You may have noticed that the Trapster app is no longer available in the App Catalog. This is not a case of Palm exerting some sort of heavy hand in the approval/denial/removal of apps. As it would turn out, Trapster the company was not prepared and Trapster the app was not as ready as they thought. The following message greets visitors to Trapster’s webOS app page:

“Important announcement: The webOS app that was previously posted has some serious issues that did not show up until a large number of users tried to use the app simultaneously. We were forced to shut off the app. We have already fixed the problem, but some additional issues were uncovered in testing. We hope to have an update posted this week. We are very sorry about the trouble. Thank you for your patience.”

We’ll admit that webOS is a new world for many programmers, but for a company with as large a userbase as Trapster it is surprising that glaring issues were not uncovered during testing. For perspective, Trapster claims the #42 spot of all-time most downloaded iPhone apps and 1,810,712 users worldwide across six smartphone platforms (Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, J2ME, webOS, and Windows Mobile).

This is why we like to advocate large-scale beta testing. There are multiple venues for distributing a beta app for testing *cough* PreCentral Homebrew Gallery *cough* that the average Pre user won’t readily access. Those that do you can trust to have a higher degree of technical knowledge, not to mention patience with the understanding that what you’re testing is an unfinished product. Plus they’re your most dedicated future customers and the type of people that will voraciously promote your app to other users (assuming it’s any good). Beta testing is a risk, we’ll admit that, but the benefits of early exposure, promotion, and bug fixes cannot be underestimated.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

With nearly 250 total apps – more than a dozen of which have graduated to Palm’s App Catalog – the PreCentral Homebrew App Gallery has logged more than two million downloads since August 19th. It was just September 4th that we hit one million downloads, so we’ve been running along at a clip of over 43,000 downloads a day over the past three weeks. In reality, we’re well over two million downloads by now, as the Homebrew Gallery actually opened for business on August 5th, but we didn’t manage to start keeping track until two weeks later when we saw just how many homebrew apps you were all sucking down through the pipes.

So to our developers and users, congratulations! Also, big thanks to Palm – we’re more than pleased to see homebrew developers graduating to the official App Catalog and honored to say that we were a part of it all.

So here’s to the next million downloads and the future of webOS apps! If you’re not sure how to install homebrew apps on your Pre, check out our step-by-step installation guide. And if you’re a developer who is interested in getting your app into the PreCentral Homebrew App Gallery, drop us a note and we’ll hook you up.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

It’s Thursday, and for us that’s come to mean new apps in the official App Catalog. Fifteen new apps landed in the App Catalog today, bringing the grand total to 83, but it seems that Palm’s server is having a fit of hiccups and has been unable to serve any of the app pages (though the Updates app will bring you app updates just fine nevermind, that doesn’t work properly either). We’ll update this post with more details on the new apps once the App Catalog is back up and running at full steam, but in the meantime, here’s a summary of the newness that landed this afternoon:

• Chess for webOS (by Fusion Creative Studios): Play chess against the Pre.
• DeadMan (by Fusion Creative Studios): A hangman variant with multi-player options.
• Ditto (by Revision X Games): Pattern repetition game, much like Simon Says.
• Dot Game (by Brandon VanBelle): Fill the dot grid with lines to make the most boxes.
• Hebrew Calendar Trial Version (by Avner Arbel): Keep track of important dates on the Jewish calendar.
• MediPDA (by Palmdoc.net): Modular medical calculator.
• P2GoogleVoice (by P2Labs): Fast, simple, easy Google Voice client.
  
• P2Snippets (by P2Labs): Store notes, canned responses, and more for quick recall.
• Pic Hunt – Pets (by Epic Tilt): Spot the the subtle differences between two similar pictures of pets.
• Pic Hunt – Space Explorer (by Epic Tilt): Pick out the differences between two similar space-themed pictures.
• Pic Hunt – Vintage Cars (by Epic Tilt): Locate discontinuities between two similar images of classic cars.
• Reversi (by Rick Boatright): Othello, played against the Pre. Apparently very easy to beat.
• Send My Location for webOS (by Software for Mobile Phones): Easily send your location via email or text, link to Google Maps.
• Survivor Samoa (by CBS Interactive): Get clips and cast bios from the new season of Survivor, manage your fantasy team, and more. Exclusive to webOS, the US, and Sprint.
• TipCalc (by Jamwam): Straight forward tip calculator and check splitter.

Dot Game, MediPDA, P2GoogleVoice, P2Snippets, and Reversi are all graduates from the PreCentral Homebrew Gallery. Congrats to developers Brandon VanBelle, Palmdoc.net, P2Labs, and Rick Boatright!

Those fifteen new apps weren’t the only newness in the App Catalog. Eight older apps also received updates, though none of them seem to bring major new features. The following apps received updates today:

• Checkers
• Connect 4 Demo
• Lemonade
• Mileage Monitor
• Pandora Radio
• PhotoDialer
• Tweed
• Zilch Lite

UPDATE: Chuq Von Rospach, Palm’s Developer Community Manager, has chimed in on Twitter: "To those asking: yes, the new apps aren’t downloadable yet. Will be in a bit. there’s a glitch in the publishing process we need to fix."

Guess that’s why the App Catalog still has that beta tag, eh?

UPDATE 2: Now that the App Catalog appears to be back on the tracks, we’ve updated the new app list with some descriptive fun.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

Is that forty hours a month limit on Pandora cramping your internet radio style? Well, we’ve got some good news for you: the PreCentral Homebrew App Gallery is practically overflowing with streaming radio apps. In fact, we have five different apps in the category, with nearly 30,000 downloads between them all!

Well how about some SHOUTcast? With more than 20,000 stations and over 600,000 daily listeners, SHOUTcast Radio is the preeminent internet radio server, and it doesn’t just serve up live audio from the big boys – folks like you and me can get in on the action and do your own broadcasting. And now, you can listen to it all from your Pre.

Check out five homebrew music streaming apps after the break!

read more

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

For many new Pre users, the current limited offerings in the App Catalog are a bit disappointing. If they’re lucky, though, they may hear about something called "homebrew" apps, which calls to mind amateurs cooking up software in their basements. It also sounds a little like the "jailbreaking" they’ve heard about for the iPhone, which may be illegal (or at least unauthorized), especially when people talk about "rooting their Pre." A large number of users are just afraid to install any homebrew apps, for fear of breaching their warranty or ruining their Pres somehow. If you know (or are) someone like that, this blog has one message for homebrew-shy users: Go For It (Here’s How).

Read on to see why.

read more

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>