Author: Robert Werlinger

Thanks to the hard work of the crew over at the webOS-Internals group, the thought of having to remove and reinstall all of your patches every time there’s a webOS update will now bring a nostalgic tear to your eye.  The Auto Update Patch Technology, released last night, changes the way that existing scripts detect the files that are already modified by a patch, meaning that once you install patches with AUPT, you’ll no longer have to run the the Emergency Patch Recovery tool before or after a webOS update.

All you have to do to benefit from AUPT is simply to install the updated version of your patches from Preware.  While the "update-all" feature should work smoothly in most cases, there are still a few bugs to be noted.  From egaudet in the forum thread:

There are some known bumps in Preware’s update-all, but no major roadblocks. The known issues and workarounds for them are:

 1) It will stop when trying to update a dependent package. The workaround here is to remove patches that depend on another patch or package that has an update. For instance the uscl memos patch depends on universal command line patch. The update all will fail when it gets to these patches, and you can workaround that by removing the uscl memos patch and then re-running update all.

2.) When the "install" part of the remove/install update process for a patch fails, Preware’s installed list doesn’t refresh automatically so the failed patch still lists on the update screen as installed. You can workaround this by updating feeds or tapping "remove" on the left-over package in Preware

This is another one of those "kind of a big deal" updates to come from the Internals collective, as I know that I’m not the only one who doesn’t enjoy the process of repatching every time there’s an OTA update (we’re at what, 9 updates at this point?).  So if you dig their work, go ahead and show the developers that bring you this patching goodness some love and hit the donate button – you know you want to.

For further discussion and for answers to any questions you may have, the folks that brought you AUPT have  a thread in the webOS Patches forum.

Thanks to dbsooner for the tip!

Attention developers and consumers with money to burn: Palm has expanded its online store to include the sale of phones without contract. As expected, the phones are still locked to their respective carriers, but it doesn’t take a stretch of the imagination to envision Palm selling the GSM variants of its phones through their online store after they finally launch on AT&T.  As far as price is concerned, expect to pay the same amount to Palm as you would to the respective carriers for the phone without contract – $599 and $549 for the Pre on Verizon and on Sprint, and $399 on both carriers for the Pixi.

And back to that bit about developers: while we wait for an unlocked GSM developer phone to be announced by Palm (MWC, anyone?), remember that the folks over at webos-internals have developed a tool called MetaDoctor that allows any webOS phone to run without having been activated on a cell network – even CDMA phones bought directly from Palm.  Sure, you’ll be relegated to using WiFi and WiFi only, but it’s still an actual device you get to hack and develop on. Hey Palm – helping developers skip this MetaDoctor step would be nice, you know?

Thanks to @webos_school for the tip!

 Here’s some of the latest talk in the forums:

• It’s almost D-day for the release of webOS 1.4, and forum members are hazarding a guess as to exactly what day in February we’ll see the update pushed out. Hop in and hedge your bets.  
• Don’t forget that Señor iPhone (Renee Rene Ritchie from The iPhone Blog) has a thread asking you about your thoughts on webOS during week 5 of the SmartPhone Round Robin. Pop in, share your thoughts, and even win the webOS powered phone you’ve always wanted.
• Who would have thought a few months back that we’d be seeing threads about how to beat the latest 3D games in the forums? Well, the future is here, and Trick504 wants to know the best way to beat Drift Mode in Need For Speed. (I do too)
• Patching our phones is a favorite pastime here at PreCentral, and forum member CdRsuLL wants to know which patch is your favorite.  One of my favorites is 4×4 Icons v2, which is usually the first patch I install on an un-patched phone. You? 
• If you’re one of those webOS users who feels that the auto correct implementation is somewhat lacking, developer rhong has a great solution over in the Homebrew forum that allows you to modify the built-in auto correct dictionary to your heart’s content.
• BlackBerry defector OmniMaxus shares their experience switching from RIM’s platform to the Pixi: “This phone was everything that the Blackberry was not – modern, smart, and “with it.” So now I lay my Blackberry to rest and begin my mobile life anew with the Pixi.” Are you a BlackBerry expatriate or contemplating becoming one? Go ahead and share your experience. 

We look forward to seeing you in the forums! (Remember: registration is free, and the benefits of doing so are immense indeed.)

Guitarists know that a reference book as pocketable as your phone is invaluable. Bonus if that guide is actually in your phone. Enter Guitarist’s Reference Pro ($2.99 in the App Catalog), a robust reference program that enables musicians to look up any chord, scale, note or arpeggio imaginable (and even tune their instruments) right from their webOS powered phone.

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 For the first time since being released back in June of ’09, people in the States will  soon have more than one carrier to choose from when looking for webOS powered phones. The Plus variant of the the Pre and Pixi are slated for release on the 25th of this month on Verizon, and we know that a launch on AT&T can’t be too far behind. Both Verizon and AT&T have recently made some significant modifications to their phone plans, making it a little confusing for those in the market for a new Palm phone, so big ups to BillShrink for compiling a comprehensive (and we do mean comprehensive) comparison of the major US carriers’ phone plans.

The basic story is this: Voice + Text + Unlimited Data for the three carriers breaks down thusly:

Sprint wins on nights and weekends (theirs start at 7pm instead of 9) and mobile-to-mobile too (Verizon and AT&T are in-network only). Sprint also tends to be the cheapest of the three for family plans, as well.

Even though the Palm Pre Plus is the bees’ knees, the original Palm Pre is still great, so the above chart combined with signal quality in your area is what you should be using to decide between Sprint, Verizon, and (future) AT&T. Anybody out there swayed to switch?

[via gigaom]

RSS readers are already a dime a dozen in the Catalog, and it’s only the beginning – Palm opened the flood gates at CES 2010, allowing any and all developers to submit their wares on Palm’s virtual shelves. Feeds ($4.99) by Delicious Morsel of Twee fame is a fully featured RSS reader that integrates into your Google Reader account. Feeds offers functionality that others don’t such as the ability to download articles for reading when you’re without connectivity, but do these features justify the rather steep asking price?

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There will continue to be a market for desktop sync software, even in the days of mobile cloud computing that are being ushered in by likes of Palm and webOS.

Count me in.  Call me paranoid, but I still use a desktop mail client on a day to day basis, primarily for archival purposes. Sure, Google and Palm both have massive server farms, and much of my important PIM data is backed up into the cloud automatically every night. The thing is, I really like having an offline backup of everything, because as we’ve seen in the last few months, some of the big players in cloud computing aren’t exactly impervious to losing our data.  And it’s not like everyone want’s all of their PIM data in the cloud. 

Mark/Space’s The Missing Sync is one such program that caters to the “I’d like to sync to my desktop” crowd, allowing for the synchronization of your contacts and calendars to various desktop mail clients on both the Pre and the Pixi, in addition to media like music, videos, and more. 

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Here’s some of the what’s being discussed in the forums:

• CES may be last week’s news, but the tech press weren’t the only ones there, and PreCentral reader mrkalel snapped some sweet pictures of the Palm lounge and the new Pre and Pixi Plus.
• The Smartphone Round Robin is in its fourth week, and Nokia Expert’s Matthew Miller has a thread asking all about webOS. Pop in and let him know what you think, and remember: there’s always the possibility of winning the webOS powered phone of your dreams.
• Wondering about NES emulation on your Pre or Pixi? We know that there are instructions on how to get it up and running over at webOS Internals, and now KalemSoft is talking about their latest offering in the webOS Apps and Software forums that requires 100% less rooting.
• From time to time the Pre is known to get stuck in headset mode, and user Syphon has discovered a quick and easy fix to get things back to normal 
• Thrifty folks are comparing Sprint and Verizon smartphone plans as the release of the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus rapidly approaches, and forum member ksom wonders if the the extra RAM and storage of the Pre Plus justifies Big Red’s more expensive plans
• So, you’ve got your new Pre and you’re wondering how to protect your new investment. Good news: Hook_em has a glowing review of the Seidio Innocase in the accessory forum, summarizing "In my experience, the Innocase definitely increased the ‘feel’ of the phone regarding build quality" 

We look forward to seeing you in the forums! 

I’m always on the search for tools that will help me to better manage my time, as effective time management is critical to being as productive as possible throughout the day. The use of a superphone smartphone helps to aid in this task and it makes sense – it’s the one device you keep with you nearly 24/7, and its usually the one screen that you check more often than any other.

We took a look at the TimeTracker time management application last year in our App Spotlight series, and were thoroughly impressed with how easy it made managing tasks and projects, how it presented the tracked data, and how easy exporting that data for use in spreadsheet programs was. TimeBits ($3.99 in the App Catalog) has been on my radar for awhile now, so it made sense to delve into the other time management/tracking application currently available to webOS to see how it compares to one of our favorites. 

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It’s only been a few days since Palm opened the proverbial flood gates of Apps with the launch of their new web distribution program at CES this year, and a lively ecosystem is already beginning to sprout up around it: We have our own App Catalog viewer in glorious beta form here at PreCentral, we know that Preware will soon be able to tap in to the app feeds provided by Palm, and now the very first on-device web only app viewer has gone live in the official App Catalog. AppScoop! (free) allows for the viewing of all of the non-reviewed web only applications (all 17 of them, at this point). Tapping on one of the listed apps allows you to read descriptions, view thumbnails, and even install the application directly to your phone just like Palm’s own ProjectAppetite demo allows you to do.

It’s pretty impressive to see an application like this appear in Palm’s official app store, and I think that the rollout of their distribution program in earnest hasn’t been on the radar of the media as much as it should be thus far – it’s a pretty big deal indeed.

Google has updated Reader for mobile with a slew of snazzy features, according to the company’s Google Reader blog.  The interface is improved overall, and the laundry list of new features includes:

• Support for "liking", tagging, and sorting feeds by oldest and newest
• A More/Less feature to reduce clutter
• Updates to the header bringing it into line with the likes of Gmail and Calendar
• The addition of a new drop-down menu
• A new "Recommended Sources" section

If you haven’t been to the mobile site for awhile because you’ve been using the likes of Scoop or Feeds, it’s definitely worth a visit to check out the new enhancements as the new version is much more pleasant to use – which is a good thing, since we need to pop in from time to time to manage our feeds when we’re away from the desktop.

When the Pre Plus was announced during Palm’s CES presentation (you were reading our live coverage of the event, right?), a few key enhancements were detailed, namely the doubling of the Flash memory 16GB and the addition of  "twice the internal memory".  An educated guess on how much RAM the Pre Plus will sport  led us to the 512MB number, and it has now been confirmed: the Plus version will indeed have an impressive 512MB of RAM when it launches on Verizon on the 25th,  as evidenced by the somewhat difficult to read screenshot above supplied by sirbowen1982 in the forums. 

We know that 512MB of RAM will allow the Pre Plus to launch more cards and we expect it’ll help the occasional PDK app – but unless we’re wildly off the extra RAM shouldn’t speed things up as a whole. That should help ease the pain for Sprint customers. Future Verizon customers, however, we’re curious: how excited are you about that extra 256?

A few months ago we were laughing at/with Palm investor Roger McNamee after his All Things D interview with Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg. And this year at CES, Palm saw fit to send just CEO Jon Rubinstein into the gauntlet, and even in the face of what some may call some rather nonsensical and unnecessarily combative and prying questioning from Swisher alone, he held up well. Sure, Swisher wanted to know what’s coming next, but Rubinstein would have nothing of it and refused to divulge any new details. That said, there were still some interesting things to take away from the interview, like Rubinstein’s admission of having never used an iPhone.

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 We’ve already seen a demo from Adobe that showed us some of what’s possible with Flash 10.1 on webOS, and they’ve released another video showcasing the gaming capabilities we’ll see when the software becomes available. It’s slick stuff: double tapping on a flash element makes it go full screen as if you were using a native application, and the Pre appears to be running 3 browser cards with a Flash element quite effortlessly. So not only do we have access to excellent 3D games like Need For Speed thanks to the Plug-in Development Kit, we’ll soon have access the hundreds of thousands of Flash based games out there. 

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

When Adobe Flash 10.1 comes the way of webOS in February, a whole new world of interactive content is going to be opened up to Pre and Pixi users.  Fierce Wireless is reporting that Sling Media, the company behind SlingPlayer, has announced a collaboration with Adobe to support the Flash streaming protocols for the "smooth streaming of H.264 audio and video", meaning that any device supporting Flash 10.1 (that’ll be you webOS users out there soon enough) will be able to run the full SlingPlayer application. 

Now we wait for 1.4 and the Flash Player Beta to land in the App Catalog. We’ll be playing some Need for Speed while we wait. You?

We’re still roaming the show floor, hunting down what webOS news we can find – meanwhile our forums are afire with talk of the new 3D apps. This app review is brought to you by forum member FiXXXerX.  

So here we are, hours after the CES Press conference with a series of new apps that have been released by some fairly high profile companies, a first for WebOS and a much needed boost to the App Catalog. Today I will be reviewing Need For Speed – Undercover. In case you’ve been living under a rock that has been hidden in a cave for the past decade you most likely know what Need For Speed is, however, for those of you that have only recently emerged I’ll give you an overview of what your looking at here. The Need For Speed (Or NFS for short) franchise from Electronic Arts is all about taking a stock production car and personalizing it per your taste and then driving it… fast. This personalization includes performance tweaks and visual modifications and then going out and establishing yourself as a dominant racer in a number of different scenarios. The game we’re looking at today has you going Undercover (As the title suggests) and racing against all sorts of nasty-for-no-reason thugs who apparently spend a majority of their time street racing… in fact, just imagine Fast and The Furious with less plot and your in the right zone, so lets get into it…

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The front page is one of the best ways keep on top of the latest Palm related news and the forums are one of the best places to talk about such things with your fellow enthusiasts.  The PreCentral forums are a bustling place indeed, and you can find many topics being discussed there, from the latest rumors to the latest hacks and the greatest apps.  Here’s some of the what’s being discussed, in the forums:

• Sprint users: feeling sore that Verizon getting the Pre and Pixi plus only 7 short months after the initial launch of the Pre?  Join others in the conversation here.
• The forums are alight with CES talk, and folks are pouring over the coverage of Palm’s presentation yesterday.  There’s discussion of the upcoming features we’ll see in webOS 1.4, and since CES is far from being over, there’s talk of what else might come the way of webOS during the course of the trade show.
• People are getting creative with accessories, and enterprising individuals are talking about the best way to integrate their touchstone charges into the dashboard of their vehicles.
• For those GSM bound Pre users among you, don’t fret – there’s a forum for that.
• Leathal over in the webOS Development forum has posted a handy guide that’ll help you get your tether on.
• The developers of some of your favorite programs maintain a sub forum in our webOS Developer forums – hit ‘em up and give ‘em some love and feedback.  You can find the likes of Keen Studios (Checkers Pro), Canuck Software (webOS Quick Install) , webOS Internals (Preware), and many more who are eager to hear from you.

We’ll see you in the forums!

Happy new year from everyone here at PreCentral! It’s been roughly a year since PreCentral was launched, and Palm and webOS have really come a long way since  their announcement at CES 2009 – Jon Rubinstein has become Palm’s CEO, the App Catalog has finally come out of beta, a vibrant homebrew community has sprung up, another webOS based handset has been launched, and much more.

As you’re recovering from your night of fun in whatever form it might have come in (champagne to the tune The Final Countdown at midnight here), you’ll be delighted to know that the Catalog has officially hit 1000 apps.  There are a few gems in the latest update that hit last night, most notably Foursquare in glorious beta form and a new native webOS application from one of our favorite tech blogs, Engadget. 

Here’s to you, PreCentral members and readers. Here’s to you, webOS developers and homebrewers. It would hardly be worth having a Pre without ya. Cheers!

The App Catalog has seen impressive growth since it first went live a little over 6 months ago.  Palm’s Early Access program brought in dozens of developers who have created over 1,000 applications in that time frame, and while we don’t have access to as many apps as other smartphone platforms do, there are a number of high quality ones that fit into all of the important categories.

With that in mind, we’ve created a list of the must have applications that have come our way in 2009.  If you’re new to webOS (you should also see our getting started guide), or have been with the platform for awhile and are unaware of how the Catalog has grown over these last few months, this is a guide for you.

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The webOS 1.3.5 update is a gift that just keeps on giving.  In addition to a rather lengthy changelog that lists the removal of the app limit and the ability to download updates over a 2G connection amongst other notable improvements, folks are finding a slew of undocumented changes.

The latest discovery, a playable 3D Demo utilizing JavaScript and the HTML5 Canvas tag that hadn’t worked on webOS until after the 1.3.5 update, comes from Zoen22 in our forums.  While the framerate isn’t great and you have to turn your phone sideways while navigating with the keyboard, it’s a playable 3D level taking place entirely in the phone’s browser, and that’s pretty slick.

It looks like Palm is brewing a perfect storm (hello, OpenGL)  for an announcement on expanded gaming capabilities for webOS at their CES presentation in a little over a week. It’s starting to look like I may very well be eating crow come January 7th.

Thanks to windzilla for the tip!