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Happy first anniversary, HP and Palm! View the full article

Ever since the TouchPad was released people have been looking for a solution to their Evernote woes, what with the fact that Evernote never created an app for the TouchPad and more recently that the app for phones was broken by a change on the Evernote servers. In swoops MeOrg!, a SpringPad client made by Sven Ziegler. SpringPad is a service not dissimilar to Evernote in that they both pretty much do the same thing, with many even preferring SpringPad over Evernote, but can MeOrg! stand up to the task? read more View the full article

Despite the fact that webOS and its apps are built using web technologies, there is actually no native way to open up a local html file on webOS phones. You can download an .html or .htm file and edit it with the Internalz Pro text editor, but you can't actually view it in the browser. While this functionality has finally been added to the TouchPad, the only way to do this on webOS phones is using a third party application such as Universe Web Browser by OpenMobl Systems. Once you have an html file on your device, you just need to: Open up Universe Swipe down from the top-left and select "Open File..." (you can also Meta-tap O). Find the file you want to open and tap on it. If there is a long list of files, you can also type-to-search to narrow down your results. A new card will open with you file in all its HTML glory Universe Web Browser is available in the webOS App Catalog for $2.99 and is compatible with all webOS devices running webOS 1.4.5 or higher (although not currently available for the Pre3) View the full article

Build scripts for the desktop version of Open webOS have managed to sneak out onto the Github code repository belonging to webOS Engineering team member Anupam Kaul. Before you get too excited, these scripts don't actually do anything yet, primarily because the majority of the source code for Open webOS hasn't yet been released. The actual code to run the webOS UI and many other underlying components are't expected to be released until July. Still, it is interesting to see these build scripts come out at this time, given that Open webOS is not yet released in full and is very much a work in progress. On the GitHub repository there are build scripts for db8, a component that manages certain types of application databases used throughout webOS and that was released in March, as well as build scripts for cjson, luna-service2, and pmloglib. Some of the components, namely luna-service2 which powers Node.js-based services, and pmloglib (which is responsible for on-device debugging logs), are webOS-specific components and are part of the Open webOS release plan. The remaining component, cjson, is a popular open source JSON library for C code required for many components of webOS. We chatted briefly with Kaul about the project and he confirmed that this is a personal project of his, and that though these scripts along with the Linux Standard Kernel would help it booting webOS onto a desktop, there's still a lot of work that will have to be done with as-of-yet unreleased components to make webOS cursor-friendly. Until then, the code on GitHub is simply waiting for the day to come where it might be pushed out to the larger Open webOS project. It's interesting to think back a year ago to Think Beyond, when HP first unveiled their plans to put webOS onto all of their computers by the end of this yar. My how times change. Although the practicality of using webOS on a computer is still debatable, we do look forward to the day when we can do just that. Until then, we have got no option but to sit and wait impatiently. View the full article

Boo-boo’s and oopsies are a part of everyday life. What if that scrape on your knee turns into a dangerous infection? What your coworker has a seizure? We might not be boy scouts, but we believe that it's always good to be prepared for the unexpected emergencies in life. Thankfully, our smartphones can help us to be prepared. Be it It a heart attack or car accident or other unpredictable event, there are webOS apps that are there to help you out. So we've gone ahead and rounded-up the best webOS apps foriInstructions, resources, and generally useful tools for dealing with life's unthinkable emergencies. read more View the full article

Glimpse by Inglorious Apps is an app that bring multitasking to a whole new level on your TouchPad, literally allowing you to run multiple mini-apps (called "widgets") by splitting the screen into panes and letting you determine which widget you want to run in each frame. Once you select which widgets that you want to use in Glimpse, you then need to select how you want to set up the screen interface. You have up to 5 different frames that you can activate/deactivate, including the top-left, bottom-left, top-middle, bottom-middle and the large frame on the right. To customize your views, you need to swipe-down from the top-left within Glimpse and then expand the "Views" section. Within that dropdown, you have a few different options: Top (Left), Bottom (Left), Right -- These are your basic views, allowing you to choose between the 2 small widgets on the left of the screen, and one large widget across the middle and right side of the screen. Tap on each checkbox to toggle them on or off Advanced -- Another set of checkboxes that allow you to add another column of one or two widgets in the middle of the screen Presets -- These are some of the most common views that you can quickly select that will automatically adjust the frames on the screen. You can choose between such options as the Default (top left, bottom left, and right), 2 by 2 (a grid of 4 apps) or Power User (all 5 available frames). Note that if the view doesn't adjust correctly, you may need to restart the app) Glimpse is available in the webOS App Catalog for $4.99 and is compatible with the HP TouchPad running webOS 3.0 or higher View the full article

It's been a while since we've had the whole Mobile Nations team together. This time around we talk BlackBerry 10, HTC One, Nokia Lumia 900, the new iPad, something something webOS, and Google Drive. Sit back, relax and enjoy! Our podcast feed: Audio | Video Download directly: Audio | Video Subscribe in iTunes: Audio | Video Subscribe in Zune read more View the full article

HP posted a job listing on LinkedIn earlier this month for an Enyo team engineering intern, asking for a university student who has finished their third year and is close to graduation. In the job listing they mention their plans to release Ares 2 during the Spring, which we know is scheduled to be released by the end of this month along with Enyo 2.1. The role requires "experience and interest" with common web technologies we know to be near and dear to the Enyo framework; technologies like JavaScript, CSS, and HTML. HP is also looking for the applicant to have experience with the iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and/or webOS SDKs and they prefer the applicant to have deployed at least one application to one of the mobile app stores. If you enjoy developing with Enyo and want to jump a bit more into the code and perhaps get some experience working with a fast-paced development team while also padding your resume with some pretty major open source contributions, this could very well be a job for you during your semester off of school. This would likely involve working out of HP's San Francisco office where the Enyo team is based, although the listing does specify Sunnyvale as the job location. Could a member of the webOS Nation community snag this internship? Why not - there are a lot of talented developers in webOS land, some young enough that they've got that summer break available. If you're thinking of applying, be sure to let us know in the comments below. We're happy to see HP hiring more people for the Enyo team, even if it is just a short-term intern role. Whoever is brought on, we're looking forward to their contributions to Enyo - HP needs everything they can add to compete with the other frameworks in the mobile arena. Update: Look, we've spotted more intern positions! How feels like being a UX Design Intern or Product Management Intern? View the full article

One of our favorite developers, Donald Kirker, has announced via his company blog that he plans to return to active development of his prize application, one of our favorite (and admittedly one of the few) web browsers for webOS, Universe Web Browser. Kirker announced that he has begun development of version 2.0 of Universe, and while not announcing a release date he did note that the code will likely end up on his GitHub code repository for the browser before it makes it to the App Catalog. In addition to this, he announced his intentions of working on a version of Universe formatted for tablet screens. Kirker also made mention of his role in webOS Internals as their chief WebKit guy and and his work on the open source Isis web browser for webOS, possibly implying a connection between Universe and Isis. At the very least he indicated that he plans to add some hooks into Isis for Universe so that he can add extra features currently not possible in webOS, such as user agent switching, the ability to disable images, text reflow, and "many reported rendering bugs." Kirker presumably was unable to add in many hooks to the WebKit engine included in webOS during his time at HP, as they still do not exist in the latest versions of webOS. We look forward to what Donald can bring to Universe 2.0 and the tablet version, as well as what contributions he can make to Isis and to making it widely available to homebrew users. We welcome his return to webOS and will be closely following his work on both Universe and Isis, anxiously awaiting the day we can install Isis onto our TouchPads to upgrade our browsing experience and install Universe 2.0 onto our phones so we can get a better browsing experience there as well. View the full article

It took a little bit longer than both we and Astraware apparently expected, but the ever-popular game OddBlob has finally hit the HP TouchPad. For the going rate of $1.99, you'll be able to guide squishy little OddBlob through squishy disintegrating maze levels, much to your amusement, we would hope. The arrival of OddBlob caps off the saga of the TouchPad Totalizer, Astraware's sales tracker for the TouchPad used to publicly gauge and encourage interest in Astraware's games on the TouchPad. The tally topped the 5000 mark last month, hitting the top of the scale and triggering the porting and release of Astraware Casino. With OddBlob out, we can put the Totalizer behind us. Or can we? Nope!, says Astraware. They've extended the Totalizer up to a new goal of 7500, at which point Astraware will work on getting their Word Games pack onto the TouchPad. We're currently sitting at a total of 6341 sales for Astraware games on the TouchPad, which is both encouraging (not that far to go) and a little bit depressing (only 6341?). Word Games is a five-pack of, well, word games, including Shuffle (find as many words as you can from a jumble of letters), Hexed (trace words on a hexagonal grid), Wordsearch (like the newspaper classic), Gridlock (trace words on a grid, selecting every square), and Spellmaster (you get three options, pick the one that's not misspelled). As before, we've got to give Astraware props for moving forward with TouchPad development even though the profits reaped from webOS over the four-month history of the Totalizer can't have been huge. Plus there are the easily achievable sales goals they've set - only 2500 sales of five popular games needed to move to the next tier is doable without really trying. If there's one advantage the webOS App Catalog has over the Google Play Market and iOS App Store, it's that the lower number of apps overall and new daily make app discovery easy and keeps new apps near the top of the list for a while. But then again, that's because it's a shrinking platform with a shrinking developer base. Thankfully the users and developers left are generally the dedicated kind. Like Astraware. You guys rock. View the full article

Sometimes the best kind of games are brain teasers. We've all played them, some as simple as rearranging a grid puzzle to make a picture, others more complicated like Sudoku or those darned twisted iron puzzles that when you finally get them apart you're not sure how to put it back together again. For your TouchPad, we can offer up Color Tangle, a game by SimianLogic Studios. With Color Tangle the goal is to un-noodle a mesh of criss-crossing colorful wires and nodes, but certain wires and nodes cannot cross each other, forcing you to study the grid and plan ahead, lest you get stuck. Feel like having your noggin' noodled? Good, because we've got 50 copies to give away! Contest: We have 50 copies of Color Tangle 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

After HP announced that webOS would be going open source way back in December we honestly thought we would never see another webOS update until the planned September release of Open webOS 1.0. Then, to our surprise, webOS 2.2.4 and 3.0.5 said hello to the world. It wasn't much of an update for Pre3 owners, but Pre 2 users finally received Bluetooth messaging support and Skype voice calling to add to their device's capabilities. Meanwhile the TouchPad gained faster view switching in calendar, IM presence indicators in Email, support for HTTP video streaming, an easy on/off toggle for auto-correct, the ability to insert a period when double-tapping the space bar, and a fistful of bug fixes. Sadly the Veer was still left in the cold and disappointed many owners longing for some Touch-to-Share action. So we revised our expectations, 2.2.4 and 3.0.5 to be the last updates before Open webOS hits and we maybe see something new pushed over-the-air from HP. Leave it to some Metrix logs to prove us wrong. Our very own Arthur Thornton, of Sparrow and Voice Memos fame, decided to check his logs since he had neglected to do so for a while. And what did he find while checking those logs? Why, four devices using webOS 2.2.5 accessed Voice Memos, two of which turned out to be Pre3s (the other two are unknown at this point). Curiosity piqued, Arthur checked his Metrix logs for Sparrow, discovering that at least one device running webOS 3.0.6 has used the app. Interesting, no? We've heard nothing from HP to indicate that webOS 2.2.5 or 3.0.6 would ever be coming, but that they're showing up in app logs - even relatively new apps like Sparrow, has us hopeful that they might see a release soon. webOS smartphones and TouchPad are decent with their current OS versions, but we wouldn't say no to the usual bug fixes and speed and battery improvements that are par for the course for a x.x.1 update. And we're sure Veer owners wouldn't mind having Touch-to-Share enabled nearly a year after the phone was released. So keep your fingers crossed webOS faithful, there might be at least one more update to be had from our beloved devices before Open webOS is upon us! read more View the full article

From the dawn of time, man has had to find a ways to write down his thoughts and reminders in order not to forget them. From the paintings on the walls of caves by cavemen; to the detailed hand writing on parchment paper with ink and a sharpened quill. Fast forward to today and we've made the grand leap from parchment to little neon-colored squares or paper we can stick to things. What a marvelous age we live in where we can afix reminders to the refrigerator, the mirror, and the door when you leave for work. Wouldn’t it be great to have the color and fun of sticky notes without forgetting them and the expense of rebuying them? Allow us to introduce you to Finger Notes, by Middlemind Games. It's a very simplified webOS notes app that lets you add your own creative touch now available for the TouchPad. There are other note-taking apps out there, like Pocket Mirror, Evernote, Notes HD, and even the built-in webOS Memos app, but what Finger Notes provides is simplicity and ease of control with the use of just one finger. But using just that one finger can be limiting - Finger Notes isn't an end-all solution for quick notes, and it certainly isn't perfect. read more View the full article

Quick Post, by Hedami, is a great way to take advantage of Quick Actions in webOS by posting to your Twitter or Facebook accounts directly from Just Type. Without even loading up an app, it's extremely easy to write up a post and even select which accounts you want to post them to. But what if you wanted to attach a photo to the posting as well? While this is clearly available as an option if you were to open up the app first before writing up your post, there is also a little shortcut that you can use in a Just Type Quick Action post to prompt you to select a photo prior to posting. All you need to do is start your message with "-i" before choosing to "Quick Post". This will then load up the Quick Post app with your message pre-populated and then automatically bring you to the photo picker. Once you select your photo, Quick Post will return you to your message and you can then choose to Send or Send & Exit the app. If Quick Post is not showing as an option in Just Type, don't forget that you may need to add it as an available Just Type Quick Action Quick Post is available in the webOS App Catalog for $1.50 and is compatible with all webOS devices running webOS 1.4.5 or higher. However, the Just Type Quick Actions feature is only available on devices running webOS 2.0 or higher. View the full article

Mobile Nations Podcast Feed Mobile Nations on iTunes Mobile Nations YouTube Galaxy Nexus, Viper and Optimus Elite now available on Sprint HTC One S review (T-Mobile U.S.) 'Samsung Galaxy S III' sighted in leaked video, hiding in plastic dummy case RIM announces the all new BlackBerry Curve 9220 in India Evidence that a BlackBerry 10 comeback in the USA is absolutely possible BlackBerry PlayBook OS v2.0.1.358 now available BlackBerry Error Codes Explained Radiant Defense brings Hexage's space-age goofiness to the tower defense genre Oracle considered purchasing Palm to jump into the smartphone business Could a Kickstarter campaign raise enough to make new webOS devices? Best free iPhone apps Celebrity iPhone 4S Siri commercials hit the air with Samuel L. Jackson, Zooey Deschanel Instapaper vs Pocket vs Readability: Read later app for iPhone shootout! (And don't miss our video interview with Pocket's founder!) Report: Windows Phone Tango aiming for a June release by Microsoft and carriers Will Microsoft deliver a Windows Phone 8 update or won't they? European carriers reportedly not convinced by Nokia's push to challenge competitors View the full article

Despite Matias Duarte's hard work to duplicate the awesome multitasking found in webOS, Android 4.0 'Ice Cream Sandwich' still seems to come up short! To say that the card metaphor found in webOS nailed mobile multitasking would be a huge understatement. Some would argue that it perfected it. All webOS love set aside, many of you have loaded Android onto your TouchPad in order to enjoy the many creature comforts that Android has to offer - like Netflix and Draw Something. Don't worry, we aren't judging (much). However, you still find yourself yearning for some good ol’ fashioned webOS esque card swiping even when using Android. The gestures are a hard habit to break, and for good reason (being that they rock). To soothe your wanting fingers, there's WebCM9. WebCM9 is a neat little mod for a couple of TouchPad ROMs that changes the current task switcher found in Android 4.0 to a webOS-style task switcher. Yep, it's cards on Android. WebCM9 currently supports CM9 Official Nightly 2/28-3/09, 3/12-3/19, and 4/04-4/12; AOKP (Build 28, 29, and 31; and Milestone 4); and CM9 Alpha 2 ROMs (if you followed the instructions linked above, you've got CM9 Alpha 2 installed). WebCM9 isn't guaranteed to work on any other Android ROMs, and the developer doesn't recommend you try, unless you're willing to deal with the potential consequences. Installation is straightforward enough and is accomplished via Clockworkmod Recovery. Once installed you can further tweak out the settings of this mod with the Task Changer Pro app found in the Google Play Market. If you would like an in depth walkthrough on both WebCM9 and Task Changer Pro webOS Nation forum member ncinerate has done a very nice job of giving a step by step breakdown of the whole process that is bound to help even the most lost and confused of Android hacking hopefuls. So there you have it folks! You can have it both ways on your TouchPad. webOS cards in webOS, and webOS cards in Android. Sure, it's not the same as being able to run those apps in webOS, but it's better than nothing. If anything, webCM9 makes using Android feel a little bit more like home to webOS users. And of course, our thanks go out to Dubi, Pacosal, Bboyairwreck, Brucekey, Tbob18, and everybody else who helped make webCM9 a reality. View the full article

Developers, if you gather information about your install base for your apps you've likely run across Metrix, a project between Syntactix, one of our favorite developers, and webOSroundup. Following the announcement by webOSroundup earlier this month that they were going to be signing off for the last time, the decision to send Metrix offline was announced on Wednesday. The servers used to host Metrix cost around $250 per month, a high cost for a service provided free-of-charge to developers. Metrix is one of the most widely-used analytics tool by webOS app developers and for good reason - implementing the tool with your app is a breeze and you can be up and running in a matter of minutes. Syntactix also made the decision to open source the entire Metrix codebase - meaning the Mojo and Enyo libraries to interact with the Metrix servers, as well as the Metrix server-side code. As such, any developer with the desire to continue gathering analytics on their apps can do so with relative ease, so long as you have the means to use the code, which requires a Windows server among other things. For developers looking to keep a historical record of their apps, you've got limited time to act and it requires that you contact Syntactix. They can provide you with a CSV file containing all of your Metrix data. Do keep in mind that there is no way to import this data into Metrix with ease so that will all fall on you to either manually enter the data into your Metrix server or to build an import function; if you choose the latter it would be beneficial to contribute it back to the developer community. Metrix has had a good ride and we've learned a lot over the years from Metrix data, such as when Palm was testing the Pre2 with Zhephree's foursquare app. We are saddened to see Metrix go though we can certainly understand why it must and we're grateful for the decision to open source the tool. View the full article

Pandora has been available for webOS for as long as webOS has been available, but the app never made it to the TouchPad. Sure, there is the HTML5 webapp for Pandora, but we'd rather not have to work it through the browser. We need something less finicky, and that's where the Jake Morrison and Taylor Kimmett's new app Apollo Radio comes in. Pandora, for the uninitiated, is sort of like your own personal DJ. Based on the Music Genome Project, Pandora's algorithms allow users to build their own personal radio station around their musical preferences. Tell Pandora what music you like, and Pandora digs up other music that it thinks you'll enjoy. If you aren't enjoying what Pandora's served up, you can give the song a thumbs down and Pandora will remove it from your playlist and adjust its predictions for your musical taste. After a while, Pandora can build up a fairly good idea of what you will and won't like. The service is provided free of charge, only asking that you listen to some ads along the way to help pay for the music and servers. Pandora has historically made their own app, releasing versions for all major smartphone platforms. read more View the full article

webOS launched with Google Maps integration, but after Palm was bought by Microsoft best-buddy HP, they switched over to Redmond's solution of Bing Maps. There are reasons to like Bing Maps - the "birds eye" view available to TouchPad users is especially nifty. But there are plenty of reasons to mourn the loss of Google Maps, including Google's superior mass transit directions and international coverage. That said, the webOS Google Maps app had fallen way behind, and by the time the switch was made to Bing, Google had plans to deprecate the Maps API used in webOS, so the app was bound to die eventually anyway. Rather than remake it with Google, HP did best bud Microsoft a favor and switched to Bing. We didn't like it then, and we still don't like it today. In our not-so-humble opinion, Google Maps is the superior mapping solution, for everything from traffic to just finding things. Google Maps also includes incredibly handy features like Street View for seeing what it looks like at ground level or Terrain mapping. webOS Nation Forum member and homebrew developer 72ka decided that he too was tired of Bing Maps, and as a European webOS user, he was even more frustrated by HP's switching. So he did what any enterprising developer would do and made his own Google Maps app that puts both the new Bing Maps and old Google Maps apps for webOS to shame. As in never show your face in public again because everbody avoids making eye contact with you because they see you as wholly inadequate and you know it even though you don't want to admit it shame. Let's run down what the new homebrew Google Maps app brings to the table: View maps as standard streets, aerial photography, combined hybrid, or terrain; routing directions, including easily to or from search results; multi-touch, double-tap, and button-controlled zoom levels, a handy distance scale at the bottom, as-you-type search suggestions; Just Type integration; landscape support for all views; current traffic overlay; and Street View. Yes, Google Maps Street View. And it's even more awesome than you can get in the browser version of Google Maps - here you can zoom out to a super wide angle 180° view. Also, unlike some of the other attempts at making a replacement mapping app, the homebrewed Google Maps is actually attractive. It looks like it belongs on the device. The app is also a Mojo app, so it works delightfully well on all webOS devices, without all of the jitters and lag we've come to associate with the Enyo-based Bing Maps app on webOS smartphones. It's relatively smooth on everything from the Pre to the TouchPad. Oddly, though it doesn't behave as well on the Pre3, despite being the most powerful of webOS smartphones. Perhaps having 2.5 times the pixels of any other webOS smartphone is more than webOS and the app can handle at this point. We're hopeful it'll get ironed out soon enough, as the developer notes this is still at an "early development state". Really, there's only one place that we see the homebrew Google Maps falling short of the admittedly not-that-high mark set by the Bing Maps app: there's no bookmarking support for your favorite locations. It's not a huge deal, but it's nice to have. That said, developer 72ka has a favorite locations implementation in mind, and if all goes according to plan it'll even be tied into your Google account, so you'll be able to manage your favorites from any computer. We heart the cloud. Google Maps by 72ka is available now from the webOS Nation Homebrew Gallery and can be installed via WebOS Quick Install or Preware. There's more we migh want to say, but we just too darned excited to have the potential for a powerful, attractive, and intuitive Google Maps app back on our webOS devices. View the full article

Going for the Mirror Universe look a little early? View the full article

Glimpse by Inglorious Apps is an app that bring multitasking to a whole new level on your TouchPad, literally allowing you to run multiple mini-apps (called "widgets") by splitting the screen into panes and letting you determine which widget you want to run in each frame. But did you know that you can adjust which widgets show up in the selection toolbars, deactivating those that you would never use and activating others that you might not have been aware of if they were deactivated? To adjust your widget options: Swipe-down from the top-left within Glimpse and select "Preferences" Go to the "Widget" tab on the top From there, you can toggle any widget on/off When you are done selecting your desired widgets, just press the "Done" button on the top-left to return to the app. Glimpse is available in the webOS App Catalog for $4.99 and is compatible with the HP TouchPad running webOS 3.0 or higher View the full article

There's been a big question mark hanging over webOS since HP announced their plans to open source the operating system: then what? Come September, assuming HP has met their roadmap obligations, Open webOS 1.0 will be free and available for anybody to use. But for it to stand any chance at lasting relevance it's going to need to be put onto devices that people can actually buy. Last month we talked about the massive hurdles that one would have to overcome to build a webOS smartphone or tablet. Chief among them (and chief among Palm's problems before they were bought by HP) is money. You need money to buy components in bulk. You need money to pay for engineers. You need money for certification, factory space, packaging, and a million other pieces that are needed to bring a modern computing device to fruition. You need money. We'll admit, Derek was being his typical sardonic self when he threw in the line, "You aren't getting it from Kickstarter, are you?" That was a week after Kickstarter's biggest project to date - kooky game Double Fine Adventure had raked in $3.3 million over the course of a month from more than 87,000 backers. For those not familiar with Kickstarter, here's a crash course: Kickstarter allows enterprising entrepreneurs to publish a product proposal on the site and collect pledges from potential customers. They have to set a pledge goal and deadline, and backers aren't committed until both the deadline has passed and the project has reached its goal. For Double Fine Adventure, the developers were looking for $400,000 in pledges to get their game up off the ground. They got eight times that amount. read more View the full article

Some things we never thought we'd see. Like Microsoft somewhat getting their act together or Rod Blagojevich kind of sort of admitting his guilt. Or a virtual on-screen keyboard for webOS smartphones, especially in the App Catalog. Now, webOS 3.0 and the TouchPad by necessity have a virtual keyboard, and it's been demonstrated to work at phone sizes, and way back when there was even a hack to enable one in webOS 2.x, though it never really made it to primetime. Now, live in primetime and the webOS App Catalog is a new app by D Gardner: Quick-Keys Keyboard. The app throws a virtual keyboard into the notification area that you can use to type on your Pre without ever opening up the keyboard. Or you can use it on a TouchPad, if you're thinking the default virtual keyboard is just too darn big at any size. This $0.99 app lives in your notification area, ready to pop up and get you typing with a mere tap. Well, at least a close approximation of typing. Somewhat by necessity, Quick-Keys Keyboard types words one-at-a-time in the dashboard and a space or enter sends them into the appropriate app. It's a tedious existence, especially without any predictive or autocorrecting type available. Obviously we'd prefer that it put the letters we type in the app's text field as we type them, but we also can't imagine this was particularly easy to code. Maybe in a future update - perhaps one that brings a serious visual refresh. webOS is by-and-large an elegant operating system and the Mojo and Enyo SDK widgets have ensured that it's not hard to make apps that look good too. Quick-Keys does not. Despite the relative ugly, Quick-Keys Keyboard does bring some neat features, like a quick-text option that lets you set up to 28 different one-tap shortcuts that circumvent the one-word-at-a-time typing method for pre-canned messages that appear in your text field with a single tap. It can also insert the current date/time, and in a format of your choosing. Quick-Keys Keyboard has some potential as a creative solution to a problem that's been with webOS for three years now, but it's going to need some serious user interface and experience polish before it's ready for primetime. View the full article

One of the coolest things we at WOR were involved in was the creation of Metrix, an analytics tool for webOS. Hundreds of apps used it and, at its peak, our server was processing over 6 million hits a month. As you can imagine, our server didn’t like this very much and it cost us a good amount (about $250/month on average). So, as I mentioned on the podcast last week, we have to shut her down… But fear not brave developers! If you want to track your apps you will still be able to because have opened everything up and given it to the community to do with as you please. Use it, upgrade it, whatever you want… You can find it over at github, so go download it when you can. As for the servers, we will be shutting them down on the 25th of this month, so you have about a week to set it up on your own server and have no downtime. I also recommend that you take a screenshot of your current analytics because, unfortunately, there is no way to port the data. We want to thank all of the developers who used Metrix and helped us make it such a success. View the full article

Hosanna! Updates to the HP webOS Developer Center! As we begged and pleaded in one of our earlier webOS Wish List entries, there's a great need for shorter, more consumer-friendly promo codes. The kind you can easily re-type, you know, maybe 15 characters tops instead of something that rivals Microsoft's validation codes for having an excessive number of characters. As we noted then, the current system of 32 alpha-numeric digits allows for 1.9 quattuordecillion (that's 1.9 billion trillion trillion trillion) possible codes. No matter how successful webOS possibly is in the future, it'll never got through that many promo codes. Developers now have the option of generating "printable" codes that are fifteen characters long instead. The codes are also a much much much easier to process five letters, five numbers, and five letters. That's still 20.6 quintillion possible combinations, so the chances of somebody successfully guessing a functional code are still more than remote. There's been another update that's far more important for most developers: they can now read reviews left in the App Catalog by users from the developer portal website. The reviews expose not just the name, date, rating, and text of the review (like the App Catalog itself does), but also allow for on-the-fly translation and show the developer what version of the app that user had installed. This makes it easier to track down bugs based on the version (or see if somebody is just using an outdated version of the app and has been ignoring update prompts on their phone). The developer center reviews still don't make it possible for the developer to contact the user to address any issues they might have (be it PIBKAC errors or a legitimate problem with the app), but being able to review the reviews from someplace other than the App Catalog. It's a step forward, and hopefully the first of many. View the full article