Zhephree

It finally happened. I’ve finally submitted Wooden Rows to HP. Hopefully it’s reviewed and approved quickly.

In case you don’t know, Wooden Rows is a visual database of your books, music, movies, and video games. You can sort and search your library almost any way you’d want to. Want to watch a movie? Scroll through your movies in Wooden Rows instead of standing in front of your DVD rack forever. Can’t remember which books you own from a series? Pull it up on Wooden Rows.

In addition to just keeping track of your stuff in your house, Wooden Rows can also let you mark whether you lent an item out to a friend and to whom. So, if Bill still has your “LOST” season 6 DVDs, you’ll know right away.

Even better is that all of your data is synced “in the cloud” so if your device gets lost or broken, or if you use Wooden Rows on multiple devices, simply logging in will pull in all of your content. What’s more is, since it’s all on the web anyway, you can view your library from the Wooden Rows website on any device with a web browser. Perfect for those times you’re in the store and can’t remember if you have the director’s cut with actor commentary, or the special edition with the blooper reel.

And, of course, Wooden Rows lets you share any item in your library on Facebook or Twitter. Your friends will get to see your library items like this. And, if you turn the feature on, it’ll share each item you add to your library via Facebook’s Open Graph, which means your items will show up in the Activity Stream on Facebook.

Wooden Rows uses Amazon to find and add your items. The app is smart enough to know whether you use Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk or any other localized Amazon site so you always get the appropriate content.

Wooden Rows is currently only available for the HP TouchPad running webOS. It will very soon be available on webOS smartphones (with Enyo), iOS devices (iPhones, iPod Touches, iPads), and Android devices (phones and tablets). Shortly thereafter we’ll see a Windows Phone 7 release as well.

Once it is approved by HP, you’ll be able to download it in the App Catalog for $3.99. 

BONUS! As a celebration of the launch of Wooden Rows, I have permanently lowered the price of incredible! from $4.99 to $3.99. If you don’t already have it, grab it from the App Catalog!

So, some time has passed since the open-sourcing of the Enyo framework and I’ve had some time to put aside my “Oh my god! Oh my god!” excitement and start formulating a plan and to reflect on what being a webOS developer has afforded me.

Let’s Take a Step Back
Mid-2009, Palm shows off the first webOS device, the Palm Pre, at CES. I happen to be in the market for a new smartphone. 

Actually, let’s take a few more steps back.

I’m a problem solver when it comes to the way I use computers. I’ve been a developer in some capacity since the second grade (built a Tic-Tac-Toe game in BASIC). Once I discovered Visual Basic 6 (using a “borrowed” copy from my uncle), I discovered that any time a program frustrated me, I’d just make my own that didn’t. Hated the calendar application in Windows 95, so I wrote my own to pop-up reminders for important events, like birthdays. The idea that I could fix something by creating something new excited me.

It was around that time that I got into web development. My first major web project was in high school where I built an online community around (yes, I know…) “new metal”. Yep, a community for Korn and System of a Down and Coal Chamber fans to post lyrics, photos, music videos, etc. It got pretty large. All of it was static pages. I’d take e-mail submissions and manually update the HTML files. A few things were done by copy-pasted widgets, but it was mostly static.

As I got older, I got into ASP, and later PHP, where I started to make websites for friends and family. I’d eventually start my own side business developing websites professionally, once my design and user experience skills increased. By 2009, I had been a professional web developer for about 10 years, both as a freelancer and for my day-job.

Now that you have my background, we can jump back to 2009.

So as I saw and read about webOS I instantly knew it was for me. Why? Because I could develop my own apps for my phone! I had never considered becoming an app developer by any means. I wanted to write apps for my old Windows Mobile 6 device, but frankly, I didn’t want to learn something new.

webOS opened a door for me to make my life easier, not only because the OS was, as I saw it, ahead of its time, but because I could make little apps that did things for me when I found things I didn’t like in existing apps.

And so I began writing the foursquare app for webOS. I wanted foursquare, but webOS users were out of luck. SMS was a terrible way to check in, and the mobile website required you to search for the venue, which wasn’t very helpful or speedy. So, I started writing the app, got some big help from a couple of other guys (Chris van Buskirk!) and the foursquare team (Naveen has had a huge hand in my success as a mobile developer as a result), and people liked what they saw. I made it prettier, made it more like the Android and iPhone experiences, and I got the confidence I needed to build more apps.

It’s important to note that I never intended my foursquare app to be used by anyone but myself. It was, in my eyes, a stop-gap until foursquare eventually developed one in-house. Unfortunately, partly because of my diligence and partly because of webOS’s lack of market-share, that never happened. So, as a result, I kept building to make the app what it is today.

The same thing happened when Google built Chrome-to-Phone for Android, an app that allowed you to send URLs from your web browser to your Android phone. I loved this idea and wanted, so I set out to build a little utility for webOS that did basically the same thing. Again, I was aiming to just make something for myself. But, people wanted the tool themselves and so I expanded its capabilities, made it prettier, and neato! was born.

Not much later, I did the same thing, only because Untappd’s mobile web interface couldn’t get GPS coordinates in the webOS browser, webOS users couldn’t add their location to their beer check-ins. So, to work around that, I built growlr, a little app to let you check-in to Untappd and attach your foursquare location to your check-in. I actually got the very first API Key for Untappd’s API to develop this app. Greg Avola, the CTO, had to add me into the database manually!

These three apps and the support from the webOS community made me realize that I was, sort of by chance, a mobile app developer.

Coming to Terms
Once I realized I was mobile developer, I needed new ideas. I also needed to make some decisions. 

I had come up with my latest idea — incredible!, a sort of aggregator for a user’s social media accounts — and I absolutely wanted it to be a webOS app. At this point, my then-girlfriend-now-wife Rhea was a Pixi user, I was a Pre user, and the murmurs of what webOS was going to be were loud. HP had purchased Palm and all we heard about was what great things were going to happen with this revolutionary mobile OS.

So, because of all of that, I put all of my eggs into the webOS basket and started development for incredible!. This felt like a good idea. Sure, webOS was barely fighting for 3rd place in the mobile market, but everything felt like it was going to advance. It felt like my choice was a smart one. As an indie developer, making the leap to crossplatform is expensive, what with developer program fees (about $100 on most platforms) and the cost of buying devices for each platform (and, in most cases, phone and tablet devices for each platform). It didn’t make financial sense for me to go cross platform at the moment.

So I stuck with webOS. And, despite HP killing off webOS hardware, despite webOS never reaching 3rd place in market or mind share, despite people laughing any time I said “webOS”, despite the quick buck being an iPhone developer made you at the time, this was the best decision I ever made.

I’m Ahead of the Game
You see, because I wrote my apps as webOS apps first, I probably missed out on some cash. That sucks. But, because the webOS community is so good and strong and supportive, and because the webOS Developer Relations group is so good and strong and supportive, I was somewhat successful. I have some dough in my PayPal account. Not much, but it’s there. 

But, because I chose webOS as my target platform, I’m ready for what 2012 webOS will bring. With the open-sourcing of Enyo, I can easily port my apps to iOS and Android using the same code base.

You see, I, today, right now, have a working version of my next app, Wooden Rows, running beautifully on webOS on my TouchPad. Taking that same code, I built a PhoneGap application and have that same app running beautifully on an iPad. And, because of the open source nature of webOS, the Android community has managed to get Android running on the TouchPad, which means, for free, I have an Android tablet to test on. Which also means, in addition to my same code running on webOS and iOS, I also have it running on Android.

That’s such an amazing thing to me, I want to state it again:

I have the exact same code for my webOS app running on iOS and Android.

Is it perfect? Nah, I have to make a few tweaks here and there, but the point is, it’s there and it works, and it’s worth charging money for in the App Store and the Android Marketplace.

And what’s awesome further is that because of webOS and Enyo’s web-based technologies, making my apps scale down to phone-sized screens is pretty much a matter of making some changes to my CSS for the app to work on smaller screens. I’m about 60% done getting my webOS tablet app working at phone resolutions on 3 platforms.

This means that Wooden Rows will be available on:

• HP TouchPad
• Palm Pre (all)
• Palm Pixi (all)
• HP Veer
• iPad (all)
• iPhone (all)
• Android phones (as many as possible!)
• Samsung Galaxy Tab
• Amazon Kindle Fire
• Other Android tablets

And that’s just the beginning.

So, again, being a webOS developer means that I have a cross-platform app almost ready for the masses, and I have a free webOS and Android tablet device. All because I made a seemingly silly decision to stick with webOS.

Looking Into the Future
Since I’m well-versed in the ways of Enyo, I am head of the game even into the future. Once Enyo 2.0 is fully baked, I’ll start developing all of my new apps using it and targeting webOS, Android, iOS, and Windows Phone 7. 

I can build apps for pretty much any platform using everything I know right now, without having to learn a new language. I can sell my apps 3 to 4 times over. 

I can, for real now, feel like a mobile developer.

And I owe every bit of it to choosing that Palm Pre back in 2009 and never looking back. Thanks, webOS community. Thanks, webOS Developer Relations team. 

I’ll preface this post with some back story. When I first got a cellphone in like 2001, I was a Verizon customer. My first for-real job found me becoming their Director of Technology right after I graduated high school and they offered to pay for my cellphone, but it required me to switch to their plan, on Sprint. So I did and got a nice little LG camera phone. A few years later, I left the company but remained on Sprint. I picked up an HTC Mogul running Windows Mobile 6.1 as my first smartphone. 

After a while, that Mogul started to wear thin and, seemingly just in time, Palm announced the original Pre. And lucky me was on Sprint. It seemed different and new and hey! apps are made in web technologies, the very thing I’ve done for a living for at least 10 years of my life. So I bought the Pre at full retail (with a portion of the cost subsidized by my current employer). I instantly loved it. 

From there, you guys know the story: I was frustrated at the lack of a webOS foursquare app, so I built one with some help from newly-found Internet-friend Chris van Buskirk. Then I got heavy into development, became a part of the community, incited a few Twitter riots with comments on webOS and HP, made a few dollars, and made a bunch more Internet-friends, many of whom I hung out with and drank with in New York. webOS is and will be for a long time, in my opinion, the best and most intuitive and beautiful mobile OS available.

However, my Sprint contract ran out in August, freeing me from their clutches. As you also know, I recently got married and when you get married, you start consolidating stuff to save hassles and money. In the New Orleans area, Verizon’s network quality outshines Sprint’s with no contest and Rhea has been a Verizon customer for years. It made better sense to move her to a family plan and add me as a second line. And so that was the plan — port my Sprint number to Verizon. (Monthly, we’ll actually save about $40 by being on one Verizon family plan vs. one Verizon single line plan and one Sprint single line plan).

At this point, I had a choice to make: take the Verizon Pre 3 I had for development purposes over to Verizon, or, try something new. It was a tough decision to make, but, as a developer, it makes more sense for me to diversify my familiarity with mobile OSes, so I decided to go with Android since it’s a market leader right now. That decision was finalized with the announcement of Ice Cream Sandwich and the Galaxy Nexus.

So, I got my GNexus in a day early on Monday and got it activated Tuesday morning. I’ve been playing with and using it pretty straight through all that time and I felt I should comment on Android as a webOS guy.

Since webOS has its awesome Synergy, setting up my GNexus was a breeze. I logged into my Google account and all my contacts were there. My calendar events were there. My email showed up. And after adding my work’s Exchange account and downloading the Facebook app, my contacts and calendars mirrored exactly what I had on webOS.

The UI is really slick-looking. It’s fluid and really intuitive. The ever-present Google search bar on your Home Screen is reminiscent of the JustType bar in webOS 2.0/3.0. Tapping it allows you to search the web and your phone for apps and contacts and email. It doesn’t have the fancy actions like JustType (like sending a tweet from the search), but I didn’t use that very often anyway so for me, it’s not a big loss. Plus, since you can add widgets to your homescreen, finding a widget to do those things is pretty trivial.

Multitasking isn’t AS good as webOS, but on Ice Cream Sandwich, the experience is similar. While the apps aren’t running live like in webOS, switching between them is very webOS-like (which makes sense, considering the same guy designed both). Whereas in webOS you have a horizontally-scrolling list of thumbnails of your open apps and you swipe them up to close them, ICS has a vertically-scrolling list of thumbnails (and text) of your open apps and you swipe them to the side to close them. While different, it was intuitive enough to figure out, especially coming from webOS.

The buttons at the bottom of the Galaxy Nexus aren’t really buttons at all. They’re soft buttons, that is, the buttons are digital buttons created by the OS at the very bottom of the screen. I like this a lot. For one, you only get the buttons you need, when you need them. For instance, the menu button. It only appears in apps that have menus. And when you rotate the phone, the buttons rotate as well.

This virtual button area makes for an unintended feature — the back button is on the far left of the bottom button area. As a webOS user, when I want to go back, I Instinctively swipe to the left of the bottom area of the screen. I can actually do this on the Galaxy Nexus, as long as I lift up my thumb when it’s over the Back button. While not an intended feature, it will help me with the transition.

I’m used to looking at the bottom of the screen for notifications in webOS, so I often think I have none since they’re at the top in Android. That’ll correct itself over time. Swiping down on the top of the screen reveals all of your notifications, similar to how tapping the notification area in webOS expanded all the notifications. And, just like in webOS, you can swipe the notifications to the side to remove them. There’s also an X button at the top to clear all of the notifications, which is a welcomed feature.

I’m getting used to the virtual keyboard and while it’s waaay different than a hardware keyboard, I like it. I type horribly on it, but I type horribly on the Pre2’s keyboard and even fullsize keyboards on computers. The difference is the autocorrect in Android is really pretty good, so no one knows how terribly I type.

The size of the phone is WAY bigger than my Pre2. Surprisingly, the Galaxy Nexus is pretty light. I honestly think the Pre2 weighs more, and that’d make sense due to the sliding mechanism and keyboard. So, the phone fits perfectly in my hand and in my pocket and weighs a bit less. I’m fine with that. The screen is HUGE, and while I’d be fine with a smaller 4.3” screen, I’m also fine with the Galaxy Nexus’s 4.65” screen. The guy at the Verizon store by my house compared it to his Droid RAZR and it’s just about the same size — even in thickness. (The GNexus is obviously thicker, but it’s only by millimeters and we all know the Metric system doesn’t count). Compared to an iPhone, it’s bigger, but it’s so negligible that I think all of the people complaining about the size are complaining just to complain.

The phone is super duper fast. Way faster than my Pre2. No sluggishness.

Battery life isn’t at all what people said it’d be, and that’s a good thing. I charged my phone to 100% around 9am yesterday morning. I didn’t get a warning about the battery being low (at 14%) until about midnight, and that’s after spending almost the whole day setting up the phone, playing around with it, and downloading and installing a couple dozen apps. I also have push notifications for like a billion apps. Now, to be fair, while I was at work, I turned off 4G to conserve power, but when it’s just sitting on my desk at the office, there’s no reason for it to be on LTE.

I think one of my favorite things though is the apps. Every time I think “Ooh! I wonder if there’s an app for this!” and I search the Marketplace for it, it exists. I have apps for PayPal, Chase, and ING Direct, which allows me to handle all of my money from my phone, which is a huge win for me. I could go on with examples, but that’s what excited me the most.

It is really weird not using my own apps on a day-to-day basis. The Android foursquare app is nice and well-made, but there are some subtleties I miss, like how the Android app opens up to your friends’ check-ins instead of nearby places like the webOS app. To me, using foursquare is for checking-in first, so I’d rather that be the first screen, but, that’s minor. Plus, since it’s an official app, I have access to all of the features, like Events, which they can’t open up entirely to third party developers due to data sharing agreements with their partners.

Chrome-to-Phone is nice and it does what it needs to and does it well, but it’s no neato!. Luckily, that won’t be forever because I plan on making neato! the first app I take to other platforms.

The official Untappd app is obviously more robust than my growlr app, but that’s expected since I never intended to make growlr a full Untappd app. Plus, Untappd hasn’t opened up photo uploads to third parties yet, so the official app is the only way to do that.

Installing apps from non-official Marketplace sources is pretty straightforward — download the APK (after enabling the ability to install from unofficial sources, a simple checkbox in your system settings) and open it and it’ll install — usually. Some APKs don’t install so easily and to do that, you have to download a (free) app call APK Installer from the official Marketplace to install those APKs. Since the app’s free and super small (like under a meg), it wasn’t a huge deal. I’ve been able to install a beta version of both Dropbox and Untappd by downloading APK files from two different web sites without ever connecting my phone to a computer, so, that experience doesn’t differ from webOS too much.

All in all, I’m really happy with my switch to Android and Verizon (except for Verizon’s data and LTE outage this morning…). It’s not webOS, which sucks, but it’s a great OS for how I use my phone. It’ll be fun getting into Android development and being able to bring my apps to even more users.

And, as I’ve said before, I’m still a webOS developer and I still have my TouchPad, so I’m still a webOS user, too. I’m still going to push apps out onto webOS (sometimes first!), so don’t worry. I just needed a new phone and I figured I’d try something new. I’m a gadget guy first and I love playing with new gadgets.

Hey, everyone! Just wanted to give you guys a quick heads-up about my availability soon.

Since I have four apps out in the Catalog, I figured I should let my users know that I will most likely not be available to respond to tweets or e-mails over the next week and a half since I’m getting married next weekend.

I will absolutely respond to support requests via Twitter or email once I return from my break.

Here’s where you can get support:

foursquare: if there is a problem with the foursquare service (i.e., not connecting, wrong points, improper mayorship, etc) you can contact foursquare’s support (as you should always be doing in these cases) on Twitter at @4sqSupport or on their support site: http://support.foursquare.com/home. If you have problems with the foursquare app, you can use the in-app contact form to send me a message and I’ll get to it as soon as I start handling e-mail again.

growlr: As with foursquare, if you have problems with the Untappd service, you can contact Untappd via twitter: @untappd or their support site: http://help.untappd.com/ And if you have a problem with the app, shoot me a tweet at @zhephree and I’ll respond sometime after the 16th.

neato!: Shoot me a tweet at @zhephree or @neato_webos and I’ll respond sometime after the 16th.

incredible!: Shoot me a tweet @zhephree or @incrediblewebos and I’ll respond sometime after the 16th.

Just wanted everyone to know so you won’t freak out if I don’t respond in my usual timely manner.

Enjoy a Zhephree-less week!

Earlier today I went on a mini-Twitter rant about switching platforms from webOS and apparently some people didn’t quite follow my point, so, I’ll explain here.

Laying Down the Facts
I’ve been a webOS user and developer the same amount of time — since October 2009. During those two years, I’ve learned a lot about development, business, and the mobile industry. I’ve made a bunch of internet friends, and made some extra spending cash. webOS has been the best mobile OS I’ve used or tinkered with, and I’ve played with them all. webOS will always be the finest choice in mobile OSes, built by people with a true passion.

The Turmoil
We had Palm floundering and then HP picked them up and we felt cautiously better. Then, HP did a half-assed job at pushing webOS, and then killed off hardware production, mere days after the launch of the TouchPad. webOS software development has continued and 3.0.4 is the most solid build of webOS we’ve ever had. Now, HP is still deciding what to do with webOS, and rumors speculate that it’ll be killed off, and not sold off.

Switching
As a result of no new hardware coming out and a lot of people running half-working Sprint Pre-s and the Pre3 being extremely scarce, people are looking for new mobile OSes. Our cellphones are important aspects of our lives. For many of us, they’re the only way to contact us (no landlines), and for work, most of us need a constant e-mail connection. Texting and Twitter and Facebook are how many of us stay in touch with distant family or old friends who’ve grown up and started families elsewhere. Our phones are very important to us. 

It’s Just a Phone
Yes, I have said it before, I said it again today, and I’ll continue to say it. At the end of the day, it’s just a phone. However, it is also a tool. Tools are personal things. Grab 10 construction workers on a jobsite and ask what brand power tools they use. Some might say Dewalt, some might say Stanley, some might say Ryobi. Some might say they use a Dewalt drill, but a Ryobi saw. They looked around, tried different ones and found that different tools work for different jobs. Different tools work for different people. 

The same thing is true for phones. Grab 10 people on the street. Some use iOS, some use Android, some use BlackBerry, and other may use webOS or Windows Phone. If you ask them why, they’ll all have different reasons. Some might say they have an Android phone, but use an iPad. That’s because they’ve looked around, tried different things and found different devices work for different jobs. Different phones work for different people.

Loyalty
The webOS community is quite possibly the most impassioned community of any tech community. We’re a loyal bunch. Most of us have been here since the Sprint launch, many more have been Palm fans since the Centro. And it’s not just the users — the engineers behind webOS believe in their product and honestly care about it, like a parent for a child. The webOS Developer Relations team is equally loving and have put thousands of hours into making sure everyone got the apps they wanted by helping developers through every step and making sure they had access to devices. It used to cost money to be a webOS dev — then they made it 100% free. Ask an iOS developer how much it costs to be an iOS developer.

But from this loyalty of the community comes a lot of what I consider to be misguided passion.

I am not implying that being passionate about webOS is misguided. I am extremely passionate about webOS. I have been for a long time. I  defend webOS every chance I get. I evangelize it to friends and people I meet. I get excited about seeing webOS devices in the wild.

But being passionate about a peace of technology is one thing. Being passionate to the point of being rude to others is a whole other thing. That’s what my tweets were about. A lot of people are switching platforms right now. Their webOS phones are falling apart and they’re under contract and finding inexpensive webOS hardware that isn’t a Pre or Pixi Plus is often difficult. Sometimes, you need a new phone and the only option is to pick from the menu of devices your carrier has. Unfortunately, that menu doesn’t have webOS devices (except a Pixi Plus on AT&T?).

I’ve seen a lot of webOS diehards tweet and post harsh statements about people that have left webOS for iOS or Android or Windows Phone. That is completely inappropriate. That way of thinking and acting is completely the opposite of everything that the webOS community stands for. Remember when people would mock webOS and we’d get offended? How is it okay to do the same to people that moved to another platform? It’s hypocritical and sad and immature.

Seeing people talk about sticking with webOS while others are leaving, like they’re somehow better people because of it, is scary to me. Who have you become? These same people are the ones that mocked iPhone “fanboys” and yet, they’re behaving the same way.

Clarification
When I said on Twitter that it doesn’t matter what mobile OS people use, I meant that, as a community, it should not matter to you. Derek Kessler said that it matters to him. As the Editor of a website devoted to covering webOS news and apps, this is obvious. The success of webOS directly affects Derek.

He also mentioned that it matters to the people working in the webOS GBU at HP. As the sole reasons webOS is what it is, they even more so directly benefit from the success of webOS. As I said earlier, these are some of the greatest people in the industry and they do not deserve to see webOS — a true labor of love — be cast away like yesterday’s jam. These are some of the best and the brightest people working in tech today and they deserve to carry out their project and see it grow to the amazing platform it should be. Of course webOS’s success matters to them.

Derek added that it should also matter to developers, like myself. As a developer that has made some money from apps, this is absolutely true. My apps, like webOS, are a labor of love. I built my apps because first and foremost, I wanted these apps. I spent time designing and developing them, spending thousands of hours in front of my laptop. My apps, and equally webOS, mean the world to me. I obviously benefit directly from the success of webOS.

But I’ve only made a little bit of cash over the years. Enough to subsidize the cost of running my webserver and buy a thing here and there, but nothing much to speak of, like the tens of thousands of dollars some of my fellow developers have reported making recently. If I develop my apps for multiple platforms, I’d probably stand to make a little extra than I do now, but not much more, since it’s a bigger pond with many more fish.

But for me, as a dev, money was always a bonus. Having thousands of people use and enjoy something I created was the part I enjoyed the most. I got into mobile development because I wanted an app, and that app is free today AND open source. Obviously, money wasn’t the issue here.

So when I said what mobile OS people use doesn’t matter, I meant it, but obviously it affects certain people. Just how if you don’t use iOS, it affects people at Apple and iOS developers. Yes, it would take a many, many more Davids to take down the Goliath that is Apple, but the principle remains the same.

The point of my Twitter rambling wasn’t to upset people about webOS. It was actually quite the opposite — I was trying to appeal to those that are acting downright childish about people leaving webOS and convince them that it’s not a big deal and that their energy is better served elsewhere.

The community collectively congratulated Richard Kerris and wished him luck via Twitter the other day. That is the true spirit of the webOS Community. Wishing luck to the man that was one of the bigger cheerleaders for webOS at HP (maybe if out of requirement of his job) as he moves over to a competitor to do the exact same job is The Right Thing. Kerris should remain a respected member of the webOS community, as should anyone that has held respect in the community.

Will I move to another OS? Probably for my daily phone, yeah. I’m getting curious about new OSes out there. My two years with webOS has been the longest I’ve stayed with any one OS. I’m itching to play with a new gadget. I’ll always be a webOS user though, as my TouchPad is more than just a developer device.

And as I said on Twitter — as long as there are people using webOS, I will be a webOS developer. If I buy a different phone, I will still update and maintain foursquare, neato!, and growlr. I will still update and maintain incredible! and my next app (yep, I’m almost finished my second TouchPad app), and my next app, and my next app…

I’m in the webOS community now, and I will be tomorrow. You can re-read that sentence every day and it will always be true.

HP and Palm are notorious for over-promising and under-delivering, and I’m sure all the personnel changes over at HP haven’t help the matter any. HP has suggested and promised a lot of things, mostly prior to the hardware cancellations. There are a lot of little tiny things, though, that get under my skin as a developer and so I want to make these requests to HP, no matter how in vain they may be.

1. License Enyo for Use on Other Platforms. Enyo’s an awesome framework. It’s quick and easy to develop apps in days, not months. It’s already open source. License it under some Apache-like license so we can distribute our apps on the web, or on iOS and Android. There’ll be no new webOS hardware for the foreseeable future, so the users we have now are the only ones we’ll ever have, and that number gets smaller every day.
2. When Submitting Apps, Disable the Final Submit Button After I Click It. Seriously. It’s not that difficult. 
3. Display the “What’s New?” block of text SOMEWHERE. When submitting an update to an app, under the field for the main Catalog description of the app, there’s another field for developers to enter in what has changed in that update. This text is not displayed in the App Catalog, nor on web listings of apps. I presume this is so the App Review Team knows what to look for, but it’d be a big help for the end users as well.
4. Speaking of Web Listings — Bring Back the RSS Feeds for the Catalog. I totally understood when you guys disabled them. You wanted to build a bigger, better online representation of the App Catalog, probably more like Android or Windows Phone or even iOS have done. But then all the HP garbage happened and this probably got shelved. That sucks, but now the only way to find new apps is on a device. Turn on the Feeds and let PreCentral and webOSRoundup take things from there.
5. Make App Download Counts Readable for Those without Calculus Degrees. Just because I’m a developer doesn’t mean that table is easy to read. Fix it. “Design decision” or otherwise, it’s stupid, ugly, and broken. 
6. License Enyo for Other Platforms. I cannot stress the importance of this enough. Just like all those engineers that worked on webOS itself don’t want to see the thing they spent years making fall by the wayside, us developers don’t want our apps to fall into obscurity either. We’re almost all small, independent developers. We can’t afford to rewrite entire apps for new platforms. Let us easily port. Remember how much you guys pushed the whole “iOS Developers! Easily port your games to webOS! Only takes a few hours!”. How great would that be for webOS devs?

This is a short list with arguably 5 items on it. Two of them (#2 and #3) you can make happen in one afternoon. The others will take some time and logistics planning, and I get that.

Give me a kick ass wedding gift (or Christmas gift, or failing that, birthday gift) and make these 5-slash-6 things happen. The actual list of things the community wants from you is much bigger and has many more lofty requests. These are manageable. Make it happen.

With all the talk of the iPhone 4GS, and with the recent webOS hardware halt, I figured it was time to speak up.

I always had basic cellphones — make a call, send a text. I eventually got into hacking my Brew-enabled phone and getting some decent apps on it. I even wrote an app that would mark incompatible apps as compatible so I could run pretty much anything on my crappy LG flip phone. 

Eventually, I got an HTC Mogul running Windows Mobile 6. I enjoyed it as it was my first smartphone. I wasn’t a fan of the stylus, but it worked. I hacked some stuff onto it to make it better, eventually cooking up some ROMs, getting WinMo 6.5 on it, and messing with the UI. I ran Android on it for about a day because it couldn’t make phone calls when in Android, and, well, it had to boot into WinMo fully first, then I had to run Android manually.

Then, I heard about the Palm Pre. I was curious, as I was already thinking about an Android device (never been a big fan of iOS), so another option seemed interesting. The UI for webOS was intriguing and different. The thing that drew me to it though was the ability to develop apps using the HTML and JavaScript I already knew. I liked the idea of making my own apps, so, when the time came, I snagged it from Sprint.

You all know my webOS history after that — putting together the foursquare app, making neato! and growlr, and eventually incredible!. At the request of Palm, I spoke at the Developer Days in NYC last year. I was one of the first people to touch a TouchPad in my bare hands and start developing for it. I’ve seen new webOS and foursquare features weeks and sometimes months before pretty much anyone else. I was the very first person to get access to Untappd’s API. I’ve done some cool things, made some cool internet friends, made some cash, but, most importantly, learned a lot about code, design, and even business and marketing.

This post is by no means as farewell to webOS development. Let me make that clear because that last paragraph sounded like it could’ve gone that way. As I’ve said before: as long as webOS devices exist, I’ll continue to develop for webOS.

At my core, I’m a gadget geek. I love buying new electronic toys. I buy things I need and things I probably don’t need. I’ve been into electronics for as long as I can remember. I’ve built things myself with parts from RadioShack and DigiKey. I’ve written software to accomplish things I needed it to. I can respect well-made electronics, regardless of the manufacturer.

As such, I can say I completely think the iPhone 4S is an amazing device. It’s beautiful and it packs some technologically impressive features. I’m not a fan of iOS, but iOS 5 is the nicest that OS has looked. Who knows, by iOS7, I might actually want an iPhone.

Windows Phone 7 looks really nice. It looks new and different and brings some much-needed elegance to the mobile UI world. I can definitely respect it.

Some of these Android devices out there, like the Droid Bionic, are crazy power-horses. Dual-core processors, HDMI out, Gigs of RAM and space — you can’t help but be impressed.

I completely believe that one can be a huge fan of a specific device or OS, but respect other devices and OSes just the same. I’m an Apple guy — I’ve used a Mac for about 10 years. Started with a G3 iBook. I’ve had about 6 different iPods, including my current 160GB Classic. But, I’ve never wanted an iPhone. There is no need to be pigeonholed into a specific group. If you heard me go on and on about my Macbook Pro and my iPod, you’d call me an Apple Fanboy. But then you’d hear me go on and on about webOS and call me a webOS fanboy. What does it matter?

I like technology. I can be a huge fan of Apple, a huge fan of webOS, and still use an Android or Windows Phone device. I was never a big fan of Sony or the Playstation. I’m a Nintendo guy through and through. Have been for over 20 years. In our house, Rhea and I have two Wiis, 3 or 4 DSes (from Lite - 3DS), a Toploader NES, a SNES, an original grey GameBoy, and countless games. But we’ve also got an original Xbox, an Xbox 360, a regular PS2, a slim PS2, a PSP, and a PS3. Sure, we bought them separate from each other and over the course of many years, but the point remains — we like video games, even though we’re some of the biggest Nintendo fans you’ll ever meet (you should see Rhea (zeldamac)’s Hyrulian shield tattoo and the replica Master Sword hanging on our wall.)

Does owning all of those Sony and Microsoft game systems make us any less of Nintendo fans? I submit that it does not. We’re video game fans first. If a game is good and interesting, we’ll buy it (finances providing, of course).

The same goes for electronics and mobile phones. I’m a huge Apple fan and a huge webOS fan. If someone wants to explore Android or Windows Phone, they should be able to do it without catching flack from their respective communities.

Will I move on from webOS as my daily device? Sure, eventually. I’ve got a Pre3 on its way to me (probably on my doorstep right now) and I’m excited to play with it and see how great it is. It might be my next daily phone (I’m leaving Sprint — contract’s up and Rhea’s already on Verizon. Cheaper to do a family plan), but it may also be a development phone. I didn’t touch my Pre2 as more than a Dev Unit until about a month ago. I’ve got my eye on some non-webOS devices on Verizon’s network and I’m super impressed and I’m curious about playing with a new toy.

My overall point is that some people will leave webOS phones, sometimes people vocal in our community, but all of us will forever remain webOS fans. Like I’ve said many times over — it’s just a phone.

To be honest, I enjoy developing for the TouchPad more than for phones. Partly because of Enyo (ok, a lot because of Enyo), but also because of the larger screen size and how that opens the door for new types of apps and that weren’t possible on 3” screens. This new world of developing is exciting to me and is the reason incredible! got released so quickly (in terms of start-release). I’m itching to get a new app out the door one day, as well as some updates to incredible! that are coming super soon.

You can bet I’ll continue pushing apps out on webOS for the TouchPad no matter what my phone decision may be. Oh, and I’ve been thinking about the phone/Mojo version of incredible!. It will never be as complete as the TouchPad version, but I’m considering cleaning up what I have and either releasing it separately super cheap, or including it in the TouchPad package. Depends on how good I can make it. This won’t be any time soon, but, I want you to know, it’s on the way, probably. And I’ve got an update to neato! and an update to foursquare in the works, so, don’t think my time with webOS phone apps is anywhere near over.

I’m here for the long haul, no matter what.

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!

Dear HP,

I love developing for webOS. It’s quick, it’s intuitive, and it’s great for web devs to get into. The big reason this is is because of the Enyo JavaScript framework used to develop webOS apps. It’s a fantastic framework and is easy to learn.

I’ve written a great, unique app for the TouchPad, written in Enyo. I want to continue developing it, and I will launch it in the App Catalog. However, I would love to release the app as a web app and using my existing code would make my life a lot easier.

If I could develop web apps in Enyo and still release them in the App Catalog, I would absolutely do so. I feel a lot of people would like that option. If you’re going to make a web app and if a side effect of using Enyo to build is that it runs as a native app on any future webOS devices, why wouldn’t you?

I ask you, HP, to please release Enyo as an open source JavaScript framework. This will keep developers using a framework compatible with your OS and whenever you find a hardware partner for webOS devices, you’ll already have apps for these devices.

Think about that — in the current state of webOS, developers will not start developing for webOS right now, even though the OS hasn’t been killed. The message around the Internet is that webOS is dead, no matter what the truth may be. No one will begin being a webOS developer, which makes webOS even less attractive to hardware partners and users in the future. Open source the framework and give current developers an incentive to keep developing webOS-compatible apps. Let us release these apps as web apps or Android/iOS apps a la PhoneGap. Then, when webOS lands on some sort of hardware, we’ll be ready. New developers will feel better about jumping into it because the risk is low — if webOS fails, their apps will still run on other platforms. It’s a win-win.

Open source Enyo, please. HP, I know deep down you guys like webOS. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have taken the chance at all. Keep webOS and its legacy alive. Keep the webOS GBU from feeling like years of their lives were wasted. Keep us developers from being hurt, and hurt financially. Open source Enyo.

Sincerely,

Geoff Gauchet,
Developer of foursquare for webOS, growlr, neato!, and incredible!