Articles
App Review: Atlantis Sky Patrol HD 11
You rmission, should you choose to accept it to save the world be defusing doomsday devices discovered in cities around the globe. You're the best pilot in the Air Force, you know it, the General knows it, and the President knows it. You are the leader of the elite Atlantis Sky Patrol, and your course of action is to match moving balls and solve puzzles.
webOS Nation Store, now shipping Pre and TouchPad accessories to more countries worldwide for less! 7
Since webOS Nation launched more than a decade ago as Visor Central, two of the most frequently asked questions we receive from visitors outside of the United States is "When will the webOS Nation Store ship to my country?", and in the case where we do ship to that country, "Why is it so #&@% expensive to ship to my country?"
Today I'm happy announce we've finally improved the service offering in our US-based the webOS Nation Store to much better support our international customers! We've also rolled out free shipping to AFP/FPO destinations around the globe.
To our international customers - thanks for the patience. And thanks for the ongoing support. Now keep reading for all the details!
Recovery from 0% battery bug 26
Have you ever been using your webOS phone, browsing the web or playing a game, knowing that you had plenty of battery left and then all of a sudden the battery level drops to 0%? And then shortly afterwards, the phone shuts down because it thinks there is no battery left even though you know it has plenty of juice in there? While this bug doesn't hit often (and seemingly most often on a Pre3), it seems to rear its ugly head at the worst possible times just when you need your phone most. The good news is that there is a rather simple fix for this, the bad news is that it may be a bit inconvenient for you.
Actually, the simplest way to fix this is to swap out the battery with a spare, if you have one. If you don't have an extra battery with you, all you need to do is plug in your device to a power source and leave it plugged in for a bit until the device recalibrates the battery to the correct level. Once your phone turns back on, it will still only show a low battery level, typically under 5%. But if you keep the phone charging, it will eventually jump back up to its "correct" levels. It may slowly charge up to 20% after 10 minutes and then jump to 90%, or it may take 20 minutes and then go back to 100%, or it may only take 5 minutes, but eventually it will return to normal. Here's just hoping that the next time this happens you are close enough to a power outlet to charge up your phone, otherwise you will have a nice paperweight that you get to carry around for a bit.
If you get this issue often and you have a phone other than the Veer or Pre3, you can also try to use the calibration tool within the homebrew app Dr. Battery (available in Preware or webOS Quick Install) to try and recalibrate your battery. Unfortunately, the Veer and Pre3 is not compatible with Dr. Battery.
Enyo 2 officially out of beta and available to the masses 11
Break out the cigars and pop the champagne because Enyo 2 is finally out of beta and available to the masses! We last reported on Enyo 2's beta progress way back in March where Beta 3 delivered sliders and progress bars to the Onyx user interface within Enyo. Since then the Enyo crew has been hard at work to get the framework out of beta and available to the public despite losing a handful of team members.
"So what's new?", you ask. Well first up they have added several new Onyx widgets. Now a handy developer can make use of Menu, Picker, Tooltip, Tree, Drawer, Scrim, and “MoreToolbar,” a responsive toolbar that adapts to different screen widths from the Onyx widgets library. Next up there is a snazzy new Enyo 2 sampler to help those interested familiarize themselves with what Enyo 2 has to offer. Last but certainly not least, there is a new contributor process that will allow code contributors to be able to submit larger quantities of code while keeping the codebase Apache 2.0-compatible. Oh and before we forget, the Enyo website has received a sexy new makeover!
We know that is a lot for the layman to take in but ultimately it means that Enyo 2 is ready to roll. Whereas Enyo in its birth was built around the TouchPad, Enyo 2.0 is platform agnostic and will allow developers to use it regardless of the platform they wish to code for. It makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside that Enyo will carry on the web-centric legacy of webOS regardless of the fate of our most loved mobile OS. So in essence a little piece of webOS will always live on so long as developers take to Enyo which we have a hunch they will.
Source: The Enyo Blog
webOS Community Edition gets card stack management that makes sense 28
How do we love the work going into improving the open source webOS Community Edition? Let us count the ways… While we're counting, we're going to direct you to the video above, posted by Andrew Holbrook (the same guy who whipped up the tabbed card stacks) is another improvement to LunaSysMgr, this time making it a whole hell of a lot quicker to manage your card stacks. The alteration makes it possible to hold a stack with one finger and use the other hand to drag an outside card into it. You can also do the opposite, holding the stack and dragging off a card, but here's where things get awesome: grab two cards in the middle of a stack and pull them apart to split the stack. We know, right!
So yeah, we're excited to see this and other improvements we haven't yet conjured in our heads brought to the Community Edition and can't wait until it's ready to be installed on our TouchPads. We're also just plain happy to see a better way to manage card stacks. As much as we love the concept, we could never quite the the hang of the slow drag to move a card into a stack and the seeming surgical precision that it took to get the card place in the stack where you wanted it. This modification looks to make things quite a bit easier.
Source: Andrew Holbrook (Twitter)
App Review: StyleTap Platform for Android 5
Editor's Note: Yes, this is for Android, no it won't work on your webOS device. But there are still some Palm OS users out there - this is for them.
Those of us who have been PDA and smartphone users for enough years likely spent at least some time in the PalmOS world. For me, that lasted from 1996 and my first Pilot 1000 through the TX I used until getting my Palm Pre in 2009, an almost 13-year run. Over that time, I accumulated a large number of applications, and PalmOS-formatted files, that have been all but unusable since I left the platform behind, especially after MotionApps dropped support for the PalmOS emulator Classic that shipped with the initial webOS devices. While most features and programs from PalmOS are available in more modern operating systems, a few are either no longer supported, or just not as well-designed as they were for PalmOS, and there are also some legacy applications (particularly custom business apps) that are still in use and needed in the real world.
In response, StyleTap has long offered its eponymous PalmOS emulator platform, which allows installation and running of PalmOS applications on mobile devices including Windows Mobile, Symbian OS, iOS and now Android 2.0 or later with StyleTap Platform for Android. Unfortunately, the application (including both desktop and device components) costs a whopping $49.95, the same price StyleTap charges for its other platforms, putting it out of range of most casual or nostalgic users. With my irony meter at 11, I downloaded and installed the demo to my brand-new Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III, to which I had already installed Access’ Graffiti (another PalmOS legacy that remains among the fastest and best handwriting recognition and text entry methods around). Note that, while StyleTap offers a downloadable installer for Windows which sets up the app installation program and detects an Android device connected in either USB media device (MTP) or camera (PTP) mode, it is unable (at least as yet) to install the emulator itself to the device. To do that, I had to manually download the .apk, move it to my GSIII via USB connection, and install it myself.
Contest Reminder: Win a Mobile Nations dream device of YOUR choice! 5
The Mobile Nations team is celebrating the first birthday of the Monday Brief, and we want to hook a lucky winner up with their dream device. We're not just going to have a regular old "post a comment and win" type giveaway this time. Instead, we're recruiting YOU to help us revamp and refresh the Monday Brief intro. Have you been lusting after the Samsung Galaxy S III? How about the new iPad? Or perhaps you've been anxiously awaiting the next round of Windows Phone 8 devices or are holding out for BlackBerry 10? Well this is your chance to win one of those dream devices!
Over the years we've seen some pretty crazy entries for video contests here at Mobile Nations (Kevin often brings up a certain Pudding Wrestling in Time Square CrackBerry video), but we want to top them all, so we're gonna make this the best video contest Mobile Nations has ever had! Seriously, we want to you see you all get creative, get crazy and show us your passion to help. Let's have a look at what you could win:
- GRAND PRIZE: One (1) phone, tablet, or gadget you've read about on Mobile Nations websites, valued at up to $600 USD
- Runners Up: We'll hook you up with some awesome stuff. Either a coupon to one of the stores, some swag or something else you'll love. Don't worry, if we use your intro on a Monday Brief, we'll give you recognition and a nice little reward.
Once again, this is a video contest -- you'll have to get creative and assemble your most creative, funny, or just plain insane version of Ashley's weekly introduction to the Monday Brief. If you're not sure what part that is, watch the beginning of the show. Jump below to get the full details on how to enter and check out the rules, you'll need to follow them accordingly.
App Giveaway: 100 copies of TaskMasterHD 281
If there's one thing we seem to have plenty of on webOS, it's task apps. Partly that's arisen from the complete lack of a Tasks app built-in to webOS 3.0 on the TouchPad, but it's also partly from the fact that we all have different ways of managing our tasks, and if a developer's into that (seems a lot of them are), why not make an app that works the way they do? So here's another option for your task management: TaskMasterHD by Rahisi. Based around the Get Things Done concept, TaskMasterHD allows for near complete list customizations, with categorization, task status, due dates and reminders, owners, costs, theming, and even built-in print support. Sound like your cup of tea? Good, because we've got 100 copies to give away!
Contest: We have 100 copies of TaskMasterHD 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 100 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.
Remote access your TouchPad files with Gemini File Manager 7
Gemini File Manager, by Oma Studios, is a fully featured File Manager that allows you to access to your TouchPad's USB drive, giving you the ability to copy, move, delete and view all your files. It also offers a whole lot more than that, such as hooks into Dropbox and Box.net to access all your files in those services. But what you may not be aware of is that it also has a "Remote" feature that lets you browse all your files from any devices connected to the same Wi-Fi network that has a web browser, including other webOS phones or TouchPads. From there, you can download or view any file, all wirelessly, while still having full access to your TouchPad (unlike when plugging it in to your computer and accessing USB mode)
To access Remote mode, just open up Gemini, tap the "Remote" tab on the top of the screen, and then press the "Start Server" button (if desired, you can change the Port as well). Once you tap that button, a web address will be given to you that will allow you to access your files. Once you are done, simply tap the "End Service" button.
Note that there is no security options for accessing your files once you start the remote server. So, make sure that you are aware of who else may be on the same Wi-Fi network and who may know the IP address for your device.
Gemini File Manager is available in the webOS App Catalog for $2.99 and is compatible with all webOS devices running webOS 3.0 or higher.
Monday Brief: Editor-In-Chiefs Best Of 0
