As we have reviewed in the past, searching for a contact throughout webOS is pretty easy to do with Universal Search, the ability to use wild cards, and using a contact’s initials to narrow down search results. However, there are times when using a person’s first initial and last name doesn’t yield the proper results. Typically, this is a result of the person’s name details (i.e. first name, middle name, last name) being incorrectly tagged in webOS, especially if their last name has a space in it. So, let’s assume you are friends with The Count from Sesame Street. You add a new contact with a name of "Count von Count". Unfortunately, while his last name is "von Count", webOS will actually assume that his middle name is "von" and last name is "Count", and may therefore not find his when you perform your contact searches. Luckily, fixing this is relatively easy and all you need to do is continue reading after the break

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Note that this only works on webOS 1.4.5 and below. This functionality appears to be disabled in webOS 2.0 and above

While searching for contacts in webOS is already an easy task using Universal Search and searching by a contact’s initials, it can get even easier by using a wildcard in your search. By substituting one or more "%" in the beginning or middle of a search as a wildcard, you can perform even more complex searches. For example, searching for "w%os" finds "WebOS Internals", but also other contacts with a "w" and then an "os" later in the name. And just as Universal Search looks in a person’s nickname and company name, these wildcards can also be used to search those, so searching for "%Experts" would return anyone with "Smartphone Experts" as their company. Unfortunately, it only appears to search for contacts within Universal Search, and not apps, but this functionality is usually somewhat consistent across the rest of webOS. Keep reading after the break to see how this differs in various areas of the OS.

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Ensuring that you always have backups of your contact list is extremely important, in case you ever lose your phone or something goes wrong with a Profile restore after a webOS Doctor or device swap. Keeping your contacts in a cloud-based solution like Google or Yahoo is one solution to ensure you maintain a backup somewhere, but even then it would be a good idea to have a local backup. Unlike Palm OS, webOS does not have any local sync solution to pull your contacts from your phone, and you can only send the details of one contact at a time with the built-in functionality (without patching your phone, that is). Luckily, there is some hidden functionality in webOS that the carriers utilize to transfer your contacts off your phone and on to another (even a non-webOS phone). Keep reading after the break to learn how to take advantage of this functionality.

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Two researchers with SecTheory have announced that they have uncovered flaws in older versions of webOS that would allow for remote command and control of the devices. These exploits were discovered in webOS 1.4.X (1.4.0 through 1.4.5), but some have since been patched in webOS 2.0.

Due to webOS’ web-tech base, it will always be possible to hack the operating system using techniques similar to those used to exploit websites, though taking into consideration the fact that our phones generally contain far more personal information than any single website, it can be slightly worrying. Of course, the other side of the coin tells us that webOS wouldn’t be webOS without these web technologies. With every mobile platform there are trade-offs. Easy of programming and accessibility leads to a more easily exploited operating system.

According to the researchers, the Company field in the 1.4.X Contacts app is “unsantized,” allowing them to inject code that allowed them to pull other information from the Contacts database. Additionally, they were able to insert a JavaScript hook that enabled the use of tools such as keyloggers, possibly leading to botnets and the like.

There are at least two unmentioned caveats to this exploit: first the code isn’t executed until the user views it (it sits there until the contact containing the malicious code is opened and viewed), and the code still has to get on the device somehow. We can think of a few ways to get the code into a contacts field of your device. Insert it through a web-based contacts application (e.g. Google Contacts or their Exchange database, but then you still have to crack the user’s password) is the only remote manner we can fathom. Everything else requires either interaction with the user (accepting a transmitted vCard contact through email or other means) or physical access to the device. And if somebody else has access to your phone, you’re pretty much screwed anyway.

Overall, like every other security exploit revealed to date about webOS, we’re not too concerned. There are all sorts of ways to exploit webOS, some of which are essential to fun stuff like homebrew. That said, we’re not super huge fans of malicious exploits, and we’re glad to see that Palm has fixed this particular problem with the release of webOS 2.0. Now if only those of us that don’t have Pre 2 phones could download the new OS…

Source: Darkreading; Via: Engadget; Thanks to everybody that sent this in.

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Have you ever noticed that the contact avatar picture in the Messaging App sometime disappears and all you see is a transparent box like in the top conversation in the screenshot? This can occur when you have a active conversation with a contact who changes their profile pictures in one of your synced accounts (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn). Instead of showing the new picture, webOS will just show a empty box. Luckily, there is an easy fix for this without resorting to deleting the entire messaging thread.

1. Open up the conversation with the contact
2. Tap on the header bar of the conversation where you see the contact’s name. This will bring up the person’s Contact record within the messaging ap.
3. Tap on the person’s name again to unhide the listing of their linked accounts
4. Find the linked account with the picture you want to display and tap on that. A pop-up will appear with various options. Select "Set As Primary Profile" (even if this is already set as the Primary)
5. Back-swipe to go back to your messaging conversation
6. Back-swipe again to go back to your Conversations listing. You will now see that the contact’s picture is showing up properly.

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In this edition of our Tip Roundup, we thought it would be a good idea to present the top tips as rated by you, the users. In case you haven’t noticed, every tip includes a rating area on the bottom that allows you to give anywhere from 1 to 5 stars for that tip. So, please be sure to always rate the usefulness of the tips you read, so we can find the best ones to share in the future. Continue reading after the break to find out which tips took the top honors

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One of the beauties of Synergy is that webOS can take multiple entries for the same person in your contact list (regardless if the entry is from Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, or your Palm Profile) and merge them all together so you don’t need to worry about finding the one right entry that has the email address or phone number you need. While webOS will automatically merge contacts based on a formula that looks for the same Name, email address or phone number, it doesn’t always work perfectly. For example, webOS may not realize that "Jon Smith" and "Jonathan Smith" are the same person, or wouldn’t know that "Jane Jones" and "Mom" should be linked together. In other cases, the way that different accounts handle middle or maiden names may cause a problem. In these situations, you may need to manually link those contacts together. Continue ready past the break to learn how

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While webOS provides the ability to share the entirety of a single contact with others, what happens if you only want to share a phone number, email address or mailing address. For certain accounts (such as your Palm Profile or Google accounts), you can go into a Contract’s entry, click "Edit", highlight the data you need and copy it, but this is clearly not the most efficient way you can do this, right? In fact, for "read only" accounts like Facebook, you are not even able to select or highlight some data in a contact record. Instead, keep reading after the break to learn how you can more quickly get access to share this information

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While webOS does not have any cool third party apps to quickly share contact information, Palm did make it very easy to send someone else the details of any contact in your address book. There are 2 main ways to share this information, but first you need to load up a contact record, which can be accomplished by using Universal Search, opening up the Contacts App, clicking on a missed call notification or a variety of other methods. Once you have a contact record open, you will want to swipe-down from the top-left corner of the screen to bring up the Contracts Application drop-down menu.  Keep reading after the break to learn what to do next

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Patching in webOS land is one of those areas where we can definitively gleefully mock declare our superiority claim a win over our friends with Android and iOS devices. The hundreds of patches available in Preware, through our forums, and even through some simple coding of your own provide customization options most platforms don’t even offer. WebOS Internals’ newest code magician, Sconix, has been hard at work whipping up a new mega patch that consolidates the functions of multiple patches into one neat little package. Unlike the much-lauded Advanced Configuration for Launcher patch, the new Advanced Configuration for System Preferences patch touches multiple apps in a multitude of ways. So many ways, in fact, that you’re going to have to head past the break to check it out.

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