We’ve been covering alternatives to iTunes for Pre/Pixi music syncing since Apple finally defeated Palm’s efforts to spoof iTunes into supporting the Pre, and we just got word of the latest version of another fine choice. Version 1.8 of Songbird, a free player for Windows, OS X and Linux, has just graduated from beta, and is available for download at the Songbird Web site.

Although the release notes for this latest version discuss the new devices it supports (Storm, Evo, Magic, etc.), Songbird has officially supported the Pre since last December, and the current version continues that support. With video, playlists, and syncing all built in, Songbird is definitely worth a look for your music and media management.

Source: Songbird (Thanks to rmausser in our forum for the heads-up!)

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It’s been some time since we reviewed The Missing Sync (available for both PC and Mac), since then they’ve added two-way calendar sync and now, most recently, the ability to sync notes and tasks to your desktop. On my Mac, TMS is my go-to app for syncing music, photos, ringtones, bookmarks, and a few other bits and bobs not handeld by Synergy and Google. (Those looking to just sync media might take a gander at the less-expensive GoGadget sync tool).

The kindly folks at Mark/Space have provided us with 20 registration codes to give away to you, our good and gentle readers. To enter, give us a comment here telling us what you would like to get synced from your computer to your Pre or Pixi. 

Full details and a note from Mark/Space after the break!

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HP has just spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $30 million to snap up Melodeo, according to TechCrunch. Melodeo offers a service to stream your music from the cloud – much like Grooveshark.

You can check them out now on their nuTsie service (get the joke there?). You can give nuTsie access to see your iTunes library and they will automatically make all the songs on their servers that match your library available for mobile streaming. TechCrunch claims that the next version will allow you to actually upload your songs to the cloud for streaming anywhere. Remember when HP said they loved the cloud and hinted that it was an integral part of their webOS strategy? Not fooling around.

Palm may have had to give up on direct iTunes sync, but it looks like HP is planning on doing them one better by purchasing a service that will let you get your entire iTunes (or whatever) library into the cloud and streamed to your webOS device. Sounds like a good trade to us – we can’t wait to see what comes of this buyout.

Source: TechCrunch

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Unless you’re already running an Exchange account of some variety, all of your tasks are syncing exclusively to your Palm Profile. While Palm Profile failures aren’t a common event (though they are still worrisome), we still worry about data integrity. More importantly, we want a way to manage our data off of the device as well, to truly leverage the whole “cloud” thing. The folks at NuevaSync have a solution, and that solution is to apply Exchange to the problem.

NuevaSync isn’t just Exchange tasks. It’s also calendar and contact sync, and push email if you opt for the $25/year premium package. You might be thinking that what you want is not just another account to keep track of. Lucky you, NuevaSync doesn’t work that way. It’s more of a conduit that wraps Exchange goodness around your Google, Yahoo, AOL, Toodledo, or just plain IMAP account. The good folks at NuevaSync have even put together a quick how-to on adding a NuevaSync Exchange account to your webOS device.

Thanks to Dan for the tip!

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Who says PC can’t have fun too? The folks over at Mark/Space may be of the Macintosh-inclined variety, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t going to work to make their products fully capable for their Windows-using brethren. To that end, Mark/Space has released a new version of The Missing Sync for webOS that brings two-way calendar synchronization to the PC side of their software. Previously two-way calendar sync was only supported for Mac users.

Change an event name on your webOS phone and sync it back to your computer. Add a location and adjust the time on your PC and then push that back to your phone. Life with webOS and Outlook just got easier. The Missing Sync for webOS is available from Mark/Space’s website for $39.95. A free webOS companion app needed to trigger and manage the sync is available in the Palm App Catalog. Future updates to The Missing Sync promise to bring Tasks and Notes synchronization to both PC and Mac users.

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Score another point for fast and easy development for webOS. Mozilla Labs has announced they’re working on a Weave Sync client for webOS. Weave is Mozilla’s way of syncing bookmarks, passwords, history, and even open tabs from your desktop Firefox to your mobile device (and eventually to mobile Firefox on your mobile device).

On webOS, the client is "all just tests," which is to say you’re going to be doing some digging into .js files to get it working. Also, the client is just a viewer for your data, there’s no syncing or editing here. That last is perhaps not likely to change anytime soon, as webOS has the browser pretty well locked down.

What about mobile Firefox for webOS. We’re not Mozilla, so we don’t know – what we do know is that if you hit the menu inside the launcher and tap "Default Applications," a placeholder is there to someday set a different browser as the primary browser. So webOS is architected to allow for mobile Firefox (or mobile whatever), should somebody wish to get their tech onto the devices.

thanks to everybody who sent this in!

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A few months ago we were laughing at/with Palm investor Roger McNamee after his All Things D interview with Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg. And this year at CES, Palm saw fit to send just CEO Jon Rubinstein into the gauntlet, and even in the face of what some may call some rather nonsensical and unnecessarily combative and prying questioning from Swisher alone, he held up well. Sure, Swisher wanted to know what’s coming next, but Rubinstein would have nothing of it and refused to divulge any new details. That said, there were still some interesting things to take away from the interview, like Rubinstein’s admission of having never used an iPhone.

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Fire up your updaters (after you uninstall patches and themes, natch), for Palm has pushed out webOS 1.3.5.1 the Pre and Pixi on Sprint. The update is for one purpose and one purpose only, if the release notes are to be believed: fixing that nasty Exchange 2010 bug we’ve been telling you about and that Palm acknowledged earlier.

This release fixes an issue in which the Calendar app displayed no events for any account after a user synchronized Calendar with an Exchange account. With this update, Calendar events now appear correctly after an Exchange sync.

Good on you, Palm, for the quick turnaround on a critical bug. Next time, though, let’s leave the "bug / quick-turn-around" step out, mmkay? This  wasn’t the first time we saw Exchange busted (or the second, even), let’s make sure it was the last.

Thanks to everybody who sent this in!

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Thanks to Jim for the heads up!

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Windows users can finally get in on the integrated Amazon MP3 that doubleTwist users on Macs have been enjoying for what seems like ages. The latest update to the media sync software brings it to version 2.6 on PC (Mac users get a feature-similar 1.0b14), and in addition to the expected bug fixes and Amazon MP3 integration also adds supports for the unannounced Google Nexus One. Seeing as it’s just an Android phone, adding support for one more Android device couldn’t have been a tall order for doubleTwist. doubleTwist added support for the Palm Pre and Palm Pixi soon after they launched.

With Amazon MP3’s music store integration doubleTwist can serve as a full-fledged iTunes sync and store replacement. Its playback controls are a bit lacking, but we have little doubt that ramping doubleTwist up to complete iTunes/Windows Media Player replacement is very much on doubleTwist’s radar.

[via: Gizmodo]

Thanks to gksspot555 for the tip!

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