webOS Developer Geoff Gauchet (aka @zhephree) has brought plenty of goodness to us all, most famously with his FourSquare app and Neato! for shooting data to and from webOS devices and computers. For his next trick, Gauchet is planning on bringing a new app called Incredible! that will serve as an aggregated social media reading tool.

Incredible! will pull in Twitter, Facebook, FourSquare, Flickr, Gowalla, Picasa, Delicious, LinkedIn, YouTube, Untappd, and, yes, a few other streams into a single unified app. Rather than try to be a full-featured client for all of these services, Incredible! will focus on providing a single way to read your entire social stream in an interface that is able to give you all those services in something actually readable.

There have been attempts to do similar things on other platforms (MotoBlur on Android comes to mind) and even on the desktop. Based on the screenshots and plans for the app, we’re optimistic that Gauchet just may have done a better job than any of them. Read on for our exclusive preview of Incredible!

read more

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

If there’s one homebrew app that’s been incredibly popular from the start, it’s been Music Player (Remix). What started as an enhancement of the built-in webOS Music app, Remix has evolved to version 2.0 with a completely new UI, awesome utilization of dashboard controls, and more.

See everything that’s new, including a video, after the break!

read more

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

If you haven’t already joined the webOS discussion on Twitter, here is one more reason to do so: info on upcoming app releases, direct from the developers. Today, the teasers come from Rovio (creators of PDK Hot Apps grand prize winner Angry Birds) and Astraware (which has already ported a number of its newer games to webOS).

First, we saw the following back and forth between Twitter user M_Osborn19 and RovioMobile:

@M_Osborn19: @RovioMobile please a webos version or at least an update?

@RovioMobile: @M_Osborn19 update will be out soon for webOS too

From Astraware came this nice piece of news:

@astraware: New game for release later today on Pre/Pre Plus – that must make it #weboswednesday!

While we always appreciate tips sent directly to us here at PreCentral, er, Central, we are also eagerly scouring Twitter for news you can use, and tweeting with our readers as well. We look forward to these news games, and we’ll see you on Twitter!

Source: Astraware (Twitter), Rovio (Twitter); thanks to jfd.lew in our forums for the heads-up!

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

We’ve been keeping a close eye on HP’s Rahul Sood, who has been the most vocal of HP’s executives about the potential of webOS in the future. In addition to a recent blog post on Palm’s official blog where he waxes on about how great hardware can generate excitement, Sood also has been engaging in a discussion on Palm’s Facebook page where he notes that what we’ve seen of webOS 2.0 thus far is "just a taster" and that using it is "like wearing velvet."

That confluence of new features in webOS 2.0 and exciting new hardware is just what Palm needs right now to help solve another vexing problem for the platform: getting more and better apps. Sood himself just tweeted as much, saying that "everyone [developers] will want in once the presentation of the hardware is in front of them."  We like that sound of that, though citing the roadmap "over the next 12 months" isn’t exactly the time window we were hoping to hear.

Which do you think comes first in the chicken and egg game of sweet apps and sweet hardware?

Update: In case you were feeling optimistic about imminent new webOS hardware, we’ll let Sood’s own words bring you down a notch:

… don’t expect anything soon, please stop asking "when" — i’d rather be straight with you. these things take time…

Update 2: Ah Twitter, how you strip away context and nuance. Sood’s ’soon’ above refers to not expecting an announcement soon, as he clarifies in a blog post. As we wrote in the original post, that window of releasing devices is still a very large 12 months:

You will certainly see products released over the next 12 months, some sooner than others, and some which are very exciting to me. The stuff that excites me the most are the new form factors. Now, when I said "over the next 12 months," I really mean over the next 12 months. Not at the end of 12 months, not tomorrow…but over the next 12 months we will see the makings of a new portfolio and the beginning of something great again. There is no predefined window of opportunity in the technology business; lack of innovation is the only thing that closes the window.

Whether "sooner than others" translates to "two thousand ten" is another vexing issue.

Source: @rahulsood

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

When webOS 2.0 comes around, Foursquare app developer Geoff Gauchet (a.k.a. Zhephree) is going to be ready with version 2.0 of his popular check-in app. As announced on his blog, Gauchet plans to hook into every webOS 2.0 feature announced thus far. You’ll be able to find places near you and submit shoutouts directly from Just Type, as well as unspecified interactions via the opened-up Synergy and new Exhibition mode.

Patching it up to work with webOS 2.0 isn’t the only thing Gauchet plans to do with Foursquare 2.0. In the cards is a massive rewrite of Foursquare’s core code, fully integrating many of the new features that have been implemented since the first release. This will serve to do a few things, most notably make it easier for future additions with less extraneous code lying around and make the app all-around faster than before. Less code means the phone needs to do less thinking. Foursquare for webOS will also be moving to an OAuth log-in scheme, just like Twitter and associated apps and services did earlier this year. Oh, and there’s the matter of switching to the not-yet-released-but-sure-to-pack-lots-of-newness API from the folks at Foursquare HQ. Even with all this, the developer is finding the time for a few new tools and features that will be sure to delight Foursquare users.

Source: Zhephree.com

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

We’ve been testing the new version 1.5 of Bad Kitty and here’s what you need to know: it’s stupid-fast, crazy-pretty, and insanely-filled with features. If you are looking for all of the above in a Twitter client, just wait. It has been submitted to Palm for review and we expect to see it live soon.

Bad Kitty keeps its basic structure of showing classy overview pages that you drill into to get to your twitter lists, then back out of to switch. Many people prefer a button structure (I know I do) where you are one tap away from switching between your full list and your @ replies. What may surprise you is that Bad Kitty is So Fast that with this app, it’s not as painful as you might thing to do all those back swipes. The lack of a new tweet button is not a problem – you can "Just Type" to start a tweet.

But all that is old news with Bad Kitty – what’s new, including a photo gallery, a neat wallpaper for ya, and a video showing the speed, is after the break!

read more

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

The App Catalog is awash in a flood of terrific Twitter apps, from the excellent Tweed (this blogger’s current favorite) to the innovative and visually stunning TweetMe for webOS.  Not only does a Twitter app have to look good these days to compete in the ‘Catalog, it has to perform blazingly fast with a cutting edge feature set, and Yak ($2.99 in the App Catalog) has what it takes to be a serious contender.  How does it stack up against some of the newer and established names? There’s only one way to find out: by reading on after the break.

read more

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

Twitter’s been in a state of near constant flux nowadays, with changes coming one after another, and mostly for the better. One of those for-the-better changes was the addition of OAuth log-in authentication that requires a Twitter user to authorize specific applications to use their accounts, and works through Twitter instead of the client.

For Tweed, that’s posed a slight problem, as with Twitter OAuth they no longer keep the user’s password logged on the device. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem, except that as OAuth has moved towards mandatory usage, Tweed’s integration with media upload services like yFrog and TwitVid was broken in the process.

Realizing the error of their not-completely-updated ways, the folks at Pivotal Labs (the people behind Tweed) are finishing up an update to Tweed that will bring OAuth log-in to all of the app as well as fix some other bugs that were introduced with version 1.8.

Source: Pivotal Labs

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

As we discussed in prior tips, Universal search is an extremely powerful tool that lets you search for your Contacts, Applications, the web and Google Maps from anywhere on your phone and in a matter of seconds. For those Homebrewers out there, there are also a wide-range of patches that are available to further enhance Universal Search. After the break, we will dive into some of the more popular Universal Search patches that are available to you via webOS Quick Install or Preware.

read more

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

Universal search is an extremely powerful tool within webOS that allows you to access all kinds of data on your phone within a matter of seconds and from anywhere on your device. To access Universal Search, all you need to do is start typing on the keyboard while in the Launcher or while in Card View (to access card view while in an App, simply swipe up from the gesture area to minimize that app). In addition to Contacts and Applications searches, webOS can also do a variety of extended searches in the web or maps. Continue reading after the break to learn the specifics of these extended searches

read more

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>