Firesheep is a Firefox extension designed as a way to show just how insecure some websites are. You can sit on an open network and ‘listen’ for passwords to popular sites that don’t properly or fully implement HTTPS and SSL. The folks at codebutler want to call attention to poorly coded sites and users who don’t think before sending their passwords over open WiFi Networks (and yes, people with less high-minded goals can also use the tool).

PreCentral reader Sebastian has ported the plugin over to webOS. The above video shows Firesheep on the Pre easily hijacking a Gowalla session. The webOS Firesheep app does not show a list of nearby logged in accounts like the Firefox plug in, but in the video it automatically detects the Gowalla log in and takes it over. 

The lesson? Ask websites that don’t offer secure login to do so. Or use VPN (which, by the by, is built-in to webOS 2.0). Or just keep an eye out for Pre owners at your local Starbucks and pay special attention if one happens to look at you and cackle maniacally.

Source: Youtube; Thanks Sebastian!  

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WiFi-equipped SD card maker Eye-Fi has launched a mobile portal that allows users to view and manage and share their photos on a number different services in addition to being able to manage device settings while on the go directly from their smartphone of choice. 

This opens up a number of intriguing usage scenarios. Fore example: you’re out with your friends or in the park with your family shooting photos, and you have access to a WiFi hotpot, you can configure the Eye-Fi card to automatically upload to the mobile center manage where you can then selectively send them off to a multitude of different services such as Facebook or Flikr.  This is also great for professional photographers who can now utilize the larger screens of their phones – and the pinch to zoom functionality therein – to look at previews of their photos without having to leave their subjects to find a laptop.  

Unfortunately, there’s still no way for Eye-Fi cards to communicate directly to smartphones – even the dedicated iPhone app just connects to the mobile portal – but as the release of webOS 2.0 grows nearer with promises of technology like Bonjour and Zero Conf baked in, it isn’t unrealistic to think that it may be possible.

Hit the break for a video overview of the service.

Source: Eye-Fi; Thanks to  jsabo for the tip! 

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Yesterday we celebrated hackers who have taken webOS software to new levels, so this morning it’s only appropriate that we call out some incredible hardware hacking. PreCentral forum member gitit20 grabbed the radio board off a Verizon Palm Pixi Plus and transplanted it into a standard Sprint Palm Pixi. The result: A Sprint Pixi with a feature that we believe it should have had all along: WiFi.

Gitit20 reports that the two versions of the Pixi are virtually identical (excepting that WiFi chip) on the inside, all the way down to the Sprint Pixi not needing an extra GPS antenna to get its transplanted board a location fix. No serial numbers or coding  needed, apparently – just swap the boards and apply the Sprint webOS doctor. Unfortunately, Sprint Nav disappears and is replaced with Verizon Nav, which doesn’t.

And we all were thinking it would be Palm that would bring new hardware to Sprint. Video after the break!

Source: PreCentral Forums, more information in this forum thread; thanks to everybody who sent this in!

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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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Our friends over at tech blog Engadget have assembled the votes and put together the nominations for the 2009 Engadget Awards, and Palm is recognized in every category (five!) in which it ought compete. There’s some tough competition out there, but you know that we think that the Palm Pre and webOS indeed are the gadgets of the year. Despite the fierceness of the competition, the Pre and (surprisingly) Touchstone are holding their own in the polls. While we have no doubt that Palm is the tops, the only opinion that counts here is the mass opinion: your vote.

What’s Palm up against?

See? Tough competition there. As you can imagine, if the Pre and Touchstone are to stand any chance of remaining in the fight, they’re going to need your vote. Voting is open until February 20, 2010.

May the best gadgets win!

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Even in these days of instant communications through text messages, instant messaging, and Twitter, there’s something to be said for the robustness (and openness) of email. Thus, when email goes wonky you can be assured that there will be noise made of it. While this blogger’s Gmail-not-pushing issue managed to magically resolve itself, other users have noticed a different problem with their email: push simply doesn’t work over WiFi, and for some in that group their email pushes very late (10-15 minutes) over EVDO. And of course, there are those who simply can’t get push email to work at all.

We feel your pain, and even though signs point to the issue not being a widespread one, we would be remiss if we didn’t ask around. So here we are, asking, with the preferred mass data gathering method of politicians and the media alike: the poll. And as an added bonus, you can also comment on this article (like any other). In particular, if you’ve had this sort of issue and figured out how to resolve it, we’re all ears.

Are you having troubles with email?(polls)

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When the Pixi was first released on Sprint, one of the big drawbacks when compared to the Pre was lack of WiFi. Evidence from the FCC suggests that those wanting a WiFi’d Pixi may be in luck very soon.
A CDMA Palm Pixi has been tested for 802.11b/g WiFi by the FCC and given Verizon’s gearing up [...]

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The other day we brought you word of how Palm Profiles were disappearing across the nation after users reset or replaced their phones. While Palm stated that they are aware of the issue and are working on correcting it, Sprint has started giving instructions to users replacing their phones on how to avoid the issue. Apparently it all stems from Palm’s servers getting confused by a new phone having a different version number than the new phone, usually an older version because the new one’s been sitting in a box for a while. Big ups to everybody who sent this in, and to bpdamas for putting it up in the forums

Instructions for users:

1. Confirm that your replacement webOS phone has been activated.
2. Power on the phone and when prompted to enter your old Palm Profile data, instead choose “Create New Profile.”
3. Create a fake/dummy Palm Profile using a different (doesn’t even have to be real) email address.
4. Once the phone finishes set-up, do not enter any of your cloud accounts (Yahoo, Gmail, etc) into contacts or calendar or email. Just go straight to Updates and check that you are running the latest version of webOS, currently webOS 1.3.1. If you’re not, immediately download the webOS update (if you have a Pre, remember that WiFi will be significantly faster than trying to go over EVDO). If you are running the latest version of webOS, skip to step six.
5. Install the update. Let the phone reset and do all it needs to do.
6. Open Device Info and confirm that you’re running the latest version of webOS. If not, go back to 4.
7. In Device Info, drop to Reset Options at the bottom and select Full Erase. This will wipe the device clean and reset it.
8. After the phone has powered back on, you will be prompted to reenter your Palm Profile. This time, enter your original login username and password. Since you’re on the same version as your last backup, this should restore all your data with no issue.

Instructions for Palm

1. Fix this.

…More specifically, one would like to see a way to keep Palm Profile information from newer webOS devices from busting up on older versions. When you think about, though, it makes sense that Palm may need to change some of the backup structures on the Profile.

Here’s a better idea: make it so that a Pre is able to do stuff like update itself before you enter your Palm Profile credentials. That’s the most user-friendly solution – there will eventually be plenty of Pre phones out there that aren’t hooked up to active service but would still be perfectly good WiFi/PDA type devices for some folks. Plus, you know, people won’t experience having their Palm Profiles janking up on new phones in the future.

Thanks to everybody that sent this in!

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As we suspected, many new Palm Pixi phones came out of the box with webOS 1.2.9 installed. That’s all well and good, since webOS checks for updates on a regular basis and downloads them in the background while you carry on with your daily business. Problem is, the Update app will only download over EVDO and WiFi, which in a way makes sense. EVDO and WiFi are nice and fast in comparison to the other wireless alternative on Sprint: 1xRTT.

So what is 1xRTT? Essentially, it’s Sprint’s 2.5G network, runs at a blistering 60 kbps to 80 kbps. Yes, kilobits per second, a speed that roughly translates to 10 kilobytes per second, in which case downloading the 126 MB webOS 1.3.1 update would take nearly 36 hours, and that’s assuming you managed to maintain peak rate for that whole day and a half. There’s a reason that you don’t see 1xRTT advertised much: it’s really slow.

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We at PreCentral weren’t the only ones that got our hands on the Palm Pixi for review. All across the intertubes various tech news outlets got to review the Pixi and the general consensus was this: the Pixi is tiny and, at $100, not that bad. With its super slim design, excellent keyboard, and solid build the Pixi won many fans, but its various drawbacks (lack of WiFi, screen size, slowness) led to many comparisons to the big brother Pre. Check it all out after the break…

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