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one step technologyApp Review: Taurus
We can all agree that the hallmark, the crown feature, of the webOS platform is its unmatched multitasking user interface. There's simply no equal to its prowess. webOS also has been one of the leading platforms for Twitter clients, though that perhaps hasn't been as evident lately. For years webOS has had some of the best Twitter clients in the mobile space, and while many have fallen behind, there are always a few more coming up and ready to take their place, and thankfully they keep spoiling us with quality user interfaces and beautiful design. The latest entrant takes after the conventions of incredible!, bringing a new unified social networking experience to the TouchPad: Taurus.
This new social app by OMA Studios has hit the webOS App Catalog, bringing a single-app multi-pane social networking experience unlike that offered by other apps. While incredible! seeks to integrate your networks into one stream like webOS tries to integrate your contacts and calendars, Taurus brings them into one app, but keeps them segmented so that even more dissimlar social network and systems can join the mix. A full Taurus cocktail can contain Google Reader feeds, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook streams, YouTube subscriptions, and your ToodleDo tasks. It's one heck of a cocktail.
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Type to search your Photo galleries [webOS Phones]
This tip is only for webOS phones
If you have multiple photo galleries on your webOS device, it can be a pain to have to scroll through all of them every time to find the one you are looking for. Luckily, you can use the keyboard to quickly search through the list of galleries just as you would do search your emails or memos. From within the Photos app or any app that uses the standard webOS photo picker, you can simply just start typing to filter your gallery listing. You can perform the search using any word within the gallery name, but it has to be at the start of the word. For example, a gallery named "Miscellanous webOS Photos" can be found by searching for "Misc" or "web" or "Phot" but not the "otos" in Photos.
If you want to remove any search criteria that you have entered, you can delete what you typed or you can back-swipe it away.
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Monday Brief: WWDC Sells Out, Waiting for BlackBerry World, the Galaxy S 3, and more!
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Ares 2 opened up, Enyo 2 updated with improved scrolling and lists
With the runway from April showers into May flowers growing short, HP is closing out the week by making good on their April code commitments for webOS. What can you expect to find in HP's various GitHubs today? How about the beginnings of Ares 2, an update to Enyo 2, and the Node.js JavaScript platform? Yeah, that'll do (and it matches up with what the roadmap said to expect).
First things first, let's tackle Ares 2. While just a bullet point on the roadmap, Ares 2 is the next generation of Palm's in-browser app builder, and it's now fully paired with Enyo 2 (whereas the original Ares was built for Mojo and Ares of the original variety). Ares 2, unlike its predecessor, is built off of Node.js (more on that later), which will enable developers to use it locally on their own machines or up in the cloud – all with a "pluggable, decentralized approach to file storage" to give developers even more flexibility. Ares 2 isn't yet complete – it's described as being "still in the early stages" – though that isn't stopping HP from turning public the GitHub for the project. But hey, you'll be able to easily build Enyo 2 apps that work across all web-compatible platforms, so that'll eventually be cool.
A number of other webOS components are seeing their release into open source today. There's an updated build of Enyo 2, bringing significantly-improved mobile scrolling performance and a "highly-optimized cross-platform virtual list control" widget. the Node.js event-driven Javascript services platform is also going open source, and in an April surprise, the System Manager Bus (otherwise known as Luna-service2) is going open source three months earlier than planned. The Node.js-reliant System Manager Bus manages the inter-process communications mechanism for Open webOS and includes monitoring and debugging utilities. You know, for when we have enough components to build a functioning operating system; we're getting there, we swear.
So there you have it, April's Open webOS code commitments are here. Coming up in May… well, actually, there's nothing on the roadmap for May or June. Could be a quiet few months, or HP could surprise us and release some other components to open source early. We wouldn't mind that one byte.
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PreDoodle – Happy Anniversary?
Happy second anniversary, HP and Palm!
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App Review: MeOrg! for SpringPad
Ever since the TouchPad was released people have been looking for a solution to their Evernote woes, what with the fact that Evernote never created an app for the TouchPad and more recently that the app for phones was broken by a change on the Evernote servers. In swoops MeOrg!, a SpringPad client made by Sven Ziegler. SpringPad is a service not dissimilar to Evernote in that they both pretty much do the same thing, with many even preferring SpringPad over Evernote, but can MeOrg! stand up to the task?
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Open up a local HTML file with Universe Browser
Despite the fact that webOS and its apps are built using web technologies, there is actually no native way to open up a local html file on webOS phones. You can download an .html or .htm file and edit it with the Internalz Pro text editor, but you can't actually view it in the browser. While this functionality has finally been added to the TouchPad, the only way to do this on webOS phones is using a third party application such as Universe Web Browser by OpenMobl Systems. Once you have an html file on your device, you just need to:
- Open up Universe
- Swipe down from the top-left and select "Open File…" (you can also Meta-tap O).
- Find the file you want to open and tap on it. If there is a long list of files, you can also type-to-search to narrow down your results.
- A new card will open with you file in all its HTML glory
Universe Web Browser is available in the webOS App Catalog for $2.99 and is compatible with all webOS devices running webOS 1.4.5 or higher (although not currently available for the Pre3)
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Open webOS build scripts sneak out onto GitHub
Build scripts for the desktop version of Open webOS have managed to sneak out onto the Github code repository belonging to webOS Engineering team member Anupam Kaul. Before you get too excited, these scripts don't actually do anything yet, primarily because the majority of the source code for Open webOS hasn't yet been released. The actual code to run the webOS UI and many other underlying components are't expected to be released until July. Still, it is interesting to see these build scripts come out at this time, given that Open webOS is not yet released in full and is very much a work in progress.
On the GitHub repository there are build scripts for db8, a component that manages certain types of application databases used throughout webOS and that was released in March, as well as build scripts for cjson, luna-service2, and pmloglib. Some of the components, namely luna-service2 which powers Node.js-based services, and pmloglib (which is responsible for on-device debugging logs), are webOS-specific components and are part of the Open webOS release plan. The remaining component, cjson, is a popular open source JSON library for C code required for many components of webOS.
We chatted briefly with Kaul about the project and he confirmed that this is a personal project of his, and that though these scripts along with the Linux Standard Kernel would help it booting webOS onto a desktop, there's still a lot of work that will have to be done with as-of-yet unreleased components to make webOS cursor-friendly. Until then, the code on GitHub is simply waiting for the day to come where it might be pushed out to the larger Open webOS project.
It's interesting to think back a year ago to Think Beyond, when HP first unveiled their plans to put webOS onto all of their computers by the end of this year. My how times change. Although the practicality of using webOS on a computer is still debatable, we do look forward to the day when we can do just that. Until then, we have got no option but to sit and wait impatiently.
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webOS apps for first aid
Boo-boo’s and oopsies are a part of everyday life. What if that scrape on your knee turns into a dangerous infection? What your coworker has a seizure? We might not be boy scouts, but we believe that it's always good to be prepared for the unexpected emergencies in life. Thankfully, our smartphones can help us to be prepared. Be it It a heart attack or car accident or other unpredictable event, there are webOS apps that are there to help you out. So we've gone ahead and rounded-up the best webOS apps foriInstructions, resources, and generally useful tools for dealing with life's unthinkable emergencies.
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Customize your view in Glimpse
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. Once you select which widgets that you want to use in Glimpse, you then need to select how you want to set up the screen interface. You have up to 5 different frames that you can activate/deactivate, including the top-left, bottom-left, top-middle, bottom-middle and the large frame on the right. To customize your views, you need to swipe-down from the top-left within Glimpse and then expand the "Views" section. Within that dropdown, you have a few different options:
- Top (Left), Bottom (Left), Right — These are your basic views, allowing you to choose between the 2 small widgets on the left of the screen, and one large widget across the middle and right side of the screen. Tap on each checkbox to toggle them on or off
- Advanced — Another set of checkboxes that allow you to add another column of one or two widgets in the middle of the screen
- Presets — These are some of the most common views that you can quickly select that will automatically adjust the frames on the screen. You can choose between such options as the Default (top left, bottom left, and right), 2 by 2 (a grid of 4 apps) or Power User (all 5 available frames). Note that if the view doesn't adjust correctly, you may need to restart 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
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