One of the biggest complaints early reviewers have had about the HP TouchPad tablet is the lack of high quality apps available for webOS 3.0. In fact, some of the apps HP had promised would be available at launch didn’t make the cut when the tablet started shipping earlier this month. Take the Amazon Kindle app for the TouchPad, for instance. The TouchPad hit the… Read more »

HP has launched a public beta of HP Play — a new application designed to let you synchronize your media between a PC or Mac and an HP TouchPad tablet or webOS phone. The software is based on the open source Songbird media player and right now it only lets you sync your music over a USB cable. But eventually HP plans to add wireless… Read more »

Popular blogging service WordPress has been offering mobile apps for writing posts, editing comments, and generally managing your blog for a few years. But the company’s iOS and Android apps have never been as easy to use as the web-based WordPress admin panel. Among other things, the mobile apps lack a WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) editor for simple things like italicizing… Read more »

HP contends that one of the strengths of the webOS platform is that the company controls both the hardware and the software, allowing HP to tightly control the user experience of the TouchPad tablet and webOS phones, much the way Apple does with its iOS devices. But that doesn’t mean HP isn’t willing to license the operating system to other companies that want to use… Read more »

HP has started accepting webOS 3.0 apps designed for the upcoming HP TouchPad tablet. The company released an SDK (software developer kit) for the operating system in February, but now developers can submit apps for including in the webOS App Catalog which will allow TouchPad users to find and download apps using the on-device app store. HP is also opening its in-app purchasing program. This… Read more »

HP may have acquired Palm just to get its hands on the webOS operating system (does a company have hands?), but HP CEO Leo Apotheker says the company isn’t ruling out the possibility of sharing webOS with other device makers. When asked whether HP would license webOS for use on phones or other devices from competing companies, Apotheker basically said, sure, why not? Specifically, he… Read more »

One issue which has reared its ugly head on most current tablet OSes is how to deal with legacy apps. For the upcoming HP TouchPad and the shiny, new webOS 3, the challenge is how to handle apps created using the older Palm Mojo SDK. As the Touchpad nears launch readiness, however, HP has finally revealed its response in the latest beta build of its… Read more »

Twitter has announced that starting by the end of this month third party apps will have to ask you for permission before they can access your Twitter direct messages. The move will certainly give users a little more control over the data shared with third parties, and it’s always good to be reminded that data you might think is private is actually in the hands… Read more »

Slacker’s premium mobile music service is now offering on-demand mobile music streaming for $10 per month. Slacker’s free music service generates a station for you based on a song or artist and finds more songs based on what you like and what you don’t. The free version was restricted featured ads and a limited number of skips, while a $3.99/month premium version bypassed those restrictions and… Read more »

With a slide-out QWERTY keyboard like the one the Palm Pre and Plus hide beneath their shells (or a permanently exposed one in the case of the Pixi) always at the ready, it’s a shame when you want to get productive on a mobile website but can’t. That’s been the case with Google Docs for some time now, because although iOS and Android users had… Read more »