webOS 3.0.5 update released for TouchPad

Good news for those of use still holding on to our TouchPads from the fire sale! HP has released the latest update for webOS 3.0.5 86 Over-The-Air for TouchPads. Good to see that it (allegedly) fixes the bugging audio issue that got introduced in the 3.0.4 update. It also has some good updates related to sensor, camera and HTML5 video playback.
Read more details on their HP webOS Developer Blog and in the webOS 3.0.5 release notes.

Kindle Import "Operation Failed" on TouchPad

I was trying to import a few books into Kindle on TouchPad using Calibre + Kindle Import but was getting the error "Operation Failed". Here's how I resolved this problem

1. Uninstalled Kindle & Kindle Import 
2. Deregistered this Kindle instance from the Amazon account (it may even work if this step is skipped)
3. Restart TouchPad
4. Reinstall Kindle and Kindle Import
5. Reregister this Kindle instance
6. Convert & Push the books from PC to TouchPad using Calibre
7. Run Kindle Import on TouchPad to select & import these books

That should solve your problem!

Updates to HomeBrew patches on TP

Updates to the patches listed in my previous post on Installing HomeBrew on TouchPad are now available for webOs3.0.4! Go ahead and update the patches and enjoy your TP. Note that I had to update each patch individually as the option to update all did not work.

Make PDF Reader intelligent on HP TouchPad

The PDF reader on the HP TouchPad currently just reads pdfs  :) It would be great if it could remember the last page that I had read on a particular pdf and it would be great if it allowed me to bookmark specific pages on pdfs.

Well, it seems that this particular wish is now granted and works well according to this thread on preCentral forums. It is a simple as downloading and installing this ipk - that's all one needs to do to get this awesome feature!

Note that this is just the beginning and there's lots of work still to be done.

WebOS 3.0.4 Update released

Ari Jaaksi, the head of webOS & services and HP announced on his blog here that they are releasing a new software update (3.0.4 - 77) for the HO TouchPad. It is an OTA update and has lots of perforamce improvements, better support for camera, UI updates & tweaks, and more apps!

So go ahead and update your TPs, but if you have HomeBrew and custom kernel & patches, then worry not. According to this forum post and this one, and this wiki page, updating your home-brewed TP is harmless and you do not need to do anything special. The patches may just stop working for some time till the latest updates of those patches are available and get updated. Also, some of the issues being addressed by the patches may also be taken care of by the new update.

So, as Ari says - enjoy the new update - no strings attached  ;)

State of Mobile OSes

What with Android, webOS, MeeGo, bada, WinMo7 in the race to become stable and the de-facto standard after iOS, things don't look very good for end-users. QuiksMode blog has a very nice entry summarizing the current fragmented & cloudy (pun intended) state of affairs for mobile OSes here. From this report - it seems that Apple may continue to be the winner unless webOS or MeeGo manage to turn the tables around.

HomeBrew on HP TouchPad

On HP TouchPad, side loading of apps - referred to as HomeBrew - is very simple and consists of a few simple steps! No complicated rooting, jail-breaking or difficult procedures as all. As detailed in this site, the steps are as follows:

1. Enable "Developer Mode" by typing webos20090606 in the "Just Type" box at the top of the home screen and enabling it
2. Download webOS Quick Install (WOSQI) developed by Jason Robitaille from here and install it on your computer.
3. Connect TP to this computer and click on close when prompted to enable USB Drive mode
4. Launch WOSQI on the computer and click on the globe like button on the right to install the Package Browser/Installer (note that it may take some time to load all the feeds and you may be prompted to load drivers from NovaCom - this is ok)
5. Launch Preware from Downloads and read through the notices - you can safely skim to the end
6. Search for and then Install the following patches to improve performance of your TP - note that you can restart after you have installed all these apps instead of once each time each app is installed:
1. Unset CFQ IO Scheduler
2. Muffle System Logging
3. Remove Dropped Packet Logging
4. Unthrottle Download Manager
5. Quiet powerd Messages
6. Faster Card Animations HYPER Version
7.  Reduce logging level - you can safely ignore the warnings that pop-up:
1. Open the Phone application and dial ##5647# followed by the green send button to open the logging menu
2. Clear the existing logs
3. Set logging level to minimal
4. You can also delete the trace/dump file from the menu on the top left

All of this took me only 15 minutes from beginning till very end!
Hopefully after reducing logging levels and speeding up the card animations, performance on TP should be vastly better.

Note that for reducing logging level, you do not need to pair to a phone or setup a phone application. Just open the included Phone app and select your own webOs account.