webOS Weekly September 3rd, 2011 1

by Tim Stiffler-Dean Sat, 03 Sep 2011 5:08 pm EDT

It's time for another webOS Weekly roundup of the news and community activity over the past week. Watch the video above to see some of the major stories we've covered, and then hit the break below to read through the rest. If you have a story you would like to share with the webOS community in future weeks, send an email to tim@precentral.net and we'll try to add it in.

Latest News

We continue the trend of looking at the TouchPad and webOS devices for the biggest news, and it hasn't disappointed this week. HP's Todd Bradley has not only mentioned that they may try to resurrect the TouchPad line, but the company has clearly said that they are planning on producing new TouchPads to satisfy "unfulfilled demand". That might be short-lived, though, because even while Samsung has expressed no interest in buying webOS, HP has made another strange decision to split the webOS GBU in two; something we've seen once before with Palm.
There's a lot going on in the app-world these days, too. QuickOffice HD has finally arrived with document editing on the TouchPad, much to the rejoicing of users everywhere, and an update to MapTools Pro brings true GPS navigation to the wifi-only device. We've also seen an update to the TouchPad Facebook app this week which brought a fun Easter Egg, and one of our forum members has broken down the details on overclocking with his benchmarking charts with the latest released kernels.

Around the Web

We can't get enough of reading what other people think HP could have done to make webOS hardware succeed, and most of you can't either. Here's one opinion from Lazy Man And Money about the still unbelievable decision by HP, so give it a read and leave your feedback in the comments.
Inglorious Apps, developer of Glimpse and Notes+, has shared some of the download numbers for the app Glimpse on Twitter, saying that it has broken the 10,000 download (and $35,000) mark in just two months! How's that for growth?
If you've neve heard of the Vietnam Catalyst Foundation, this video should help. It was created to raise awareness for the organization in Vietnam, which fights against the trafficking of young children in the country. In this very great but short video, two little girls are playing with a the Coloring Book HD app on an HP TouchPad. Watch it below:

On PhoneDog, the question is raised on why webOS hasn't succeeded under HP: It has a strong community behind it, good advertising from HP, high quality apps that will rock your world and better hardware than ever before. Yet here we are, still fighting for the survival of our platform on the last HP webOS devices that will be made. We have our own thoughts on what went so badly for the OS, but what do you think?
Rather than explaining this tweet, you can read the message sent out from developers to all webOS users in the image below. Avner Arbel has said it perfectly.

Splashtop Remote Desktop for the TouchPad is on its way! We've already used Splashtop on webOS smartphones, but bring that to the TouchPad and you get a really great experience.

Want to be in our next video?

We want you to introduce our webOS Weekly videos, and now's your chance to do it! Simply go to YouTube and upload your video introduction (like the one by Nate Jenkins in today's video) and then send an email to tim@precentral.net. We'll pick the best ones and put them into future episodes of the webOS Weekly. Get to it!