webOS 3.0.5 'Community Edition' Released To Open Source

As promised back in March, HP today released to open source some large chunks of webOS 3.0.5 as the new "Community Edition". The Community Edition of webOS is meant for, well, the homebrew community and will enable homebrew developers even deeper (and more legal) access to the webOS source code to make alterations and improvements.

As a sign of how serious HP is about the community aspect of the webOS Community Edition, they actually worked hand-in-hand with the WebOS Internals homebrew group to make this happen. WebOS Internals has put together a team named WebOS Ports dedicated to working with the Community Edition, led by Tom King - though you might know him from his work as ka6sox.

So just what can we expect out of the Community Edition? HP's code releases come from webOS 3.0.5 and as such are geared towards the TouchPad. Among the things the WebOS Ports team (and anybody else, it is open source after all) will be able to tinker with are notifications, the app launcher (hello custom pages), Just Type, and even card view among other things.

We're excited about the potential for the webOS Community Edition. There's a lot of low-hanging fruit in webOS could be fixed, updated, or added thanks to the newly open-sourced code and the WebOS Ports team. Yeah, we're psyched. Just imagine... a TouchPad with a zoomed-out card view, or Just Type with multi-choice actions, or built-in Twitter and Facebook sharing across all apps, or... the possibilities may not be endless, but they are many.

It's worth noting that the webOS Community Edition release and Open webOS are two separate projects. Open webOS is going for the 1.0 version and is an active and ongoing project for HP, while the Community Edition is more of a code dump for the benefit of the community.

GVoice Getting Rebranded As SyngerGV, To Integrate With Messaging

If you're a Google Voice user on webOS, we hope you've at least looked at GVoice. The app, a fine Enyo app originally built to bring Google Voice to the TouchPad and since shrunken down to phone-appropriate dimensions was just updated to version 1.1.0. The update brings a larger font for the blind among us and adds right and left justification to message conversations. Version 1.1.0 also has expanded Text-to-Speech capabilities for users of webOS smartphones.

But what we're really interested in is the upcoming version 1.2.0. The app will be rebranded as SynerGV, and if the synergistic name is dropping any hints, well, it ought be. SynerGV 1.2.0 will offer integration via Synergy Connectors with the webOS 3.0 TouchPad Messaging app. The plan is for the SynerGV Synergy Connector to be offered by the end of July as an in-app purchase, with a secondary companion app to manage things like placing phone calls, setting your Google Voice status, listening to voicemails, and the like. If you're downloading GVoice 1.1.0 onto your TouchPad, you'll have the option to pre-purchase SynerGV at a reduced price of $1.49. When SynerGV launches, it'll cost $4.99.

As for our webOS smartphones, where you're more likely to be making active use of Google Voice, the developer says that "if and when" he makes a smartphone version, the same offer to pre-purchase at a discount will be made. We're a little disappointed by the "if and when" part, but we know that webOS smartphones are a small market and as a lone developer there's only so much time in the day to commit to an increasingly niche app market. Regardless, we're hopeful that the "if" does become a "when", and we wouldn't be above suggesting you comment on this article to demonstrate how much demand for the app there just might be.

HP webOS application download link

HP Looking To Hire More webOS Team Members

HP is looking for several new faces for webOS, ranging from software engineers to visual designers to user experience experts according to job listings on HP's Taleo job site. While we are hesitant to take this as signs of things drastically changing for the better on the inside we can't help but feel good knowing that HP is looking to hire some people into the organization after all of the drastic staff cuts in recent months. The job openings come after a hiring freeze was put in place in August immediately following the decision to stop the manufacturing of webOS hardware.

HP has exactly twelve job postings live at this time. Four of them are internships, one for the Enyo team, one product management internship, and two user experience design internships. There are also eight other job openings that include two senior interaction designers, two senior visual designers, one network engineer, one senior product manager, one in quality assurance, and one senior cloud services architecture role. A couple of these openings appear to be for the Enyo team, specifically the interaction designers, as they are based out of the San Francisco office where the fine Enyo folks work.

We hope the listings continue to expand, especially given the vast number of employees who were laid off. The more employees they have on the team the faster they should be able to get Open webOS out, and the better it should be when it becomes available in September. We do know one of those listings will be coming down fairly soon given that the Enyo team has already hired one of the smartest minds in webOS homebrew, Jason Robitaille, as an intern, unless the Enyo team is actually hiring multiple interns which could certainly help the framework grow to be even bigger and better.

Jason Robitaille Joining Enyo Team

Homebrew extraordinaire Jason Robitaille, the creator of webOS Quick Install, Comic Shelf (and its big sibling, Comic Shelf HD), Internalz, Internalz Pro, and many other apps, dozens of patches, and several homebrew services, will soon be joining the Enyo team in sunny San Francisco for the summer as their intern, he announced today on his Twitter account. The move is unsurprising, given his active participation in the community and numerous recent contributions to the open source Enyo project.

Jason's ability to work with the Enyo team came following the herculean recruiting efforts of Matt McNulty, the Senior Director of Frameworks and Tools at HP, more simply known as the head of the Enyo team. As a Canadian citizen, Jason required more than just the typical human resources visits to hire. McNulty did everything he had to do to ensure that Jason would be able to get the necessary documents from the US State Department to work and live in California, which is neither trivial nor quick.

Jason has told us that he will be starting later this month, May 14th to be precise, and that his internship will last roughly three months, ending in early August. We look forward to seeing what contributions he can make to Enyo 2.2, which is currently scheduled for release in July. We wish him the best of luck and we hope he can take with him some great knowledge, excellent memories, and perhaps even an offer for a job after he graduates. We expect he will enjoy working with the great group of folks over in the Enyo team and home he enjoys his time in San Francisco - after all we could use a guy like him at HP helping mold Enyo into a better framework and Open webOS into a better operating system with the community truly in mind.

webOS 2.2.5 And 3.0.6 Caught In Testing Logs

After HP announced that webOS would be going open source way back in December we honestly thought we would never see another webOS update until the planned September release of Open webOS 1.0. Then, to our surprise, webOS 2.2.4 and 3.0.5 said hello to the world. It wasn't much of an update for Pre3 owners, but Pre 2 users finally received Bluetooth messaging support and Skype voice calling to add to their device's capabilities. Meanwhile the TouchPad gained faster view switching in calendar, IM presence indicators in Email, support for HTTP video streaming, an easy on/off toggle for auto-correct, the ability to insert a period when double-tapping the space bar, and a fistful of bug fixes. Sadly the Veer was still left in the cold and disappointed many owners longing for some Touch-to-Share action.

So we revised our expectations, 2.2.4 and 3.0.5 to be the last updates before Open webOS hits and we maybe see something new pushed over-the-air from HP. Leave it to some Metrix logs to prove us wrong. Our very own Arthur Thornton, of Sparrow and Voice Memos fame, decided to check his logs since he had neglected to do so for a while. And what did he find while checking those logs? Why, four devices using webOS 2.2.5 accessed Voice Memos, two of which turned out to be Pre3s (the other two are unknown at this point). Curiosity piqued, Arthur checked his Metrix logs for Sparrow, discovering that at least one device running webOS 3.0.6 has used the app. Interesting, no?

We've heard nothing from HP to indicate that webOS 2.2.5 or 3.0.6 would ever be coming, but that they're showing up in app logs - even relatively new apps like Sparrow, has us hopeful that they might see a release soon. webOS smartphones and TouchPad are decent with their current OS versions, but we wouldn't say no to the usual bug fixes and speed and battery improvements that are par for the course for a x.x.1 update. And we're sure Veer owners wouldn't mind having Touch-to-Share enabled nearly a year after the phone was released. So keep your fingers crossed webOS faithful, there might be at least one more update to be had from our beloved devices before Open webOS is upon us!

webOSroundup Calls It Quit After Three Amazing Years

A post from webOSrounup founder David Baxter

When I started this site in November 2009 I never expected the amazing ride it would turn into. What started out as a simple app review site grew into the second largest webOS fan site on the planet with over 300,000 visitors a month, a live podcast, two trips to CES, a lot of contests and more fun than one group of guys should be allowed to have.

It is with great sorrow then to say that it is time for webOSroundup to sign off. It has been obvious for a little while now that WOR has not been able to keep up with the stories and news like we used to and rather than just languish and put up an occasional story from time to time we wanted to go out on our own terms and say thank you to each and every one of our fans…so in standard WOR fashion, we are going to do it with one final podcast.

Next Tuesday (April 10th) at 9pm(Eastern) all of the WOR miscreants from the past and present will be around to talk about the wonderful ride running this site has been. We will be doing it live so we want everyone who can join us to do so.

On tap to join us is: Dan Ramirez, myself, Jesse Mendoza, Ryan St. Andrie, and (hopefully) Roy Sutton. It should be a grand time where we can reminiscent about all the antics, webOS as a platform, and some behind the scenes stuff that you probably wouldn’t otherwise hear. Also, if you have questions, we will answer those as well.

We hope you can join us and add your webOS and WOR stories into the mix as well. If you have any questions or stories, feel free to email me at david@webosroundup.com and we will do our best to get to each and every one of them.

Novacom USB Communication Toolset Released To Open Source

Today saw yet another release along the Open webOS roadmap, with Novacom and Novacomd finding their way onto GitHub. The two pieces comprise a generic communication toolset used to communicate between a host (your computer) and embedded device (your webOS device) over USB. It's what allows the webOS SDK and programs like WebOS Quick Install to access the device over a USB connection without having to put the device into USB Mode. Plus there's the fact that USB mode doesn't allow access to the file system.

Novacom has been distributed as part of the webOS SDK and webOS Doctors since what seems like the beginning of time, and was released as a separate downloadable executable a while back as well. The separate release, while not open source, enabled WebOS Quick Install to get by without downloading the entire webOS Doctor just to be able to extract Novacom to install a single app or patch.

There are two parts to the release, Novacom and Novacomd. The latter is the service that runs on both the host and the target device, while Novacom is the command line user interface that provides a human-accessible way to access that service. With both now out in open source, the webOS developer community (and the developer community at large) is free to enhance, fix, and repurpose the two as they see fit.

The release of Novacom nearly closes out the Open webOS release commitments for March, with just LevelDB and MojoDB/DB8 left for the month. Major releases for March have included the Nyx hardware abstraction layer and the Linux Standard Kernel 3.3, both of which will go a long way towards opening up Open webOS to installation on a wide range of devices. There's still a lot to go on the roadmap, but despite what feels like near constant drama, Open webOS is still making progress.

Sam Greenblatt Out As webOS CTO

Today we've learned that webOS CTO Sam Greenblatt is transitioning away from his leadership position within webOS. We contacted HP and they confirmed that Greenblatt will no longer be in charge of webOS, though they offered no hints as to who might be taking the lead:

"Sam Greenblatt is moving from webOS to a new role at HP and will continue to assist the team during the transition. The Open webOS project is on schedule and HP remains committed to the roadmap announced in January."

Sources indicate to us that developers within HP were frustrated by the pace of the roadmap, and that there has been considerable head-butting since Greenblatt took the lead of webOS just a few short months ago. For what it's worth, HP has delivered on Enyo 2.0, QtWebKit, the Linux Standard Kernel, and the Nyx hardware abstraction layer.

Before coming to webOS, Greenblatt had been "VP of Strategic Program, Strategy & Corporate Development", a job title that tells us pretty much nothing, but still sounds like something that would mesh well with leading a group like webOS. Additionally, at least according to his LinkedIn profile, Greenblatt also currently holds the CTO of Enterprise Global Distribution position at HP, so he'll still have something to do once the transition to whoever is new is complete. Of course, the last webOS leader that transitioned to another position within HP eventually transitioned to a hammock in Mexico.

HP Chief Strategy Office Bill Veghte is still in place, guiding the webOS effort from above, as are the remnants of the Open webOS staff after the most recent round of dismissals. Drama like this is never good for any group, and it's especially not good right now after all of the hits webOS has taken in the past five months.