HP launches webOS products, but no ecosystem

Oh my god, they killed Palm

So Palm is dead long live palm, I think these will go the way of HP's PDA's niche products used in a few industrial applications and then vanish off the face of the earth, my personal feeling is the biggest asset they bought with the acquisition was the Palm brand and that now been binned, way to go!

Alas poor HP - we knew it well?

Pocket PC shame. HP really was almost there.

But where the Apple went for consumer in the street wanting to do popular things HP went for the tech/engineer offsite in company van.

How I bet HP wishes it did things differently.

Navit for WebOS - free turn by turn

Navit is a 3rd party, open source, stand alone GPS app with turn-by-turn navigation. It uses the OpenStreetMap (OSM) data sources, which include Europe. Matter of fact, it's irritatingly european for us 'Mericans because there's no non-metric option.

It's a homebrew app, available from www.webos-internals.org for free.

First time homebrew users will need to download the desktop app "WebOS Quick Install" from the same site, and then install PreWare. PreWare is an over-the-air installer, aka the "homebrew app catalog" app for your WebOS device. Once you have PreWare on your phone you will not need to connect your device to a PC to install apps again (barring a major software update that requires a new version of PreWare)

All the apps, patches, services, and tools on PreWare are free. There are some ~1,000 app and another 400 patches that tweak the behavior of WebOS.

Oh and if you're miffed that it's homebrew, that's because the spoken directions require a software service that can hijack the audio feed. That's not in any of the existing WebOS 1.4.5 APIs so it can't go in the official app catalog. WebOS 2 or 3 may change that.

What does the author think "a developer ecosystem" is?

AFAIK, it consists of development tools, a channel that can be monetized, and a userbase.

HP has the first two. WebOS development tools are reputed to be pretty nice for both the "light" HTML5 apps and the native apps. The App Catalog is now international

Devices & users in the market are somewhat thin; active WebOS devices are probably number in the low tens of millions. However if HP can push out enterprise sales of phone + tablet + laptop/desktop + servers, those volumes will increase. Plus HP has plans to make WebOS available on PCs. I don't expect that to be full-on Windows-free devices. Remember that most WebOS apps are HTML5-based so they can be run in HTML5 browsers with a plug-in or two.

So imagine HP bundling a Chrome-based WebOS environment with every of their PCs along with a cloud-sync app to make sure the PC, phone and tablet have a single data set. Even 3D games could be supported with the emulator from the SDK. Make it a free download for users without HP pcs.

If a WebOS package like that was installed on 25% of HP PCs shipped worldwide, that would be an installed userbase larger than OSx and iPad combined. Any phone/tablet sales would be icing on the cake.

keep in mind

Just keep in mind that Clearwire provides some of the worst customer service in the industry. Their obvious goal is to keep you (and your money)...

What's more, , I think readers and ipad fans might be interested in read this "Tips to Turn iPad Wifi Into 3G": (tip:this article is come from iFunia ipad column.

and there are some more ipad tips and tricks, also with free ipad apps and games, resources.

keep in mind

HP will pit the TouchPad against the iPad and Android tablets. WebOS was previously seen in the Palm Pre Plus smartphone and will be featured in the new Palm Veer and Palm Pre 3. First impression is that it looks a lot like the iPad, even down to the colors of keys on the virtual keyboard, but especially the very elegant and simple design.

What's more, if you get an touchpad, you'll enjoy watch movie on it through iFunia video covnerter.