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This week marked our 2 year anniversary of writing a daily webOS Tip for our then-PreCentral.net and now-webOSNation.com readers. Despite a roller coaster of a year since our last anniversary, which saw the release of the TouchPad and TouchPad Go, the release of the Pre3 and then the subsequent cancellation of the Pre3 after former-CEO Leo Apotheker decided to shut down the webOS Hardware decision, and then all that waiting until we learned about Open webOS (due out later this year), we have continued to bring our faithful readers tips to getting the most out of their webOS experience. While we have scaled the tips back from every day to just three times a week, we have also expanded them to include some functionality in our favorite apps that the average user may not even be aware of. To mark this anniversary, we would like to bring you some of our favorite and most used tips from the last year. Continue after the break for that extensive list of tips read more View the full article

Finally. We've been waiting a long time for this one and we're glad to see it finally here: gesture-based application switching is becoming a reality thanks to the work of homebrewer Eric B (ekdikeo) and the webOS Community Edition open source release. The modification came quickly after this week's release of the Community Edition for webOS 3.0.5, and the tweaks to LunaSysMgr allows users to swipe in from the bezel on their TouchPad to switch to the next app card without having to go into card view, swipe over, and tap to bring that app to full screen. It's a simple tweak and something we've been practically begging for for over a year now. When the app switching gesture will make its way into a release that mere humans can make use of, we're not sure, but we're eagerly awaiting that day. Video after the break. read more View the full article

Sometimes you just need a quick classic game to fill some idle time in your day. In the old days you'd grab a piece of paper and set up the four lines for tic-tac-toe, or if you were feeling particularly ambitious you might lay out a grid of dots for a game of dots-and-lines. Thanks to the magic of tablets, you can make a quick game tic-tac-toe happen, or if you're in that particularly ambitious mood you can turn to Dots Lines Squares for the paper classic. read more View the full article

Many of you familiar with the Android world may have caught the news that a cavalcade of devices received RC1 treatment from the CyanogenMod team. "What the hell does that mean?" you ask. Well, in a nutshell it means that these 37 devices took one step closer to what the CyanogenMod team considers a "stable" release. Either way, many of us with dual booted TouchPads rushed to the various forums on the interwebs in hopes that we too moved to the next step in the beta process but alas we are not quite there yet. We're not left in the cold, as the newest CM9 official nightly build has a bit of functionality that has been missing for some time now. The newest build finally has mic support so we can utilize all the nifty apps and cool Android voice functions. We have found in our testing that it is hit and miss as to which apps work and which ones don't though. For example, trying to do a voice chat in Gtalk results in a force close of the app whereas voice chat in Skype works like a champ. So don't expect everything to work as intended for the time being. This functionality is yet another step forward in the progress toward a stable build for CM9 on the TouchPad. All that lacks now is a little polish on the mic service and getting the camera support up and running. These two bits have been an issue since the move from CM7 to CM9 but the CyanogenMod team are obviously hard at work to remedy both of those issues. Hopefully, one day in the near future we will have a fully stable release of CM9 to ride shotgun with Open webOS 1.0. In the meantime we will be more than happy to run the nightly next to webOS Community Edition in the very near future! View the full article

Did you know that you can give your webOS device its own name? Why would you give it a name, you ask? Well, whenever you pair your device over Bluetooth with an audio headset or another webOS device (i.e. pairing a phone and TouchPad together), or if you go to http://palm.com/profile to access your webOS Profile details, this gives you a method of uniquely identifying your devices. To change the device name, just open up the "Device Info" app on your webOS device, tap on the "NAME" section at top, and type in your desired name. Close the "Device Info" app and you are done. If you had previously paired your device with another via BlueTooth, don't worry; you will not need to re-pair it as the device name should automatically update the next time you connect them together. View the full article

In the olden days you could judge the economy on the price of a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk. Today it's the price of a gallon of gasoline. Thankfully, we have the internet, which makes navigating the confounding differences in cost between gas stations across town. In the United States, that's GasBuddy.com, which has official apps for iOS, Android, and BlackBerry - but if you happen to have a TouchPad you can grab the unofficial Gas Buddy to go TouchPad app by micro-tech for $1.43 to get access to the latest local gas prices. A buck-forty-three too much for your penny-pinching ways? Act fast, because we have a whole bunch of copies to give away. It's for the United States only (sorry, that's all the Gas Buddy system supports), but there are plenty of copies to go around. Here it goes... USA only: https://developer.palm.com/appredirect/?promocode=hqidr21292nzigj View the full article

As promised back in March, HP today released to open source some large chunks of webOS 3.0.5 as the new "Community Edition". The Community Edition of webOS is meant for, well, the homebrew community and will enable homebrew developers even deeper (and more legal) access to the webOS source code to make alterations and improvements. As a sign of how serious HP is about the community aspect of the webOS Community Edition, they actually worked hand-in-hand with the WebOS Internals homebrew group to make this happen. WebOS Internals has put together a team named WebOS Ports dedicated to working with the Community Edition, led by Tom King - though you might know him from his work as ka6sox. So just what can we expect out of the Community Edition? HP's code releases come from webOS 3.0.5 and as such are geared towards the TouchPad. Among the things the WebOS Ports team (and anybody else, it is open source after all) will be able to tinker with are notifications, the app launcher (hello custom pages), Just Type, and even card view - among other things. We're excited about the potential for the webOS Community Edition. There's a lot of low-hanging fruit in webOS could be fixed, updated, or added thanks to the newly open-sourced code and the WebOS Ports team. Yeah, we're psyched. Just imagine... a TouchPad with a zoomed-out card view, or Just Type with multi-choice actions, or built-in Twitter and Facebook sharing across all apps, or... the possibilities may not be endless, but they are many. It's worth noting that the webOS Community Edition release and Open webOS are two separate projects. Open webOS is going for the 1.0 version and is an active and ongoing project for HP, while the Community Edition is more of a code dump for the benefit of the community. Not that we're complaining; we'll take as many code dumps as we can get our paws on. View the full article

First we showed you how to install Android on your TouchPad and make it an awesome dual booting beast of a tablet. Then we showed you how to mod Android to have a more to "card like" task switcher with WebCM9. We even made up a sweet webOS Nation moboot theme for all of our dual booting readers. If Android isn't your cup of tea we also had a short tutorial on how to eradicate it from your TouchPad forever. To bring this whole set of articles full circle we felt it necessary to tell our readers that have decided to keep Android on their TouchPad about a really cool app that we are sure all of you will appreciate. So you like having Android on your TouchPad but you really only use it to scratch the occasional Netflix itch. With that said, you prefer to spend most of your time using webOS and the current moboot setup that boots to Android by default annoys you. As it stands right now when you boot up your TouchPad and get to the moboot screen you have five seconds to choose if you want to boot into webOS or Android. If you don't choose an option in that five seconds your device will default to Android. If you weren't paying attention and didn't choose webOS quick enough you will then have to reboot your system just to get back into webOS. This is a pain to say the least. This is where CyBoot from developer hiddenpremise (@grep_awesome on Twitter) comes into play. read more View the full article

Taurus, by OMA Studios, is one of those ultimate-social-networking apps that allows you to aggregate your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google (Reader, Contacts, YouTube) and Toodledo accounts all in one app. You can create multiple "dashboards", each with their own set of columns from the various social networks, even mix-and-matching aspects of different social networks within a single dashboard. Once you create a dashboard, tapping the icon will easily allow you to delete or reorder columns within a dashboard, or delete entire dashboards altogether, but there does not seem to be any way to reorder those dashboard. It turns out, all you need is a little press-and-hold action to accomplish this. When you press-and-hold on the name of a dashboard on the bottom of the screen, a little pop-up appears giving you the option to move that dashboard to the left or right by tapping on the arrows (you can also rename or delete the dashboard here as well). Be aware that it may take a few seconds for the dashboard to reorder once you tap on the arrow, so just be patient and it will eventually move. Taurus is available in the webOS App Catalog for $3.99 and is compatible with all webOS devices running webOS 3.0.4 or higher View the full article

A few weeks beack we took a look at some of the best apps to sync your webOS device with your more traditional computing devices, but we didn't touch on all of them. There's one that isn't really a syncing app, it's more of a fling-files--and-stuff-through-the-air app. It's DataJog's Send to webOS, an ingenious system that makes getting all sorts of data, be it files or raw text, back and forth thanks to the magic of the internet and webOS. read more View the full article

If you're a Google Voice user on webOS, we hope you've at least looked at GVoice. The app, a fine Enyo app originally built to bring Google Voice to the TouchPad and since shrunken down to phone-appropriate dimensions was just updated to version 1.1.0. The update brings a larger font for the blind among us and adds right and left justification to message conversations. Version 1.1.0 also has expanded Text-to-Speech capabilities for users of webOS smartphones. But what we're really interested in is the upcoming version 1.2.0. The app will be rebranded as SynerGV, and if the synergistic name is dropping any hints, well, it ought be. SynerGV 1.2.0 will offer integration via Synergy Connectors with the webOS 3.0 TouchPad Messaging app. The plan is for the SynerGV Synergy Connector to be offered by the end of July as an in-app purchase, with a secondary companion app to manage things like placing phone calls, setting your Google Voice status, listening to voicemails, and the like. If you're downloading GVoice 1.1.0 onto your TouchPad, you'll have the option to pre-purchase SynerGV at a reduced price of $1.49. When SynerGV launches, it'll cost $4.99. As for our webOS smartphones, where you're more likely to be making active use of Google Voice, the developer says that "if and when" he makes a smartphone version, the same offer to pre-purchase at a discount will be made. We're a little disappointed by the "if and when" part, but we know that webOS smartphones are a small market and as a lone developer there's only so much time in the day to commit to an increasingly niche app market. Regardless, we're hopeful that the "if" does become a "when", and we wouldn't be above suggesting you comment on this article to demonstrate how much demand for the app there just might be… View the full article

What do you think of when you think of a taskmaster? You think of someone that constantly challenges you to do a certain task. You can picture someone who cracks the whip driving you to meet results for a specific deadline. They push you and push you, and usually show no mercy. But lucky a developer by the name of Rashi has made such issues a little easier to handle. TaskMaster HD, originally made for webOS smartphones, takes list making to another level. Sure there are other task or note taking apps available for webOS, but what this does specifically, especially if you have an a Type-A personality is define those details. Right down to costs, time, and date associated with the chore. And it works. read more View the full article

Our man Arthur Thornton is popular guy in the webOS circles. Not only does he write for us here at webOS Nation, but he also is an active developer, notably of the popular TouchPad Twitter app Sparrow. See, right about this time last year, Arthur was in the midst of a ten-week summer internship with HP's Developer Relations team, an experience where he learned plenty and similarly helped improve the developer relations process. They must have liked him over at HP, because he got offered a second internship this summer, again at Developer Relations (even if they're on the third head of Developer Relations since that time). And he'll be leaving soon - Monday the 25th, in fact, is his start date out in sunny California. We'll give Arthur some space to do a little talking here, as he said on the announcement post on his personal blog: "Being on the inside again will enable me to help any webOS or Enyo developer further than I've been able to on the outside. I should be doing much of what I did last summer - developer portal and community stuff, such as tutorials - along with many more things." While Arthur hasn't been with webOS Nation for a long time, we'll still miss having him around. He's been an invaluable asset, and we're sure he will be when HP returns him to us in six months. That's assuming they don't just want to keep him - we wouldn't blame them; he's good. Arthur's not the only one interning for the HP webOS team this summer - Jason Robitaiile is already in California and working with the Enyo team, while webOS app developers Patrick Roberts and Joshua Cole will also be pitching in. View the full article

Picross is a fun and addictive game by PenduinBits that challenges you to solve picture puzzles (or picture crosswords, as the app name indicates) on an 8x8 grid solely using number clues that indicate how many blocks you need to fill in on a given row or column of the grid. For $0.99, you get 384 unique puzzles that the developer created split between Easy, Medium and Hard levels. But what happens when you solve all 384 puzzles? The only option you have right now is to create your own puzzles using the Builder feature that lets you create and name up to 64 more of your own custom puzzles. However, if you think you have created some great puzzles and want to submit those to the developer for a possible future update of the app, PenduinBits included a little easter egg that will send him an email with your custom puzzles. From the main homescreen of Picross, tap the "Options" button Go to the "Credits" tab and double tap on "Jacob Cappell" in the "Puzzle Design" section Go back to the "Options" tab and you should now see a "Submit Custom Puzzles" button Tap that button and an email will open up with all your custom puzzles in the body of the email Each puzzle will be enclosed between { } brackets, so if there is any puzzle you don’t want to share, just delete it from the body of the email Once you are happy with the puzzles to share, send off the email There is no guarantee that he will use your puzzles for a future update, but if enough people submit their custom puzzles, we might just see a "community puzzle" update sooner, rather than later Picross is available in the webOS App Catalog for $0.99 and is compatible with all webOS devices running webOS 1.4.5 or higher View the full article

Archive Manager by pcworldSoftware was the first application in the app catalog that gave the regular webOS user the ability to create or extract archive files (e.g. zip, rar, tar, etc), while also providing a rather fully featured file manager app, all for $1.99. This added some much needed functionality that has been missing is webOS, but to extract a file you needed to have it on your device already. That meant that if you received an email with a .zip file or wanted to open a .zip file from the web, you first needed to download the file to your device, load up Archive Manager, and then find the file to extract. That is, until its latest update to version 1.1.0. With its latest update, pcworldSoftware added in the ability to open up an archive file directly from an email message or the browser and immediately extract it anywhere on your device. This is accomplished by registering Archive Manager as the default application for all archive file types, so whenever you tap on an email attachment archive or an archive file in the browser, it directly launches Archive Manager. You still need to extract the zipped file to your device to gain access to any of the compress files inside it, but at least it saves you a few steps in process. Be aware that if you have a TouchPad, there are a few extra steps that you need to follow in order to register Archive Manager as the default file type due to some security restrictions in webOS 3.0. The developer makes this process extremely simple in the help section of the app, but you will need to have Preware installed on your device to accomplish this. View the full article

Road trips are always fun and a great way for families together. But getting to your destination isn’t always a pleasure. You always have a tiny backseat driver trying to distract you while you manuver through minivans, RV's and motorbikes. Wish the shoe was on the other foot? We may have the solution for you. So while you are busy trying to not entice road rage or an accident, give your kids a game so they can see what it’s like to control a car in traffic: Car Traffic Control. read more View the full article

Some games are good time sinks, taking up hours upon hours of time. Others are good for a few minutes here or there when you've got just a few minutes. And a few bright games fall into both camps, good for the quick round or whiling away the hours you should be spending working. We've come across a new game in the App Catalog with the unassuming (and admittedly vague) title of BallZ HD. When the description said it was good for everything from the original Pre and Pixi to the big-screen TouchPad, well, we couldn't help but take a look. read more View the full article

We had an inkling that this was coming eventually, but even so we're still surprised and glad to see it has arrived: Verizon is the first US carrier to reorient their plans to be data-centric and enable data limit sharing. They call it the Share Everything plan, and it's pretty slick. Here's how it breaks down: You pay for your device's service and then buy a bucket of data to be shared across up to ten devices. The monthly device rates (unlimited phone and messaging included on all) break down thusly: Smartphones: $40 Basic Phones: $30 Laptops, USB modems, and wireless hotspots: $20 Tablets: $10 And here's how the shared data plans break down: 1GB: $50 2GB: $60 4GB: $70 6GB: $80 8GB: $90 10GB: $100 There are also separate plans available for basic phones (no data) and modem devices (USB/MiFi), but we don't care too much about those. Verizon is throwing in mobile hotspot for free on all plans, though, which we heartily approve of. What these changes result in is higher charges for the smartphone-only user, but as you add on more devices the rates become more acceptable. The average smartphone user uses less than half a gigabyte in a month, but if you own a Verizon smartphone and tablet you could be using well over a gigabyte between the two. Now, instead of paying for two separate data plans you can have just the one and pay an extra $10 to add your tablet or $20 for a MiFi hotspot. If you're paying the bill for a family of Verizon device owners, it's even better, with the per-GB data rate scaling down as you increase the size of your bucket. Data still ain't cheap, but Verizon's at least doing the work to make it reasonable for those of us with multiple devices. View the full article

First published in 1605, Cervantes' The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha follows the adventures of Alonso Quijano, a man who perhaps has let his novel-fed imagination get the best of him. It's an epic tale of chivalry and windmills. This TouchPad-based copy of Don Quixote supports power scroll to jump between chapters, copy/paste support, font and text size preferences, full-screen and auto-bookmarking, and even automatic scrolling. It's an eBook on steroids, and we just so happen to have 50 copies from developer Erick Brown to give away. Contest: We have 50 copies of Don Quixote 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 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 3.0 or higher with the latest version of the App Catalog. View the full article

Have you ever tried downloading an app from the App Catalog, only to get a "Not Enough Storage to Download" error, despite checking to make sure you had plenty of storage space on the device? Although the error message suggests clearing space on your drive by deleting music or photos, this will not help the issue if you already had enough space for the app. As it turns out, there is a bug that sometimes occurs if your /var/luna/data/downloadhistory.db gets too large, causing one of the internal drive partitions to get full. Luckily, a simple fix for this was found in our webOS Nation forums, where just need to delete that file with some simple homebrew magic. The easiest way to fix this is by using the Internalz Pro homebrew app. To delete that file: Open Internalz Pro Navigate to the /var/luna/data folder Find the downloadhistory.db file. Tap on it and select "Delete" and then confirm the deletion in the pop-up dialog. Alternatively, you can also swipe-to-delete the file as well and then confirm that deletion Reboot your device Once rebooted, you should be able to install apps again. If you are still getting the error, make sure that check that you do in fact have enough storage space on your device Thanks to @Pre2Ries on Twitter for identifying our webOS Nation Forum thread with this tip View the full article

We know you don't want to hear it, but today's going to be about one thing across the technology blogosphere: whatever Apple announces at WWDC 2012. The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference has been a staple for Apple product introductions, and this year isn't expected to be any different. On the docket is the already expected iOS 6, but what exactly that'll bring is still up in the air (expect flexible screen size support, Facebook integration, and maybe Siri APIs). While we'll be interested in seeing whatever Apple spits out, we'll be honest - we're more psyched for the expected updates to the MacBook line... if that happens. Either way, iMore is on the ground at the Moscone Center in San Francisco and is all geared up for the opening keynote. Things are scheduled to kick off at 1 PM Eastern (10 AM Pacific, 5PM GMT), and iMore's already got the liveblog up and ready to go. We'll be sure to check it out and see just what Apple has deigned to copy from webOS this time around. In the meantime, we won't be upset if you keep a tab open to iMore for WWDC 2012. View the full article

Mobile Nations Podcast Feed Mobile Nations on iTunes Mobile Nations YouTube Samsung Galaxy S III review Orange San Diego video walkthrough How to restore the functionality the Apple v HTC war has taken away [root] CrackBerry Asks: What are you most looking forward to in BlackBerry 10? We're one step closer to our dream BlackBerry with curved display What are RIM’s Strategic Alternatives? Analyst downgrades HP over mobile concerns Three years ago today, the era of webOS began This is the C40: the Sprint Palm Pre 2 that never was iMore is at WWDC 2012! Follow along for everything you need to know about iOS 6, iCloud, Mac, and more! Best iPad cases iOS 6: The multi-billion dollar balancing act (or listen to the podcast version!) Summing up the Microsoft E3 Presentation AT&T Lumia 900 gets firmware update, fixes display issue and more Hands on with SmartGlass at E3 2012 -- Windows Phone, Windows 8 & Xbox 360 View the full article

Are you ready for some fútbol? Oh, you are? Good. Turns out that over in Europe there's definitely some football soccer going on between the nations of the old world, with the Union of European Football Associations 2012 tournament duking it out in Poland and the Ukraine. Sixteen teams from across Europe are meeting this in a month-long tournament that will conclude on the first of July. webOS developer Thomas Haustein put together a slick UEFA 2012 app for the TouchPad named Euro 2012 that will give you all the latest scores from the tournament broken down by group, along with a calendar and the eventual finals brackets. Euro 2012 is in the App Catalog for $1.99, but the developer decided he wanted to celebrate the soccer season by giving away 300 copies! Each code is of limited quantity, so once they're gone, they're gone! Canada: https://developer.palm.com/appredirect/?promocode=wopyq11220eytpc Australia: https://developer.palm.com/appredirect/?promocode=hbojb08904pqxva France: https://developer.palm.com/appredirect/?promocode=itugz78228xxyeb Germany: https://developer.palm.com/appredirect/?promocode=xrrku87372kbtji Ireland: https://developer.palm.com/appredirect/?promocode=tpkbv82065jtbst Mexico: https://developer.palm.com/appredirect/?promocode=gbdha80353qppod New Zealand: https://developer.palm.com/appredirect/?promocode=qkntb09287yukmd Spain: https://developer.palm.com/appredirect/?promocode=vvodw77551lnxvj UK: https://developer.palm.com/appredirect/?promocode=nvyxl81675fjanv USA: https://developer.palm.com/appredirect/?promocode=pfkgp86959yccwj p.s. Developers like it when their apps get reviews. You got the app for free, the least you could do is leave them a note, eh? View the full article

Late last month, Facebook started pushing harder for users to add people to their 'Close Friends' smart list, something intended to help Facebook figure out which people you want to see most in your News Feed (personally, we'd prefer Facebook stop trying to decide what it thinks will be important to us, but we're cranky like that). The push involved a big banner at the top of the desktop site that prompts users to "star" friends onto the Close Friends list, an initiative they've been slowly rolling out across their userbase. We'll admit to not using the desktop site all that often (or Facebook anywhere, for that matter), but just yesterday we hopped onto Facebook, got the prompt, thought "why not?", starred a few friends and family, and called it a day. That is, until later that night when we started getting notifications for mundane status updates that had nothing to do with interactions with ourselves. "Mary Jane uploaded a photo", "Joe Schmoe update his status: "Tacos!" ", "Pat Chris checked in at Pete's Eats", and the like. It was confusing at first, until we realized that Facebook was serving us status updates for people we'd starred onto the Close Friends list . Without having received any updates in several months, we're impressed that the webOS apps (both smartphone and tablet) handled the new us-free notifications without skipping a beat, including proper links to the friends and their posts (and any links within said post) with nary an issue. We're also somewhat amused by the in-your-face-ness of the updates, as it'll certainly make stalking keeping tabs on your friends easier, and yet possibly more annoying. We like our friends and all, but we're not sure we want everything they've done popping up on our phones as it happens all the freaking time. We're close, but we're not that close. Thankfully, you can kill the notifications, but you have to go to Facebook's desktop site to do it. Load up you Close Friends list (it'll be on the left, possibly hidden under the More link), click on Notifications in the top right, and select Off. Alternatively you can click on the Manage List button just to the right of that, select Choose Update Types, and filter out the Likes and Game posts you don't want or need to see. View the full article