Ready to jump into the wide world of homebrew on your TouchPad, Pre, or Veer? Alright! Here’s what you need:

• Your webOS tablet or smartphone
• A computer, Mac or PC, connected to the internet
• A Micro-USB cable to connect the webOS device to your computer (you can use the cable that came with the device, but any Micro-USB cable will do)
• A stiff drink (this isn’t required, but you’ll deserve one for being awesome enough to be doing homebrew)

Got that? Okay, time for some clarifications. webOS devices do not need to be “rooted” – they come from the factory open enough that special tools aren’t needed to install apps outside of the App Catalog or gain access to the operating system. The process of getting a homebrew installer set-up is relatively straight-forward and doesn’t involve anything scary or potentially warranty voiding (there are potentially warranty-voiding things you can do after that, but everything described in this how-to is perfectly acceptable).

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Palm VP Joe Hayashi gave a presentation on marketing webOS Apps and the current and future state of the Palm App catalog. While the majority of the presentation covered the general marketing concepts he presented at he last Dev Day’s presentation (YouTube Link here), he did drop some new details.

Operator/Carrier billing will be available to some customers in early 2011. No details on which carriers or countries, but of importance to developers, this will not affect that 70/30 revenue split the currently receive from sales of their apps. The carrier billing option will also be opt-in for consumers – you can still always buy your apps directly from Palm with the credit card you assign to your Palm Profile.

Promo Codes will also be available early next year, allowing developers, HP or the carriers to create promotional codes to use in the App catalog. Promo codes will be good for free downloads of apps (discounts won’t be supported). Developers will be able to generate a given number special links that will go to a free version of their app to give away. HP will also be able to create promo codes for a dollar amount for people to use to purchase apps (and yes, devs will still get paid). One notable caveat: customers do need to have previously set up a payment method in order to use a promo code.

One nice thing: Palm and HP have heard loud and clear that nobody is really happy with the geo-restricted nature of the App catalog that occurs when you activate your device in a country that doesn’t support paid apps. They’re researching a solution, it’s a priority, they say.

Finally, as previously reported, the App Catalog will be getting an overhaul for webOS 2.0, including an updated search algorithm to provide more relevant results, improved navigation, more relevant lists/categories, and configurable "ad tiles" on the top of the screen. While we have only seen those tiles display two specific apps, they do have the capability to link those to lists or categories of apps.

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Among the many revolutionary features in webOS 1.0 was Palm Synergy, the ability to pull in contact lists and address books from multiple sources (e.g. Exchange, Gmail, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Facebook, AOL, etc), merge similar records together for the same person, and then display them in a single cleaned-up list on your phone. While there is fairly complex methodology behind the scenes on how these linkages are done, it doesn’t always work the way you would like it to. The good news was that Palm allowed for a way to manual link records together. The bad news was that those linkages were not saved to your Palm Profile, meaning that any manual links did not survive a device swap or a webOS Doctor and you were forced to first try and remember what manual links you made, and then you needed to perform those linkages all over again.

Fast forward to Synergy in webOS 2.0: Palm Synergy is now called HP Synergy. Additional APIs will be available for third-party developers to offer more sync sources to contacts, messaging, and calendar. And according to a recently updated Palm Support page titled "Using Backup", a new section for webOS 2.0 now states that "Linking relationships between contacts" will now be backed up!

Reviewing the rest of the updates did not reveal any other major changes to how the Palm Backup will work in webOS 2.0, and sadly it still clearly states that "There is no online data source or other location from which to view the Palm profile contacts, calendar, tasks, memos, or other items that are backed up to the Palm server". However, here’s hoping that there are more enhancements hidden inside webOS 2.0 for us to find.

Source: Palm Support
 

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Among many other things, webOS 2.0 finally brings support for Bluetooth Keyboards to the table. In the video above we break down the steps necessary to pair webOS 2.0 with an Apple Bluetooth Keyboard. We also walk you through what works (and what doesn’t work) once you get paired up. Come on, typists, you know you can’t resist.

Also see our full webOS 2.0 Review!

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Palm’s webOS icons are some of the cleanest and best-looking in the mobile space. That said, have you ever come across an app you loved but couldn’t quite come to terms with what the developer was (or wasn’t) thinking when it came to the icon for that app? Or have you just felt the need to add a little customization to the look of your launcher by adding your own icons? If you’ve answered “yes” to any of these questions then this how-to is for you.

Customizing, switching, and experimenting with the icons on your webOS device isn’t the most complicated process out there, but it’s not a simple one- or two-step processed. Consider this to be an “advanced tip,” if you will, as there are additional requirements apart from just having the phone needed to make customized app icons happen. You’ll need Internalz and the accompanying File Manager Service to make this happen (both are available through WebOS Quick Install, Preware, or your other favorite homebrew install method). It also requires a little Homebrew know-how, but is otherwise, rather simple. For the sake illustrating this technique we’ll replace the icon from the very popular homebrew Music (Remix) with the icon from the very cute Cutest Kitten from the Palm app catalog. Both apps, for what it’s worth, feature excellent icons – this is just an illustration of icon swapping and customizing.

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There are myriad options when it comes to getting music onto your phone. There’s the straight-forward built-in music player app and there are internet radio streaming apps like Pandora. And let’s not forget podcasts in apps like drPodder. With all these options, there’s one place practically everybody listens: in the car. Sadly, webOS doesn’t have the fancy-pants remote control options available to our iOS-using friends, but that doesn’t mean you still can’t get your tunes into the car.

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A note for developers: if you submit an app to the App Catalog that you built with the webOS 2.0 SDK, it’ll be denied. Problem is, Palm’s not quite accepting those apps just yet – they’ll only take apps for currently-released version of webOS. Developer Geoff Gauchet noticed this when he submitted an update to Neato. Gauchet hadn’t baked any webOS 2.0 features into Neato, he’d merely packaged it up with the 2.0 SDK. With the app rejected, Gauchett thought it best to (1) fix it and (2) let the rest of the developer community know how it’s done. And so, we’ll point you over to Zhephree.com for the directions so you don’t have to go an install the webOS 1.4.5 SDK too.

Source: Zhephree.com

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We’ll be the first to admit that the webOS contacts management system doesn’t provide you with a lot of options for labeling your different fields. For example, the only options for a phone number are Mobile, Home, Work, Fax, and Other. Not exactly the most descriptive if a contact has multiple “work” numbers, plus a personal mobile phone, Google Voice, and maybe a home line as well.

Thankfully, PreCentral reader Kal El on Twitter noticed something pretty slick: the recently-updated desktop/web Google Contacts manager lets you apply custom field labels to pretty much any item, and when you do that with phone numbers and email addresses, they sync just fine to the Synergized contacts on your phone (curiously, Google Voice syncs over as GrandCentral). Even better, the custom labels show up in Universal Search, so you’re that much closer to knowing which number is the right number.

Note: We should point out that this applies only to regular Gmail/Google accounts. Sadly the sweet new Contacts interface has not yet been rolled out to Google Apps accounts.

Source: Kal El on Twitter

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webOS 2.0 may not be out and ready to install on your Pre or Pixi, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get Exhibition running on your phone. As PreCentral forum member Honis pointed out in the comments of our Developers and 2.0 post, it’s possible to get something like Exhibition running on webOS 1.4.X. All it takes is some homebrew action, thanks to the full multitasking capabilities of webOS.

What makes the action happen is the homebrew app NoDoze. As the name might imply, NoDoze’s raison d’être is to keep your phone from dozing off as it’s apt to do when left alone. NoDoze quiet simply keeps the phone on so long as the app is running. As Honis points out, combined with apps like ClearCard with a clock or a streaming news webpage you can have pseudo-Exhibition running without having webOS 2.0.

Of course, leaving your phone completely on isn’t quite the same as Touchstone-triggered Exhibition, but we’ll take what we can get until webOS 2.0 finally hits our phones.

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As expected, Microsoft has turned on Exchange ActiveSync for Hotmail users. This means that Hotmail users can now get their email, calendar, and contacts fully pushed out to plenty of mobile devices, including webOS devices. 

To program Hotmail into Synergy, just start a new account in email and then punch in your hotmail credentials – but make sure you enter your password incorrectly. That part is crucial, as it will allow you to set up Hotmail manually instead of using webOS’s default POP settings. After automatic setup fails, select "Manual Setup."

*Facepalm*. Plenty of folks on Twitter and in the comments remind us: On the add account screen, you can hit the upper-left menu to go directly to ‘Manual Setup.’ (Thanks everybody!) Then, on the Manual Setup Screen:

• Tap "POP" and switch the account type to "Exchange (EAS)"
• Set the Incoming Mail Server to "https://m.hotmail.com" (no quotes)
• Leave Domain blank
• Set your username to your full @hotmail email address (i.e. include @hotmail.com or @live.com)
• Enter your password, correctly this time.

That’s it! You will now be getting all your Hotmail (or live.com mail) pushed out to you automatically and have your contacts and calendar sync’d up via Exchange.

More information from Microsoft here. Thanks to Joe for the tip!

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