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At webOS Nation we are big fans of the homebrew Google Maps app by Jan Herman (72ka). It brings many needed features that were absent from the official old-and-defunct Google Maps or the new Bing Maps in an easy to use interface that is still getting regular updates. One of those nice features is the ability to drop a marker pin on any spot on the map and easily recall that address in the future to center the map or get directions to/from that location. There are actually two ways to drop a marker pin. If you perform a search for a specific location by tapping on the "Google Maps" header bar and then typing in a search, the map will center to that location and drop a pin for easy reference. The other way to drop a pin is by simply tap-and-holding anywhere on the map. That marker pin will contain the latitude and longitude of that location, along with an approximate address for that location. In either situation, you can tap on the pop-up bubble for that marker and select "Info" to bring up a detail screen for that marker and then tap-and-hold on the header bar to rename this location if you want something more descriptive. Back on the main map screen, these markers provide functionality beyond just a visual pin on the map. If you tap on the icon on the bottom of the screen, you can choose "Markers" to bring up a list of your current markers that you can tap on to jump to that map location, or on the icon to bring up the same detailed screen mentioned above. Or instead of tapping the "Markers" option above, when you tap on "Directions" you can access your pin markers for either the origin or destination by tapping the on the right side of the screen to bring up your marker listing. It is important to note that these marker pins will be wiped away whenever you close the Google Maps app. If you would like any of your marker pins to survive a app restart, you need to mark those as "favorite" locations. In order to do this, access the Marker Pin detail screen (using either method mentioned above) and then tap the button on the bottom-left of the screen. You will notice that the marker pin on the map now shows a star on the top of the pin to indicate that it's a "favorite" place, but more important, these favorites will stick around the next time you launch the app. 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

While upstart Phoenix International Communications hopes to someday put out their own hardware running our favored mobile operating system (we'll give you one guess as to what that operating system is), in the meantime they're focusing on a more-attainable project: getting Open webOS running as an app on existing Android hardware, without having to make modifications to the Android device itself. Where the WebOS Ports homebrew team is working on porting Open webOS to the Samsung Galaxy Nexus as a separate operating system, Phoenix wants to run Open webOS on top of Android, giving users the option to run both operating systems simultaneously instead of booting into one or the other. There are advantages to both approaches, so we're happy to have the potential for choices to be offered. Several weeks ago we brought you the first look at what Phoneix was cooking up, showing off webOS opening as an app on Android. There was a problem, though: they couldn't get past the lockscreen, and attempting to do so crashed the OS/app. So at that point in mid-October, it was more of a proof-of-concept and work-in-progress than anything else. Fast-forward to today and the Phoenix team has made progress, as shown in the video after the break. Not only can they now get past the lock screen, but webOS actually runs on their test Samsung Nexus S. It's not perfect - there's still a lot of work to be done - as the stuttering and sluggishness driven by the lack of working hardware acceleration shows, but it's progress. Phoenix says that the project is still in "pre-alpha" status; like the WebOS Ports port, it has to be launched via Terminal commands, though eventually Phoenix does plan to implement a launcher icon for the Android side of things. Phoenix has also borrowed some elements from the open source work of the WebOS Ports team, including the swanky phone-sized virtual keyboard they unearthed. Phoenix right now is entirely volunteer-driven, and as always they're looking for people willing to contribute their skills. Specifically, they're in need of people experienced with working on the Linux Kernel and operating system (both Open webOS and Android share a common Linux base), Android itself, and the GNU toolchain. If you're so inclined, go ahead and hit up the source link below. read more View the full article

Quick Keys Keyboard, by D Gardner, is an app that you can purchase to give you access to a virtual keyboard on any webOS device from the original Palm Pre to the HP TouchPad, along with adding the ability to define up to 57 pre-defined responses. By default, initially activating the keyboard is a four-step process: open the "Quick-keys Keyboard" app, toggle the "Enable Keyboard" switch to "ON", close the app card, and then tap on the Quick-Keys Keyboard dashboard notification to display the virtual keyboard. However, there is a simple way to cut out half of these steps using a feature built into the app. Once you open the app and view the "Keyboard settings" card, scroll down to the bottom where you will see an "Add Quick-Key Launcher" button. Tapping this will add a new Launcher icon called "QK Launcher". This will cut out the two middle steps above, so now all you need to do is tap the icon and then activate the keyboard in the dashboard when needed. There is also an "Add App-Mode Launcher" button that will launch the more detailed "app mode" view for the Quick Keys keyboard. Quick-Keys Keyboard is available in the webOS App Catalog for $1.25 and is compatible with all webOS devices running webOS 1.4.5 or higher View the full article

REMINDER: Last Chance to Save 15% on ALL webOS Accessories in the webOS Nation Store. Sale ends tonight at midnight PST. View the full article

Mobile Nations Podcast Feed Mobile Nations on iTunes Mobile Nations YouTube Verizon Droid DNA Review! HTC Droid DNA bootloader unlock now available More 'HTC Deluxe' promo shots leak I just quit my job for BlackBerry 10 10 Weeks of BlackBerry 10: The Time Shift Camera BlackBerry CEO goes on another BlackBerry 10 media blitz, read the highlights HP writes down $8.8 billion over 'improprieties' in the Autonomy acquisition webOS Nation 2.1, the community edition Sharing Super Mix patch updated with Instapaper Mobilizer and source viewing Apple iOS and Mac gifts: 2012 holiday guide AT&T may be further expanding FaceTime over cellular Have a liquid damaged iPhone, iPad, or iPod? Here's what you should and shouldn't do! iMore show 326: Because Apple hates you (with CrackBerry Kevin Michaluk!) HTC Windows Phone 8X Review HTC 8X vs Nokia Lumia 920: Signature vs Flagship Report: Features of Windows Phone 7.8 get revealed and confirmed View the full article

Mobile Nations Network Movember Funds Raised so far: $11,330 (USD) The MO-bile Nations crew in the 'Peg eating deep fried chicken... it's great for 'stache growth! WE DID IT! Movember isn't quite over, but we've already surpassed our Mobile Nations Network goal of raising over $10,000 for the cause. Mo-Mazing! We have witnessed some great fundraising efforts across the team, and special props go out to Canada's Mike Whitton for raising over $1500 and Australia's Daniel Kollehn for raising over $600. Great effort. HUGE thanks to everybody that has contributed! If you haven't donated yet, you still have time. The only thing better than meeting our goal is blowing right past it! And we'll love you forever if you donate. Donations can be made easily over the web. Simply jump over to our Mobile Nations Network page, click on the name of any of the individuals listed as part of the network, and hit the donate button. All funds donated to an individual will pass through to the network total. This is our fourth Movember update for the month, and we have one more to come once the month is over. We'll report back with our final pledge totals and a final gallery of all the moustaches we've grown out. Keep reading for more on Movember and to see some great photos from the team! read more View the full article

This time a year ago, my regular electronic device use consisted of a two-year-old MacBook Pro, a Sprint FrankenPre 2, a Pre3 on AT&T, and a white TouchPad. My FrankenPre 2 was starting to show its age at that point, and for a device that I had quite literally hacked together both from a physical and software standpoint, I was surprised by how well it was still holding up. In the past year I've upgraded my laptop to a new Retina MacBook Pro (what a screen), swapped my degrading FrankenPre 2 for a Sprint iPhone 4S, all but stopped using my TouchPad in favor of the faster, slimmer, lighter iPad Mini, and added a late-generation Apple TV to the mix (I had a first-generation Apple TV, but it hadn't gotten much use since I moved into a place where my office and living room weren't the same room). Today I caught myself looking at AirPlay-enabled speakers and AirPrint-enabled printers to complete the conversion. I've always been a fan of Apple's hardware products, but I wish I could have webOS running on all of my mobile devices, but in this day and age it's becoming harder and harder to be a webOS-everywhere user thanks to the manner in which webOS has rapidly fallen behind the competition on so many fronts. read more View the full article

Starting with webOS 2.0, we lost something near and dear to our multitasking hearts: the mini card view. With the addition of card stacks in webOS 2.0, Palm made the decision to drop the easy-rearranging miniature cards to enable the stacking of cards. The slowed things down a bit when it comes to moving your cards around, but that's how it has to go sometimes. Or so we thought. webOS 3.0 carried over the same card stacks, and they're also present in Open webOS. But when HP decided to open source part of webOS 3.0.5 as the webOS Community Edition, it didn't take long for the WebOS Ports crew working on the homebrew LunaCE enhancements to re-implement mini-cards in conjunction with card stacks. Seeing as Open webOS is more or less an open source version of webOS 3.0.5, it shouldn't come as a surprise that tweaks and enhancements from LunaCE are making their way into WebOS Port's process of porting Open webOS onto the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. Such as… mini cards! As posted onto the Twitters by WebOS Ports's Josh Palmer (known 'round these parts as ShiftyAxel), cards in the Galaxy Nexus port can now get their tiny on. So, fear not, they're not just porting Open webOS over and making it look pretty - improvements are happening too. View the full article

The screen on your webOS device is the primary way for you to interact with your device, but it's also a big battery drainer. You can easily adjust the brightness of your device, but you can also set the length of time that it will take before webOS automatically turns off the screen. If you go into the Screen & Lock app, you can set the "Turn off after" option to 30 seconds or 1, 2 or 3 minutes on webOS phones, or 1, 2, 5 or 10 minutes on the TouchPad. There are also patches available in Preware that will give you additional screen timeout options. You want to find the timeout setting that works best for you. Adjusting the setting for too long of a time will potentially cause the screen to be on longer than necessary, thereby draining the battery faster than you needed and may even cause unintentional screen taps. But selecting too short of a setting may cause the screen to turn off before you want it to, such as when you are reading a long article or while thinking of what to write in a document or email. Regardless of the setting, you will notice that the screen will dim first after a short period of time, giving you a little warning before the screen will turn off all the way. All you need to do is tap the screen or anywhere in the gesture area of phones to reset the clock for the screen timeout. Also, note that some apps may override your screen timeout setting. If you are watching a video or playing a PDK game, the screen may stay on indefinitely. You will need to manually press the power button to shut off the screen in these situations, or minimize the app to card mode to allow the auto-shut off to occur. View the full article

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Last week, in celebration of the successful rollout of Mobile Nations Passport, we were given the opportunity to pass on some amazing prize packs to our awesome readers. With over 51,000 entries across the Mobile Nations sites, it was obvious how excited you all were to win these incredible prizes. So without further ado, the winners of the Ultimate Prize packs, courtesy of Gogo and Mobile Nations are... read more View the full article

Be it Android Central, CrackBerry, iMore, Windows Phone Central or webOS Nation, you need only dive into any of our forums for a few minutes to realize what makes them so special is the amazing group of individuals who go above and beyond the call of duty every single day to make them a helpful, friendly and fun community to be part of. With the introduction of the first annual Mobile Nations Community Awards, we are going to better acknowledge and reward the members and volunteers who have made outstanding contributions to our Mobile Nations community across our individual sites and give them the full recognition they truly deserve. And there are so many people too recognize. Passionate members who share their expert knowledge freely, answering and troubleshooting the questions and issues of new users at all times of the day. We have many volunteer moderators, advisors and ambassadors, who not only keep the forums organized and under control, but also produce guides and tutorials to help device owners get the most out of their ownership experience. And then you have somebody like Cory Streater, our Android-loving Forums Administrator, who has put literally thousands of hours into the forums on all of our sites over the years behind the scenes, squashing bugs and adding new features that make the forums rock. We have a lot of categories planned for the Community Awards. Next week we'll be following up with another post here and in each of the forums, opening up nominations and voting for some of the different categories. In the meantime, if you have any ideas for specific categories of awards you would like to see us acknowledge, be sure to let us know! View the full article

At the beginning of this year we launched a massive redesign and overhaul of our site, bringing webOS Nation up to modern standards front and back. Today we're pleased to be able to bring you the next step for webOS Nation, which puts more emphasis on the webOS Nation community, namely the greatest webOS forums in the history of webOS forums. If you're a patron of the other sites in the Mobile Nations network, this layout should be pretty familiar to you. Up top we have a new featured stories block that will allow us to highlight in one neat little box the latest and greatest that is webOS Nation News. Below that is the big list area, which can either display the latest news or the latest activity in the forums. As I noted last week, news right now is just unbearably slow in the land of webOS, and we don't have any guarantees that it's going to pick up any time soon. So, by default, we've set the selection to display the latests posts from the webOS Nation Forum. That's where most of you are going anyway. You can always switch back with just a single click or tap; there's some Ajax magic happening so you don't have to wait for the page to reload after making the switch (except, alas, when using the old-school webOS browsers, which are more than a little long in the tooth at this point). And since we like providing you with options, here's a link for those of you that want to stick with old-school blog news view without the header. But we think you'll like this new layout better. Don't think this means we're going to rest on our laurels when it comes to bringing you the latest and greatest webOS news. No, we're going to keep trucking right along, bringing you news, exclusives, the occasional review (so much as activity in the App Catalog permits), editorials, tips, and everything else you've come to depend on webOS Nation for. If things do happen to pick up on the news front, switching back won't be a hassle. So, welcome to webOS 2.1 - the community edition. Let us know what you think in the comments. View the full article

Really, guys? Really? Since when did Touch-to-Share allow sharing of anything other than URLs, let alone ambiguous media? And when did the Palm Pixi Plus get updated to webOS 2.0? And isn't it a little disengenuous to be claiming the Palm Pre Plus got 2.0 when only one country in Europe got the update, and they had to download the webOS Doctor to install it? And how did we miss that the HP Veer got an updated that enabled Touch-to-Share functionality? And weren't the Pre3 and Veer HP-branded, not Palm? HP, this is silly. You probably should have just gone with an automatic redirect to openwebosproject.org instead of building what amounts to a depressing animated (via HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript!) graveyard of webOS hardware past and even more past. And way to not touch on anything that makes webOS unique. Like, you know, web technologies, unobtrusive and interactive notifications, Synergy data unification, the multitasking… oh screw it. View the full article

It was a little over two years ago that HP hired former SAP chief Leo Apotheker to be the Palo Alto tech giant's new CEO. Apotheker came from a short tenure as CEO of German enterprise software firm SAP, from which he'd been forced out after poor performance during an admittedly poor economic environment. At the time, we expressed our misgivings over the pick; Apotheker was an enterprise software guy through-and-through, having spent twenty years at SAP (which is small in comparison to HP). Sure, enterprise services were a profitable and growing portion of the HP business, but HP also still had a massive and dominating consumer hardware enterprise and had just months prior completed its acquisition of Palm to further expand that consumer hardware portfolio. We all know what happened next: within a year HP launched and then cancelled a new generation of webOS hardware, announced a plan to split HP into separate consumer and enterprise companies, and purchased UK-based enterprise software company Autonomy for $10.2 billion. A month later, Apotheker's embattled term as HP CEO came to an unceremonious end as he was dumped in favor of former Ebay CEO Meg Whitman, who has since spent the past year struggling to clean up the mess Apotheker created. Today, in conjunction with announcing their fiscal year 2012 results, HP declared an $8.8 billion write-down loss related to the purchase of Autonomy. Specifically, the charge is related to the revelation that "members of Autonomy’s management team used accounting improprieties, misrepresentations and disclosure failures to inflate the underlying financial metrics of the company" before HP's purchase. In other words, they lied about how much Autonomy was worth and how much money it could make for HP, leading to HP overpaying by billions of dollars for the company (The purchase price at the time was more than 80% higher than Autonomy's stock price; when HP bought Palm they paid a mere 23% premium over the trading price). After writing down $3.3 billion a year ago after Apotheker's cancellation of webOS hardware and $8 billion more a few months ago related to a failure to actualize the value of their 2008 purchase of enterprise services company EDS, the last thing HP needed was another multi-billion write-down. But here we are, bringing the one-year write-down total to over $20 billion. Without the EDS and Autonomy write-downs, HP actually would have only suffered a loss of $600 million for the year, which while not great, looks downright rosy given the situation HP found itself in a year ago and the $12.7 billion paper loss now on the books. Understandably, HP's not happy about this debacle, and make no mistake, this is a debacle. HP says that they have contacted both the US SEC Enforcement Division and the UK Serious Fraud Office for "civil and criminal investigation". And not wanting to leave it up to the feds, HP's also "preparing to seek redress against various parties in the appropriate civil courts to recoup what it can for its shareholders." In other words, "We'll see you in court." read more View the full article

Quick Keys Keyboard, by D Gardner, is an app that you can purchase to give you access to a virtual keyboard on any webOS device from the original Palm Pre to the HP TouchPad. It has some limitations due to the nature of webOS, but it will still give you the ability to type out a quick message without having to slide open your phone to access the keyboard. In addition being a virtual keyboard, it also allows you to define up to 57 "Quick Keys" that gives you quick access to those pre-define responses. There are two ways to add/edit the Quick Keys. The easiest way is to open up the Quick Keys Keyboard app, scroll down to the "Edit Quick Keys" button and then add or edit any of the 57 numbered options. Just back-swipe when you are down to save your updates. Another option is to open up the "App-Mode" keyboard by tapping on the icon on the keyboard, typing in your text in the textbox and then tapping the icon to save your text to the next available Quick Keys slot. Once you have your Quick Keys define, now you need to know how to paste them in to webOS. All you need to do is activate the virtual keyboard and then tap the icon. The keyboard will be replaced with a number keyboard from 1-28, along with a few additional icons. From here, you can: Tap on a number to paste in the respective Quick Keys (unfortunately, you have to remember what each one is, as there is no onscreen indicator) Tap on the to return to the virtual keyboard Tap on the to paste in the current date and timestamp Tap on the to dismiss the virtual keyboard Tap on the to toggle between quick keys 30-57 or back to 1-28 (note that #29 seems to be missing from the options) Note that you can also set the "Enable Launch to Q.K." preference within the app to default to the quick keys responses instead of the keyboard when you launch it. Quick-Keys Keyboard is available in the webOS App Catalog for $1.25 and is compatible with all webOS devices running webOS 1.4.5 or higher View the full article

Mobile Nations Podcast Feed Mobile Nations on iTunes Mobile Nations YouTube The Verizon Droid DNA has arrived! Android Central review of the LG Nexus 4 Samsung Nexus 10 review RIM introduces BBM Voice - Make calls to BBM friends free over Wi-Fi First BlackBerry 10 smartphones suggested to start arriving in February BlackBerry L-Series gets sized up next to the iPhone 5 The Waiting Game Quick-Keys virtual keyboard updated for better performance and customization Use Nokia's Here mapping service on your webOS smartphone, thanks to homebrew Why Apple couldn't make the iPad mini with a Retina display Exclusive first look: 1Password 4 for iOS The future of Siri and Apple's services New podcast! Debug 1: Loren Brichter talks all about Apple, Tweetie, and Letterpress Nokia Lumia 920's Camera - A Second Look T-Mobile Nokia Lumia 810 unboxing and video tour Windows Phone 7.8 features confirmed in leaked Nokia presentation slide View the full article

Click the image below to jump over to the official contest thread and leave a comment on that post for your chance to win! Remember, leaving a comment to this post won't get you entered... click the image above to head to the contest post and leave a comment there. Good luck! The Contest ends at 12 Noon PT on Monday, November 19th, 2012, so HURRY UP AND ENTER! View the full article

Mobile Nations Network Movember Funds Raised so far: $9358 (USD) Is this a new boyband, or the MO-bile Nations crew in Winnipeg? Welcome to our third Mobile Nations Movember update. We're be bringing you these updates every Sunday throughout the month of Movember (formerly known as November) as we grow out our moustaches and raise awareness and funds for prostate cancer research and men's mental health issues. When we embarked upon our Mobile Nations Movember mission I thought it would be great if we could raise $10,000, and we're almost there! There's still a lot of Movember left, and we've already raised over $9,300. Maybe it's time to up our goals to $15k? The facial lip growth is really starting to blossom now, so hopefully we'll see the 'staches and the fundraising continue to accelerate right through to the end of the month. If you haven't donated yet, we'll love you forever if you do. Donations can be made easily over the web. Simply jump over to our Mobile Nations Network page, click on the name of any of the inidividuals listed as part of the network, and hit the donate button. All funds donated to an individual will pass through to the network total. Keep reading for more on Movember and to see some great moustache photos from the team! read more View the full article

In this year of two thousand twelve, we've reached a point in our modern society where waiting is considered a bad thing. Patience runs thin. We don't tolerate lines, nor are we accepting of slow downloads. We get irritated if we have to wait for what we perceive as being too long for food in a restaurant, the arrival of a delivery, or for that idiot driver up ahead to make up their mind about how fast they're going to drive. All of this makes being a webOS fan an excruciating exercise in patience. It's one thing to be waiting for a device to be released after its announced. You have a general idea of when it's going to come, even if it's something vague like "first half of 2011" or "late summer". You have a time frame. Right now, as we wait on whatever's happening with Open webOS to, well, happen, we have no time frame. At least with the open sourcing process for webOS we had a roadmap. Now that the roadmap was more-or-less fully executed upon at the end of September, we've ended up in a holding pattern here in the webOS community, waiting for something - anything - to come our way. Three months ago we broke the news about HP spinning off the webOS Global Business Unit as a sort-of-independent company to be called Gram. Two months ago they moved out of the old Palm campus into a newly renovated space. And today the company still hasn't been announced, let alone discussed what they're going to do. For three months now, employees have been stuck in this sort of limbo where they can say they work for Gram, wear Gram shirts, and carry around Gram bags, but can't talk about what Gram is going to do. So we wait for Gram to become official. And we wait for the webOS-powered LG TV (maybe - maybe - seeing a debut at CES this coming January) and for webOS Professional Edition and for the Android Compatibility Layer and for… anything. read more View the full article

Earlier this week, Nokia rebranded their pretty-darn-good Nokia Maps as 'Here' and launched their maps outside of Microsoft's Bing and Windows Phone platforms (and Nokia's own much-maligned Symbian platform). What made the rebrand/relaunch interesting was that Nokia will be launching apps for Here on iOS and Firefox OS in the near future, with Android support on the horizon. Here also debuted a new online webapp so you can check out and use the service in your browser, even on smartphones. Unless it's a webOS smartphone, that is. It's not that they're deliberately dismissing webOS, no, it's that the webOS browser just isn't up to snuff anymore. Thankfully, webOS itself can handle the service, so long as it's packaged as an app. That's exactly what lauded homebrew developer 72ka decided to do. If this sounds familiar, that's because 72ka is the force behind the all-too-awesome homebrew Google Maps app. He seems to have a thing for maps apps, and considering that we're otherwise stuck with a sub-par Bing Maps app on webOS, we're okay with him having a thing for maps apps. 72ka describes the Here maps app as a "simple webview container to allow user interactions", circumventing the webOS browser's inability to permit user interactions with the Here website. And just too tickle our awesome bone a little bit further, he's planning to offer the app for free through the webOS Nation Homebrew Gallery (installable via webOS Quick Install and Preware) and it's available under the Apache open source license. There are still some things to work out - 72ka says it's an alpha at this point - including support on webOS 1.x (currently the app won't load) and fixing an awkward half-loading problem on the TouchPad. But even then, this webview container of an app is a stopgap measure. When Nokia announced Here, they said they would be releasing an API for the maps next year, which 72ka hopes to use to build a native app for webOS. But until then, if the Bing apps map doesn't do it for your and you're just sick of Google, check out Here. View the full article

With webOS synergy you can have up to 16 different email accounts loaded up on your webOS device. Choosing which email account to send a message from is only a tap away, but did you know that you can control the name (if any) that shows up on other people's email program that is attached to your email address. In most cases when communicating with friends or business associates, you probably want your actual name displayed alongside your email address. But if you are replying to a mass email with people you don't know, entering an email-based contest or sending a note to a random business/website you are not familiar with, you may not want your real name disclosed to them. Unfortunately, this change requires more than just a tap to update, but it's still pretty easy to do and can be assigned per email account, similar to how you set a reply-to address. To change your email account's "From" name: Open the Email app Swipe down from the top-left to access the Application drop-down menu and select "Preferences & Accounts" Scroll down to the ACCOUNTS section and tap the account you want to update Scroll down to the FULL NAME section and name that you want people to see when you send them an email Swipe back (on phones) or tap Done (on the TouchPad) to return to the Preferences screen If necessary, repeat for any other email accounts you want to update Swipe back (on phones) or tap Done (on the TouchPad) again to return to the email app Note that if you are listed as a contact in the recipient's email program, their name for you may override any setting that you make here. Thanks to webOS Nation reader pro2 who posing this question in our comments on a previous tip View the full article