Zhephree

Welcome to webOS! We’re here for the long haul, and thanks for becoming a webOS user, even if it was only because you had a $100 bucks burning a hole in your pocket. webOS is an amazing thing, so I decided to put together a guide to help make the most of it for you.

Apps, Apps, Apps!
The TouchPad has a lot of apps for it (especially when you add in Phone apps, which work pretty well on it), but finding the best apps isn’t always easy. Check out PreCentral’s and webOSRoundup’s app run-downs, and this PreCentral Forum thread that’s constantly being updated. 

Don’t forget, there’s a lot you can do without an app! There’s no Hulu app on webOS, but the Hulu website works just fine!  (Hulu found out and started blocking the TP) Want to play Plants vs. Zombies or Bejeweled? The PopCap website works fine too! Looking for hurricane tracking and envy your iPad friends with their StormPulse app? No big deal: The StormPulse site is really usable on a TouchPad.

Tips & Tricks
PreCentral has a whole section on their site about tips. They give you info on the simple things like using Flash, to more complex things like mapping Box.net as a virtual disk on your computer to transfer files wirelessly to your TouchPad.

Community
The best part of webOS is its community of users and developers. The developers of most of your apps have presences on Twitter and Facebook, and routinely lurk around the PreCentral and webOSroundup forums. So, chances are, if you have a bug or suggestion for an app, you can find the developer and talk to them directly and watch the app become better from your suggestions!

In addition to developers, you’ve got a direct line to a lot of HP/webOS employees on Twitter. Here’s a partial list of those people I’ve put together. They’re always there to help!

And of course, there’s the users. They’re all over Twitter. The webOSroundup and PreCentral forums are extremely active and worth hanging out in. 

webOSroundup even has an Answers section where you can ask questions and the community will answer them for you.

webOSroundup also put together a post about the webOS community, which is a great starting point.

News
As you may have guessed, PreCentral and webOSroundup are great news sources, as are webOS World, and everythingpre. 

Development
Wanna make your own apps? It’s easy to get started, and best of all, completely free. The official webOS Developer Portal has everything you need to get started. You can also ask developers questions on Twitter and in the above mentioned forums. You can also get involved in the Devs and Friends group on Facebook, and follow them on Twitter.

Thinking Beyond
webOS is a very open platform, which means you can hack around on it and patch it and customize it, and even overclock your device. And with the way the webOS Internals team has done things, it’s very difficult to completely brick your device. Everything you want to know is available on their wiki. You can also ask Rod Whitby for help right on Twitter.

Homebrew isn’t just overclocking or changing your device’s appearance though. Through Preware you can access thousands of apps that just aren’t suited for the official App Catalog.

webOS is a very unique platform, and as a developer, I welcome you to it! The community is unlike any other and everyone is willing to help you. So, feel free to ask questions pretty much anywhere!

After HP effectively killed webOS devices and made webOS’s future uncertain, they launched a “firesale” this weekend, pushing TouchPads out the door at $99. They’re sold out almost everywhere. This has lead to thousands of new webOS users itching to download apps. I figured it’d be cool to see what happened with my apps over the weekend.

foursquare
This is by far my most popular app and it continues to be so. In its heyday, about a year or so ago, it would average about 400 downloads per day. In the last 8-12 months, that number has steadily decreased to about 250 per day. Sunday saw 511 downloads, almost double my daily average. TouchPad users went from a handful, around a couple hundred, to over 1700 users checking-in on a TouchPad (including Friday, Saturday, and Sunday downloads). There are now 70% more TouchPad users than Veer users.

neato!
neato! has always had low, but very steady download numbers. Enough cover my monthly cellphone bill, with some spending cash after that. Sunday had a 70% uptick in sales from Saturday, which had a 10% increase from Friday, which also had a 10% increase from Thursday. neato! is a very niche app and it’s hard to explain it in text, so it doesn’t get the downloads it should. It’s also a phone-sized Mojo app, so it doesn’t get top billing like TouchPad-specific apps, making downloads less common on a TouchPad (it works perfectly though). There are now 4 times as many TouchPad users as Veer users, and by the end of the week, I suspect TouchPad users will overtake Pixi users, to put the TouchPad in the number two slot for neato!.

growlr
I don’t track individual downloads for growlr, but from total downloads, it looks like about an 8% increase in users, which is good for such a niche app.

This is all very encouraging to me, and has given me new energy to work on incredible! and get it out the door for the new users. The response from my beta testers has been overwhelmingly positive (with bug reports as well, naturally), so it feels good.

I encourage other webOS devs (even those that gave up) to look at their stats if they can and see how their apps are doing. It might be encouraging!

Ah yes, ladies and gents — the webOS 3.0.2 update that went out this morning for the TouchPad fixed a critical bug in the emulation of legacy (Mojo) apps and the way WebViews are handled. This prevented you from signing in with your foursquare account, which made the app useless. I prohibited the app from being available for TouchPads.

Well, the update fixes the system bug and I made a few tweaks and the app runs just fine on a TouchPad! I’ve submitted the update to HP tonight, so it should be available soon.

Keen eyes will also note that the foursquare update (v2.8) fixes the 0 Mayorships bug introduced in the last update (v2.7.7). You can now see not only your own, but your friends’ and non-friends’ mayorships in the app.

I also forgot to turn off debug mode in the app when I shipped the last version, which means a TON of data was being written to your device’s logs. In fact, this was happening on every keypress when shouting, which created some super lag when typing shouts. SInce I’ve turned this off in this version (simple slip of the mind last time), you should notice some speed boosts.

So, yeah, small update, but there you go!

Progress on incredible! keeps on moving! I’ve cleaned up foursquare items and added Flickr support. No photo uploads yet, but that’s coming up. Here are some shots:

Here’s a regular ol’ foursquare check-in. Displays the venue’s address and categories. You also have the ability to not only comment on a check-in, but add that venue to your to do list for those times a friend goes somewhere you’ve been meaning to try.

The map image below is static, but tapping it opens a fullscreen interactive Bing map. You can also see comments below that.

Here’s a foursquare check-in where they added a photo when they checked-in. In the stream, the map is replaced with the photo, but in the details pane, you egt a thumbnail of the photo(s) and the map. Tapping them behave as they do elsewhere.

The new service added today was Flickr. You can view all of your contacts recent photo uploads, as well as view any comments on the photo. You can add your own comments, or mark the photo as a favorite. Tapping the photo enlarges it, just like everywhere else.

You’ll also notice that the app displays the service icons for each stream item. Once duplicate detection is complete, each item that has duplicates will have multiple service icons. So, for the Flickr photo above, if it was sent to Twitter or also uploaded to Facebook, it would do its best to detect it as a duplicate, you’d only see the photo once in your stream, but you’d see two different service icons under the user’s avatar instead of just the Flickr one.

That’s what’s new for now. Most of all the basic features of these four services (Facebook, foursquare, Twitter, and Flickr) has been added in. I’d say about 95%. Then there’s the task of adding incredible!-specific features. Rules and Groups have been added, but duplicate detection and some filters and rule styles still need work, plus a few other fun features I haven’t mentioned before.

Anyway, stay tuned! This is the closest I’ve ever felt to getting this in people’s hands.

So, I’ve been trucking away on incredible!’s development. It’s changed a bit visually, but there’s still more to do (that left side column isn’t staying like that). I’ve gotten Facebook, Twitter, and now foursquare support in the app. I’m stupid and didn’t create any rules to show you how they work, but rules support is there.

So yeah, here’s the app when you load it up. Some stuff in your stream, and a welcome message on the details pane.

Here’s a foursquare check-in. Gives you a map and shows comments on the check-in. You can also post a comment from the app. More details coming soon. Just wanted to show what I’ve got.

Here’s a Facebook link being viewed, with comments below it.

Here’s a Facebook link and showing off how the page is displayed in the app and the details pane expanded so you can better see the web site. Some display issues in the content area, but I’m working on functionality right now.

A Facebook photo. Tapping it opens it fullscreen.

Here’s a Facebook album. A friend shared a new album, so now you can swipe through all the photos in the album.

A Twitter post with the conversation displayed below it.

More stuff coming, but I like keeping you guys updated so you know I’m still working on it!

Plenty more to do, but it’s going well!

If you’re a user of my apps, no doubt you’re familiar with neato! and what it does. If you’re not, here’s the skinny:

• You’re browsing a website on your computer, maybe a news article, or a recipe, or some directions. You need to leave your house, or otherwise step away from your computer, but wish to continue reading that website.
• Click the “neato!” bookmarklet in your browser (or the Chrome extension) and blammo! the website instantly shows up on your phone.

There’s more to it than that, obviously. neato! does the same thing from your phone to your computer, or, from your phone to a friend’s phone. It also does the same for plain text, which is also handy.

The beauty of it all is that neato! runs as expected on your TouchPad! The dashboard icon hangs out up top with all your webOS 3.0 icons, but neato! does run in the mini emulator window, but it still works just fine!

One caveat! If you are restoring neato! to your TouchPad through the one time profile sync, you’ll probably have to regenerate your neato! codes in the Preferences so that the TouchPad has its own set of codes.

So that’s handy — send a recipe from your laptop to your TouchPad and then read along in your kitchen from the TouchPad. But here’s where it gets slick: since neato! can send data to other neato! users and since your phone and your TouchPad have their own codes and friend codes, they can send stuff back-and-forth!

What I did was set my name on my TouchPad to “Geoff’s TouchPad”, sent a friend request to my phone and now my phone has an option in the send-to dropdown called” Geoff’s TouchPad”. Now, I send content as I normally would and it appears on my TouchPad!

So, it may not be as elegant as Touch-to-Share, but now your legacy webOS device can send stuff to your TouchPad, and vice-versa!

I’ve had some time to play with a TouchPad and I felt I should review it. I’ve been iffy about the idea of owning a tablet. iPads looked nice, but never made me want one. The bulk of what made me want a TouchPad was out of necessity for development. Having said that, this thing is quite impressive. Obviously, I’m a fan of webOS, but this device is pretty interesting. Though I’m techy and a developer, I’m reviewing this as a consumer.

Battery Life. I’ve read mixed reviews about the battery life of the TouchPad. Some say it’s horrible, some say it’s decent. I have no frame of reference, but I’ve charged this thing twice. It idles for days with minimal battery drain (down to, say, 56% after 2 days of standby with minimal use) and after heavy use for several hours, a couple of percentage points dropped. For me, the battery life is insane and way more than adequate. Even if I had to charge it every night, that’s fine for me, but so far, that isn’t the case. Edit: I should clarify. The “56%” is a total guess. I have no idea how much it drains, other than “feel”. I do know, that I charged it to 100% the day I got it and didn’t have to recharge until about 2 and a half weeks later.

Screen. Some people say it’s “meh” based on the specs. I know nothing about screens, but, for what it’s worth, it’s gorgeous to me. Colors are vibrant and accurate. As a designer, you have to have accurate colors everywhere and the colors on the TouchPad rival my 24” Samsung monitor. 

Build Quality. I dunno, it feels good to me. Sure, it has plastic for its shell, but I mean, it seems sturdy to me. I don’t plan on walking around with a tablet, so I don’t see me dropping it any time soon. For my use, it’s at my desk or on the couch or in bed, so the risk of damage is minimal, so, whatever. You might wanna wear gloves when working with this thing though — it gets very smudgey very easily, including the screen. It comes with a lint-free cloth, so, there’s that.

Speed. The only area I’ve seen speed issues is launching some apps (a few pulses of the icon on the card before they load full screen) and rendering a few web sites with a lot of junk on them (TechCrunch, and other blogs with a hundred of those stupid share-plus-tweet-like buttons). Other than that, everything seems really snappy. Scrolling is sooo smooth and fluid, very unlike the splotchiness of the phones. Dragging things around is as fluid as you’d want. Seemed good to me.

Sound. Sound is loud, but not the best. Listening to music sounds like, well, like HP’s base line of laptops sound, that is to say, okay but not great. For system sounds and alerts, it’s perfect. For a YouTube video, it’s fine. For music or a lengthy film, maybe some headphones or bluetooth beaming to your stereo would be best.

Flash. On a scale of 1 to 10, I’d give Flash performance like a 7. Take that with a grain of salt since Flash sucks everywhere. So like, 10 for Flash is still ass. I have the browser set to auto-load Flash objects and that hasn’t slowed down page rendering times. YouTube’s page works really well, though when embedded on other sites, hitting the play button took once or twice extra. Hulu works beautifully. Took a few seconds longer than on my MacBook to start the video after hitting play, but running embedded in the page and fullscreen works surprisingly well.

Apps. I didn’t have access to the App Catalog at the time of writing this, but the pre-installed HP apps like Calendar, Bing Maps, etc. were fine apps. No complaints. Bing does initially take a few seconds to load the map tiles, but afterward, panning, zooming, and rotating the map is fluid, fast, and responsive.

GPS. Obviously, the Wi-Fi models don’t have GPS (boo!) but they use Google Location Services to estimate your location. Since I couldn’t take the TouchPad from my house because of NDA, I didn’t get to super-test it, but I’ll say this: Bing Maps put the blue glowly “You Are Here” dot directly in neutral ground (“median” to you non-New Orleanians) in front of my house. That’s about 80 feet from my front door. Maybe for me, I got lucky here, but, that’s more accurate than my damn Pre Plus ever is.

Weight. I’ve never held an iPad longer than I could stand being in an Apple Store before wanting to scream and throw things, so I can’t do a fair comparison. I can say, however, that, I mean, I know it’s there. It’s an object and it has mass. Was it heavy? What’s heavy? To me, a child is heavy. To others, a wheelbarrow of cinder blocks. But a 1.6lbs gadget isn’t heavy to me. According to Amazon, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows weighs 2.5lbs. If holding a device that weighs almost a full pound lighter than one of the most popular books of all time is a problem for you, first, re-evaluate your life, and second, go lift some weights. I’m a fairly weak fellow. I don’t exercise (save for a walk with Rhea once in a while), and holding Harry Potter for an hour or two at night, before bed when I was tired, to read it was never an issue, so I don’t imagine holding a TouchPad for any length of time should be an issue.

Phone Pairing. This is a really awesome feature. I have a Pre Plus (modified for Sprint). I turned on Bluetooth and it pairs with the TouchPad almost instantly. The TouchPad appears as a “Hands-free Device”, much like how many newer cars connect to phones. I could make and receive calls on the TouchPad via my Pre Plus with no problems. However, text messages did not get forwarded to the TouchPad, nor would they send from it. This is because the Bluetooth profile on the Pre doesn’t support SMS forwarding to devices. I didn’t have any non-webOS phones to test with, so I can’t say whether it works with them, or if the device only works with my phone because it’s a pre-release developer unit, but it works well as a phone. Honestly, because the speakers are so much better than my Pre’s, if I ever have to use speakerphone, I’ll connect to my TouchPad.

Final Thoughts. It’s a great device! I can’t speak to the “lack of apps” issue since I don’t have App Catalog access yet, but for me, the TouchPad is a great device that I’ll definitely use a lot. Should you get a TouchPad? I dunno, I’m not you. A Honeycomb tablet or an iPad might be right for you. But, if someone asks which tablet I like, I’ll answer “TouchPad” and if someone asks me to recommend a tablet, I’ll say “I personally really like the TouchPad, but I haven’t used the others. Maybe test drive some at various stores a few times and make an informed decision?”

Well, here it is. After some cryptic tweets, I can finally show off some screenshots of the TouchPad version of incredible!. Some notes:

• The working title of the app is “incredible! HD” but that will NOT be the final name
• There’s TONS left to do. Some icons are just placeholders, some text is just a placeholder
• Anything shown here can and possibly will change
• No, I don’t have an estimated time for completion
• Only Facebook is set up with it right now

On to the goods:

When you first load up the app (well, after having an account added) you’ll see ths:

(Full Size) Obviously, clicking the follow and like buttons will perform those actions using an account you specify.

As you can see, my Facebook news feed has been loaded into the stream. Items that have comments on them have a little footer poking out showing how many comments it has.

(Full Size) Here’s some items that have zero comments right now. As you can see, there is no footer. The footer may eventually contain more info, and will have different info for different networks.

(Full Size) Tapping on an item will load it into the side panel. Here, Rhea just posted a plain text status, so there isn’t a lot of content, other than the comment it had.

(Full Size) If the item posted is a link, an embedded webview loads the full page. You can also shrink and stretch the detail panel to make view the web page easier. The grey buttons on the toolbar let you control the web page. The last button with no icon on it yet (next to refresh) opens the page in the full Browser app.

(Full Size) If someone posts a single photo, you get a larger thumbnail of it and the option to view the full size.

(Full Size) Here’s an item with multiple comments.

(Full Size) Here’s where someone uploaded multiple photos to a new photo album.

(Full Size) And lastly, here’s the Publisher. Right now, it only supports plain text. It will allow you to attach photos, links, and your location (for services that support this). You’ll be able to select the account, or the posting group for the post as well (when posting a new item yourself, not commenting or replying). If you’ll notice, the Publisher does its best to let you know what action you’re about to take. It let’s you know you’re adding a comment, and also to whom and on what network. With multiple networks and stuff all around the app, it can be easy to reply to a status that went to Facebook and Twitter on the unintended network.

So, there you have it! I have lots more to do, but once Facebook is 100%, the rest will follow a bit quicker since I’ll have the template laid out.

The TouchPad is available for pre-order right now and will be available in the typical consumer electronic stores on July 1st. A webOS tablet — I’m certainly excited.

As I’m bound by NDA, I can’t go into details about TouchPad features and offerings, but I can very well speculate about why it’s stupid that people are bashing a device that isn’t even to market yet.

Firstly, the tablet market is relatively new. Some say it’s purely an iPad market, and, hey, they’re probably right. People have been asking what the “iPad killer” will be and frankly, any time that phrase gets tossed around about any product, it’s pretty sad. The phrase is pointless and artificially devalues the competitors to the “king” product and perpetuates the idea that the “king” product is, in fact, the best option.

The best option doesn’t always win — look at the classic VHS vs. Betamax bout in the 80s. Betamax was arguably a better format, with higher quality sound and video, but, the consumers bought VHS instead and as a result, VHS was the declared winner. Or, if that’s too old for you youngsters, the same thing happened to Blu-Ray and HD DVD (which one is actually better is best saved for a debate at another time).

But in some cases, you don’t need to win. Sometimes, you just need to be good. I attempted to think of a non-Apple product, but, that wasn’t so easy, so I’ll go with the iPod for this example. The iPod wasn’t the first portable digital music player. It also doesn’t have the most features, and it doesn’t even implement all the features it does have in the best possible way. But for me, the iPod is the best choice for a digital music player. For others, the Zune or an offering from Creative is the best bet. And that’s the important thing to notice: Microsoft nor Creative are hurting from iPod sales. 

Microsoft and Creative would obviously greatly benefit from consumers purchasing more of their products instead of Apple’s, but do they need to? They’re two companies whose portable digital music player divisions are doing fine and selling well. Are they the most popular? No. Are they synonymous with “MP3 Player”? Nope. They probably never will be, but, they don’t need to be. They need to fill that spot for people who either dislike Apple as a company, or those that just don’t care for Apple’s implementation.

The same can be said for HP with the TouchPad. Will the TouchPad be an “iPad killer”? I certainly doubt it. Consumers that want an iPad want one because it’s an iPad, not because it’s the best tablet available. There’s a level of chic associated with owning an iPad in our culture for some reason and people want that. The percentage of people wanting an iPad that you could successfully convince to buy a TouchPad instead is relatively small and isn’t worth the effort.

What HP can hope and strive for is that the TouchPad is successful in and of itself with no regard to the iPad. Will the iPad be the king of the tablet space? For the foreseeable future, I’d say “most likely.” While the TouchPad may not be an “iPad Killer” it will certainly be a viable iPad alternative for those who don’t care for an iPad, but do want a tablet.

The TouchPad should strive to be what Android phones are to the iPhone — the thing you buy when you don’t want an iPad.

And I honestly believe the TouchPad can and will be that very device.

The time is coming near, webOS fans. The TouchPad is set to launch this summer and all rumors point to June-something. This means one thing:

I have to get off my ass and start coding for the TouchPad.

I’ve filled you all in on my development roadmap and I wanted to give an update since I’m at a turning point right now.

MOJO
I’ll give you some updates on my apps built on the Mojo (current) framework.

growlr
Version 0.7 of growlr was submitted to Palm this weekend, adding the ability to view the beers your friends are drinking and the ability to toast and comment on them. I expect it in the Catalog this week. This will be one of, if no the last update to growlr for a while. Don’t worry — it’ll make its way to the TouchPad.

neato!
A new version of neato! — version 1.2 — is almost finished. I plan to submit this to Palm this week. It’ll add two new features: scheduling and card-only mode. Scheduling will allow you to have neato! launch and close at specific times so you don’t have to remember to open or close it. Useful if you only use neato! when you’re at work, so you could, say, have it launch at 8:30am and shut down at 4:45pm. Card-only mode will allow neato! to stay open and connected but without a dashboard icon. This will require a full card open, but won’t take up any screen real estate,  which is precious on the Pixi and Veer. I’ll also be adding support for Carbon, Spaz, and hopefully phnx Twitter apps. I am 90% certain this will be the final Mojo release of neato!. Oh, and a new browser extension will be launched with it, but I’m not saying which browser yet. neato! will probably make it to the TouchPad down the road, but it’s not a high priority.

foursquare
This is a tough one. It’s my biggest and most widely-used app. Version 2.6 just launched this week, adding the new leaderboard and some other stuff. I have one more maintenance release (read: bug fixes) I’m working on that’ll release soon, but that will be about all that happens now. Bug fixes, and minor tweaks or small feature additions. If enough people clamor for whatever awesome new stuff foursquare cooks up soon, I’ll add it in. Don’t worry — support won’t cease and I’ll pick up development on foursquare later this year to rebuild it in Enyo for future device support. I’ll always be your foursquare developer.

incredible!
The big one! This is a huge project, but it’s getting close to a beta launch. I’m hoping for a beta launch around early June (which is super soon). I want to have a full launch of the Mojo version shortly after. 

ENYO
I have some info about the Enyo/TouchPad versions of my apps.

I’ve prioritized all four of my apps for how they will come to the TouchPad. It’s sort of the reverse order they originally launched.

1. incredible!
   This will be my first TouchPad app. I want desperately to have it coincide with the TouchPad launch, but I don’t see it being spot on. However, I’m going to start working on it now, during the same time I’m developing the Mojo version. This way, it’ll be mostly done by the time the Mojo version launches and hopefully development will go speedier since some ideas and designs already happened. 
2. growlr
   While Untappd isn’t super-duper mainstream, I feel this will be a nice TouchPad app as people do drink beer at home, so the odds of checking-in to beers on a tablet are pretty good. Plus, it’s a 75% finished app on Mojo, so it’ll get completed on TouchPad.
3. foursquare
   I had trouble deciding between neato! and foursquare, but I think foursquare will be the biggest benefit. Plus, it’ll give me a chance to rewrite it, and it really needs it.
4. neato!
   With Touch-to-Share’s ability to move info from your phone to your tablet, device-to-device is handled natively. And, since Mojo won’t be killed off any time soon, neato! will still work on the TouchPad. In fact, I think its dashboard icon will be less intrusive on the TouchPad, so it’s not as high priority. It will be rewritten at some point, though.

So, what about time frames? I’d love to have incredible! out by July, but we’ll see how that goes. As for the other apps, the last chunk of the year is completely booked up for me between getting married and probably going back to school, so foursquare and neato! might not see rewrites until 2012. Unless Enyo is super fast to develop in. I dunno, haven’t started yet.

Remember, foursquare is open source, so if there’s a bug and you fix it, send me a pull request! It’d be a big help! It’s a free app, so it’s no big deal to me if you guys help out! Just send me a pull request and if I’m down with it, I’ll merge it with the master and submit it to Palm! It’s a good way to keep the app alive while I’m super swamped right now.