & Ringtones app and make sure you have the right ringtone set for your device. Continue with the rest of the Settings apps Got any other suggestions not included above that you follow when you restore your profile onto a new webOS device? View the full article

Kevin, Phil, Daniel, and Rene talk about CES 2013, what they expect to see, and whether it's still relevant, then fight about ActiveSync, RIM vs. Microsoft, and what they want to see from Apple, Google, and everyone going forward! Apologies for the video quality, we experienced severe technical problems during the recording of the show, and while we're providing it for those who really want it, we recommend sticking to audio for this episode - check out the swanky new HTML5 player below. type="audio/mpeg"> Our podcast feed: Audio | Video Download directly: Audio | Video Subscribe in iTunes: Audio | Video Subscribe in Zune read more View the full article

If you're like me (and who doesn't want to be like me?), your webOS device is constantly full of multitasking app cards. Some are fleeting, around for until you don't need them anymore and then tossed off the top of the screen like the day's garbage. Others are important, and you keep them around because you don't want to deal with relaunching the app later, need it to be running in the background, or just want to have whatever's in that card available for quick reference later. For that latter category of app cards there's a problem lurking in your quick-gesturing thumb: the inadvertent toss-away. It's too easy, we know. You're busy closing away unneeded cards at the end of the day and before you know it you've tossed away the web browser card with that restaurant address you were going to need later that evening. Curse words fly forth as you're forced to reopen the browser, dig into your history, and find the lost page. But… what if you could lock that card and make it so you couldn't accidentally throw it away? Wouldn't that be grand? Yes, it would indeed be exceedingly grand. But locking a card should be a very deliberate action, something you can't do or undo accidentally. Our simple and straightforward proposal: pull down and hold. The current pull-down behavior in webOS varies depending on the version. webOS 1.x and 2.x treat a pull down the same as tapping on a card, merely maximizing the card. It makes sense - if pushing it away is closing it, pulling it down - towards you - should be the opposite, making the card active. But webOS 3.x left us scratching our heads, as pulling down on an app card instead triggers a slingshot that throws it off the top of the screen, closing any background processes for running built-in apps. Useful, but in no way intuitive. So our proposal is really two-fold. First: restore the pull-down-to-open behavior for cards. Second: add a pull-down-and-hold gesture to trigger locking a card. For a visual cue, add a red glow and a lock icon on activation, and have a translucent lock icon superimposed on the locked app in card view. Swiping up on a locked card triggers a vertical wobble (perhaps with a red glow at the top of the screen), and unlocking is accomplished by the same pull-down-and-hold gesture. Simple, intuitive, discoverable, and it doesn't get in the way if you don't need it. Most of all, it's useful and a life-saver of sorts. Have your own thoughts on this or any other webOS Wish List entry? We'd be disappointed if you didn't. That's why we have the comments, it's your place to say how incredibly right (or horribly wrong) we are, plus there's a poll! And we have little doubt you have your own ideas as to what ought be on the webOS wish list, and so there's a forum thread just for that where awesome webOS dreaming is the order of the day. The webOS Wish List: Lockable Cards View the full article

Open source! Free! Gestures galore! Today brought a surprise from London with Canonical's newly announced Ubuntu for smartphones. We're not going to be too critical of Ubuntu here, after all, we write about webOS here, we don't have many legs to stand on when it comes to mocking other operating systems. So… good luck with that. Canonical's Ubuntu operating system has ben around for years for the desktop and they've recently been making a good deal of noise about extending Ubuntu to other platforms, wanting to get Ubuntu running on screens big, medium, and small with the same general interface. You know, like Open webOS. Where Ubuntu 12 on the desktop is a fairly intuitive and easy-to-grasp user interface that relies on pre-existing interface conventions in common with Windows (pre-Windows 8, that is) and Mac OS X, Ubuntu for smartphones offers a fairly fresh take on the smartphone user interface. One can look at Ubuntu for phones and see where certain parts of the OS may have taken inspiration, with heavy doses of BlackBerry PlayBook and BlackBerry 10 along with measures of Android, Windows Phone, and webOS. Ubuntu for phones is far more reliant on gestures than any smartphone OS to date, perhaps to its detriment. Where gestures in webOS were relatively easy to grasp (swipe back, swipe up, and swipe off), Ubuntu for smartphones is entirely dependent on gestures to to the point that user interface discoverability has all but evaporated. webOS had some small discoverability issues, iOS and Windows Phone have always been perfectly obvious, and Android has greatly improved on the discoverability front. Ubuntu, on the other hand, requires knowing gestures just to get past the lock, er, 'welcome' screen. As John Gruber of Daring Fireball put it, "it’s like a desktop interface with nothing but keyboard shortcuts." Ubuntu for phones also faces the same set of issues as webOS: convincing manufacturers to pick it up and run with it. It's hard to say who has the tougher road here, though the two Linux-based operating systems both have a difficult path to acceptance ahead of them. And hey, they both run on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. That's fun, right? read more View the full article

As with any struggling company, HP's looking at ways to streamline their business and raise some cash in the process. Late last month HP send a 10-K filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission that the company will "continue to evaluate the potential disposition of assets and businesses that may no longer help us meet our objectives." In plain talk: if you're a part of HP but aren't helping out the bottom line as much as HP would like, you might not be part of HP for much longer. Of course, the ideal method for getting rid of those not-helping-HP units is for HP to sell them. You know, stop losing money by making money. This isn't the first time HP's looked at selling parts of the company. In fact, a lot of HP's problems over the past year can be traced back to efforts to dispense with large parts of the company. It was the plan of then CEO Leo Apotheker and still-Chairman Ray Lane to split HP into two distinctly separate companies, with one focusing on enterprise software and the other built around the declining PC business. That plan kicked off a firestorm in Palo Alto and Wall Street, ending with the ouster of Apotheker. HP also tried and failed to find a buyer for webOS and/or the webOS Global Business Unit at a favorable price, eventually opting instead to commit webOS to open source and spin off the GBU as a standalone company. Or at least, that was the plan months ago. Gram, that standalone company, has yet to launch, and since HP's decision to open source webOS a year ago the mobile landscape has dramatically changed. Could HP be weighing giving a sale of webOS and it's GBU another go? Not likely, considering how much they've invested in spinning off Gram so far, but… crazier things have happened. View the full article

Oh, what a whirlwind year it was for webOS in 2012. From unbelievable highs to unimaginable lows, we've been through it all and we're coming out on the other side looking forward to whatever it is that 2013 has to offer. So let's take a look back at the year that was 2012 and see what all actually happened... read more View the full article

2012 was a weird year for webOS, and we decided it was best if the webOS Nation Best of 2012 Awards reflected that. As did you, with nearly four thousand votes cast, it's time to reveal the winners… read more View the full article

It's the Reasonably Special Edition, need you any more? We've got fifty copies of the colorful and puzzling Giddy 3 primed and ready to give away to you, dear reader, all you have to do is comment for a chance to win one. Across five huge old-school scrolling levels you take on the part of Giddy, the all-round good egg with unfeasibly large hands and fight to save the world from the big bad aliens and their giant robot stompers. Sound exceedingly weird and goofy? Good, because it is, and you should be into that sort of thing. Especially when you get it for free instead of the $0.99 it might normally cost you. Contest: We have 50 copies of Giddy 3 to give away. Just leave a comment on this post to enter. Contest ends next Sunday at midnight US Eastern Time, after which time we will select 50 random entrants to win. Please only leave one comment, multiple entries won’t count. Promo codes are only valid in countries serviced by the App Catalog, and users must be running webOS 2.0 or higher with the latest version of the App Catalog. View the full article

After a roller coaster of a year in 2011 for webOS, the pace of news for 2012 was definitely a lot slower. For the first time since webOS was released in 2009, we did not see any hardware released or software updated for existing devices. Instead, the focus on 2012 was on Open webOS, the open source next generation of the webOS operating system that was officially released this past September. While existing webOS devices will not officially be able to run Open webOS, there are still a lot of users who are proud (or stubborn, depending on your perspective) to keep carrying on with their webOS devices, be it the TouchPad, Pre3 or Pre2, Veer, or even a few brave folks still using a Pixi or Pre+. And there is nothing better at webOS Nation that we like to do more than to make your webOS experience the best it can possibly be. So as long as there are webOS users out there, we will continue to bring you our Tips of the Day, with over 425 and counting for you to view. As we close out 2012, we wanted to look back at some of our favorite and most used tips of the year. read more View the full article

As if the Samsung Galaxy Nexus Open webOS port wasn't enough, WebOS Ports has announced a new porting project: Open webOS on the Google Nexus 7. The seven-inch Android-powered tablet built by Asus was the premiere launch devices for Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, and thanks to the open source and open hardware nature of the device, it is the perfect fit for WebOS Ports's next porting adventure. Seeing how much we loved the small seven-inch TouchPad Go, it's no surprise that the equally small Nexus 7 tablet was on the radar of WebOS Ports. Though larger, the 1280x800 screen on the Nexus 7 is close enough in pixel dimensions to the 1280x720 screen on the Galaxy Nexus, so a lot of the work put into the smartphone project could be easily translated to the Nexus 7. How easy? This work was led by WebOS Ports's Simon "morphis" Busch over the course of about a week while he was on winter break from college. The port was accomplished with the Galaxy Nexus project in conjunction with LibHybris, created by Carsten Munk (an engineer at Jolla, though he also leads Merproject, which grew out of Sailfish ancestors Maemo and Meego), a library that allows for "bionic-based [Android] hardware adaptations in glibc systems", in essence making it easier to translate between the designed-for-Android hardware and Linux-based software like the Open webOS operating system. This means that with LibHybris the WebOS Ports team won't have to write drivers from scratch for different Android-based devices they might wish to attack. In addition to LibHybris, the Nexus 7 leverages the work of those involved in Merproject, FreeSmartphone, and SHR Project. A video of the port in action is after the break, and as an early alpha we're rather impressed. Open webOS on the Nexus 7 runs generally smoothly (there's some intermittent and infrequent lag, which isn't anything too surprising at this stage) and has improved considerably from our last look at Open webOS on the Galaxy Nexus. In addition there's now an Enyo 2-based Settings app that allows you to toy with things like the Wi-Fi and brightness settings and the new OWO Memos app (also Enyo 2 based). The port also supports the classic webOS tablet keyboard, the made-for-the-Galaxy-Nexus virtual gesture area, and forward-swipe-driven screen rotation. Essentially, it's like webOS on the TouchPad Go, except on the slimmer, lighter, faster, newer Nexus 7 and more open source-y. Oh, and did we mention that it runs untethered now? Yeah, it does that. Being able to use Open webOS on the device without being hooked up to your computer is a big deal, and we're really quite psyched to see that happen. You still have to boot from a desktop, but after that you can unplug the cable and get on with the webOSing. The Nexus 7 Open webOS port is still in its early stages, but thanks to the work done on the Galaxy Nexus port it's come a long way in a relatively short time. We're looking forward to what's coming next. read more View the full article

Mobile Nations Podcast Feed Mobile Nations on iTunes Mobile Nations YouTube OUYA ships 1,200 developer consoles, opens dev portal Press: Google Reader done right? Or just different? Multi-window update for AT&T Galaxy Note 2 now live BlackBerry Travel will make its way to BlackBerry 10 New pictures of the BlackBerry 10 N-Series QWERTY device surface BlackBerry Z10 and QWERTY N-Series pose together with a special guest US Department of Justice now investigating HP's Autonomy acquisition WebOS Ports's OWO Memos: an Enyo 2 replacement Messenger Mega Mix mixes in smartphone messaging improvements Facebook Poke vs. Snapchat: What's the best sexting app for iPhone? Apple iWatch rumors surface again, this time with Intel attached 2012 iMore editors choice awards Notifications for Windows Phone 7 hits the Store HDR Photo Camera for Windows Phone 8 updated, adds settings and more Cloud-focused GPS chip by Microsoft Research slashes smartphone battery consumption View the full article

It's been excluisvely up to the webOS homebrew community for over a year to make improvements to the existing crop of webOS devices. Smartphones like the Pre3 aren't going to get a software update from HP, just like the TouchPad isn't going to receive new official software. But that hasn't stopped the homebrew community, from the organized grand project groups like WebOS Internals and WebOS Ports to individual developers, from making improvements on their own. One of the latest improvements comes to use in the form of a combination patch: Messenger Mega Mix. Coded up by webOS Nation Forums member michel_ng and recently added to the Preware and WebOS Quick Install patches feed, the Messenger Mega Mix patch makes a number of improvements to the built-in Messaging app for webOS 2.2.x smartphones, including some very gesture-y enhancements. There are the improvements like adding a character counter (seriously, how did Palm and HP never get around to adding something so simple and yet so imminently useful to an app that deals with a character-limited service?) and putting the date and time of the sent and received messages into the conversation. Messenger Mega Mix also wipes out the on-screen send/attach button, opting to instead have you attach media with a Gesture+P shortcut (or the app menu, which hasn't been changed here) and sending is accomplished with a forward swipe on the gesture area. As in, sending it to your friend with a swipe of the thumb. Magic. We're digging a lot of the changes made by Messenger Mega Mix, though it's worth noting that by adding so much it could conflict with other patches (in particular the Advanced System series) and not install alongside. The patch also isn't Tweaks-enabled, though we'd like to think that's something that could be added in so we can turn on or off the one alteration made by Messenger Mega Mix that might not go over well with everybody: the Enter key switches to adding a new line in the composed message instead of sending said message. Even with those caveats, michel_ng's Messenger Mega Mix is still an interesting patch. The gesture area is one of the most unique aspects of webOS smartphones, and is so beloved by webOS fans that even with it not explicitly needed in the WebOS Ports process of bringing Open webOS to the Samsung Galaxy Nexus they added it anyway. So we're quite pleased to see homebrew developers like michel_ng finding new and different ways to make use of the feature. View the full article

A little over a month ago, HP announced that they were writing down $8.8 billion from "improprieties" in their 2011 acquisition of UK software firm Autonomy, and this week the United States Department of Justice has opened an inquiry into HP's allegations. Those allegations are that Autonomy engaged in accounting fraud that dramatically increased the perceived value of the firm, leading HP to overpay by several billion dollars when they executed their $11 billion purchase. The Autonomy writedown was the third multi-billion paper loss for HP in a year, following up on a $3.3 billion loss on webOS after abruptly canceling hardware development and an $8 billion loss stemming from the 2008 purchase of EDS. Through 2012, shares of HP have declined 45%, despite dumping floudering CEO Leo Apotheker for former eBay chief Meg Whitman. According to a filing by HP with the SEC, the DOJ investigation into the Autonomy acquisition began on November 21, 2012, the day after HP publicly leveled accusations at the former leadership of the software unit (Whitman fired Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch in May of 2012). Unsurprisingly, HP claims to be cooperating with agencies investigating the alleged malfeasance. In addition to the DOJ probe, HP also says they've submitted their evidence to the United Kingdom's Serious Fraud Office and to the US SEC. We have every expectation that this is going to be a long, drawn-out slog for HP, and that they're not likely to get much of their billions of dollars back. A group of disgruntled HP shareholders have filed suit against HP, alleging the company didn't do its due diligence, and Lynch has publicly fought back against HP allegations, demanding they release the evidence HP says they have of the improprieties. It's a cleve strategy that Lynch has employed, as HP's made to look publicly uncooperative when the evidence they've submitted to the authorities cannot be publicly shared while under investigation. And to think, HP cancelled webOS hardware development because they weren't willing to make the multi-billion investments needed for a chance at long-term success View the full article

The WebOS Internals' homebrew app Save/Restore is great to backup your important application data in case you ever need to webOS Doctor you device, swap it out with a new device, or even transfer data between a phone and TouchPad. Typically, Save/Restore will save files that are tied to specific applications, such as progress in your games, specific stock quotes set up in a finance app, or settings/preferences for apps. However, there are a lot of other miscellanous files that you may find throughout webOS that are not tied to specific apps, but you would still like to save. These can include changes that you have made to the lockscreen or boot logos, the background for the phone dialer, or even the database files that contain some system data (e.g. cookies.db, database.db). While you would never want to restore those database files after a device swap or webOS doctor, it would be nice to restore those personalized image files. Since this is not your typical Save/Restore function and does involve some additional homebrew knowedge, it's not automatically added to the list of supported applications within the app. But, there a little easter egg within Save/Restore that will allow you to backup or restore these files as needed. The easiest way to accomplish this is to use Internalz Pro, by Jason Robatille, which is available in both Preware or webOS Quick Install. Open Internalz Pro Navigate to /media/cryptofs/apps/usr/palm/applications/org.webosinternals.saverestore/contrib Tap on the "org.webosinternals.deviceinfo" script and select "Copy". Find "/var/svc/org.webosinternals.saverestore", highlight it and then choose "Select" to copy it. Now, you can open up the Save/Restore app, wait for the data to load and choose "Save Application Data". Scroll down until you find "Misc OS Backup files" and ensure that it is toggled to "ON" Once you run that script, you will have all these files backed up to the USB drive on your webOS device. Be aware that when it comes time to restore these files after a device swap or webOS doctor, you will need to follow the directions above on the new device before you run the restore with Save/Restore in order to add that script to the app on the new device. If you would like to see what files this script backs up (and have some knowledge of how to read save/restore scripts), you can edit the file on your device using Internalz Pro or you can view it on the WebOS Internals git repository. View the full article

Alright folks, it's time to announce the 6 lucky people that will be joining NVIDIA and Mobile Nations at CES 2013! We would like to say a huge THANK YOU to all of the members that submitted an entry. We really appreciate all of the time and effort everyone put in, and the response was quite overwhelming. So, getting down to business... after much debate and discussion, we have selected 6 stand out entries. These folks will join the Mobile Nations and NVIDIA crews in Las Vegas for CES 2013! read more View the full article

From all of us here to all of you out there, we wish you the most splendid of holidays. While you weren't likely to find webOS under the tree today, hope springs eternal for next year. View the full article