The news going around that HP is not going to release another edition of their MediaServer product for savvy consumers came with another little tidbit – that the team behind the product has been transferred over to help out with webOS. We checked in with HP to see if that was indeed the case and sure enough, they’re on board with the Palm GBU:

With the recent acquisition of Palm, HP’s Personal Systems Group is further building the resources and talent necessary to take full advantage of the large and growing connected device market. One of the teams that have been transferred to the Palm Global Business Unit is from the MediaSmart Server line of products. We believe the MediaSmart Server team’s depth and experience on multimedia and entertainment applications will benefit the future development of webOS.

That sounds pretty good to us and along with the HP acquisition of Melodeo seems to send a clear signal that HP is very, very serious about beefing up the media (and streaming?) capabilities of webOS.

For those wondering about the MediaSmart line itself, here’s HP’s word:

The HP MediaSmart Server includes many unique innovations including a media collector, video converter, remote and mobile media streaming, and a complete solution for Mac users that continue to position it as the leading product in the home server category. HP will sell through the current MediaSmart Server inventory, and of course we’ll honor our service and support commitments.

Sounds like features that would all fit quite well on a PC-home for media meant to be streamed to webOS. HP doesn’t look to want to let this turn into a snub against Microsoft (just as they didn’t with the Slate) – they are hugely important partners after all – but it’s looking a bit like HP is looking to control more of their software solutions directly rather than depend on Microsoft.

Source: Engadget; Thanks to everybody who sent this in!

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PreCentral forum member jackofspeed submits this review of the Spotify webOS app and service, as he’s from the UK and can use Spotify

Here in Europe (the land from whence this author hails), Spotify is kind of a big deal. When their webOS app became available last week, it was the end of a 12-month wait for those of us lucky enough to be able to get the Spotify service. To most of you though (i.e. the United States) it may be an unknown commodity, and this is as much a review of the service as it is the app.

A quick summary is in order: Spotify is a cloud-based music streaming service, not unlike Pandora, but with one key difference – you can choose exactly the music you want to play. It’s as simple as that; if you want to listen to a specific artist’s new album, you just search for it and play it. What’s more, if you don’t mind a few adverts, it’s free to do so! Alternatively, you can pay £4.99 a month for ad-free streaming to a computer at 160kbps, or £9.99 per month for ad-free streaming at 320kbps to a computer or mobile device.

The more expensive of these services also allows for offline storage of playlists (limited to around 3000 tracks) so playback can continue in the absence of a data connection. The service also supports collaboratively editable playlists, scrobbling, and social links via Facebook or as web links which can be used in any way you wish. Incorporation of local music into playlists is now supported as well, so the Spotify app can really act as a hub for all your music on your Pre or your desktop. Yes, you understood that correctly, Spotify does what iTunes does, but with a subscription service like Zune Pass built right in.

But what about webOS? Well the Spotify app supports all the features described above, provided you have a Premium subscription. You can build playlists on the phone or on the desktop app, and they sync through the cloud between devices in a totally transparent way. Got a good Spotify playlist already? Install the app and it’s there, ready to go. You can hit play straightaway and it’s off, playing your music pretty much instantly. This works flawlessly over Wi-Fi, and pretty much flawlessly over 3G GSM.

read more

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If you’re looking for an alternative to Pandora for your music streaming needs, look no further than Grooveshark. Unlike Pandora, Grooveshark allows you to play the songs you want and combines it with an advanced recommendation engine. Those recommendations are also tied into the playlists of other Grooveshark users you follow (assuming you and your friends have similar musical tastes).

Grooveshark’s webOS app debuted earlier this year and recently received a hefty update. The new Grooveshark 1.2.0 brings a long awaited notification area dashboard player for controlling the streaming music playback from within other apps. There’s also now a shuffle mode option for your playlists and search filters to better narrow your results. And if you happen to be in a poor signal area, Grooveshark can detect that and serve up lower bitrate tunes for continuing (if lesser quality) music.

The app has received a number of other smaller updates, tweaks, and bug fixes to bring it to the big one dot two dot oh. Check it out – Grooveshark is available for free from the Palm App Catalog, with full functionality offered through a $3 monthly subscription, which by the way, allows you to stream copies of your own music. Cool, eh?

Source: Grooveshark Blog

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With the appearance of so many social networking sites in recent times, it can be a real chore to open each application  or webpage of the associated social networking or microblogging service individually to update the world on what you’ve just eaten for breakfast or your most recent encounter with mall security.  The solution to this vexing issue is the recently released free application Ping.fm, which allows you to update the untold multitudes of services you belong to all at once, with the program supporting a staggering list of services, many of which you’ve probably never heard of.

If you’re thinking of downloading the app and you’re not already a ping.fm user, you would wise to hit the service’s website from the desktop and configure everything there, as the webOS app doesn’t offer the ability to configure such things on the device itself and setting everything up via the phone’s browser is a less than enjoyable experience.  Once everything’s set up, though, the program is as easy to use as it is simple:  You’re presented with a drop down menu allowing you to select which services you’d like to ping, either individually or as a whole, a space to type your message, and a button to "Ping it!".

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One of the biggest complaints about the Palm Pre when it was first announced, was the lack of an SD card slot. Thanks to an interesting device called the AirStash, we may have a solution for the webOS. According the company’s latest tweet, it works fully with the Palm Pre and and Palm Pixi.

If you can make it through the above video’s strong iPhone content, you’ll be able to see how the device works.  Think of it like a wireless thumb drive, using a media server.  Basically, the AirStash creates a wifi access point that you can connect your device to, and stream files from it. And rather than having a predefined flash memory size, it has an SD/SDHC slot supporting up to 32GB.

The beauty of the AirStash is that once you’re connected to it from your device, all you need to do is go to a particular URL in the web browser and you’ll be able to use an HTML5-enchanced web file viewer interface. In it, you can stream and download any files from the SD/SDHC card.

The AirStash is still quite a new product and as such, is only currently available in Canada and the USA. According to the company’s FAQs page, the battery life can last up to 5 hours of video streaming, which isn’t too bad.

There a few catches though. For one, file uploads must be done via the usb adapter (or via a SD/SDHC card reader), though a future firmware is planned to allow file uploading via wifi. In addition, it doesn’t seem as though the wifi access point offers any sort of security, so other people could possibly connect to to access point and view your files.

If that doesn’t bother you, the AirStash is available on their website for $99 USD.

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While there are all sorts of streaming music apps available for the Palm Pre (Pandora and Slacker, to name two), there’s one more service has made its presence known on webOS: Grooveshark. Their app, as demoed above, leverages Grooveshark’s popular and powerful recommendation engine to find other music you might like. Like Pandora you can rate a song up or down (smile or frown, in Grooveshark lingo), but you can also save playlists and songs for later repeat listening and sharing with other users.

What makes Grooveshark truly unique, however, is that users can upload their own content to the service. Like YouTube, you can upload whatever music or other audio you want (from your desktop, of course – that’d be too much for webOS) to Grooveshark. What makes this cool is that you can upload your own music collection to Grooveshark and listen to it from wherever you have an internet connection, be it on a friend’s computer or on your webOS phone using the Grooveshark app. Cool, eh?

Grooveshark is available now, for free, in the App Catalog.

[via: MobileCrunch]

Thanks to everybody that sent this in!

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Slacker Radio for webOS has finally hit 1.0, bringing the much-needed music search feature to the app. As I mentioned on this week’s podcast, I like Slacker a lot – although it’s missing a few webOS-specific features like controls in the notification area, the music seems to be a little better suited to my tastes than the alternatives.

Slacker also as a "Radio Plus" option for $4.99 a month that adds unlimited skips, complete lyrics, unlimited direct song requests, and a (Windows only) desktop player. If you’re a Slacker fanatic, it’s a nice upgrade.

Slacker has provided us with TEN Radio Plus Subscriptions to give away to you, our music loving readers! Seven of them are 3-month subscriptions, three of them are full one-year subscriptions.

To enter: First, you’ll need to set up a Free Slacker account for them to upgrade. Second – comment away right here! We’ll pick ten winners at random from all the comments made on this post. One comment per person. If you post more than one, we’ll know and we’ll disqualify all of your entries.  We’ll close entries for the contest tomorrow, Friday Feb 12th, at midnight.

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