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Folks, it happened: Astraware's TouchPad Totalizer tracker of TouchPad game sales finally topped 5,000 sales, the top level for Astraware's we'll-make-these-if-you-buy-enough-of-those deal. Granted, 5,000 isn't a huge number for Astraware; they likely sell more than that in a day on iOS or Android - when you're on a platform that sells three million units in a weekend, five thousand is a drop in the bucket for a firm like Astraware. The progress up the Totalizer totem pole has seen the release of Astraware Mahjong HD to test the waters, with Sudoku HD and Astraware Solitaire following as further sales targets fell. But things hit a hitch around the 3500 mark, where one would find the popular Astraware game OddBlob. Sudoku and Solitaire saw releases shortly after hitting the sales targets, but OddBlob has not hit the TouchPad App Catalog yet despite it having been quite some time since the sales target was hit. Asked about this seeming oversight on the Twitters, Astraware admitted that the process of transferring OddBlob to the TouchPad "has taken longer than expected", so you should expect Astraware Casino to hit first. That said, OddBlob and Casino are both popular games and we wouldn't be surprised to see them sell a few thousand copies on the TouchPad eventually. It's a testament to Astraware that they're willing to put the work into using the webOS PDK to bring their apps to the TouchPad. As the delay with OddBlob has shown, it's not always super easy to make the transfer happen, but we're happen to see Astraware making the effort even for just the few thousand sales that the TouchPad user community can bring. Sometimes it's not about the money, though we doubt Astraware would be doing this if they weren't at least breaking even - that's why they set up the Totalizer in the first place, so that we could see ourselves what it would take to make it worthwhile in Astraware's eyes. View the full article

The march towards a fully open source webOS continues, with today seeing the release of the Nyx hardware abstraction layer. As described on the nyx-lib GitHub repository, "Nyx is the webOS portability layer used to isolate the remainder of webOS from dependencies on the hardware and core OS upon which it is running." Essentially what that means is that Nyx picks up where the Linux Standard Kernel drops off. So while open source kernel integrates a number of Android drivers and the like, Nyx takes it a step further for Open webOS, enabling the OS to run successfully on an even greater variety of hardware. And since Nyx is open source like the rest of Open webOS eventually will be, it's conceivable that it could be adapted in conjunction with the Linux Standard Kernel to enable other operating systems to run on other hardware. Not that we'd want that - we want webOS, of course. How exactly Nyx works, well, that's over our heads here. Dammit Jim, we're bloggers, not programmers! All we know is that we're glad to see it released and excited by its potential. There's a wide world of excellent hardware out there running less than optimal operating systems, and we want them to run webOS. That's our hope, now that we've been reduced to dreaming about a day where webOS hardware is produced again. Today also saw the launch of a new website for Open webOS: openwebosproject.org. The new site is styled very much after the old Palm.com and the current webOS Developer Center, and right now serves more as an introduction for the uninitiated and a portal to content on other sites. But eventually it could be more. Not that we'd recommend you go somewhere else to get the latest on Open webOS. You're already reading this, so clearly you're smart enough to know where to look. Nyx, for the record, is yet another Greek goddess (joining Ares, Enyo, and Isis). She's the goddess of the night, and is only seen in the shadows and just a glimpse at that. An appropriate name, we suppose, for a hardware abstraction layer that's supposed to do it's job without being seen or heard. View the full article

Unsurprisingly, our call for people to lay out their vision for branding for Open webOS drew a lot of awesome entries. Surprisingly, HP liked it enough that wanted to get involved, pitching in a TouchPad and a meeting with the HP design team for the winning design. And thus, a competition was born. With so much awesomeness competing for so much awesomeness, it was difficult for us to pick just a few to stand up to compete for this prize. But, we did, and you voted, and now it's time to unveil the final results… after the break. Yeah, we're such a tease. read more View the full article

When HP pulled access to their previously-open-to-all App Catalog feeds, we were understandably disappointed. But HP had promised something new and innovative in the way of app discovery. That turned out to be Pivot, which while new and innovative to say the least, was lacking in a pretty important area: it existed only on the TouchPad (and doesn't exist at all anymore), leaving those of us looking to do some app browsing and comparison online in a lurch. While we're still longing for the return of the app feeds or an appropriate replacement so we can resurrect the App Gallery in full, we'd also like to see HP go official with their own web-based App Catalog browser. And with open source Enyo 2.0 it'd be even easier than before to just put the app itself online, accessing all the same content in the exact same way. Plus, having a web presence there when somebody searches Google for App Catalog would be a incredibly good thing. Right now a search for App Catalog brings up results that are practically worthless to the intended purpose of the search. Also, it should be a source of great embarrassment to HP that Apple, Google, Microsoft, and even Research in Motion all have desktop-browsable application stores. Seriously, BlackBerry beat webOS to the punch. On the web. That's not good. Have your own thoughts on this webOS Wish List entry? Of course you do - the comments await. Without a doubt you have your own ideas as to what ought be on the webOS wish list, and so we've created a forum thread just for that - and an awesome discussion it has proven to be. View the full article

Mobile Nations Podcast Feed Mobile Nations on iTunes Mobile Nations YouTube Samsung Galaxy S III' pictured, May 22 London unveiling rumored Early ICS build leaks for the Verizon HTC Rezound CyanogenMod 9 makes root access an option, not the default T-Mobile BlackBerry Bold 9900 and Torch 9810 OS 7.1 updates now available LTE and HSPA+ models of the BlackBerry Playbook stroll through the FCC A closer look at the awesome QNX CAR 2 application platform Open sourcing Open webOS branding competition finalists HP was supposed to leave Palm alone for three years, lacked the "patience for innovation" HP to open source chunks of webOS 3.0.5 as a "Community Edition" The new iPad has landed! Here’s everything you need to know! iMore hits NBC, ABC, and CNN as media hype soars on new iPad launch day! iPad help and discussion forum: Add your review, show off your speed tests, share your Retina wallpapers! New rumor: AT&T launching Lumia 900 on April 8th? FCC certifies Samsung SGH i667 "Mandel" 4G LTE Windows Phone Nokia working on Windows 8 tablet says Design Chief View the full article

As the owner of a TouchPad, Pre3, and iPhone, I can tell you there's one thing that's needed in spades with a virtual keyboard over the hardware variety: strong and aggressive autocorrect. There are things that both the iPhone and webOS do right, and things they do wrong. For instance, I like that webOS gives me a little chirp when it corrects something so I know to look back and see what it was, and I love that if I don't like it, undoing the autocorrection is as easy as a backspace. The iPhone, however, excels at predicting what it is I'm trying to type, and gives me the option to just hit the space key to use that word. It's a time saver, and its necessary given the inherent drop in accuracy that comes with a virtual keyboard. webOS, through all its iterations, has never had the joy of predictive text. Well, that's not entirely true - when we looked at the Beta 1 emulator for webOS 3.0, text prediction was present, although in rudimentary and buggy form. The bones for the feature exist in webOS, and using the same sort of interface as the copy/paste/you-spelled-something-weirdly dialogs would enable even faster typing on the TouchPad's already excellent virtual keyboard. And let's not forget about the webOS smartphones - physical keyboard typing is fast enough as it is (at least in our practiced agile hands), imagine how much faster it could be if the phone was correctly guessing what you were trying to write. Have your own thoughts on this webOS Wish List entry? Of course you do - the comments await. Without a doubt you have your own ideas as to what ought be on the webOS wish list, and so we've created a forum thread just for that - and an awesome discussion it has proven to be. View the full article

iPad SchmiPad. We know what we're waiting for. View the full article

You may have noticed that some app can be found using Universal Search / Just Type by using certain keywords, instead of the actual App name. For example, search for “pref” and you will see all the stock preferences apps such as Backup, Bluetooth, Date & Time, Device Info, etc. Application authors have the ability to specify those additional keywords for their apps, but using a little homebrew magic, you can easily update or add those keywords, too, similar to they way that you are able to to hide app icons from both the App Launcher and Just Type The easiest way to do this is to have Internalz Pro from Jason Robitaille (available in Preware or webOS Quick Install) installed on your device and follow the following steps On your device, open Internalz Pro If you want to update the keyword for one of the stock webOS apps: Swipe down from the top-left corner to bring down the Internalz Pro Application dropdown menu and select "Preferences". Scroll to the bottom of Preferences and ensure that "Master mode" is turned on. If you need to turn it on, be sure to select "YES" to the warning prompt. On phones, back-swipe or on the TouchPad, swipe down from the top-left corner to bring down the Internalz Pro Application dropdown menu and select "Close" to return to Internalz Pro Locate the directory for the app whose keywords you with to edit. Some system apps like Phone, Email, PDF Viewer are usually in the /usr/palm/applications folder, while installed apps are in /media/cryptofs/apps/usr/palm/applications/. However, with the latest webOS 3.0.5 update for the TouchPad, many of those stock system apps may also be found in /media/cryptofs/apps/usr/palm/applications/ Open the app folder and find the appinfo.json file. Tap on the file and select "Open" Look for a line of text that starts with "keywords" (it will look like "keywords": ["keyword1", "keyword2"], ). If the line aready exists, all you need to do is add another keyword to the list. If there is no keyword line, you will need to add it. If this is not the last line of code in the file, be sure that you have that comma at the end of the line! If necessary, access the Internalz Pro preferences again and turn off Master Mode After he next time you reboot your device, the app will now be searchable using the new keywords that you just added Note that if the app gets an update, these changes will need to be recreated after that update is complete One quick note about search keyword. While a Universal Search/Just Type search will search for an app using just one letter of the actually app name, keywords require at least 3 letters before it will find the application. So, if you add "awesome" as a keyword to Preware, it won't be found until you type in at least "awe". The only exception to this is if you add a keyword with only one or two letters. So, add "Z" to the keywords, and the app will show up in a search just by typing "Z" View the full article

Nearly five months ago HP VP of webOS Developer Relations Richard Kerris vacated his post for a new job at Nokia, just eight months after he was trotted out before the world at Think Beyond. Granted, a lot went down in those eight months at HP, so we can't blame him for looking to the greener pastures of Nokia's Sunnyvale office. But it's been nearly half a year since Kerris left, with nobody stepping in to fill the void. Until now - today the HP webOS Developer Center made the stealth announcement of Palm veteran Fred Patton as the new head of Developer Relations. Patton came to Palm in early 2010, tasked with running the developer website - yes, we're now to the point where two years qualifies one as a veteran at webOS. With all of the departures and layoffs that have hit the Developer Relations team in the past few months, two years later he's now "managing day-to-day operations" of the department, as he put it in the "about me" blog post that went up this evening. An impressive resume is part of what Patton brings to the table here, having developed command and control software for Air Force and NASA satellites and been the Director of Engineering and Quality at Innovative Robotics (where he wrote user and developer documentation and optimized customer setups - good skills for leading a software developer relations team). So congratulations on the new gig, Fred, and good luck. We'll be watching. And waiting (save us some cake). View the full article

It's that time of year. The squeak of sneakers and screams of crowds fill the air and the hopes of 67 squads from across the United States are crushed with a ferocity that only basketball can bring. That's right, March Madness is underway. While there are plenty of sports apps in the webOS App Catalog, only one really stands out as worth your money for keeping tabs on all the games upon which the success of your bracket. That one app is Sports Live! Well, it's Sports Live and it's derivatives. On the TouchPad, we wouldn't talk anybody out of buying Sports Live HD, and for this happy go lucky season of basketball insanity, you wouldn't be wrong to buy College Basketball Live for your webOS smartphone either. Both apps let you passively keep tabs on your favorite/necessary teams through the joy of webOS notifications. Should you be feeling more antsy, you can also open the app itself and check out the scores in real time for all games. Both apps are made by More Solutions and available now in the App Catalog - Sports Live! HD for the TouchPad is currently on sale for $2.49, while College Basketball Live! and Women's College Basketball Live! are available for $1.99 and Sports Live! for webOS smartphones is $7.99 Also, go Bearcats! View the full article

In a new posting by webOS CTO Sam Greenblatt on the HP webOS Developer Blog, HP has announced it plans on publishing additional components of webOS version 3.0.5 for the TouchPad to open source, calling it the “Community Edition”. It will be posted at opensource.palm.com and is to be completed by June. The publishing of the code will provide the community the ability to “work with legacy devices using the current platform.” In a separate announcement, the Linux 3.3. kernel has produced a seventh release candidate containing patches for networking, drivers, management, and memory. The release should be ready by the end of this month. You can see the post in its entirety here. Source: HP webOS Developer Blog View the full article

Although the HP Pre3 was only officially released throughout Europe for just a few days before HP pulled the plug on webOS hardware, a lot more AT&T (and a few Verizon) Pre3s made their way to eBay and other "unofficial" channels. Unfortunately, since HP will not support the device or make any additional accessories for it, it appeared as if spare or extended Pre3 batteries would never see the light of day, even if you simply needed a replacement for a defective battery. Luckily for us Pre3 owners, Mugen Power Batteries decided to produce two sizes of extended batteries, the 1400 mAh "SL" extended battery for $46.95 and a 2800 mAh "XL" extended battery for $98.95. As compared to the stock Pre3 battery that clocks in at 1230 mAh, these batteries will give you an additional 14% or 128% of battery life, respectively, before your phone needs to be plugged back in. The 1400 mAh SL battery--which we previously reviewed--is only slightly bigger than the stock battery, essentially making it more of a spare battery than an extended battery. With no other source of spare batteries for the Pre3, having this option for a spare or replacement battery is great. In addition, since Mugen's SL battery is the same physical size as the stock Pre3 battery you can continue to use your existing touchstone-enabled back cover for the Pre3 with no issues However, if you are looking for some more heavy-duty battery life for your Pre3, you may instead want to consider the 2800 mAh XL battery from Mugen. After putting our review battery through its paces, our overall reaction was quite favorable. While the battery's capacity is twice the size as the SL extended battery, it is also physically bigger, weighing 1.7 ounces (48 grams) as compared to .85 oz (24 grams) of either the stock or SL extended battery. As a result of the larger size, it also requires a larger back cover for the phone which is included with your purchase. For this review, we will focus on both the affects on battery life but also the affects of the larger back cover. read more View the full article

In a new posting to the HP webOS Developer Blog, webOS CTO Sam Greenblatt announced that HP intends to publish additional components from the already-released webOS 3.0.5 to open source, branding the components as "the Community Edition." The work will be hosted at opensource.palm.com and is expect to take through June, and is not directly related to the Open webOS project. The idea behind open sourcing parts of the legacy code is to allow the homebrew community to do even more with devices currently running webOS 3.0.5 - that is, the HP TouchPad. Greenblatt wrote that the hope is "that this additional release will help [the homebrew community] better understand the platform and create a constructive environment for moving forward as Open webOS itself is released." What exactly we can expect to see from this release is still up in the air, and being a side-project like this is, we wouldn't expect to see a roadmap like we did for Open webOS. The name "Community Edition" doesn't refer to the entirety of webOS 3.0.5 (since it contains plenty of proprietary third-party bits that HP can't open source), but do the portions that HP will be open sourcing. It's a thank you to the homebrew community that helped webOS keep on keeping on. Greenblatt also laid out some housekeeping notes for March's Open webOS release commitments. Delays in the final release of the Linux Standard Kernel 3.3 have pushed that back to the end of the month, while we can expect to see the Nyx abstraction layer and components released in the next few days ahead of the kernel. View the full article

This tip is only for devices running webOS 2.x The order of the email accounts listed in the email app is determined by the order that you add them to the app. While you have been able to reorder those email accounts since the original days of webOS 1.0.1, that functionality seems to have been broken in webOS 2.0. Fortunately, that is not the case, but rather it just requires one additional step, added below as step #5 In this example, you can see a Yahoo account and a Gmail account. Let’s say we want to swap the order of how those two accounts show up, so Gmail shows first. read more View the full article

Phil McKinney left his position as HP CTO and chief big thinker at the end of this past October. Since then he published a new book, Beyond the Obvious: Killer Questions That Spark Game-Changing Innovation [hardcover, Kindle, iBooks] that explores his experience as an innovator. In promoting Beyond the Obvious, McKinney sat down for an interview with "strategic marketing expert" and fellow author Rick Mathieson. Most of the interview touches on what's in McKinney's book, but in part four of the interview he steers the discussion towards what went down with webOS and McKinney's last few months at HP. We'll let McKinney do the talking here: "[The Palm acquisition] was going to be a long term effort. Palm was struggling and HP was stepping in, doing the acquisition, and we were basically going to take three years hands-off. Palm was basically going to get cash infusions, resources, and expertise. But Palm was going to be given three years to basically get itself positioned to be a market leader in its space. Now, fast forward to July of 2011 and, one, you had a swap out of the CEOs - Leo comes in as the new CEO - and HP, for whatever reason - I was not a part of this decision - made the decision to kill it, one year into the three year program. This is an example of not committing long term to the resources and not having patience for innovation." McKinney notes that he was part of the team that drove the acquisition of Palm and that there are always challenges to overcome with trying to get a large organization like HP to be innovative. As the existence of a three-year plan for Palm implies, the challenge is sticking to a long-term plan that ignores the quarterly financial reports in favor of the long view. It's equal parts hard and frustrating to imagine where Palm and webOS would be today had HP not pulled the plug on hardware development and essentially killed (and since attempted to revived) the OS. It's been seven months since former HP CEO Leo Apotheker made the decision to kill webOS hardware, and during that time we expect that we would have at the very least seen the release of the HP Pre3 and TouchPad Go, plus whatever else HP might have been working up. For his part, McKinney still uses a webOS smartphone and a TouchPad. View the full article

We've seen all sorts of interesting things done with webOS notifications, from persistent weather and stock information to pop-up mini news readers. But they were always basic and focused apps. But Science Apps, the webOS developers behind Starter and Lithium News, recently kicked things up a notch with the app-in-a-notification system with Pop!Later. This new app is a Read It Later client that lives in a notification on your webOS smartphone or TouchPad. Not only can you use it to submit a copied URL, you can actually browse, read, and manage your saved articles all from within the notification. You might be asking yourself, "Why would I want this?" Essentially this lets you have two apps running at once on the same screen - Pop!Later providing the Read It Later view while whatever else you want - a movie, for example - takes up the rest of the screen. View the full article

Oh, Best Buy, you didn't tell us you had a brand new TouchPad in stock. We left our number and everything. Did we do something wrong? Why don't you ever call anymore? In all seriousness, we're not surprised that the Best Buy in Santee, California, found a brand-new 32GB HP TouchPad to sell. How it got on their shelves isn't likely to be a harrowing tale of dragons and sword fights and multitasking cards. Like tipster nfrisbie1, we're more interested in how this Best Buy location thinks they can get away with asking full list price - $599.99 - for a long-discontinued product that sells for close to a third of that on eBay, which is itself notably higher than the fire sale pricing that Best Buy previously honored. You so silly. View the full article

As we noted last week, our little post about the branding design for Open webOS caught some eyes at HP and they decided they wanted to kick things up a notch, throwing in a TouchPad and a session with their design team for the winner. In response you all kicked things up a notch, with well over a hundred entries pouring into the comments over the weekend. Well, we've waded through all of your creative responses to our design query and picked out what we think are ten deserving candidates to have some confab time with HP's design team, plus a TouchPad for the hell of it. Those with a chance to leave their mark on Open webOS are after the break. read more View the full article

In 2009 the world welcomed two random-partner chat platforms to the internet. Getting most of the press because of its skeeziness and the prevalence of male genitalia was video-based Chatroulette, overshadowing the ealier-in-the-year launch of text-based random chatter Omegle. With the tagline of "Talk to strangers!" Omegle pairs you with, well, strangers, to chat about whatever. They don't know who you are, and you don't know who they are. Perfectly anonymous chatter. And if you want to get to it on webOS, there just so happens to be an app for that: Padegle, a $0.99 app by Cool Story Products. And if you're the type that wants to get some chat on with a truly random stranger, then we have one of fifty copies to give to you. Contest: We have 50 copies of Padegle 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 50random entrants to win. Please only leave one comment, multiple entries won’t count. Promo codes are only valid in countries serviced by the App Catalog, and users must be running webOS 2.x or higher with the latest version of the App Catalog. View the full article

This tip is only for webOS phones When webOS 3.0 and the TouchPad were released, Bing Maps was the default mapping application, replacing the Google Maps app that was installed on al webOS phones. Shortly after, those webOS phones were then updated to also replace Google Maps with Bing Maps, bringing almost all of the same functionality of the larger tablet-based version. One similar feature is the ability to change how you view the map, including the standard street map, satellite view and the "Bird's Eye" views that provide an angled viewing of a map. Unfortunately, unlike the TouchPad version, you can not rotate the angle of the Bird’s Eye view. To change you desired view type, tap on the icon on the top-right of the app to open the “OPTIONS” screen and use the bottom dropdown to select your “VIEW”. This will then take you back to the map and reload it as selected View the full article

Mobile Nations Podcast Feed Mobile Nations on iTunes Mobile Nations YouTube Reminder: The Android Market is now the Play Store Hands-on redux with the HTC One X Three UK announces availability of Sony Xperia S RIM's quest for app developers in the wake of PlayBook 2.0 Why I love my BlackBerry PlayBook now more than ever D-pad app for PlayBook gaming may be coming soon to a BlackBerry near you OpenMobile working with HP to make Android apps on webOS a reality Open sourcing Open webOS branding, a super sweet prize awaits! Should HP make a "Nexus" hero device for Open webOS? Apple unveils the new iPad, and here’s everything you need to know! 2012 iPad buyers guide: How to choose the perfect model, size, color and 4G LTE carrier iOS 5.1 for iPhone and iPad walkthrough AT&T Lumia 900 delayed till April 22nd? Say it ain't so... Windows Phone "Tango" limitations officially confirmed It’s Official: Windows Phone Users Hate Macs View the full article

If there's one thing that webOS and the Palm Pre ushered into maturity it was the gesture-based user interface. While gestures had been a part of modern mobile operating systems like Android and iOS, they'd only been present in places like the app launcher or widgets panels. webOS kicked that all up a launch, using gestures to go back, to go into multitasking mode, to switch between apps, close apps, delete items, open menus, and much more. It was a genius use of gestures and it gets so engrained in your use of webOS that your author often finds himself trying to swipe up into card view on non-webOS devices. The TouchPad ditched a lot of that when webOS 3.0 could have taken things up a notch (or ten). The multitasking gestures are still there, and for hardware and usability reasons the back gesture went away, but as I noted back in August, there's no reason that webOS couldn't have adopted plenty of new gestures. Be it swiping in from the sides to switch apps (a feature now in use in BlackBerry's PlayBook OS and Microsoft Windows 8), two finger swipes to go forward and back in the browser, and so much more. None of these would be necessary for anybody's use of webOS, unlike the Playbook which is almost dependent upon knowing gestures, but for users that do know the gestures will make webOS even faster and more fluid to use. So, HP, you're working on Open webOS 1.0. Give the gestures are bit of love, will ya? Have your own thoughts on this webOS Wish List entry? Of course you do - the comments are below. Surely you have your own ideas as to what ought be on the webOS wish list, and so we've created a forum thread just for what has proven to be an awesome discussion. View the full article

Touch-to-share was a concept that was introduced at the Think Beyond event with the unveiling of the Veer, Pre3 and TouchPad. The concept was that you could use a near field communications-type technology to share data between your devices simply by touching them together. While touch-to-share was ultimately going to be expanded to include a lot of different types of data, even giving developers the ability to access it in their apps, touch-to-share currently only lets you share web pages between devices and doesn’t appear that it will be expanded any time soon. And unfortunately, while the Veer has the hardware requirements to allow touch-to-share, it never received the software update to take advantage of this functionality; so, you will be required to have a Pre3 and a TouchPad (or two of each device) to access it. So how does touch-to-share work? All you need to do is place the back of the Pre3 (where the HP logo is) on top the home button of the TouchPad and let it sit for a second or two. You will know that the touch-to-share was activated because a giant ripple will emanate from the home button on the TouchPad, and then one of a few things will happen: If Bluetooth was not turned On on either device, you will get a notice saying that you will need to turn Bluetooth on in order to take advantage of this feature and give you an option to turn Bluetooth on. Once on, try touch-to-share again If the two devices were not already paired together via Bluetooth, they will automatically get paired together and you will get a pop-up on your Pre3 asking to allow messaging access to share your text messages across the devices. Regardless of the answer to this question, your devices will now be paired together and you can access touch-to-share. You can also adjust your Bluetooth preferences (such as allowing messaging or phone calls between devices) later or even open up the Bluetooth app and swipe-to-delete a device from your list if you want permanently delete it from your list of trusted devices. Assuming that you now have Bluetooth turned on and two devices paired together, if you have a webpage active on the screen from the stock web browser on the Pre3 and/or the TouchPad when you touch the two devices together, the URL of that site will be sent to the other device and the stock web browser will launch and open that page. Unfortunately, it will not send your position on the page or any other data that you may have filled in on the originating device. It simply sends over the website address While this is not a feature that is probably used often, it is convienent when you are reading a site on your phone and decide that you would rather read it on the larger screen of your TouchPad, or if you are reading a site on your TouchPad but have to leave the house and you can quickly transfer that site to your phone. And, until HP or someone within the Open Source webOS team expands touch-to-share, this is all that we will be able to use touch-to-share for. View the full article

An interesting question was posed this morning in our forums by aia832003: should HP make a "Nexus" device? For those not familiar, Google has over the past few years commissioned a series of "Nexus" phones for Android, phones that are the launch device for a new version of Android and run "pure" Android, [mostly] free of carrier and manufacturer interference. They're also typically the state-of-the-art as far as smartphones of the moment are concerned. For example, the current Nexus device is the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, a powerhouse of a smartphone no matter which way you cut it. With webOS going open source, HP's going to face two problems going forward. The first, and largest problem, is convincing another manufacturer to take a chance on webOS. The second will be controlling webOS - while you technically can't control an open source project, especially with HP's plan to go with Apache licensing, setting the example can go a long way towards setting consumer expectations. With Android, consumers have come to expect and differentiate between the experience offered by the skins of HTC, Samsung, and Motorola. Obviously HP will want to avoid that kind of fragmentation, and setting the example with a "hero" type device might do that trick. That said, there are some potential problems with the Nexus-approach for HP. The first being smartphones - it'll be hard enough to convince any manufacturer to pick up webOS, it'll be even harder to convince the carriers to give webOS yet another chance after years of disappointment at the register. There is of course the tablet market, in which HP could easily do the Nexus thing. They're planning on making ARM-powered Windows 8 tablets, and that hardware engineering wouldn't be that far off from what an open source Open webOS kernel could support. Heck, HP CEO Meg Whitman even said she'd like for HP to get back into the webOS tablet game. So what do you say, oh webOS Nation? Should HP take the lead and set the example with webOS hardware, or should they leave it to the professionals? View the full article

Two days ago we posted what we thought would be a fun exercise: getting the webOS Nation community involved in working up fresh branding for Open webOS. At the time we were doing it just because, with no expectations that HP would do anything with what was worked up, much less that they might be paying attention. Well, dear reader and potential logo designer, HP is paying attention - they've been watching the comments rolling in and like what they've seen thus far. So much so that they want to get involved, well, technically they want to get you involved. So they've pitched in a sweet prize pack that will go to the winning logo designer (more on that in a bit). So to determine who gets this sweet prize pack we're going to take this fun exercise and turn it into a competition. We'll be taking submissions (keep posting them in the comments of the original post) through Sunday, March 11th, at which time we'll pick a group of what we think are the best and put it up to a community vote to determine the winner. What does the winner get? Well, HP's chipping in a brand-new TouchPad, an article that is becoming harder to find every day. They'll also want to get the winner involved with the official branding process and will arrange for them to do some speaking on their design with the design team currently working on the branding for Open webOS. So go ahead and get cracking on those Open webOS logo designs - a TouchPad and your chance to leave an official mark on webOS are waiting! View the full article