Category Archives: webOS

Headlines 2 now available in the AppCatalog!

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After teasing our new app for the last couple of weeks and answering your questions only with, “soon” we’re proud to publish this blog post today.

Finally, the day has come, our first native Touchpad application is available now in the AppCatalog.
We’re really happy that Headlines 2 is the next chapter of Google News reading and also provides RSS support for all your feeds from different blogs and websites.

Features:

  • completely rewritten from scratch for the full screen size
  • landscape&portrait mode
  • specify a language for each news topic, finally, yep!
  • track of already read rss articles for the last 30 days
  • background update and offline support
  • pull-to-refresh
  • advanced sharing options, completely customizable
  • Instapaper & Read It Later support
  • advanced Browser & neato! Support
  • read articles in a readability like view
  • Touch-to-Share support
  • much more!

We build a website for some screenshots and some more info.
If you like, head over to the AppCatalog and grab your copy today!

We’re giving away some promo codes!

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We want to give away some promo codes!

We’re giving away 30 promo codes for Headlines and also 30 promo codes for Twithibition. (Both smartphone apps) The codes are only valid in the German AppCatalog.

Sounds good? O.K. here’s what you’ve to-do to participate and maybe win a code:
First, by visiting our Facebook page, like us/become a fan of the page and leave comment on this post you’ll find there that we’ve posted.

On Saturday, we will select the winners and we will get in contact with you. Each winner will get one promo code, we will select which of the both apps randomly and will send it either via Facebook message of contact ask you to contact us back.

We’re also giving  2x 10 codes to the German webos-blog.de so have a look there to maybe also get one of the codes.

Good luck to all!

 

Convertor XL – Special offer for existing customers!

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ConvertorTo support our existing customers that already bought a copy of Convertor for webOS, our premium unit & currency converter, we would like to say Thank You! and created a special promotion.

To proof you purchased the app in the past, please do the following:

  • Open the HP/Palm receipt you received in your mail when you bought Convertor. Take a screenshot of the attached PDF (feel free to black out your home address, everything also should remain intact)
  • Email the screenshot to support AT coding bees DOT com
  • Include the country of the AppCatalog where you purchased the app and use the code
  • The mail address where you sending the screenshot should be the same as the one you received the receipt from HP/Palm
We have only a limited amount of promo codes available. It’s first come, first serve. So be sure to act quickly on this offer! This will be a one time offer, once all codes are used, promo is over.
The promo is time limited and will end on October 30th!

Insights in TouchPad usage – Statistics of an app!

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Since HP’s fire-sale of their webOS devices TouchPad sales gone crazy and most of the webOS developers saw a nice increase of downloads of their app. No matter if free or paid versions.

One of our apps ColorHarmony is available for a long time already for all the phones and since end of August also for the TouchPad. We track some device distribution statistics for over a year now and we were really surprised on how many users are already downloaded and used this app on the TouchPad.

Enough words typed, let pictures speak.

Device Distribution overall (Emulator is development)

Different ScreenResolutions

Download stats for the last couple of days

As a summary, these stats are tracked over the last 12 months, except the download stats that are representing only the last weeks, since TouchPad launch. And as you see, the TouchPad has already taken the 2nd place, has left the usage on Pixi‘s behind and is only a few weeks on the market.
I also not included a number on how many apps are used out there, because it would make no difference if overall are 1000 or 100.000 users of ColorHarmony.

Now think what could have been happened if HP has done the launch of the latest device (Pre3, Veer and of course the TouchPad) right?

App update

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I just want to give a short update on what happened the last week and what’s happening in the next couple of days/weeks.

Apps for the Pre3
We trying hard to make all our applications ready and using the full size of the 480×800 pixels on the HP Pre3. This will take some time for some of our applications, but we made good progress already.
The following applications are already available.

Both are already using the full resolution including the 20px bottom fix. (Pre3 users know what I mean :) )

We already submitted the following apps that are waiting for approval from HP:

Some of the above apps will still show the 20px bottom line, but be sure that we will fix that in the coming days!

Wait, where is Headlines? You may ask, it should run fine already (based on reports from users) on the Pre3. If you’ve found issues in the full version please report them to us so that we can fix them. The Lite version of Headlines is currently not able to use the inline view for articles. We’re aware of this and will submit a fix for the Lite version next week.

We haven’t written something about the TouchPad compatibility yet, so here we go.
As of version 1.6.0 ColorHarmony runs in full resolution on the TouchPad, as you’ve noted this is already the published version and is available in the catalog.
Next one will be Convertor, but since we had to change the UI to make full use of the higher resolution it won’t be compatible with the phone-sized version. So we decided to bring a new version strictly for the TouchPad.
Be sure, that our existing Convertor customers are getting promo codes if they want to also get the TouchPad version for no extra costs!

We also decided to rewrite Headlines for the TouchPad as Enyo app, that means, it will take some time before we can release a public version to the AppCatalog. It will be a complete rewrite and will use some of the new webOS 3.x features as well. Sorry for this delay, but be sure you’ll love what the new version will provide. So stay tuned!

Get your Ares apps Touchpad ready

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Since we adjust some of our apps to the big resolution of the TouchPad (1024×768) we also have a few Ares apps that need to be changed. And since we had some problems first on how to get started, here is a short tutorial that is hopefully helpful to you.

If you normally open the Ares site, you have only the resolutions for Pixi/Veer and Pre/Pre2 phones. But if you call the Ares URL with a parameter its possible to get the TouchPad resolution and you can design for that one!

URL

The URL you’ve to call is: https://ares.palm.com/Ares/index.html?res=1024×768
Notice the res=1024×768 parameter at the end?

In-App adjustments

After you changed/adjusted the layout to fit the new resolution all you’ve to do is to add one parameter to your appinfo.json file.


"uiRevision" : 2

Don’t forget to add a back-button to your scenes, because there is no gesture area on the TouchPad!

That’s all!

After testing & packaging your app, submit it as an update through the developer portal. This tutorial will show you how to submit multi-platform apps:

Of course, your app is not a native TouchPad app, it’s still a Mojo app, but it works fine in most cases, too!

About the current situation

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It’s been a while since we blogged something here.

There where many changes since our last post. But we’re alive and I will give you a short summary about our development & apps in the current situation, that HP has dumped all webOS hardware.

TouchPad update (Mojo)
First thing, we don’t leave all you TouchPad owners out in the cold! Even if HP has dumped all the TouchPads, there are plenty of you out there that already bought one and we understand that you want to use them.
There is no native TouchPad application from us available in the AppCatalog yet, but ColorHarmony will be the first one, we submitted it today and if all runs fine, will be available in the next couple of days. We also prepare Headlines for the TouchPad, both apps are still Mojo versions, but they will get “back” buttons on different scenes and we adjust the screen real estate so that it matches the bigger screen better.

We got plenty of question about our TrackMyTransit apps, currently we don’t plan to bring them to the TouchPad, because these apps are built for really mobile usage on a phone that you carry always with you. Currently it makes no sense to pull a TouchPad out of your pocket ( :-) ) and check the latest bus schedules.

Pre3 update
Even if the Pre3 will never be available as hardware to ourselves, we currently update Headlines to match the bigger screen and update the used images with higher resolution (1.5x) size so that it looks great on the 480×800 resolution.
We’ll see in the coming days/weeks how any Pre3 are used in the wild and we will than decide if we adjust other apps from our portfolio also to the Pre3. At the moment that is lowprio, due to the cancelation of the Pre3.

Touchpad native (Enyo)
We had 3 apps in development before HP doomed all webOS hardware last week. At the moment all Enyo apps are on hold. We’ve plenty of work with porting our Mojo apps to Touchpad resolution (see above) and maybe in the meanwhile we get some updates from the webOS Development team about the current situation and we can work again on our planned apps.

So check the AppCatalog in the coming days/weeks and there will more&more of our apps appear also for the TouchPad/Pre3.

Preview: Tppd! for webOS

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You know Untappd?
No? in short: Untappd is a social site like Gowalla or Foursquare for beer, there are tons of beers added from users around the world, you can search for a beer you’re currently enjoying and check it in. After check-in you earn a badge and get recommendations for other beers. So pretty similar to the above mentioned services, you got the idea.

In November Untappd announced a API for developers to access their service with native apps. And since I love enjoying a good cold beer I decided to work on an app for webOS. The current webOS browser does not support geo-location, so you cannot check-in a beer in Untappd with your current position. The API can make use of location data, so why not use webOS GPS service and build it into Tppd!

So what is Tpdd!? Yes with the exclamation mark :-) it’s a native webOS client you can use to read your friends timeline, the pub and of course you can check-in your drink and share your location with data from foursquare. tweet it to your Twitter followers or as update to Facebook. I designed it as a multi-panel client with some ideas from the Windows Phone Metro UI, or some webOS users know the beta Twitter client Phnx by @rmxdave, that used the same technique.

Search Panel with results

Checkin Info

Currently I’m already done with the skeleton, some major functions are missing like checkin-results and badge/foursquare presentation. But most of the features I planned for a version 1.0 are already finished. So expect a first beta soon :-)

Since this was started as a fun project where I try to learn some more of the new webOS 2.x goodness like Javascript-Services, this app will be webOS 2.1 only with the newest available features a webOS 2.x app can have at the moment and are useful in such an app. Also this app will be a free app that I work on at my spare time with low priority but I plan to release a first public beta in April.

Search for an icon desginer!:

If you’re an icon designer or know someone who can do icons, lease let me know, I search for a good icon and since I’m not a designer I hope someone can help me out. I can only pay with some credits inside the app or on the app info but not with money…

Shameless plug: If you are already a Untappd user or want to sign up, you can add me to your firends list by visiting my Profile :-)

Twithibition – passive Twitter client for webOS

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We had a lot of work in the last couple of days to finalize our latest app for webOS. So blogging here is a little late since Twithibition is available for a few hours already in the official HP AppCatalog already.

Twithibition is a passive Twitter client for HP webOS that displays tweets from your timeline or custom searches in a new way while for example your device rests on the TouchStone in Exhibition mode (on webOS 2.1 and above) but this also works for older webOS version too but not via Exhibition mode, but via a prevent display from going to sleep mode.

Passive means that it is not a full featured Twitter client, there are plenty of really good Twitter apps for webOS already. So passive means, display tweets/searches and easily favorite tweets or re-tweet the current displayed one.

You can’t send a new tweet or add/follow new users. That’s not the target of it. So really passive for sitting on your desk and of course also if you want to read tweets by swiping each one of them from right to left or let Twithibition do its magic and let it do the work for you.

For more info head over to its own page here: http://twithibition.codingbees.com

Tip: Currently the app is available for 50% of the normal price, but only for the first few days during introduction!

The Curiously Sad Case of webOS 2.0 App Development | PreCentral.net

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In response to a published article today on PreCentral.net:

The Curiously Sad Case of webOS 2.0 App Development | PreCentral.net | The #1 Palm Pre and Pixi Community.

From a developers point of view, since I’m one of them I also have to decide which way to go for the near future.

I’ve currently a bunch of apps in the official catalog that are all running on 1.4.5 and also tested on 2.0. However non of them using webOS 2.0 specific features.

My options are:

  • Update the current and already in beta available applications to support as many webOS devices as available and stick on the 1.4.5 API, since today only 2-5% of users of my apps are on webOS 2.x
  • Enhance the current apps with some nice little webOS 2.x features. Start developing new apps with webOS 2.x in mind and forget about 1.4.5?
  • Start new apps with the Enyo SDK and only provide bugfixes to current avail. apps. Maybe port them over to Enyo.

If I look into the usage stats of some of my apps, pretty simple to stick with the first option here. I already have an app in development that uses Exhibition mode on webOS 2.1 devices but here comes the hard part:

I as a early access developer can’t submit a webOS 2.x feature enabled app to the catalog today! Got this? Really, this is not a joke! I try to submit a beta version of Twithibition to the beta feed with Exhibition mode for over a week now with absolutely no success.
So if I can’t even submit a webOS 2.x feature enabled app to the beta catalog, than also other developers have the same problems. (The currently available Apps with specific features are white listed and approved manual in the catalog, that’s why only a dozen is avail today)

So for the long road, clearly I start an app with the Enyo SDK, but this will take a while, because I doubt that this summer are million new customers are available that have a Enyo enabled device (Only Touchpad and Pre3 so far).

I really not know what I should do today to start a new app. Normally a development process takes some months till catalog release. So If I start today I prefer to stick with the Mojo SDK with also 1.4.5 devices in mind, because that’s where the big user base is, for at least some months. And also if there is some change in the next months, maybe end of year. Mojo apps will run fine on the Pre3 also.

So with Mojo today I can reach at least Pre1, Pre Plus, Pre2 and also Pre3 (same for Pixi, Veer) devices for the next year, maybe much longer. Enyo, I don’t know.