One of the biggest hurdles to getting into an exercise routine is finding the motivation to do it. Yes, better health is a huge motivator, but we as humans are for whatever reason hardwired to want to help our fellow beings (it actually seems to have worked out pretty well, with cooperative societies and all). So what if you could use helping others as motivation?

Plus 3 – founded in part by ex-Palm guy and permanent PreCentral fave Joe Fabris – is here to provide that motivation. They’ve teamed up with thirty corporations to support charities like the American Red Cross, the American Heart Association, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and dozens more, raising more than $200,000 to date. The concept is a furthering of the classic walk-a-thon fundraiser: you pick a sponsor/charity combo and log your exercising to raise money. It’s not just running or walking that you can log; there are more than seventy different activities you can log, from Yoga to mountain biking to snow shoveling to skateboarding to rehabilitation therapy. You can even log your time volunteering, thus being doubly helpful with your Plus 3 logs resulting in donations from your volunteer work.

To make it as easy as possible to log your activities, Plus 3 has produced an iPhone and webOS app. If you’re doing a distance-related activity (running, biking, etc), you can use GPS to automatically log your exercises. Otherwise, you can easily input your entries on the go with the Plus 3 Mobile app. Sure, it costs $1.99, but from then on out you can use your phone to help raise money for charity. Plus 3’s website has leader boards, friendly challenges, rewards, and more to help keep you motivated and engaged.

Get fit and help others? Sounds like a win-win to us.

Source: Plus 3 Network

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If you happen to own a Verizon Palm Pre Plus or Palm Pixi Plus, then you likely know the pain of Verizon’s intentional GPS crippling. The culprit, at least on the technology side of things, is that when looking for its position, webOS first turns to aGPS (cellular tower assisted GPS) to get a general location, and then looks to the sky for the more accurate triangulated positioning. Verizon’s aGPS for whatever reason was set such that unless you have a VZ Navigator subscription your aGPS data is locked down, but you still have a connection that the phone will continue to ping, looking for a response it isn’t going to receive. Eventually webOS gives up and turns to satellite GPS, but it takes long enough that users will give up rather than wait several minutes (or longer) for their location.

Intrepid PreCentral forum member Troy Miller may have found one workable solution, and it comes in our favorite form: a homebrew patch. His idea was to block the aGPS ping, such that the phone would ask for the general location from Verizon, not even get the metaphorical dial tone, and immediately move on to trying with standalone GPS. The patch that Miller put together forcibly redirects an aGPS request to an IP where it will get no response, thus tricking webOS into thinking there’s no available aGPS data (whereas before the phone would sit patiently and wait for Verizon to not respond). Of course, that means that you won’t get aGPS at all and will need a clear view of the sky, but at least your fix will come in more quickly.

Several forum members have tried out the patch with varying degrees of success, but now at least many are getting a precise GPS lock in a minute or two. This is a huge improvement over what Verizon Pre and Pixi owners have been living with, and at the very least should serve as a stepping stone to getting Verizon GPS working properly. Of course, if Verizon would just stop being big meanie poo poo heads we wouldn’t have to be bothering with this.

Source: PreCentral Forums; Thanks be to Troy!

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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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Welcome to Round Table, which is in fact not a table at all. Round Table is a continuing series on PreCentral where we pose a question to the staff and they provide their thoughts and insights. The question could be something simple like “what’s your favorite webOS RSS reader?” or something a bit more complicated, like “where do you see Palm in a year?” Or maybe we’ll just end up chatting about how we miss the cartoons of our childhood. Today, however, we’re going to take a look at the latest hardware from Palm: the Pre 2.

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In addition to simply doing an address search within your TeleNav application (e.g. Sprint Navigation, AT&T Navigator), there are a few ways that you can import those addresses into your app, including options from both on your device and from a computer. Note that not all GPS navigation software is covered by this tip (such as Verizon Navigator), so please check the TeleNav Supported Devices page to check to see if your device is included. Continue reading after the break to learn how to import these address.

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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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So this is what it’s like when GPS doesn’t work…

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You know and love @MrKal_El on Twitter, now know and love him here as he gives us a rundown of restaurant apps on webOS!

Who doesn’t like going out to restaurants? But we can all use some help finding where to go and what’s good, especially when traveling. For those who know me on Twitter: I love food and travel. One of my favorite things to do involves going out to try new and exciting restaurants. As a launch day webOS user, some of the first apps I downloaded dealt with finding great new places to go to. After the break I’ll walk you guys through the apps I typically use on my webOS device to help me accomplish this. This guide is great for local use or when traveling. Hopefully it will help any foodie or casual diner out there find interesting and unique eats.

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You may recall that, as part of its final response (and denial) last week about their webOS aGPS issue, Verizon Wireless promised a bit of potential help in the future:

We are working on offering location APIs / LBS enablers for our developer community. Please check the http://developer.verizon.com for updates. Later this month at our VDC Conference 2010 event, we will be talking about these LBS/location enablers in detail.

Well, Verizon’s Developer Conference was today, and sure enough, VZW announced a new set of location-related APIs collectively called "NAVBuilder Inside" or NBI. Only problem is, webOS was conspicuously absent from their list of supported platforms. The APIs, which cover both access to navigation systems generally and interaction with VZ Navigator, are being offered only for Android, Blackberry, Brew, and Windows Mobile. We checked with webOS Internals‘ Rod Whitby, who confirmed that these are "binary libraries, [with] no support for webOS."

We have reached out to both Verizon Wireless and Palm for comments on this newest rejection of webOS developers and users. Meanwhile, James Harris, creator of GPS Fix continues his  investigation in our forum of the oddities of GPS function on Verizon Pre Plus and Pixi Plus phones.

Source: GigaOm

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It looks like a little rumor that popped up on BGR yesterday is probably true: Verizon is going to be launching a ‘Mobile Recovery’ app for webOS in conjunction with asurion, who is the insurance company behind their Total Equipment Coverage program. If you’re enrolled, you download the app now by visiting the mobile recovery site or, heck, here is the direct link to it in Palm’s web feed. If you’re not enrolled (and doubly if you’re not a Verizon customer), you may be able to download it but you’ll get booted if you’re not signed up for TEC.

So.. what’s the app do? It can sound an alarm on your phone, locate a lost phone, and and lock your phone as well (though remotely erasing contacts is not supported).  

We’ve installed the app on our Verizon Pre Plus and, well, so far we haven’t actually managed to get any of the services at http://www.mymobilerecovery.com/ working just yet

Of course, those location services might be a little dicey – no word yet whether or not Verizon is allowing the app full access to aGPS because of their relationship with asurion or if they’ve allowed it to remain hobbled. We set ours to check every 10 minutes (and didn’t open VZ Navigator) for testing purposes and have to yet to get a lock, for what that’s worth.

The app was briefly available in the Palm webOS Web Feed and some of our members grabbed an early look, they seemed to like what they were seeing. Go on and take a gander at the web interface for locating (via Bing maps), sounding the alarm, and securing your Palm Pre after the break.

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