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The Palm Pre line of smartphones and the new TouchPad tablet computer, are very good products, but they have not been doing well in the market place. Apple, with iPhone and the iPad, has a near choke-hold on that market segment. HP has thus decided to either spin-off the business unit that WebOS and its devices are part of, or explore "other transaction." That is another way of saying, if the first option does not succeed, we will sell it. But rather than those two options, here's what I think HP should do with WebOS.

Just 16 months after announcing the acquisition of Palm, HP has said today that it will “discontinue operations for webOS devices,” saying that the units (presumably the TouchPad, Pre series, and Veer) have “not met internal milestones and financial targets.”

Before I open palm — make that palms — and insert face, let me say that the Ubuntu community’s general mantra of “haters gonna hate” never really works as a valid argument when someone disagrees with what the self-appointed Ubuntu/Canonical leader/founder/Grand Poobah, or any other Ubuntu/Canonical leader, says. It’s a profoundly weak argument that first and foremost makes you sound shallow and stupid. It also makes you sound like you don’t have a reasonable response, as well as sounding like you’re incapable of responding.

The Wi-Fi version of the 9.7-inch HP TouchPad tablet went on sale today for $499 (16GB) and $599 (32GB). Early reviews follow the same general pattern as those of the original Palm Pre two years ago: praise for the promise of WebOS, but disappointment over bugs, performance, lack of apps, and limited battery life....

This tutorial describes how you can set up an development environment for building Android apps on an Ubuntu 11.04 desktop using Eclipse, the Android SDK, and PhoneGap. I will describe how to build Android apps from the command line with PhoneGap and from the GUI with Eclipse and PhoneGap and how to test them in an Android emulator and on a real Android device. PhoneGap allows you to develop your Android applications using web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (e.g. with JavaScript libraries such as jQuery/jQTouch), and it will turn these web apps into native Android apps (in fact, PhoneGap supports multiple platforms such as Android, iPhone, Palm, Windows Mobile, Symbian, so you can use the same sources to create apps for multiple platforms).

To celebrate its 100th anniversary IBM threw itself a party and, oh, what a bash it was. It's IBM's culture that has kept it going, CEO Sam Palmisano told an audience of thousands.

It seems like only yesterday that Palm announced its brand new Linux-based WebOS and Palm Pre, ready to shake up the world with awesomeness and Linux in a little package. They matched that announcement up with a nifty little SDK that emulated the entire OS in VirtualBox, and was released as a .deb package for Ubuntu. Someone even posted a HOWTO on the Linux Journal web site about it!

US market researcher comScore reports that 69.5 million US citizens own a smartphone, and that one third of these phones run Google's open source Android mobile operating system. On the popularity scale, RIM and Apple are next with 29% and 25% of users, leaving Microsoft (8%) and Palm (3%) far behind. According to market researcher Nielsen, the US sales figures for Android phones have already been above those for RIM and Apple since July 2010, but this is the first time that Android is also leading in terms of devices in use. comScore said that last November, RIM was in the lead with 34%, followed by Android and Apple with an almost identical share each of 25% of users.

LXer Feature: 27-Mar-2011

In the LXWR this week we have HP declaring its OS independence, the claims regarding Linux kernel headers in Android "seems totally bogus" according to Linus. Can free software idealism be pragmatic? Richard Hillesley thinks so. And our own Carla Schroder talks about the freeloading digital economy. Enjoy!

(Sacramento, CA, USA: March 24, 2011) - The Linux Professional Institute (LPI), the world's premier Linux certification organization (http://www.lpi.org), announced promotional exam labs for their Linux Professional Institute Certification (LPIC) at the Flourish Conference, April 1-3 - Chicago, Illinois (http://www.flourishconf.com/) and the Southeast LinuxFest, June 10-12 - Spartanburg, South Carolina (http://www.southeastlinuxfest.org).

From April 1 - 3, Free Technology Conference Brings Fifth Year of Insightful Talks and Hands-on Workshops about Open-source Software, Technology, and Culture

As mobile data usage skyrockets, wireless companies are spending billions each year to maximize capacity, and consumers end up footing the cost in the form of higher cell phone bills. But a cube that fits in the palm of your hand could help solve that problem.

Not FOSS related but very cool. - Scott

This tutorial describes how you can set up an development environment for building Android apps on a Debian Squeeze desktop using Eclipse, the Android SDK, and PhoneGap. I will describe how to build Android apps from the command line with PhoneGap and from the GUI with Eclipse and PhoneGap and how to test them in an Android emulator and on a real Android device. PhoneGap allows you to develop your Android applications using web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (e.g. with JavaScript libraries such as jQuery/jQTouch), and it will turn these web apps into native Android apps (in fact, PhoneGap supports multiple platforms such as Android, iPhone, Palm, Windows Mobile, Symbian, so you can use the same sources to create apps for multiple platforms).

This tutorial describes how you can set up a development environment for building Android apps on a Fedora 14 desktop using Eclipse, the Android SDK, and PhoneGap. I will describe how to build Android apps from the command line with PhoneGap and from the GUI with Eclipse and PhoneGap and how to test them in an Android emulator and on a real Android device. PhoneGap allows you to develop your Android applications using web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (e.g. with JavaScript libraries such as jQuery/jQTouch), and it will turn these web apps into native Android apps (in fact, PhoneGap supports multiple platforms such as Android, iPhone, Palm, Windows Mobile, Symbian, so you can use the same sources to create apps for multiple platforms).

This tutorial describes how you can set up a development environment for building Android apps on an Ubuntu 10.10 desktop using Eclipse, the Android SDK, and PhoneGap. I will describe how to build Android apps from the command line with PhoneGap and from the GUI with Eclipse and PhoneGap and how to test them in an Android emulator and on a real Android device. PhoneGap allows you to develop your Android applications using web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (e.g. with JavaScript libraries such as jQuery/jQTouch), and it will turn these web apps into native Android apps (in fact, PhoneGap supports multiple platforms such as Android, iPhone, Palm, Windows Mobile, Symbian, so you can use the same sources to create apps for multiple platforms).

HP may be prepping a netbook using its Linux-based WebOS operating system, says an industry report. The computer giant is expected to announce a WebOS tablet and a smartphone successor to its Palm Pre 2 at a Feb. 9 event, yet the company will face stiff competition in both markets.

Sure, the webOS App Catalog lags behind the markets of other mobile OSes -- but the homebrew community continues porting apps to HP/Palm's platform. One of the more recent additions is mPlayer, the cross-platform open source media app.

HP has officially announced the launch of version 2.0 of its webOS mobile operating system, considered to be Palm's response to Apple's iOS 4 and Google's Android 2.2. The latest version of the proprietary-but-Linux-based mobile OS features built-in support for Adobe Flash 10.1 for viewing web content in the included browser and improved multi-tasking support, which the company calls "true multitasking". Users can easily switch between open applications without needing to close current apps by viewing running programs using a "card stacks" view that displays open apps in the order they were last used.

Palm’s WebOS (a Linux variant) based phones have been out for a while but I haven’t had the need to consider them until recently (in the form of my Treo 650 broken down).

A mobile phone "feature" that is touted as a way to remove data from stolen phones is also being used in far less reasonable ways. It is, or could be seen as, an anti-feature added for the benefit of companies, but without taking users' needs into consideration. The "remote wipe" available for (at least) Android, iOS, and Palm's webOS allows Exchange administrators to remotely reset logged-in mobile phones—removing all personal data and resetting them to factory defaults.