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Monday Brief: RIM Rollercoaster, EVO LTE Review, iOS 6 Predictions, and More! 2
That 'QuickOffice Beta' update? Don't download it. 9
Way back in October of 2010 we finally got confirmation from HP of the next generation of document handling and editing for webOS: QuickOffice would be shipping with webOS 2.0 in place of Documents to Go, though only as a viewer for Word and Excel files. Editing would come as part of a later update, or at least that's what we were told.
July 2011 brought the release of QuickOffice 2.x for the TouchPad, with an editing version again promised for later, with the clarification that the TouchPad would get a free update, while webOS smartphone users would have to pay for the privilege of editing their own documents. It took a few months, but the editing update for QuickOffice for TouchPad finally arrived in September 2011, though we ended up being disappointed by the final product.
And your webOS 2.x-powered smartphone? When would it get the much-wanted availability of document editing from QuickOffice? Never, it seemed. Today we got a rude, strange, and puzzling reminder of that on our webOS smartphones: an available update to version 1.0.585 of the QuickOffice Beta. It's clearly something that shouldn't be available in the App Catalog, given the Beta tag, the TouchPad screenshot, and the "PALM INTERNAL USE ONLY" description. For comparison's sake, the current version of QuickOffice on both the Pre 2 and Pre3 is 1.0.10, while the HP Veer has the higher-numbered but just-as-feature-lacking version 1.0.696. The TouchPad, meanwhile, is up to version 2.2.247, despite the big-screen screenshots accompanying this weird update.
Clearly, this isn't supposed to be available - the light-gray background you get when you open the update is that of the Beta distribution feed. Why it's showing up as an available update, we're not sure, but we know it's something you shouldn't bother installing. It won't bork your phone, at least not permanently or in a manner that's hard to fix, it just won't do you any good to do so.
If you happen to be of the update zealous type and already hit the download command, only to find that the download failed, QuickOffice no longer works, and the App Catalog is getting wonky on you, never fear, for the fix is easy. Just delete QuickOffice (Opt + tap on the QuickOffice icon, tap Delete) and restart your phone. QuickOffice will be reinstalled from the memory on reboot and everything will be back to normal. At least, it will be once HP makes this faux-update go away and we can get back to using Picsel Smart Office without fear of confusion.
Analyst downgrades HP over mobile concerns 39
Shares of HP were down more than 6% on Friday on a day where the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 2.2%. With no real news to speak of out of Palo Alto, what drove the drop? It was a downgrade of HP's stock by Peter Misek of Jefferies & Co. Misek's been noted a few times in these pages, most notably in March 2010 when he valued Palm's stock at $0.00, and in September of 2011 when he said HP should sell or license webOS to Facebook. Friday brought a note from Jefferies saying that tablets are due to put a major hurting on HP's PC business, and that tablets and smartphones combined are lowering printing demand - something HP's well aware of.
If only HP had a mobile operating system all their own that they could use for a line of smartphones and tablets…
Source: The New York Times; Via: webOS Nation Forums
Former HP CEO Leo Apotheker joins board of French IT company Steria 35
Sometimes we're privileged to watch somebody go down in flames. If you're watching from the outside, it can be pretty amusing. If you've got chips in the game, it's galling and terrifying. But typically, you never expect to see that person again. It's a combination of stigma amongst those who watched it happen, and what we imagine would be utter embarrassment of the fallen.
Not so for former HP CEO Leo Apotheker. After his eleven month reign of terror at the head of the world's largest technology company, Apotheker got the boot in favor of board member and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman. It wasn't until later that we saw just how much of a disaster HP was internally under Apotheker, though we saw plenty of the external signs. Apotheker went down in the kind of flames that made the reentry of Mir look like a kid with a sparkler running around in the back yard on the Fourth of July. He's the guy we though we would never ever see or hear from again, especially following his move back to France.
Nope. We were wrong. So very wrong. Leo's back. French IT company Steria appointed Apotheker and Laetitia Puyfaucher to their board last month, making the announcement today. In addition to her new position with Steria, Puyfaucher is the co-founder and chairwoman of global communications agency WordAppeal. Apotheker, we know him too well. Steria General Manager François Enaud, well, we're not going to judge him too harshly, because we really know nothing about him (or really Steria, for that matter), but he might not know Apotheker that well...
"Given the widespread changes underway in our industry, Leo's expertise in strategic planning and Laetitia's in image development will be precious assets for our group."
Maybe they don't get CNBC in France?
AIOSettings homebrews together a unified System Preferences app for TouchPad 8
We wrote about it in a webOS Wish List entry a few months back, and today it's reality. Thanks to homebrew developer Garrett92C, the unified System Preferences app finally exists for TouchPad users. Dubbed AIOSettings (All-In-One-Settings), the Enyo-based app simply takes the seventeen separate Preferences apps and loads them up in a two-column layout.
On the left you'll find a scrolling alphabetical list of the formerly separate Preferences apps. On the right, your selected Preferences screen. It's as simple as that. AIOSettings works in both landscape and portrait orientations, though if you find yourself wanting additional horizontal real estate you can collapse the list column down to just the icons to view the full-width of your selected Preferences screen. It helps that when laying out the Preferences apps for webOS 3.0, HP purposefully made them narrower than was necessary for the 1024x768 screen of the TouchPad, perhaps with this express purpose in mind. Also, it's worth noting that right now a few of the preference screens (Bluetooth, Print Manager, Software Manager, Text Assist, and VPN) don't open in AIOSettings and instead open in a separate card, but they do at least stack with the origin card. It's a known issue, and one we're sure will be addressed in due time. Before you get worried, AIOSettings does not replace or alter your existing Preferences apps, they're all still there and they all still work.
Like practically all homebrew development for webOS, Garrett92C has done this out of his love for the operating system and is providing AIOSettings free-of-charge. You can grab it now from the webOS Nation Homebrew Gallery or via our feeds in Preware and WebOS Quick Install. If you're finding yourself approving of Garrett92C's work (and you should be finding yourself approving), then we might recommend you show your appreciation with a quick donation as a "thank you" for the work.
PreDoodle - WebOS S.O.S. 2
After everything that's happened, we still seem to keep afloat...
Hide Glimpse's widget selector toolbars 0
Glimpse by Inglorious Apps is an app that bring multitasking to a whole new level on your TouchPad, literally allowing you to run multiple mini-apps (called "widgets") by splitting the screen into panes and letting you determine which widget you want to run in each frame. While you have a large number of widgets that you can choose from along with a multiple ways to customize the frames on the screen, you may find yourself always using the same widgets and want to remove the widget selector toolbar on the bottom of each frame. Luckily, there is an option in the app preferences that will allow you to hide those toolbars, but at the cost of not being able to change your widgets (unless you reactivate those toolbars again in the future).
All you need to do is swipe-down from the top-left within Glimpse, select "Preferences" and then go to the "Appearance" tab on the top. From here, just toggle the "WIDGET TOOLBAR VISIBILITY" to Yes or No depending on if you want to see or hide that toolbar, respectively. Then just press the "Done" button on the top-left to return to the app.
Glimpse is available in the webOS App Catalog for $4.99 and is compatible with the HP TouchPad running webOS 3.0 or higher
Former HP CTO Phil McKinney taking over CableLabs as the President and CEO 7
At HP, Phil McKinney served as the Chief Technology Officer and was responsible for driving innovation across the company's product platform. As such, he was a pretty big fan and supporter of webOS after HP's purchase of Palm. Even though he wasn't directly involved, you might say he was the cheerleader in chief. He was a force within the organization, though the changes that struck HP over the past few years clearly were starting to wear on the man. By the end of 2011, McKinney had retired from HP, setting out to work on his first book and spending more time working on personal projects.
Six months later, things are changing again for McKinney, with his new appointment as President and CEO of CableLabs. If you follow the television news space, you might have a passing familiarity with CableLabs as the not-for-profit research-and-development organization funded by the cable companies. McKinney's innovation and creativity-driven philosophy will fit in perfectly at CableLabs, whose on mission is to drive innovation in the television space. CableLabs has been responsible for DOCSIS internet, CableCard and Tru2way, and other "that's awesome!" innovations that the cable companies stomp out for fear of jeopardizing the precious control over the end user (you). We could go and on about how the cable companies quash and handicap a lot of the innovation that comes out of CableLabs (for instance, CableCard was supposed to allow you to plug a simple PC Card - remember those? - size card into the back of your TV and get full cable access without needing a stupid box and another remote, but that never went anywhere), but that's for another blog at another time...
We wish Phil all the best luck at CableLabs - it should be a good fit for the man who brought HP the BlackBird and FireBird desktops, the Envy laptops, and fancy-pants flexible displays.
Source: CableLabs; Via: Phil McKinney
App Giveaway: 50 copies of ToodleTasks Phone Edition 204
Earlier this month we brought the glorious news that the ToodleDo task manager client ToodleTasks had been brought down from the TouchPad's big screen to our more pocketable webOS smartphones. The app, dubbed ToodleTasks Phone Edition by developer ProdiSoft, uses the same Enyo application framework and interface scheme as its bigger brother, but does so on the smaller screen. ToodleTasks Phone Edition can be had for $3.99 from the App Catalog, but fifty lucky versions of you stand a chance at winning a copy for free!
Contest: We have 50 copies of ToodleTasks Phone Edition to give away. Just leave a comment on this post to enter. Contest ends next Wednesday 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 2.1.0 or higher with the latest version of the App Catalog.
Phoenix looking to rise from the ashes of webOS 39
We've said it many times over the past six months since HP announced their intentions to open source webOS: open source is not a plan. Once the software is out there… then what? It's a question we've been asking for a while, and we've been hearing you ask the same one. HP CEO Meg Whitman said that they'll eventually make new webOS tablets, but we haven't heard anything since, and it doesn't seem like webOS is really a big priority for HP.
So what's an enterprising webOS fan to do? Take matters into their own hands, that's what. That's part of the beauty of open source: once it's out there, anybody can do whatever they want with the code. So a group of webOS fans - developers, designers, and engineers - formed a group they've named Phoenix International Communications.
The goals of Phoenix are both simple and attainable while also complex and ambitious. Unlike some of the other noise that's been made recently about webOS devices, Phoenix is taking a slow-and-steady approach and focusing initially on porting Open webOS (once it's out in full in August) to existing devices - not just webOS devices, we would assume. And they're not just going to take Open webOS and throw it onto other devices, as anybody with minimal skill could figure that out, no, Phoenix wants to improve upon webOS with new features and fixes. Long term, the folks at Phoenix hope to be able to bring new webOS-specific devices to market, but that's a ways off and dependent upon things like money. We've talked with Phoenix about their plans, and while there's plenty that they can't share at this point, we're confident that they're being realistic and optimistic about their goals here.
Right now Phoenix consists of a small team, but they're looking to expand. Developers and engineers might be able to make devices work, but in the end they still need designers, marketers, accountants, sales representatives, and the like to actually get their work out to the public. You could say that Phoenix is hiring, but in reality their hope for expansion at this point rests on volunteers. And what better place to pick up a few genius collaborators than webOS Nation? If you're finding yourself interested in pitching in for the Phoenix webOS effort, hit up the source link below.
