Prior to snapping up Palm, HP was very intently studying the tablet space. It was obvious that a Windows 7 tablet was in the cards (Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer showed one off at CES), but whether they were working on something else wasn’t clear. Rumors and leaks and blurry cam photos soon surfaced of an Android-powered tablet and printer combo code-named the Zeus (or Zeen (or c510)).

HP’s finally gotten around to announcing this fantastical mystery device, and it’s called the HP Photosmart eStation AiO. AiO stands for all-in-one (as in printer/fax/scanner/copier), but the tablet is obviously the interesting part of this combination: it runs Android 2.1, but it’s nowhere near the typical Android experience. Instead this sucker’s been heavily skinned and locked down with the help of Yahoo (yes, Yahoo tinkering with Google’s OS on HP’s printer), leaving users with a host of Yahoo widgets and a handful of HP ePrint apps, plus email and browser and a Nook eReader app.

This ain’t no Google experience, but signs right now indicate that it’s not what we should expect from webOS and Palm under HP. Despite its Android roots, the eStation AiO is a dedicated device. It’s not a tablet computer by any means: it’s more a super-advanced control interface for a printer with some on-the-go on the side. Which is kind of, uh, interesting? Let’s just hope that this isn’t what HP has in mind for their webOS printer idea too.

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

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Welcome to 2010, AOL. The internet giant turned media giant turned hopeful contender for hearts and minds has relaunched their mobile website, and thankfully left behind the relic of dumbphone past known as WAP. Wireless Application Protocol, or WAP, was meant to deliver online media (well, mostly text and some pictures) efficiently to older phones with their poor browsers and limited bandwidth. In this era of advanced WebKit browsers like those found in webOS, iOS, and Android, as well as the advent of speedy 3G tech, WAP just doesn’t cut it anymore.

AOL has seen the light and rebuilt their mobile site to deliver better HTML-based content goodness. Like Yahoo!, AOL has been busy retooling themselves as an information and media portal, and the new mobile version of the site easily shoehorns that portal to millions of smartphones across the world. AOL also released new apps for iOS and Android, but a webOS app was nowhere in sight. Of course, it’s still AOL, but it’s not the mailing-more-than-a-billion-CDs-to-your-house AOL of years past. Worth a shot? Check it out at m.aol.com.

Source: AOL Mobile

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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.

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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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While NBC may have a monopoly on Olympics coverage on the teletube, the internet is a free-for-all when it comes to news. The folks at Yahoo! know that we want Olympics news on the go, so they’ve put together a slick mobile portal for their 2010 Winter Olympic Games news. And just in time, as the games kick off tonight with what’s sure to be an extravaganza of an opening ceremony (thanks for setting the bar ridiculously high, China).

Even if you’re up in Vancouver you might find this useful. The site wraps news, galleries, and the medal count all into a neat little package along with coverage from blogs and sports experts. And it’s not just for American sports fans – Yahoo! is bringing Olympic-level news to 13 countries, including Australia, Canada (naturally), France, Germany, and India. Check it out at http://m.yahoo.com/olympics

[via: PreCentral sister site Crackberry.com]

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As we know that some of you have noticed, webOS 1.3.1 changed the way that email is handled with respect to POP access. If you’re not familiar with POP (Post Office Protocol) email, essentially the way the service is ‘supposed’ to work is that computers download the email from the server but do not communicate their status back to the server (e.g. the server will not know if you’ve read the email). This stands in contrast to IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol), in which read, flagged, and deleted statuses are synced back to the server and other clients accessing the same account. To deal with the amount of email that can amass on a server, many POP users choose to have the server delete messages after they’re downloaded by the computer.

Prior to the most recent webOS update, POP email status didn’t work quite the way it was ‘supposed’ to work. Email used to actually be checked back against the server, and if the email had been deleted there it was then deleted on the phone, even if you hadn’t read it on phone. From a design standpoint, that’s not ideal POP behavior, as POP is supposed to download messages and ignore what happens on the server after that. In essence, POP on webOS used to work sort of like IMAP ‘lite’ email. This worked well for users that relied on POP for their email access (many ISPs only offer POP), as handling emails in bulk on their computer subsequently handled them in bulk on their webOS phones.

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We at PreCentral receive a lot of tips throughout the day, but more and more over the past few weeks our inbox has been flooding with stories of users having just reset or replaced their webOS phones only to find that their Palm Profile did not back up all their data as promised. If you haven’t experienced this issue you’re in the lucky majority, but it seems the rate of the backup failures is accelerating and spreading.

We do feel your pain – one of our own staff members was hit by this bug and lost all of his contacts, calendar events, memos, and tasks. The only thing that was saved were his apps, which is a small consolation when you’ve just lost hundreds of phone numbers and email addresses accumulated over the years.

While we’re waiting for a third-party backup solution to land, we did some investigating. It turns out that the problem stems from corrupted backups, which is nothing new in the backup industry. Corrupted data happens all the time, but there are always safeguards to ensure that it doesn’t corrupt the system. Usually, that’s a prior backup. The issue is that the Palm Profile doesn’t keep anything other than the most recent backup, corrupted or not. Since your phone doesn’t provide any feedback on backups, even when they end up as corrupted, webOS users have no idea whether or not their backup was successfully completed. That is, until you reset your phone and realize that everything is lost.

Update: Palm has issued an official statement on the situation:

We are seeing a small number of customers who have experienced issues transferring their Palm Profile information to another Palm webOS device. Palm and Sprint are working closely together to support these customers to successfully transfer their information to the new device

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Coming days earlier than we were told to expect it is Palm webOS 1.3.1. Weighing in at 126 MB, webOS 1.3.1 brings a number of under-the-hood changes to the webOS, as well as a number of new features:

• Yahoo support in Synergy
• Improved notifications for emails
• A track scrubber in Music
• Text message forwarding
• Custom ringtones for text messages (see changelog for instructions)
• Google contact sync only now pulls from My Contacts all emails
• Google Apps and Yahoo Small Business work with Email
• PIN lock timer

Dozens of bug fixes have also been incorporated into webOS 1.3.1. Currently webOS 1.3.1 is only available for Pre owners on Sprint and Bell; GSM Pre owners can expect the update by the end of November. The full changelog is posted after the break.

A word of caution to all patchers and themers: before updating remove all patches and themes. We don’t want you to accidentally screw up your Pre. We’re doing it and so should you.

Thanks to everybody that sent this in!

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The chaps over at PalmInfocenter have heard from O2 that webOS 1.3 (we assume that O2 meant 1.3.1) will be coming to GSM Palm Pre phones by the end of November, presumably alongside the same update for the CDMA Pre you can get on Sprint and Bell. Currently the CDMA version of the phone sports a 1.2.1 operating system. 

We don’t have any confirmation, but it’s also been rumored/wished that the App Catalog will be rolled out in force to the whole world instead of having paid apps limited to just the United States. But if wishes were horse then we’d, well, we’d have a lot of horses. So take heart, our European friends languishing in the strange and unfamiliar land of webOS 1.1.3, soon your troubles will be ended and some of those horses will be taken off of your hands. Three cheers for parity!

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The teasing and leaking can officially end, with Palm webOS 1.3.1 scheduled to land for the Palm Pixi on Sunday, November 15 (i.e. Pixi release day) and on the Pre "shortly thereafter." In actuality, we have heard a few reports of Pixi phones out in the wild already and they’re showing the update available now.

Most Pixi phones will ship with webOS 1.2.9 out-of-the-box and will pull down the 1.3.1 update soon after activation. Between downloading the update and all the Synergy account information over exclusively EVDO, well, it’ll be slow going for the first hour or so. For a full list of the updates in webOS 1.3.1, click here.

webOS 1.3.1 will also be required for the new Facebook app to work, apparently there are some underpinnings not in older version of webOS that are needed. And on that note, the Facebook app will not ship in 1.3.1, instead it will appear in the App Catalog for users to download if they so desire (and have space). As always, you should remove any and all patches and themes before updating webOS.

Now, about that “shortly thereafter” for Pre users. We know you don’t like it. Neither do we. Palm has assured us that they are doing everything that they can to get webOS 1.3.1 out to Pre owners as soon as possible, but there are still some things that must receive a final stamp of approval from the powers that be before all is deemed a-okay There’s no getting around carrier approval, and that approval comes on a per-device basis.

Oh, and we should note that the above only applies to Sprint phones. We don’t know when Pre owners on Bell, O2, or Movistar will be able to update to 1.3.1, but we hope it won’t be much longer after the folks on Sprint get it.

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