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Just about a month ago now Meg Whitman announced to the world that webOS was going to follow in Android’s footsteps and go open source. Much of the tech world rejoiced…us included, but what does that mean for the short term? What about further out?

Being the EiC of a webOS focused site I get asked a good bit as to what my thoughts are about it and whether or not 2012 is going to be “the year” of webOS [Don't we ask that every year? - Ed].

Will the fact that webOS is now open source change how the world sees our beloved framework? The answer could be yes…but there is a tough climb ahead. At WOR we are known for not pulling punches and we aren’t about to start now. So without further ado…here is what I believe it will take to make webOS a contender in the OS wars.

We need hardware. Period.

Here is the unvarnished truth: an OS that doesn’t have hardware isn’t an OS at all because it isn’t actually operating anything. HP has said very clearly that it is out of the smartphone business for at least the foreseeable future if not forever (probably forever). They have further said that they might make tablets sometime in 2013…that isn’t good enough. Not by a long shot. By 2013 webOS will be a distant memory.

In order to become more than a has been one or more major manufacturers need to embrace webOS this year. Now I am not saying that they need to focus purely on webOS and forsake all others, but a company like HTC, Samsung, or even one of the many Chinese companies that are beginning to flex their muscles will need to release a few models that have webOS as the primary operating system.

Is this likely? Hard to say. On the positive side, we have Googlerola out there. This merger ticked off a lot of the major Android brands because it is hard to see a future where Motorola isn’t going to get favored treatment.

Could this be enough to push them over the edge to try out webOS? In all honesty, the fact that Android is such a powerhouse makes this seem unlikely. Being a second class citizen to the biggest of the big is probably more enticing than being the champion of a brand that most people have never heard of. However, stranger things have happened.

Another possibility is that HP pulls a Microsoft and throws gobs of money at a respected manufacturer in return for them putting webOS on their devices. This strategy is just getting up and running with Nokia so it is hard to say whether this tactic works at all. Regardless, the real question there is whether HP has any interest in such a strategy.

Realistically the best chance of webOS getting its own hardware lies in some of the smaller, or less prominent brands, such as Huawei or even Lenovo (they like Android right now, but they are really just getting started in the smartphone market).

Why do I say that? Let’s jump to part 2.

Software

When webOS came out it truly was way ahead of everyone else. It may not have been the fastest on the block, but functionality like cards, synergy, etc. put it above everyone else. Fast forward to now and the things that made webOS unique are ingrained in every OS out there (except perhaps iOS).

Both the latest versions of WP7 and Android have a respectable implementation of cards. Android 4.0 also has, for all intents and purposes, synergy through their people functions.

So the playing field is basically leveled in terms of functionality, so where does webOS go from here? It has to innovate again. In an open source environment is that possible? That will really depend on HP.

When HP released webOS to the world what did that really mean? Did that mean that they washed their hands of it and were done? Or, perhaps, did it mean that they were going to be like Google and be its champion by improving on it constantly and making sure that the app store was up and running for all those who use it?

We don’t know the answer to that yet, but my big question is, why would HP spend millions or billions of dollars on improving it? Google has a lot of incentives…ads mainly and a lot of app sales. Does HP have some? It very well might. Having a top tier OS that they can leverage in their consumer and enterprise products could give them a competitive advantage when fighting with Dell, Lenovo, etc. Another possibility is that they could use webOS as the glue between their servers, printers, laptops, and other doodads that they produce. Having custom apps could allow these devices to talk to each other in completely new ways. More importantly these “new ways” would belong to HP.

The only hint as to the direction HP is going is the fact that they have kept a reported 600 people who are focused on webOS in some capacity. This includes the SWAT team that exists to build apps for corporations. Both of these are good signs and show that, at least for now, HP is content with being the overseer of development.

Hardware and software truly go together here. No manufacturer is going to put out a device for a dead OS, but if they are convinced that HP, and the avid community, is behind it, then they very well might take a risk and see if they can set themselves apart from the Android army.

Bringing it home

So will webOS take the world by storm in 2012? Not likely. The days where we dreamed that webOS would become number one, second, or even third in the smartphone wars are most likely behind us; however, if some hardware comes out this year and HP really does get behind the software, then it is entirely possible that webOS could have a small, yet profitable, place in the smartphone arena.

Selling 50 million devices a year is not required to be profitable. What needs to happen is that webOS needs to find its niche this year. Will it be the tinker toy for the super geeks like Linux has been for all these years? Will it be home to a new brand of business device championed by HP?

What do you think? In your estimation, where do you think webOS will be a year from now?

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more specifically about my dual-booting hp touchpad than android per se, but still..

By JR Raphael (@jr_raphael)

If you're among the lucky few who've been able to get their hands on Asus's Transformer Prime, congratulations: You're now among the first tablet owners to experience Android 4.0, aka Ice Cream Sandwich.

Asus had previously planned to upgrade its Transformer Prime to Ice Cream Sandwich this Thursday, January 12, but provided a pleasant surprise by announcing an early delivery during a press event at the Consumer Electronics Show Monday night. Asus started rolling out Android 4.0 to Prime users that very evening and is continuing to distribute the software today.

The Asus Transformer Prime's Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade is being done over-the-air, which means you'll get a notification on your tablet when the download is available to you. You can also manually check for the software by going into the "Firmware Update" section of your tablet's "About Tablet" settings menu.

The Transformer Prime's upgrade to Android 4.0 is particularly significant, as it makes Asus the first manufacturer to get ICS delivered to an existing Android tablet. This is especially surprising given the existence of the Motorola Xoom, a developer-targeted "Google experience" device whose software updates have previously been handled by Google, resulting in fast and early OS upgrades.

Asus not only beat out the Xoom -- it did it on a tablet that isn't a vanilla Android experience, meaning the company had to make its own set of custom changes to the software before it could ship to users. While I've long been a vocal opponent of baked-in Android skins, Asus is really showing how to do it right. Its OS-level modifications are relatively light and unobtrusive, and its most prominent software changes -- things like a custom system keyboard and expanded status panel -- can easily be disabled if a user so chooses.

Perhaps most important, though, Asus's changes aren't preventing it from shipping OS updates in a timely fashion, as tends to be the case with most Android manufacturers. We've seen the story play out far too many times with manufacturer-modified phones and tablets ('m looking at you, Samsung). So watch and learn, hardware-makers: This is how the Android upgrade game should be played.

For more on Ice Cream Sandwich and how it'll change your tablet, click over to my complete Android Ice Cream Sandwich FAQ. And to get the latest upgrade status for any Android phone or tablet, check out my Android 4.0 upgrade list; it's always kept up-to-date with the most current info available for all devices.   

JR Raphael writes about smartphones and other tasty technology. You can find him on Facebook, Twitter, or Google+.

been using this on my droid 2 in place of the stock swype. love. stumbled across this tablet version today to make bigger and prettier on my touchpad. still force closes a lot, but so nice.

Evernote for Android updated with notebook sharing, stand-alone widget app

News by Dan Seifert on Thursday November 17, 2011.0 Comments

Evernote has released version 3.3 of its note-taking and syncing app for Android, and with the update it has included improved notebook sharing and better integration with the Evernote-owned Skitch app. Additionally, Evernote has released a seperate widget app that lets users make use of the widget while the main Evernote app is stored on an SD card.

The new update lets users share entire notebooks with their colleagues, not just individual notes. Notebooks can be shared privately or publicly, but Evernote does say that an internet connection is required to make use of the sharing feature. Premium Evernote users can allow others to edit and make changes to their shared notes.

It is now possible to edit images in Skitch that are saved in Evernote notes. A user just has to tap and hold on an image and then choose the "Edit in Skitch" option, which will then send the image over to Skitch for annotation. Once the image has been adjusted to the user's liking, they can hit the elephant icon in Skitch to send the edited product back to Evernote, which will prompt them if they want to overwrite their existing image or append the edited version to the original note.

Those who have smartphones with limited internal storage have the option to store the Evernote app on an SD card. The downside of this is once the app is on an SD card, you cannot make use of the homescreen widgets. Evernote has come up with a solution for this with the stand-alone Evernote Widget app that just provides a homescreen widget to control the main Evernote app, but takes up much less internal storage. The Evernote Widget app has a small shortcut version and a larger option that shows previews of recently accessed notes.

The Evernote for Android app is free and available to download in the Android Market now. The Evernote Widget app is also free, and available through the Android Market as well. [via Evernote]

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Facebook’s new timeline profile encourages users of the social network to share more of their past. Exfoliate, a new app for the Android platform, basically functions as the anti-timeline.

Exfoliate allows users to automatically remove content from Facebook, simply by specifying the type of content to be deleted, and which date to start from. The app costs $2.99.

Users can choose to purge their own posts, comments, and likes, as well as any of those three types of content that were posted to their page by their friends, or that they posted to their friends’ pages.

The developers of Exfoliate claim that although users must log in to Facebook to begin the process, neither they, nor anyone else, will ever gain access to any personal data.

Be warned, however: Exfoliate is a huge battery hog.

This comes from its description on the Android Market:

Exfoliate will find and delete all of the items matching your selections. Behind the scenes, this requires a large volume of web service transactions. To put it bluntly, Exfoliate is a network and battery hog, and there’s simply no way around this.

To manage the impact, you can stop Exfoliate at any time, and restart Exfoliate later. Exfoliate, when restarted, will resume where it left off. Ideally, run Exfoliate when your device is plugged in. Also, Exfoliate may perform much faster on a WiFi network, so you may want to run it at home, through your WiFi, while you are asleep.

If you have chosen to disallow background data transfers on your Android device, Exfoliate will not be able to function as designed. You can authorize Exfoliate to do its work despite this setting by enabling the “allow background” setting in Exfoliate advanced settings.

Exfoliate will likely take many hours, or longer, to complete its work. This can be especially true if you are fresh out of college, facing the job market with four years of forgotten social networking data scattered across hundreds of friends’ walls.

To make this long process more manageable, you can start and stop Exfoliate at any time. The next time you start it, it will resume where it left off unless you optionally delete all clean-up data. You may choose to limit what content you ask Exfoliate to delete so you can get more immediate results.

For example, if you choose to clean only your wall, Exfoliate can complete its work fairly quickly. Cleaning your posts, comments, and likes off of your friends’ walls is what takes the largest share of the time. By default, Exfoliate does this after completing the process on your own wall.

Readers: Would you consider using an app like Exfoliate to start the cleansing process?

Like a lot of people in the ’80s, I bought a microcassette recorder to capture great ideas the way Michael Keaton’s character did in “Night Shift.” (“Idea to eliminate garbage: edible paper.”)

Enlarge This Image

The Evernote app allows users to create notes as text, audio or photos.

Enlarge This Image

With the iPad's Notability app users can take notes on a presentation and record it simultaneously.

My recorder quickly gathered dust because it was much easier to retrieve ideas and reminders from good old inedible paper.

So when I first saw apps like Evernote (free on Apple and Android), PhatPad ($5 for iPad) and Notability ($1 for iPad) for note-taking and organizing, they struck me as software versions of those old recorders: places where ideas go to die.

I was wrong.

These and other apps make it so easy to record, circulate and retrieve your most important thoughts that they’re worth far more than the few bucks you’ll spend on them.

As for the other mobile software on this list, they’re headed by the new girl on the block, Siri, and she’s available only to those who bought her shiny new chariot, Apple’s iPhone 4S.

If you’ve written off Siri as a cocktail party prop, as I initially did, give it another shot.

Moments after a conversation in which a friend told me his e-mail address, I knew I’d eventually forget it. I opened Siri and told it to send me an e-mail with my friend’s address in the subject line. Siri didn’t render the address I spoke with perfect accuracy, but when I tapped the screen I was able to edit the e-mail draft before sending.

I told Siri to remind me to be at home when my son got off the bus, and it set up an alert that reached my mobile devices and appeared on my desktop version of Apple’s iCloud service.

Siri also helps with less time-sensitive notes. I’m a longtime user of the Notes app, but instead of tapping out a missive, I’m now getting accustomed to saying “write a note to myself” and then dictating the text. The text immediately appears in Notes, and if I want to export it later, I can e-mail it from within the app.

As a free-standing app on all of Apple’s mobile devices, Notes is nimble but rudimentary. The same goes for the free Android app that I use for the same purposes, Freenote.

For a more comprehensive note-taking and organizing system, I’ve found nothing better than Evernote. Here, Android users actually have an advantage over Apple users, but I’ll get to that.

Evernote holds all your digital ephemera and helps you with the filing. You create notes in the form of text, audio clips or photos, and as soon as they’re entered into the app, you can retrieve them from any other Web-connected device. Likewise, if you enter a note on the Web version of the service, it appears in the app or on Evernote’s free desktop version.

That synchronization is a trick Apple’s iCloud service can also perform, but on Evernote you can quickly get access to a wider range of your stuff.

You can label your notes and sort them by subject matter or date, among other things, and you can search them by keyword. The app’s description suggests that if you take a picture of text, that text will be searchable, but this feature did not work for me.

Heavy users of Evernote might want to consider upgrading to the service’s paid version ($5 a month, or $45 annually), which offers more storage.

Given Evernote’s all-around quality, I was puzzled by its failure to include a user-friendly alerts system. The Evernote Corporation, creator of the app, released a feature in June that lets users copy a link to a note into a calendar application, but it’s a flawed approach. Where, for instance, would you paste a link into Google Calendar?

So when I want to set up an alert, I instead use Apple’s Calendar app in conjunction with its iCloud service and, on Android, Google’s calendar.

When I typed a reminder into Apple’s Calendar, my Apple devices received alerts. And as long as I kept Calendar in an open tab on my laptop’s browser, the alerts reached me there too.

On Android, Google Calendar sent text and e-mail alerts to any device that was logged on to Google. Since most Android users log on to the service to use various features — not the least of which is the Android Market, which Google owns — alerts are essentially automatic.

If you own a Macintosh computer and an Android, you’re probably best off using the Google calendar, since that will push alerts to your mobile device as well as the desktop, whereas the Apple calendar will not.

Some people remain wedded to the idea of handwritten notes — even when the writing appears on a touch screen — and for them, the best apps I’ve found so far are Notability and PhatPad.

From a sketching and handwriting standpoint, PhatPad is smoother, and unlike many similar apps, it lets you lean your wrist on the screen and write without problems.

Notability’s audio features, on the other hand, are better than those of PhatPad. With Notability, if you record a lecture or a presentation and take notes simultaneously, you can touch a word and hear what was said when you wrote the word. For students, doctors and coaches, among others, this feature will be highly useful.

On Android, I’d recommend Skitch (free on Android and Apple), a slick sketchpad that lets you decorate and share snapshots, or just doodle on a blank page.

Evernote this year bought Skitch, but so far that has helped only Android users, who can drop their Skitch creations into the Evernote service and organize them accordingly. One assumes that the same connection will eventually reach the Apple version.

If Evernote could manage to buy a calendar app in the meantime, its service might be all things to all people.

Quick Calls

The Professional Chef iPad Edition ($50), an interactive textbook for aspiring chefs, is extremely comprehensive and highly polished, with videos, text and slide shows. Google Translate (free on Android), an amazingly nimble translator, recently expanded its conversation mode to encompass 14 languages.

According to the latest statistics, there are more than 250,000 apps available within the Android Market. Of course, the vast majority of these apps will never find their way onto most users' Android devices. The number of apps that most people download onto their smartphones is numbered in tens, and only a handful can be considered truly must-have apps.

So just what makes an Android app an epic, must-have app? Criteria could include an app that you use every day, or an app that helps make tasks easier. Business users may point to apps that make it easier to connect to company resources while on the road, or that help them be more productive. Or an epic app can be one that, while not used on a regular basis, comes in very handy to save your bacon in one way or another.

For this selection of 10 epic Android apps, we've used all of these criteria to come up with apps that should be considered a part of any user's smartphone. We've left out games, which, while a lot of fun, can't usually be considered vital. And we also haven't included apps that are most likely already bundled on your device, such as Gmail, Google Maps, and Facebook (though in certain cases some of the apps on this list are pre-bundled on devices).

The apps on this list span the gamut from basic utilities to tools that make it easier to get things done. But there is one thing they all have in common--if you've installed these apps on your smartphone, at some point in time you will be very glad that you took the time to download them.

Considered as a whole, today's smartphones--whichever platform they run--are amazing devices. They've long outgrown the simple ability to place calls and send text messages. Professionals and consumers alike use smartphones to manage their daily lives; to keep in touch with colleagues, family, and friends; to explore the world around them; and to serve as entertainment devices.

While you'll find a half-dozen smartphone platforms operating in the market, there are two clear frontrunners: Google's Android and Apple's iOS. These two platforms have seen explosive growth at the expense of the old guard smartphone platforms: BlackBerry OS, Symbian, and Windows Mobile. Not only have Android and iOS taken the lead, but also, they continue to set the pace with significant updates and improvements each year.

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That's why it is so exciting to see Google and Apple go head-to-head this month with major system revisions. Google announced Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich on October 19, and Apple released iOS 5 on October 12. Let's look at what these two new platforms (the platforms themselves, not third parties) bring to the table in their latest iterations.

Ease of Use:

Android 4.0: Google took major steps towards unifying the look and feel of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. By introducing a new system font, adding the ability to create folders on the home screen, and giving the platform a new look, Android is as attractive as ever. But it still suffers from complexity. Android devices (we're talking stock, not skinned) have deep settings menus that aren't always intuitive to figure out.

[ Take a look at our comparison of the two hottest new Android 4.0 phones, Samsung's Galaxy Nexus and Motorola's RAZR. ]

The trade-off, however, is a much greater degree of customization. Android devices have a sky's-the-limit appeal for tinkerers who have the time and skill to adjust their devices. Custom ROMs (think Cyanogen Mod) abound and can be used to take any Android device to the next level (though security often takes a hit). Android's appeal is far and wide in this respect and outclasses iOS 5.

iOS 5: iOS 5 grows more complicated with each revision, but is still the easier of the two when it comes to basic usability. Apple has not changed the general look and feel of iOS since it was first launched. This has pros and cons. The home screens are easy to navigate and adjust, but the settings menu grows deeper and deeper each year. Still, it is easier to make adjustments to the iOS system settings than on a typical Android device.

Here, the trade-off is that iOS 5 devices have a lesser degree of customization (OK, they have almost no customization). iOS 5 is the ultimate locked-down system. The only way to get under its skin, so to speak, is to jailbreak it. Once jailbroken, custom software can be added, but at significant risk.

Communications:

Android 4.0: Android of course integrates natively with all of Google's services. That means it speaks fluent Gmail, Google Contacts, Calendar, Documents, Maps, Search, Google+, Google Voice, and the like. If you're invested in Google's services as a consumer--or Google Apps as a business--Android destroys iOS with respect to Google integration (as it should). Android also supports Exchange and POP3/IMAP4 email, and can import the contacts, calendar, and email info from those systems. Android's Gmail/email app far outclasses the iOS email application when it comes to supporting secondary features, such as folders, labels, archiving, and so on.

iOS 5: iOS 5 supports Exchange, Gmail, and most POP3/IMAP4 email systems. It, too, will integrate contacts, email, and calendar info via Exchange. If you're a Google services user, however, the integration requires work-arounds. For example, though I use Gmail, I have it set up as an Exchange account on my iOS devices in order to sync email, calendar, and contacts. The email program has inexplicably remained a weak link in iOS 5's armor. While it is serviceable, it doesn't offer the wide array of controls that are available via Android 4.0.

Social Tools:

Android 4.0: Android leapfrogged iOS early on with respect to social skills. By using its own APIs and taking advantage of the APIs offered by Facebook and Twitter, it has built social networking into the platform itself. Facebook integration, in particular, is extremely strong with Android. By sprinkling features and functions of Facebook throughout the operating system, Android makes it a breeze to connect to and share with social networks. For example, the way Android integrates Facebook contacts into the native contacts application is brilliant.

iOS 5: iOS 5 continue to lack deep social skills. Apple did add some respectable and appreciated support for Twitter into iOS 5, but even that falls short. In iOS 5, it is possible to share pictures, web sites, and other content to Twitter without first launching the Twitter application, but that's about as far as it goes. For iOS 5 device users, third-party applications are necessary to complete the social networking picture. Facebook and Twitter for iOS are great applications, to be sure, but they offer a siloed approach to social networking and not one that's integrated into the platform to the same degree it is in Android.

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10 Coolest Android Ice Cream Sandwich Features

Google's Android 4.0—better known as Ice Cream Sandwich—has the usual smorgasbord of new features; we?ve selected the ten most delicious features.

Wednesday morning, Google and Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Nexus, the first phone designed specifically with Android 4.0 (aka Ice Cream Sandwich) in mind. Ice Cream Sandwich will, naturally, make its way to other handsets when it's released to the public sometime in November. As such, we're taking a look at the latest Google Android mobile operating system.

Ice Cream Sandwich contains many new features, but we've highlighted 10 of the tastiest, ranging from wireless sharing to new widget management. Check out the features and images below for a rundown on the new operating system. Which is your favorite?

Face Unlock
Is swiping the home screen to unlock your phone growing a bit tiresome? Ice Cream Sandwich's new Face Unlock feature taps a phone's camera so that users can log in by simply looking at the handset. Don't worry, if you don't want to use your grill, you can still use a code number (or a drawing interface) to unlock the handset.

Android Beam
Ice Cream Sandwich leverages NFC (near-field communication) technology that lets users share apps, websites, YouTube videos, maps, directions, and more by simply tapping two Android 4.0 phones together, much like iOS's Bump It app.

New Browser Functionality
Android 4.0's Web browser has evolved to closely match the desktop Chrome browser. Ice Cream Sandwich includes Chrome sync (which keeps bookmarks synced between your handset and desktop browsers), a “full site" button (which let users switch between desktop and mobile views), tabs, and a new Incognito tab.

New Contacts and Social Networking Features
Ice Cream Sandwich's "People" streamlines the way that contacts are displayed. Contact information is culled from your social networking connections, plus any other custom info that you'd like to manually add. This data is displayed on cards (similar to Windows Phone 7.5's tiles) that are updated when the contact updates his or her social networking information.

Data Management
Bundled with Android 4.0 is a stock app that lets you control network activity and view a specific app’s data usage. What's the benefit of this? You can now set up warnings (for when you begin to approach certain data thresholds), and hard caps to avoid an overage-fee pummeling.—Next: New User Interface >

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