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Mobile Nations Podcast Feed Mobile Nations on iTunes Mobile Nations YouTube Google: Oct. 29 in NYC, the playground is open AT&T LG Optimus G review Android Central celebrates 1 million members! Brainstorming BB10: A closer look at the Flow experience within an app Proud to be a Black Sheep! BlackBerry Evolution - A look back at the long road of devices leading up to BlackBerry 10 Hands-on with the alpha Open webOS port for Galaxy Nexus WebOS Ports posts instructions for alpha Galaxy Nexus Open webOS port Open webOS booted onto Nook Color and Samsung Series 7 Slate Apple sends out invitations to October 23 iPad mini event iPad mini preview redux Win free iPods touch and nano from iMore! iMore show 320: Selling trucks Microsoft reveals pricing of its Surface RT Windows tablet, starts at $499 AT&T Lumia 920 exclusive for six months and some training videos leak too Xbox Music set to officially start rolling out tomorrow View the full article

When the Palm Pre launched on Sprint back in 2009, little 'ole Palm partnered with Amazon, offering the relatively new Amazon MP3 store (launched two years prior as the first online music store to offer tracks without DRM) as a pre-installed app. It was a good compromise for Palm, hoping to take on Apple's iPhone - remember when they were going back-and-forth-and-back-and-forth-and-back-and-forth-and-back-and-forth-and-back-and-forth with Apple, making the Pre impersonate an iPod when plugged into a computer and Apple updating iTunes to prevent that bit of hackery? Those were fun - and quite hilarious - days. Today, however, it's not so dandy as far as music on webOS is concerned. Sure, there's Pandora and Spotify, but if you want to download music onto your device, it seems you can now count Amazon MP3 out. As noticed by The Linked List, Amazon MP3 is no longer working as it ought to. The app will find albums and tracks just fine, but when it comes time to buy it, things start to fall apart. There are two issues. The Amazon MP3 app can be found on a number of webOS smartphones that were sold in the US, including the HP Pre3. The first problem has to deal with Amazon's Cloud Player streaming music player, a service that ties in nicely with Amazon MP3. Until recently, buying and downloading a song from the webOS Amazon MP3 app would see that song also automatically added to Amazon Cloud Player (the same happens when you from Amazon's Android app or from their website on a desktop). Now, it seems, that's not happening - the MP3 is successfully downloaded onto your smartphone, but the purchase isn't also transferred into Cloud Player. Sure, you can transfer the MP3 off your Pre via USB onto your computer and upload it to Cloud Player via Amazon's synchronization app, but that's just a pain. The other issue is more of a headache, especially if it arises in conjunction with the above. Some users of the Amazon MP3 app have been hit with an error of "Failed to complete that request. Try again later." after hitting the buy button. You might shrug and try again later as suggested, but in the meantime your credit card has been charged by Amazon for the MP3 you wanted but you have not the song in your possession. If it's not on your device and not added to Amazon's Cloud Player, then things get even more frustrating. You're out the money, with no music to show for it (Amazon Cloud Player has become Amazon's backup music downloading solution - all of your purchases are supposed to be in there). Being a decent corporation, Amazon has at least made it easy enough to lodge a complaint and get your money back. When we asked Amazon about the issue, they suggested that we make sure we have the latest version of the app installed from the Amazon Appstore for Android or Google Play (duuurh). It's clear that the webOS Amazon MP3 app has fallen off of Amazon's radar - the app hasn't seen an update since it's release in 2009, and we doubt it'll see an update ever in the future (especially considering that it's a first-generation Mojo framework app and Open webOS does not include support for that legacy framework). Our suggestion: just don't use the app. It's disappointing to not be able to download music anymore from Amazon or other sources, but thems the breaks when you're using a three-year-old-app on an abandoned smartphone. View the full article

Ah, webOS, it's good to see you again. Sure, I see webOS every day on my Pre3 and TouchPad, but they're starting to show their age. And, well, they're getting boring. Still great hardware and all, but just long in the tooth. So when I found out that WebOS Ports was targeting the Samsung Galaxy Nexus as their first Open webOS port device, you can imagine my excitement. "New hardware!" I shouted from the nearest hilltop. Having procured a Samsung Galaxy Nexus, so began the wait to be able to install Open webOS on my shiny new toy. It was an anxious wait, during which time I toyed around with the build instructions, getting to know my way around Ubuntu and Terminal (I'm a Mac guy who likes graphical user interfaces). At least I thought I was getting to know my way around - turns out I'm really only good for copying and pasting the commands given by the fine folks that hang out in the WebOS Ports IRC channel. Earlier this week we got the installation instructions, and after two days of utter headaches trying to hack my way around Ubuntu, swap space, the Android SDK, and the build process with minimal knowledge pertaining to the operation of any component, I finally managed to get Open webOS running on my Galaxy Nexus (again, with significant assistance from the WebOS Ports IRC gang - a number of the hurdles I as a 'normal' person encountered made their way into addendums to the instructions) It's webOS, as we know it on the TouchPad, but seriously stripped down. Open webOS as released to open source by HP is lacking in many areas, which we won't waste your time going over here. Suffice to say that even when the WebOS Ports team gets the Galaxy Nexus port running at full speed and all cylinders, there will still be significant application and services hurdles to overcome. But back to the port. It's still an early alpha state, and there are some things that would prevent you from using this as anything more than a guinea pig right now. It has to be tethered to your computer to boot. There's no working radio support, be it Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, or cellular. The accelerometer doesn't work. Everything is absolutely tiny, being formatted for the four-times-larger TouchPad screen but still displayed pixel-for-pixel on the Galaxy Nexus. And it's not super stable or remotely optimized on many fronts. It's a proof of concept at this point that's rapidly evolving to what will hopefully someday be a fully functional device. Even as a development toy right now, it's still a delight to see and play with. Sure, I can't really do much with it so long as there's no radio functionality, but that will come eventually. In the meantime, I'm going to launch Calendar again and start swiping through the empty schedule. Video after the break. read more View the full article

As webOS users we are definitely no stranger to developers leaving our platform. Even before former HP CEO Leo Apotheker killed webOS hardware developers were already abandoning the platform by the boatload for "greener pastures". Fast forward to today where there is no webOS hardware to look forward to, a customer base that is shrinking by the day, and an uncertain future in the open source world and we are truly lucky to have any new app development at all. One has to be a true die hard webOS lover to continue to develop apps for the various webOS devices that we hold so dear. With that said, a "die hard" webOS developer leaving the platform kind of stings a bit. So when we heard the news that developer extraordinaire Syntactix announced that they would be dropping support for two of the most popular webOS apps we were a bit taken back. As of October 16 Syntactix developer Greg Hrebek announced that they will be dropping support for both YouView and Pack 'n' Track. These two apps were prime examples of webOS apps done right and really showed what was possible on the platform. As a matter of fact YouView (a YouMail visual voicemail client) won the Palm Hot Apps contest by a sizable margin earning Syntactix a cool $100k. Their other app Pack 'n' Track also won best Business/Finance app in our Best of 2010 awards. Last but certainly not least we had a nice in depth interview with Greg Hrebek (Syntactix President) a little over a year ago in our Developer Spotlight series. So to say that both Syntactix and their apps played a very big role in webOS history would be a huge understatement. So why if they are so loved and well respected in this community is Syntactix dropping support for their webOS apps? Well both apps are facing ongoing API changes which the now aged legacy webOS hardware simply does not support. Add that to the anemic webOS userbase and you're left with two projects that unfortunately do not justify further development. As much as it pains us to hear that it is the harsh reality of the situation. In closing Greg did say that Syntactix is interested in Enyo 2 and have been monitoring the framework's progress closely. So it wouldn't be too far fetched to imagine more of their great work in the future using the framework which is something we look forward too. In the meantime we here at webOS Nation would like to collectively wish Syntactix the best of luck in the future and thank them for all their hardwork and dedication over the years. View the full article

If you're feeling up for some time in Ubuntu's Terminal and have a spare Galaxy Nexus sitting around, then we might just have a project for you. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you can now get an early build of Open webOS on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus running all on your own. Unless you're like us (i.e. Linux noobs), in which case you might want to hold off for a more straight-forward installation method. The instructions posted by WebOS Ports do require some understanding of working in Terminal, or at least the ability to closely follow instructions and input the commands you're told to input. And, of course, you have to be willing to accept that this could bork your entire device and you'll have to start from scratch on all operating system fronts. Such is life on the alpha edge. The instructions come with a set of big scary warnings, which in essence can be boiled down to "you should at least have a vague idea of what you're doing and be willing to smartly ask for help". The installation process will be streamlined in the future, but for now it's not for the faint of heart. Alpha, people, alpha. At the very minimum you're going to need to install the latest version of Ubuntu Linux (thankfully, unlike the convoluted built process for raw Open webOS OE, it doesn't matter whether you've installed a 32-bit or 64-bit version). You'll also be installing the Android SDK and unlocking the Galaxy Nexus's bootloader, in addition to downloading and building the latest version of the Open webOS port (a process that even in our virtualized Ubuntu machine with two Intel Core i7 cores and 4GB of RAM took less than three hours). Build instructions for the Galaxy Nexus Open webOS port are located at www.webos-ports.org/wiki/Galaxy_Nexus_Build_Setup Installation instructions can be found at www.webos-ports.org/wiki/Testing_Gnex It's worth noting that even once the installation process is done, you're not going to have an Open webOS smartphone. There are still a lot of bit hurdles the WebOS Ports team is going to have to overcome. This build also ins't exactly portable - it's still reliant on files located on your computer. It's still an early alpha, so don't expect miracles. And have some patience too. If you're Linux noobs like we are, you'll need it. View the full article

This tip is currently only for devices running webOS 2.2.4 You always want to make sure that you have a backup of your critical data that you keep on your smartphone, 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 phone itself, and if the phone is lost or your backup gets corrupted, you run the risk of forever losing that data. Luckily, there is a rather simple method to perform an export of all your contacts to a .vcf (VCard or "Virtual Business Card") file by just dialing a code into the dialer. This is useful to not only create a backup of your data, but also would allow you to easily migrate your data to a different service like Google Contacts. Unfortunately, it appears that since webOS 2.1 this export does not include the "Spouse" or "Children" fields in your contacts, and the URL field is not saved with the right field type. This is obviously not ideal as you will no longer have a complete backup, nor will you be able to migrate all of your data to a different service. In order to combat this, webOS Nation forum member gizmo21 created the "Enhanced Contacts VCard Export" (available in preware) that will fix these issues when you perform an export of either a single contact or all your contacts. Currently, this patch is only available for webOS 2.2.4. If you would like to help gizmo1 test this patch for webOS 2.1 or 3.0.5, reply in the patch's forum thread to let him know. View the full article

There's a decent enough photo viewing app on the TouchPad. But that's what it is - decent. Sure, you can run a slideshow on it, but what about putting in music, changing the display order, and including captions for each photo? Well, that's where an app like the recently over-hauled Slideshow Presentation HD comes in - you can do all that and more. Transitions? It's got twenty-five. Zoom settings? Stretch or fill, even on a per-image basis. Want to do individual folders, or even files? Yep, it can do that. How much would this cost you? Normally it's $0.99, but we just so happen to have 100 copies to give away to you, dear readers. Contest: We have 100 copies of Slideshow Presentation HD 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 3.0.2 or higher with the latest version of the App Catalog. View the full article

Last month developer Bryan Leasot was kind enough to give us a very early preview of his up and coming Twitter app Neo. At the time the app was in an extremely early beta stage and was a little rough around the edges but showed a great deal of promise. Despite the app’s then rough edges, we really liked the extreme customization options found in Neo. To our knowledge, there is simply no Twitter client that allows such a deep level of customization. In the end we walked away impressed and looking forward to an official release of Neo. So here we are a month later putting the official version of Neo through its paces. Are we still as impressed as we were last month? Once you are signed in to Twitter, you immediately notice just how different the appearance of Neo is when compared to other Twitter apps on the TouchPad. Instead of the expected rounded boxes, gray menus, and webOS icons, you're greeted by a more angular look that is far from typical for a webOS app. While a squared-off interface is all fine and dandy, what makes Neo really stand out is this interface is customizable (although we must say we really dig the stock theme). Customizing Neo can be a rather time-consuming affair if you're as picky as we can be, but considering the number of things you can customize that's to be expected. Thankfully this is all accomplished via sliding bars to adjust the various colors, sizes, and other settings. The end result can be an app that is highly personalized. You can save your custom themes for later use and can even email your custom themes to share with your like-aesthetic friends (or whip up something awful and send them that instead). read more View the full article

Just when you thought things couldn't get any crazier for Open webOS, they have. Industrious developers have already booted the open source successor to webOS onto the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and the Asus Transformer Prime, and are working on getting it running on top of Android. The march onward and outward continues, with two new tablets getting demonstration builds of Open webOS and a new distribution meant to be booted off of an external disc. First up, lets take a look at those tablets getting a new welcoming into the Open webOS fold. We'll go in title order and start with the Barnes & Noble Nook Color, which got a demonstration courtesy of Ping-Hsun Chen of Taiwan. He managed to get Open webOS booting on the book seller's first-generation Android tablet, and much as with other builds there's still work to be done as far as getting it running up to speed is concerned. But it's a start, and the Nook Color is certainly an affordable alternative for those looking to jump into the Open webOS tablet game. Though judging by the speed - Ping-Hsun's build of for the Nook Color is currently lacking hardware graphics acceleration, and thus quite lagging - it might be a while before anybody's going to want to jump in for purposes other than tinkering. Interestingly, the Nook Color port seems to be of the desktop edition, and leverages the already-existing Ubuntu port for the tablet instead of the processor-agnostic OpenEmbedded version of Open webOS. read more View the full article

If your webOS smartphone is active on a cellular account, you probably have your Date and Time setting to automatically pull from the network connection for the time and time zone. However, if you are running your device without a cellular signal, even if it's connected to Wi-Fi, the network time will be unavailable and the time may start to slip. While a one or two minute difference will not affect your webOS experience, a significant difference will cause some things to break in how you use your phone. The clock and calendar appointments / reminders will be useless and you will be unable to perform actions like refreshing a twitter app or logging in to services like Instapaper because they check the timestamp on your device to make sure nothing unnatural is occurring. Having to manually update the time often can become a frustrating experience, but developer content754 has come to your resuce with Clock Sync, available in the official App Catalog for any webOS device that has App Catalog or App Tucketbox access Once you install Click Sync, just open up and app and you have the option to perform a onetime sync by tapping the "Sync Now" button. You can also set the app to perform a "periodic sync" every 2, 6, 12 or 24 hours by switching the toggle to ON and selecting your sync time. Alternatively, you can choose a specific fixed time by choosing the "+ Add new time" option under the "@TIME SYNC" section. Once the app is running, you can tap the icon to view a history of the time syncs. If you swipe down from the top-left to view the Application dropdown menu and choose Preferences, you can also choose some addition advanced features as well. You can select to turn on "Monitor Mode" that will not actually change the date and time during a periodic or fixed sync, but rather just keep a history of how far off your time is from the official time. In addition, you decide if you want to show or suppress notifications for when a time sync occurs Finally you can work with an experimental "Time Shift" feature that will add or subtract a selected number of hours or minutes to your clock's time. If you wanted to use this feature--especially if you do have a cellular signal on your device--make sure that the "Network time" option in the Date & Time app is turned off so this time shift will not be continually reset. Clock Sync is available in the webOS App Catalog for free and is compatible with all webOS devices running webOS 1.3.5 or higher View the full article

Mobile Nations Podcast Feed Mobile Nations on iTunes Mobile Nations YouTube On brand loyalty and blind hate LG's Nexus - here's what we know so far Samsung announces Galaxy S3 Mini BlackBerry L-Series Device appears in video?! Farewell Brick Breaker, I'll miss you Don't believe everything you read, Instagram is coming to BlackBerry 10 CrackBerry Podcast 091: Rusty, Ranty and a whole lotta fun! Open webOS Professional Edition to be how Gram makes money HP challenges claims of Lenovo's captaincy of the slowly sinking HMS PC Shipments Galaxy Nexus port getting a new virtual gesture area Apple iPad mini event indeed likely to be held Tuesday, October 23 iPod touch 5 gallery and iPod touch 5 vs. iPhone 5 vs. iPod touch 4 gallery Barriers to entry: Why Apple is making the iPad mini iMore Special Edition: Subscribe now via RSS or iTunes T-Mobile US officially announces the Nokia Lumia 810. Coming within weeks First look at the T-Mobile Lumia 810 First real pics of the Verizon Nokia Lumia 822 with Windows Phone 8 show up View the full article

If you've been in the webOS community for a while you are probably familiar with the name Arthur Thornton. His various contributions to the homebrew scene, popular apps, two-time webOS Developer Relations internship, and (most importantly wink wink) former webOS Nation writer status has made him pretty well known in these parts of the interwebs. Perhaps one the things that he known best for recently is his awesome TouchPad Twitter client Sparrow. We gave his app a rightfully good review because it turned out to be one of the best Twitter clients to grace our beloved platform. Needless to say, Sparrow is the "go to" TouchPad Twitter client for many of us here at webOS Nation, so you can imagine our excitement when we found out that there was more to come for the future of Sparrow. First and foremost Sparrow is getting a new name. Due to confusion with a very popular Gmail client for Mac and iOS (which was recently purchased by Google), the new name will be the homophonic but differently-spelled sprw (not meant to be said with your teeth clenched to avoid vowel sounds). The name change will also help Arthur better discover users that need help or would like to make feature requests with services like Twitter and in forums (you can just ask fellow webOS developer Zhephree about the troubles he's encountered with names like neato! and incredible!). With that said, most of us in webOS-land are fully aware that Sparrow in our world refers to an awesome Twitter client, so why bother with rebranding? Because the new sprw will be cross-platform, that's why. One of the greatest things about using Enyo 2 to build applications is how easy it is to take said app and push it to other platforms. After Arthur finishes building sprw for webOS, he intends to push forward with builds for other platforms. Shortly after the webOS version of sprw drops our friends over at CrackBerry will be happy to know that Arthur is going to push some awesome Enyo 2 goodness to Playbook users with a version of sprw for them as well. In addition to the Playbook version, Arthur also has plans to hit Android and iOS. Last but certainly not least, there will be an Open webOS build in the near future as well. So when can we expect to see sprw and what kind of new features will it be packing? Arthur will be starting a closed beta for sprw 2.0 later this month, if you'd like to inquire as how to get involved in the beta process, Arthur's accepting requests via Twitter. As to new features, all that Arthur would reveal at this point is that sprw 2.0 will have both a "light" and "classic" theme and that he'll keep the community posted on what he has in store as he moves forward. Ultimately, we're happy to hear that one of our favorite Twitter clients is going to be getting a major update, and as always we whole heartedly appreciate Arthur's hard work and dedication for this platform that we love so much. View the full article

Just a few days ago, Sprint confirmed they were exploring the possibility of selling a majority stake of their business to Japanese telecommunications company Softbank. While the deal hasn't yet been officially announced, Business Insider is reporting that the boards of both Softbank and Sprint have agreed on a $20 billion deal with will see Softbank acquire seventy percent of the third-place US cellular network operator. The deal, which is expected to be announced on Monday morning and still has a a few details to be worked out, will see Sprint transferring $8 billion worth of shares directly from the company, with Softbank buying an additional $12 billion from existing shareholders. The offer stands at $7.30 a share, a healthy 27% premium over the $5.73 closing price for shares of Sprint on Friday. Additionally, Softbank will take over a $3 billion bond from Sprint, clearing the way for the carrier to complete its purchase of the remaining half of floudering 4G wholesaler Clearwire. Clearly, Softbank is betting big on the US cellular market. They've experienced substantial success in building an LTE network in Japan, stemming from a 2006 purchase of Vodafone Japan. They'll have their work cut out for them with Sprint, however. While CEO Dan Hesse has been working for several years to right the pin drop network, Sprint's suffered massive subscriber losses to competitors AT&T and Verizon, dropping them into third place by a significant margin. Additionally, Sprint is playing catch-up with their LTE network, which is currently only available in a handful of cities. While Sprint lays claim to being the first to the market with a 4G network, their WiMAX network never particularly caught on with consumers and has fallen far behind AT&T and Verizon's LTE speeds (and the latter on coverage). According to Business Insider's sources, Softbank hopes to "build on Sprint's spectrum position", which will be enhanced once the buyout of Clearwire is completed, though apparently Softbank is hoping to further expand Sprint's spectrum holdings through acquisitions from and of other operators (say, Metro PCS?). Pending regulatory approval, the purchase is expected to close in six months. View the full article

In her Fox Business Network interview last month HP CEO Meg Whitman all but confirmed that HP would in fact be stepping back into the smartphone market all the while inferring that said smartphone may already be in the pipeline. Despite owning their own mobile operating system - our beloved webOS - nobody assumed that HP would even conceive the thought of giving webOS another go after their floundering attempt the first time around. Instead, the speculation instantly pointed to Microsoft's upcoming Windows Phone 8 operating system, a thought that makes a lot of since given HP and Microsoft's long standing relationship and HP's plans to make Windows 8 tablets in the near future. Then out of nowhere a GLBenchmark log containing a 'bender' device manufactured by 'hp' running Android 4.0.4 hit the interwebs. Of course, those sorts of logs can be easily faked, but it certainly kicked into high gear the speculating about HP's supposed upcoming return to smartphones. Fast forward to this week's HP analyst day. During the meeting, Whitman reportedly admitted that her prior comments in regards to HP entering the smartphone market had created a bit of a ruckus. She then went on to state: "We don't have any plans to introduce a smartphone in 2013, but we've got to start thinking about what is our unique play, how do we capture this element of the personal computing market?" So 2013 won't be the year of the return of the HP smartphone. It'll be the year that they think about the return of the HP smartphone. HP's PC business is continuing to falter, and even in spite of their denials of this becoming the "post-PC era", the company knows that mobile is going to have to be a part of their future. They even created a new business unit just for mobile devices like tablets and smartphones (despite already having one that they're spinning off). The mobile device market is rapidly growing. Things have advanced a long way in the past year, and there's no telling how far forward we'll have moved in mobility by the time 2014 hits and HP's maybe ready to put out a new smartphone. No matter what the operating system HP's new smartphone is destined to run, they'd be well adviced not to take too long before the market gets too far away from them. Also, you know, consider using webOS. It'll cost lots of money regardless of what path HP takes, might as well try a unique one (again). Nudge nudge, wink wink. View the full article

Less than a week ago, HP released the 1.0 version of Open webOS. The updated open source version of webOS wasn't released in a form ready-to-install on any particular device, but the inclusion of OpenEmbedded meant that Open webOS was at least capable of running on a variety of hardware. It only took a few hours for the intrepid developers of WebOS Ports to get Open webOS booted on a Samsung Galaxy Nexus. It wasn't pretty, but it as a proof of concept it was a success. At the time, the code for the Galaxy Nexus port wasn't available publicly, but today WebOS Ports opened the doors to their porting work for the Galaxy Nexus, offering up everything you'll need to get this early attempt at Open webOS up and running on modern hardware. Just as things were last week, there are still some pretty significant holes to be filled before this becomes something you'll want to run on a daily driver device. Important stuff like camera and Bluetooth support are still missing and the video acceleration to have a more smooth operational experience is described as being "pre-Alpha". Even with the current unfinished state of the build we're still psyched to see it made available. Not just for the thrill of booting webOS on new hardware, but also because making it publicly open source in typical WebOS Internals style means that other interested developers are going to be able to pitch in to improve and move along the porting process. View the full article

While fans of webOS might feel they've been slighted over the years, our anguish is a different beast than that of the MeeGo fan. If you're not familiar with MeeGo, or even aware of it, we wouldn't blame you. MeeGo was introduced in early 2010 by Nokia and Intel. It was the combination of Intel's Moblin development efforts and Nokia's Maemo, and it was supposed to represent the future for both companies. A year later, Microsoft and Nokia shacked up together, and where Microsoft's Windows Phone OS took the high- and middle-tiers of Nokia's smartphone strategy, Nokia's old workhorse Symbian retained the bottom tier. MeeGo was unceremoniously put out to pasture, with the too-far-in-development-to-kill Nokia N9 getting released later that year as the world's first and so far only MeeGo device. Thing is, everybody we've talked to who has used an N9 rather liked MeeGo. It's a unique OS and very much gesture-oriented. But having been released on only one device with no fanfare and certainly not much in the way of carrier support, it never took off. But then, it also never got established in the minds of consumers and then yanked as webOS was, thus avoiding being termed a failure (as webOS is so often branded, in spite of the failure being one of patience, not product). Unlike webOS, however, MeeGo has been open source from the start. Earlier this year, a group of former Nokia employees that had worked on MeeGo and the N9 formed a company called Jolla, with the express purpose of releasing a new phone running MeeGo. We've been cheering them on a bit, but in a smartphone landscape dominated by multi-billion-dollar companies like Apple, Google, and Samsung with big players like Microsoft willing to put down their own billions, we weren't ever really optimistic about the chance for little Jolla. read more View the full article

Maybe it's a good thing the webOS GBU is going to be divorcing splitting itself from HP, as the parent company is gearing up for a year that even has pessimistic analysts and investors caught off guard. HP today issued guidance for fiscal year 2013, expecting profits to come it at $3.40-$3.60 a share, which is well under the $4.16 average guesstimate given by the analysts that cover HP. Normally those analysts aren't far off, but a miss this big is cause for alarm - as indicated by the nearly 13% drop in HP's share price today. The drop in earnings is expect to be a "broad-based profit decline", i.e. HP expects a drop in profit across their entire business (enterprise services in particular is expecting the coming year to have revenues lowered by 13% and profits at next to nothing). In a weird statement, according to Business Insider, HP CEO Meg Whitman told investors that the company will be "more contained" in 2013. Whatever that means. By 2016, HP expects their revenues "to be growing in line with gross domestic product" with profits growing faster than that, thanks to "industry-leading margins and disciplined capital allocation." In other words, HP wants to operate on a fiscal sense more like Apple (high margin, low cost), though for that to happen they'll have to continue to make significant changes to the way they do business, starting by making all of their products more desirable. View the full article

This tip should work on any devices running webOS 2.0 and higher If you have been a victim of the "Application database is full" error on your webOS device, you know what a devastating issue this can be. If you have not seen this error, consider yourself lucky. The "application database" that is referenced here is not the USB drive on your device, but rather the internal database that was introduced in webOS 2.0 that manages a lot of data on your device. And if it gets full, there is no place to store any more data. You may get some advance warnings that will tell you to try deleting calendar entries, reducing the number of emails you save and even trying remove music, movies or documents from your USB drive, but most likely none of that will work and you will eventually be alerted that the database is full and you need to restart your device. And unfortunately, it doesn't make it clear that it will essentially perform an "erase apps and data" and log you out of your profile, requiring you to reactivate your device and log back in, also losing your application data and settings. And to add insult to injury, you may log back in to your profile and still get that error once you activate it again. Although there is no official fix from Palm/HP on this, you can always count on the homebrew community to get your back. In this case, it's Donald Kirker, webOS developer and former Intern for both HP and Palm. The problem stems from the fact that the internal partition that the database is saved to is only 135 MB big so it doesn't take a lot of data to fill this up. Donald's solution is to increase this partition by reducing the space available on the USB drive. To ensure that you don't run into this issue again, we will show you how you can extend this partition by 512 MB, but you can adjust that number up or down as needed. But be warned, you are messing around the underlying Operating System here and can cause some major problems on your device if something goes awry . You will also need to have Novacom installed on your computer and be familiar with using the Command Line. If you don’t have the webOS SDK installed on your computer to access the command line, you can always use webOS Quick Install and select "Tools" and then "Linux Commandline" to get access to it. Note that this is has only been tested on a Pre3 (including by this writer), but should work on any webOS 2.x device and possibly the TouchPad. However, before performing any actions, back up all of your data, both on your USB as well as any application data by using Save/Restore. read more View the full article

As many of you may know our dear friend and webOS community member Rich Dunbar was hosting a really sweet raffle last month to raise money for two really great causes. Not only did he auction off his own personal TouchPad Go (one of the rarest mobile tech devices around) but he also sweetened the pot with a cavalcade of other devices courtesy of webOS Developer Relations. As promised the winners of both the large and small pots of webOS gear were chosen yesterday. Rich sent us an email to let us know who won, how much money was raised, and his plans to deliver the funds to said causes. So without further ado we give you Rich Dunbar's message: read more View the full article

It's been over a year since HP discontinued sales, development, and production of webOS devices. There's been no indication for nearly that long that HP intends to produce new webOS hardware, and they've gotten to the point where they're spinning off the webOS group as a separate company. So while it's disappointing, it's not surprising to see that HP has shut down customer support live chat for webOS. The service has proven helpful to a good many of our readers (your dear editor even used it once or twice), so we're sad to see it go. Now anybody visiting the Live Chat page on hpwebos.com is met with a message that "this service has been discontinued" and recommending other ways to get help, including the on-device help app, HP's support forums, and elsewhere on the webOS support website. For visitors to the chat page, the support forums would probably be the best option for getting close to the level of in-depth assistance you could get through chat, but if we're being perfectly honest you should really just come over to the webOS Nation Forums for the best help in all the 'verse. Our tips are a lot more in-depth too. We might be biased, but our community is just more awesome at this. View the full article

Although webOS has officially abandoned Google Maps in favor of Bing maps, the homebrew developer Jan Herman (72ka) has been actively working on a homebrew Google Maps app that not only surpasses the official Bing Maps app in many ways, but also the old Google Maps app that we used to have. One feature of the app is the ability to select different views or layers of information that are visible on the map. If you tap the button on the top of the screen, you get a pop-up to choose between a Roadmap, Satellite, Hybrid or Terrain view, just as you would on the Google Maps desktop app. But that is not all, as you can tap the "More..."option to show some additional options for layers to go on top of the map, including: Night - Switch to a "dark" these for the maps that is better when viewing at night Traffic - Overlays a red, yellow or green identifier over the road to indicate current traffic conditions Transit - Show subway or transit options Bike - Highlight any bike paths on the map in favor roads Weather - Show weather icons and temperature indicators throughout the map (currently only shown in Celsius) Clouds - Overlay current cloud cover over the map, but only available when zoomed out to show a large area of the screen With the different map views, you can only choose one view type to show at any given time. However, you are able to toggle one or more different layers within the app at the same time. A check mark will appear if the layer is selected, and just tap on it again to deselect it Google Maps is available in the webOS Nation homebrew feed in Preware and is compatible with all webOS devices running webOS 1.4.5 or higher View the full article

A month ago, intrepid webOS developer Steven Troughton-Smith got to tinkering with the then newly-released Open webOS OpenEmbedded beta, and managed to get it to boot relatively quickly on his Asus Transformer Prime tablet (a rather hackable piece of Android hardware). Today, with the full 1.0 version of Open webOS OE available to open source, Troughton-Smith went back to his Transformer Prime and worked a little bit more homebrew magic. We don't have complete details on the status of the port, though if it's anything like the Galaxy Nexus Open webOS port put together by WebOS Ports, there's likely still some work to be done. Regardless, we're glad to see it happen, and are already day-dreaming of the day when we'll be running Open webOS on whatever hardware we desire… View the full article