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I'll be honest, this is one of those wish list items of something minor that's always bugged me. I'm talking about the App Catalog, which if anything should be the epitome of webOS apps. So what does it do? It completely ignores the most characteristic of webOS TouchPad app features: the sliding panels of Enyo. For most of the browsing experience in the App Catalog that's forgivable. The top and bottom tabs do just fine and make sense to navigate around. Where things break down is when you open an app listing. Suddenly you're presented with this tabled layout that works, but there's this weird, out-of-place button labeled "Back" in the bottom left corner. You know, right where the Enyo grab handle should be. The App Catalog is an Enyo app, there's no doubt about that, but in the most identifiable of ways it behaves more like something out of iOS or Android. Heck, even the web browser has sliding panels, and that's for things like bookmarks that could be very easily displayed in a pop-over list. Think about it - browsing in the App Catalog could be greatly enhanced with the addition of Enyo panels. You could have a list of the apps on the left and the listing itself on the right, enabling fast one-tap comparisons. Screenshots could be presented in true full-screen instead of the also out-of-place overlay. There's a lot that Enyo could bring to the App Catalog, and it just doesn't make sense that it's not there. [/rant] 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

The built-in Memos app for webOS isn't all that great. We all know it. With a big 9.7-inch screen like that on the TouchPad, its even more unforgivable how basic it is and how little its been updated. If there's one good thing about the pitifulness of the TouchPad Memos app, it's that it has opened the door for several third-party developers to built the better notepad. One such developer is Inglorious Apps, who created the aptly titled and well-featured Notes HD. For the asking price of $1.99, Notes HD drags memos on webOS up to modern standards. Well, really it brings back a lot of the features from the Palm OS Memos app, including titles, password protection, and categories (gasp). read more View the full article

When you get an email from someone in your contact list, did you know that you can easily call, text, look up their address, or get access to any of the data from their contact record with just a single tap on the screen? From an email message on either webOS phones or the TouchPad, tap on the header that shows who was the sender of the email. On phones, this will bring you directly to that person's Contact record, while the TouchPad will give you a little pop-up dialog box with all of their information. From here, you can tap on a phone number to call the person, tap on the SMS icon next to the phone number to text them, initiate a skype call, or perform any other action based on the data available, all without really leaving the email application. If you want to go back to the message, just back-swipe on phones or press the "Close" button on the TouchPad. Note that if the person is not in your contact list, you will have the option of adding them by tapping on the sender header. View the full article

So everybody's got their panties all in a bunch over some new iPad or something that's being announced today. You heard it here first, folks: It'll be better than the last one. It'll be more magical than the last one. Magical-er. Anyhoo. Our pals at iMore are rocking the all-day coverage, including a boatload of live commentary. And just like with the iPhone 4S event, there's a better than average chance that Phil will swing by to remind everybody that it's just an iPad, they should all go outside and enjoy the fresh air -- basically do his damndest to burst that Reality Distortion Field. Just keep it glued to iMore.com. View the full article

Sometimes, for reasons we've yet to determine, the built-in first-party apps can disappear off an HP TouchPad. It's rare, but it happens, and for the average user it's annoying, frustrating, and confusing to have a basic app like the App Catalog or Calendar just up and disappear. Thankfully, HP has made it relatively easy to restore these apps, and you can do it all on your TouchPad, though some homebrew magic is required. First things first, you'll need the excellent homebrew file browser Internalz Pro installed on your TouchPad. Our how-to install homebrew apps guide will give you a step-by-step of how to install Internalz (or any other homebrew app, for that matter). read more View the full article

You know what's fun about open source? Anybody can contribute. While that generally has to do with code-level stuff, there's still plenty of user-facing design work that has to be done with open source software projects - Open webOS included. We've already seen the snazzy logo HP whipped up for the open source Enyo application framework, but as of yet we haven't been graced with a new logo for Open webOS. So we're asking you, webOS Nation, to step up and show HP how it ought be done. We know there are a lot of good designers and artists in the crowd, and we want to see what kind of work you can come up with for the Open webOS branding. This isn't an official or unofficial HP project - we're just doing this because we think it'll be fun and, frankly, Derek's a giant design nerd. So have at it, dear reader, and post your attempt at a logo for Open webOS in the comments of this post. You know you've got a good idea or two! View the full article

webOS developers from around the world gathered yesterday in person and online to take place in the first ever virtual Enyo hackathon. The event lasted right around six hours, including an introduction from HP's Ben Combee, a Q&A session, and judging period. Seventeen apps were submitted by the end, with the only rules that they must made with Enyo 1.0 or 2.0, use a publicly-available API, and run either on a TouchPad or in the Chrome browser. The judges - Combee, Enyo Developer Relations guru Lisa Brewster, and your's truly - selected apps to win the vaunted label of best design, best functionality, and best overall app, with the best overall winning an HP TouchPad while the other two went home with a Pre3. So, without further ado, the winners are… read more View the full article

The biggest stumbling block for webOS, apart from mismanagement on the part of HP, has always been the relative lack of apps. Sure, there are standards there and the most basic needs are covered, but the "long tail" of apps, those apps that aren't the nine or ten that everybody's downloaded, that's where webOS has struggled for the whole time it's been around. The app situation isn't entirely responsible for the predicament webOS is in today, but it certainly played a big part in the vicious cycle (despite our protestations that Palm and HP do something about it). Enter OpenMobile with a solution that aims to work around this problem by drafting Android into the webOS ecosystem. OpenMobile was showing off their Android Compatibility Layer product at CES, which grafts Android as a runtime into webOS, allowing users to run Android apps in webOS, complete with cards, notifications, and all that jazz. At the time, the folks at OpenMobile had made the ACL work on Meego and webOS, but at the time they weren't involved with HP. Since then things have been pretty quiet on the OpenMobile front, but webOS Nation forum member Zukny reached out to OpenMobile to see if he could find out more information. Unexpectedly he got a call back from OpenMobile CEO Bob Angelo, who informed him that not only is HP interested in getting the OpenMobile ACL onto the HP TouchPad and Open webOS, the project has high-level support within the webOS organization. Additionally, though OpenMobile's original business plan was to work with HP and other manufacturers to integrate the ACL into the product before it shipped, they've changed gears with webOS for obvious reasons and are exploring offering the ACL as a package you'll be able to purchase at what they're expecting to be a relatively low price point - though we're sure plenty of you would pay good money for access to a couple hundred thousand more apps over the couple thousand currently available to TouchPad owners. We're pleased to hear that OpenMobile is encouraged by the enthusiasm the webOS community has expressed for their efforts and hope it won't be long before we're running Android apps without running Android. View the full article

We think it's safe to declare Mobile Nations Fitness Month to have been a success. Looking back at February we had many members on webOS Nation and across the Mobile Nations network of sites getting up, going out, and getting fit - and dragging the editorial staff along for the ride. As we said at the outset, we would be running a contest through our forums to give away a TouchPad bundle and a quartet of TouchPad Touchstone chargers. And as you might expect from the best community in mobile, there was plenty of participation! So without further ado, the winners are… Grand Prize - 32GB HP TouchPad, Touchstone charger, Bluetooth keyboard, and folio case: woosh! Weekly prizes - a TouchPad Touchstone charging dock: camiller, Cyberpmg, solaimadhan, and romeytang! Congratulations to all our winners, but also congratulations to everybody who participated in Fitness Month for taking steps in the right direction for fitness and health. As you might have noticed, it is now March. Fitness Month is past us, but there's no reason to stop now. Our minds are at our best when our bodies are in good condition, so keep up with the running, with the weight lifting, with the reduction of sugar, the taking the stairs, or whatever it is you're doing to get into better shape. It's your health we're talking about here - there's not much more important than that. View the full article

When we announced our name change to webOS Nation a few months back, we noted that the webOS platform and this very site only exist today because of the community. Without our more than half a million members and millions more readers there would simply be no webOS Nation. You're this community's fuel. So we're going to gake some time out of our weekend every now and then to look at some of the tremendous members of our forums. With more than 9000 posts to his name and more every day, Shane (you might know his as Shadavis08) is the kind of engaged, helpful, and all-around aweomse member we love to have. He’s also our very first reader spotlight! read more View the full article

There are a lot of cool ideas in webOS, and there are plenty of cool ideas that we're sure they've come up with in Sunnyvale over the past four years they just didn't have the time, money, and personnel to put together. Some they even patented, like the slick multi-layer wave launcher we picked out of Palm's patent portfolio a few months ago. The ideas was to allow you to pause on a wave launcher icon to open additional options, such as displaying favorites under Contacts or bookmarks from Web or direct-launching into different parts of Carbon. The multi-layer wave launcher would allow for all manner of even faster webOS actions, be it firing off a tweet or calling the spouse. Just Type and Quick Actions are great for some things, but let's be honest - should you really have to bust out the keyboard to call the office and let them know you're running late? No, you really shouldn't have to do that. The office is already one of your favorites, but the only place you see those favorites is in the Phone app or when searching. Why not swipe > pause > pick > release? Unlike some other Wish List items, the multi-layer wave launcher isn't borrowing from other platforms or even standard computing expectations or picking up where Palm OS left off. This is taking after an idea that Palm already has, an idea that they own. And what good is an idea like this if you don't act on it? 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

Talking about cutting WebOS staff in half! View the full article

As a reminder to our wonderful developer community, the virtual Enyo Hackathon is set to kick of on Sunday at noon Eastern Time. Groups will be gathering in New York City, Indianapolis, Oklahoma City, Dallas, San Diego, and San Francisco as well as tuning in from more than twenty countries around the globe to hack their way with EnyoJS and webOS. As we noted last week, prizes hadn't yet been announced, but now they are known: an HP TouchPad will go to the best overall app, while the best app design and best functionality each will get an HP Pre3. And that's just for the hacking part - if you're able to make it in person to an event you'll see a bunch of prizes onsite from the individual meetup organizers. As for who is going to be deciding the winners, a three person slate of HP's Ben Combee and Lisa Brewster joined by webOS Nation's Derek Kessler (yours truly) will be doing the evaluating, with the winners also getting featured on EnyoJS.com and this little site as well. So if you've been itching for a reason to do some EnyoJS hacking, well, itch no longer - the Virtual Enyo Hackathon is this weekend, and it's bound to rock. View the full article

Have you ever tried to either purchase or update an app from the App Catalog and you get a "Download failed" error? First, don't panic! Second, don't immediately give the app a 1 star review since it would not download. While these types of errors occasionally occur when downloading apps, especially when updating multiple apps at once, it's usually easy to fix and just requires a little manual intervention. There are actually a few places to perform this fix, either from the Software Manager, on the App description page, or from the error dashboard notification. If you load up the actual App Description page from the App Catalog, you will see "Download failed" where you would normally tap to buy the app along with a yellow error triangle. Tapping on that error will give you the option to try to download the app again or to cancel the download. From the Software Manager app, you can find the failed app with that same yellow error triangle replaced over the version number of the app. Tapping on that error triangle will give you the same options as above to try the download again or to cancel the download Finally, depending on your webOS device and version, tapping on the Download Failed notification will either take you to you to the App Description page or the Software Manager. The just follow the directions above You should first simply "try again" to reinitiate the download. If you still get an error, then select the option to cancel the download and open up the app directly in the App Catalog and try to manually download the app again. If the app still does not download, wait a little while to see if it's simply a glitch on the app catalog server. Finally, if you can not get the app to update regardless of what you do, contact HP/Palm support. Do not contact the developer because they will not be able to support your download Please note that if you had previously installed a paid app from outside of the App Catalog but the developer updates the app in the catalog, you will still receive a notice that the app was updated. However, the app will always fail to download no matter what you do since the app is not listed in your profile as a paid app. If you want the updated version, first delete the app from your device and then purchase it directly in the app catalog. View the full article

There are a great many things you can do wirelessly with the HP TouchPad - heck you can charge the darned thing without plugging it in. But transferring files from your desktop computer to the tablet has always involved either a giving a song-and-dance performance to appease the cloud syncing gods or just plugging in with a Micro-USB cable. We at webOS Nation do a lot of screencapping, and we've taken to just emailing the shots to ourselves as the fastest and simplest method to get the images back-and-forth. "The line must be drawn here! This far, no farther!" said homebrew developer ShiftyAxel - he wanted more wireless. So he whipped up a Samba installer for webOS and put together a the cunningly named app WiFi File Sharing. The app, currently available in the webOS Nation Homebrew Gallery, when opened turns your TouchPad into a local network drive accessible by your computer. Simple as that. Out-of-the-box, WiFi File Sharing is set up to allow access to a newly-created Public folder, though with just a few taps in the Preferences pane you can allow access to the entirety of your USB drive and boot partitions. That's not just browsing access - WiFi File Sharing mounts your TouchPad as a fully-accessible network drive, complete with read and write privileges. All you have to do is have WiFi File Sharing open and in the foreground ("maximized") to maintain the connection. Toss the app away and the connection is automatically terminated. Ideally your computer should be able to automatically the TouchPad right off the bat after installing and launching, but there's always room for finickiness. This is why we're beginning the migration to tablets as everyday devices - they're just nowhere near as finicky. Anyway, on first launch we couldn't get our Mac to notice that there was a fun new network drive to play with. But directing our file browser to connect to the smb://Touchpad/Public server (Go > Connect to Server… (no password) on a Mac, Start > Computer > Map Network Drive for PC) solved the issue handily. Now we're wirelessly slinging files back and forth through the ether, and we find ourselves agreeing with ShiftyAxel - this kind of stuff should be included in webOS. Sure, it's a an advanced feature, but it'd be there to supplement the cloud and cabled options. Either way, WiFi File Sharing and Easy Samba are available now through our Homebrew Gallery, webOS Quick Install, and Preware. Go download it. Now. read more View the full article

With yesterday's release of the Enyo 2.0 UI widgets bringing February's code commitment for Open webOS to a close, it's time now to look forward to March. webOS CTO Sam Greenblatt took to the HP webOS Developer Blog to lay out what we can expect in the month ahead - and it's right as the roadmap said it would be, though fleshed out with som additional detail today. March's release will expand the already-released QtWebKit framework to incorporate Open GL ES and WebGL graphics libraries (the latter having taken far too long to make it on to web-based webOS), 3D audio API OpenAL Soft, and streaming media framework GStreamer. We'll also get our first look at HP's implementation of the Linux Standard Kernel (v 3.3), which they'll be supplementing with a new hardware abstraction layered called "Nyx" that provides access to layers not available through the standard driver set. What exactly Nyx will provide access to (cellular radios? advanced sensors?) isn't clear at this point, but HP's got 31 days to clear that up. Database-wise the Open webOS implementation of LevelDB will be released, as well as the developer-facing MojoDB/DB8 abstraction layer. Lastly, later in the month, we'll see the open sourcing of the Novacom USB driver, which though not yet open source is readily availabile already. View the full article

We're not entirely onboard with Pinterest's pinboard-inspired photo sharing social network, but we can understand why somebody would be. It seems like it might be fun, you know, if we had anything worth sharing. webOS Nation forum member BeckeyJane found herself wanting better (read: any) Pinterest support for her TouchPad, and she found her savior in fellow member and webOS developer hkowalczyk. Mr. Kowalczyk just so happens to have a wife who's also an active Pinterest user, so he created a patch to add "Pin This" to the tap+hold images context menu in the webOS browser. Essentially it's a bookmarklet that throw's that images URL over to Pinterest for pinning on your pinboard (obviously a Pinterest account is required for this to work and be useful). The patch is available right now in the webOS Nation forums - just download it on you computer and install with webOS Quick Install or use Preware or Internalz on your TouchPad. It's pinteresting. View the full article

Part of the joy of apps is that they provide a customized experience for a specific service, quite often providing that service better on a smartphone or tablet than the website itself could. The web by-and-large is built for use with a mouse and a keyboard, not your fingers - and so often we find ourselves using webpages to accomplish things that there just aren't apps around to do. That's not a bad thing, but it can be frustrating on webOS since the browser apps have no password saving capabilities. It's a fairly simple concept (like the scrollbars we looked at earlier today), but it goes a long way towards accelerating the user experience. Cookies expire, preferences get reset. sessions time out, and users simply don't stay logged in to a site. But in a world rife with data security problems, keeping track of all your passwords can be a pain. Sure, there are apps to help with that, but for not-your-bank-account logins, there's often little reason for the browser to not remember your username and password. You can always hit that "no" button if you're really concerned about your password security. 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

The month may be over, but the Mobile Nations quest to use our phones and tablets, apps and accessories to get stronger, faster, and healthier continues! February was fitness month at Mobile Nations, the month we sought to keep our new year's hopes and dreams of thinner waistlines and fitter bodies alive. Week after week we picked reasonable, attainable goals and strove to keep them -- eating less and better, moving farther and more frequently, lifting more than ever before. From Android Central to CrackBerry.com, from iMore to WPCentral to webOS Nation, we checked out all the best ways to use our phones and tablets to improve our mobile lives, and all the top apps and accessories focused on our health and fitness. And you did it right along with us in our forums! So here we are, at the end of the month, having achieved tremendous successes, suffered occasional setbacks, but sticking together and seeing it through. And this is far from the end -- we're going to keep covering eHealth/iHealth and eFitness/iFitness year round. We're also going to focus on health and fitness again, and we're going to bring in some experts to help us bring you even better, more helpful coverage. But for now it's time to enjoy a well deserved break. A cheat meal. A rest between sets. Take a seat, crack open a shake, and relax. Here's your Mobile Nations fitness month round up! read more View the full article

We've all had that moment, where we want to keep that file or photo or video on our device, but we really don't want to be caught having it around (or just can't let it fall into the wrong hands). Natively, there's no way to really hide files on the TouchPad and yet still have them accessible. But with 'Ncognito by Code-Crunch.com you can do just that. The app creates a hidden folder into which you can put pictures, videos, audio files, and documents, all of which are only accessible through 'Ncognito's password-protected interface. The ability to store and hide files with 'Ncognito would normally cost you $0.99, but we just so happen to have 50 copies of it to give away! Contest: We have 50 copies of 'Ncognito 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 3.0.0 or higher with the latest version of the App Catalog. View the full article

This tip is only for devices running webOS 3.0 and higher While you can always view your Facebook photos using the web browser or within the TouchPad's Facebook app, did you know that you can also see all the comments of your pictures directly in the Photos & Videos app on the TouchPad, providing that you have Facebook photos sync enabled?. If you do not have Facebook photos sync enabled, go to the Accounts app and turn it on. Then, just open the Photos & Videos app and find the album that contains the photo and then tap on the photo itself. You will be able to tell it's a Facebook photo album because it has a icon on the album's thumbnail After loading up the photo, you should see the onscreen controls across the bottom of the screen. If you do not see the photo controls, just tap the photo once. On the bottom-right of the screen, you should see a icon that, when tapped, will show you all the comments on that picture along with when the comments was left. You can even add your own right from the app. Note that if you have added multiple Facebook accounts to your TouchPad, there will not be any indicator as to which account the album belongs to. And, if you were to add your own comment to a photo, it will automatically use the account that owns the album. View the full article

Squeaking in just under the February deadline (thank goodness for that extra day, eh?) is the promised release this month for the Enyo 2.0 user interface widgets. The release, as noted on the EnyoJS blog also brings the Enyo framework to beta 2 status, which comes with fuller cross platform support for "a wide range of desktop and mobile browsers, from IE 8 to iOS 5." The UI widgets set takes after the already-established look of webOS 3.0, maintaining the three-dimensional rounded buttons and text fields aesthetic. The only easily discerned difference is in the slider grab handles, which have morphed from virtual slots to more subtle virtual grooves. The new/old look has been dubbed Onyx by the Enyo team - while it may look practically the same, the widgets were built from the ground-up for Enyo 2. This is just the initial release for Onyx, with additional updates to come in the months ahead. If you're wanting to try it out while you're waiting for developers to deploy Enyo 2.0-based apps, they've put together an Onyx Widget sampler that shows how it all looks in your browser (and that's using Enyo 2.0 code to boot). The beta 2 release for Enyo 2 also includes a new layout library meant to help developers build flexible layouts to fit the available space of the screen. Considering that Enyo 2.0 is meant to be deployed across multiple platforms and the web, flexibility will be a key component. With new FittableColumns and FittableRows controls, developers will be able to choose a section of their app to expand and contract to fill available space while the rest maintain their sizing. This is all done with minimal JavaScript and CSS styling limitations for developers - it's highly flexible while also seriously lightweight on the processing front. Apart from layout and UI widgets, the Enyo 2 beta 2 release also includes improved event handling, unstyled base UI controls, and updates to improve performance for Enyo apps on iOS and Android. The Enyo 2.0b2 release is up on GitHub right now - go get it, developers! View the full article

When we were brewing up the idea of doing Mobile Nations Fitness Month at CES this year, I had some reservations. These weren't reservations about doing a fitness month - it seemed like a good idea then and looking back on February it still looks that way. My hesitation was personal. As some of you might be aware, I'm a member of the Ohio Army National Guard, and as part of that job I have to maintain a minimum level of physical fitness, and through the past eight years I've worked to do so. I'll admit to some struggles in that department - I suffer from bouts of lazy and "I don't wanna", but by and large I've been able to stay in relatively good shape, at least well enough to pass an annual Army Physical Fitness Test. There's just one thing: I learned how to exercise from the Army in basic training. I can count on one hand the encounters I had with technology during my nine weeks at Fort Knox during the summer of 2004: the pay phone to call my parents and girlfriend, the little CRT TV that we watched Apocalypse Now on for July 4th, the fancy but faulty nighttime rifle range simulator, and the stopwatch the Drill Sergeants used to time our runs. So I learned to exercise, to do pushups and situps and run two miles without the aid of technology. It was do push-ups until your arms turn to jelly, do sit-ups until you can get your shoulders off the ground, and run until you can't stand. There's no tech needed to do that, and no tech that can help with such a simple routine of "go until you can't go anymore, then do some more." I was seventeen-years-old then, so while I found technology cool, the extent of my collection at that point was a Gateway laptop (chunky, as you would expect for 2004) and a Palm Tungsten T3 PDA (still one of my all-time favorite bits of technology). I still had a film camera (it took me until 2007 to make the jump to digital) and didn't get a cellphone until after basic training - a smartphone took another year after that. And while there were plenty of exercise-tracking technology bits in the mid-2000's, they were almost universally bulky, inaccurate, difficult to use, and of limited usefulness. read more View the full article

One of the things we've been waiting so long for in webOS is something relatively simple, at least conceptually: scrollbars. They've marked your progress down a page in practically every graphical user interface since the dawn of the GUI with Xerox PARC back in the 1970's. But when webOS was introduced in 2009, there wasn't a progress bar in sight. Some third party apps, like the Enyo-based Paper Mache have added in their own scrollbars, and with webOS 3.0.5 the TouchPad browser also picked up its own scrollbar, but by and large webOS has been scrollbar-free. Homebrew developer Isaac Garzon (isagar2004 in our forums) decided to do something about that shortcoming, and the result is a patch oh-so-aptly titled "webOS Scrollbars". Garzon had previously built a patch to add scrollbars to the browser, but with the new patch he's managed to add the scrollbar to most of the built-in webOS apps and practically every third party app. The only exceptions to the built-in apps are five Mojo 2-based apps: Accounts, Contacts, Email, Exhibition and Photos. Everything else we tested, from Calendar to Memos to Web to Music to the other Preferences apps worked exactly as expected. Every third party app we tried out also picked up the scrollbars with no problem, including Music Player (Remix), Carbon, Preware, Feeder, JogStats, and Project Macaw. The patch adds iOS-style scrollbars to Mojo smartphone apps, in that they're round-capped narrow bars that appear as soon as you start scrolling and go away when you stop. The scrollbars also adjust their size to be relative to the ratio of what's currently displayed versus the entire scrollable space. Both vertical and horizontal scrolling are supported, with vertical on the right edge and horizontal at the bottom (but somewhat distractingly floating over bottom-aligned onscreen buttons such as the back and refresh controls in the browser). The bars themselves are colored so that they'll appear equally well in almost all apps, with a transulcent dark gray body rimmed by a one-pixel white border. webOS Scrollbars isn't currently designed to add scrollbars to Enyo apps, though Garzon plans to work on that after finishing up the Mojo implementation. Additionally there's still work to be done as far as getting the scrollbars to be supported in those remaining five apps (if you have any insights to offer, Isaac is listening). But for a work-in-progress we're still plenty impressed and looking forward to what comes next for this patch. Go ahead and check it out in the webOS Nation Forums (patches for webOS 2.1.c and 2.2.x) or in Preware and webOS Quick Install (just webOS 2.2.x) View the full article

Last week as part of Mobile Nations Fitness Month we took a look at Speedy Marks' Workout, an interval training timer app. The gist of interval training is that exercising in bursts of high-intensity instead of a continuous moderate intensity results in a more effective workout. While Workout provides a pretty basic approach to the concept of interval training, A1 Fit Interval Trainer by A1 Development takes comes at it with more customizability information presentation. Upon launch you're presented with a set-up screen asking you to specify your warm-up and cool-down times, how long you'd like each high- and low-intensity period to last, and how many cycles you'd like the app to run you through. Hit the big green start button and you're thrown to the timer screen. There are two countdown timers, with your current period timer at the top and the total time remaining at the bottom. Each is accompanied by a shrinking progress bar, with the period timer's also listing the current activity (warm-up, high intensity, et al). Smack dab in the middle is a count of how many intervals through you are in the workout. Since you're not likely to have your smartphone up by your face when you're working out, A1 Fit has taken a number of steps to help you workout from a distance. There's the large bold text for the timers and the contrast of the progress bars and a loudly repeating chime at the change of each interval. Additionally, the background color changes with each interval, becoming orange for the warmup phase, red for high intensity workouts, green for low intensity, and a cool blue for the cool down period. You can turn off both the chime and the color change if you want to keep things calm. Smartly, A1 Fit also keeps the screen turned on through your workout. It might seem like a simple concept, but proper and consistent timing is important for interval training to be effective. Apps like the $1.49 A1 Fit Interval Trainer aim to make it as easy as possible to do so. View the full article