Attaching a photo or video to an SMS/MMS message is a fairly straight-forward task. You can either push a multimedia file to a new message from another app, such as directly from the Photo or Video app, or you can attach it directly from within a text message. The easiest way to do this is to tap the icon in the bottom-right corner of the screen to load up a photo selection screen, choose your desired folder and then photo, and tap the "Attach Photo" button. If you want to send a video, use the icons on the bottom of the screen to switch between photos and videos.

You will notice that once you start writing your message, the icon turns into a icon to send the message. If you want to attach a file after this, you don’t need to first delete your text to get the icon back. Instead, just swipe-down from the top-left of the screen to bring down the Messaging application drop-down menu and select "Attach File" and follow the same steps as above.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

When you are sending a text message to a person in your contact list, you normally just search for that contact in the TO field on a new SMS message (or just use Universal Search). But what happens if you want to send a message to a number not in your contact list? Or what if you are given a name or word to send the message to, but don’t have a phone dialpad in front of you to know what number each character refers to (e.g. 2 = ABC, 3 = DEF, etc). Luckily, webOS gives you the flexibility to address the message almost any way you want.

• Dial by number: If you wanted to send a message to 123456789, you can just start typing the numbers of your keyboard without the need to press the Option (Orange/Silver) key beforehand. As you can see in the top of screenshot, typing "ertdfgcvb" (the 123456789 keys on the keyboard) gives you an option to "SEND TO NUMBER".
• Dial by word: Many companies, however, will often tell you to send a text message to a word, which requires you to have a old-school telephone dialpad in front of you to know how to do that conversion. For example, Coca-cola’s MyCokeRewards tells you to text a code to "COKE" (2653). Even though the dialpad isn’t available in the Messaging App to refer to, all you need to do is just type the word in the "TO" field and the conversion is done in the "SHORT CODE" section. As you can see in the screenshot, the Short code for "ertdfgcvb" converts to 378334928.

Note that you can not mix-and-match these methods. So, if you want to send a text to 1-555-PALM-200, you will actually need to do the PALM-to-7256 conversion on your own.
 

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

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.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

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

read more

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

Deleting a text message or IM conversation in the messaging app is accomplished the same way as you would delete a multitude of things throughout webOS: by swiping the message off the screen. However, there are a couple of unique aspects of deleting from within of the Messaging App:

• You can delete your entire messaging thread by swiping off a full conversation from the main top page of the Messaging App, but you can also delete individual messages from within a conversation.
• As discussed on a prior tip, you do have the ability to send a single text message to multiple recipients at once. If you individually delete one of those messages from within a conversation, it will actually delete it in all of the conversation threads for each recipient. However, if you delete the message as part of an entire conversation, no other threads will be affected and that message will remain in those conversations until you delete it!
• And don’t forget that while you must press "Delete" to confirm after you swipe it off the screen, if you have multiple items to delete you do not need to confirm each deletion. Just swipe off the next item and the prior action will automatically be confirmed.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

Adding a new contact or adding to an existing contact is obviously an important function for a smartphone, and webOS gives you a lot of options to do just that.  The following is a long–and probably not complete–list on how you can add a new contact or add to an existing contact.  Continue reading after the break for all the details…

read more

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

While you are only able to send a text message to a single recipient when initiating a new conversation via Universal Search or when responding to an existing conversation, there is a way to send a single message to multiple contacts at once. To initiate a multi-contact message, first you need to open up a new message by either pressing the new message icon on the bottom left corner of the Messaging App, selecting the "Share via MMS" option while viewing a photo, or by clicking any variation of "share via SMS" from within another app or while sharing an app link from the App Catalog. Then, in the "TO:" area at the top of the message just type to search for your first contact and when select the phone number you want to text, the recipient’s name will appear. Then, just start typing again to search for the next contact and continue until you have everyone you need included. You can also automate this process by using apps such as LaunchPoint Speed Dial or Mail Lists, but due to webOS limitations you can only initiate any new message from within those apps

Note that while you can send a single message out to multiple contacts, the recipients don’t see who else you sent that message to, nor can they reply back to everyone.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

When you are looking at a photo on your device, there are a number of different actions that you can perform with that photo. To access these actions, first you need to load up a photo via either the Photos app or by tapping on the photo thumbnail in the Camera App. Then, you can pitch-to-zoom or double-tap to zoom to navigate the photo, rotate your phone to view the photo in landscape mode, or you can work with the various buttons on that screen, as shown in the screenshot here (if you do not see any of those buttons, just tap the screen once to make them appear).  Continue reading after the break to review what each of those buttons do.

read more

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

Do you have an application that you love and want to easily share with your friends? You can always go to PreCentral’s App Catalog App Gallery and search for the app, copy the link location and send it as an email or text message, but there has to be a faster method, right? Indeed there is! All you need to do is:

1. Open up the App Catalog on your device
2. Find the specific app you want to share by either searching for it from the main page, or clicking on the Shopping Bag button on the bottom right to bring up a list installed apps
3. Once you have the App Description page loaded, click on the "Share" button and choose either "Email" or "Text Message"
4. This will open up either an email or text message with the direct link to the app for you to send to your friends
    

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

Firm MWR Infosecurity claims to have discovered a vulnerability in webOS that would allow an attacker to create a specially crafted SMS message that would allow them to "subvert webOS completely."  Once the attacker gains control, the phone’s microphone could be utilized to record and transmit whatever is picked up around it.

Reached for comment, Palm has told us that "The current version of webOS fixes the security vulnerability reported to Palm."

We at PreCentral assume that the "current version" with the fix is webOS 1.4.5, which has been released to nearly all carriers in all regions, excepting most prominently AT&T and Verizon. As with OS updates in the past, we hope and expect that 1.4.5 will roll out to those users soon.

The exploit sounds awfully similar to the SMS injection exploit that was discovered in webOS 1.3.1 and subsequently remedied by Palm in later releases of the operating system. It is notable that webOS 1.4.5’s release notes for Sprint do mention MWR in regard to fixing a security issue.

Via: The Inquirer, Source: V3, webOS 1.4.5 Release Notes; More coverage: webosroundup; Thanks to fusion 158 for the tip!

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>