Like most things involving WebOS and the new Palm devices, the Facebook app for WebOS is underwhelming. Actually, it's worse than that, considering how far app development has come since the smartphone app craze started. Maybe they should get Joe Hewitt involved? I hear he's done with that other project he's been working on.

The problem is just a total lack of features. You get unfiltered news feeds, even if you've unselected application updates in your profile, and videos and links pull you out of the app. Sure it's nice to multitask but to do so unnecessarily is just silly. There's seemingly no search feature, no way to access events, and clicking another person's name seems to bring up little more than contact info.

What can you do? Well, you can upload pictures and post status updates and...well that seems to be about it. Another compelling reason to get a Palm Pre.

Now that the Droid has launched we all want to know how many have sold. Well, I want to know anyway, and I'm guessing a few of you probably do as well. If you take Bloomberg's word, opening weekend showed 110,000 units sold. Developer uLocate, which develops the GPS app "Where" has confirmed those numbers and done one better.

According to uLocate, the Where app typically gets installed on 10% of new Android devices in the first month, jumping to a 25% penetration rate thereafter. The same was true for the Droid, boasting 11,000 downloads during opening weekend. Since last weekend that number is up to 25,000, meaning we're looking at 250,000 Droid sales in the first week. Considering the Palm Pre only sold 300,000 in its first month, that number's looking pretty good. Doesn't hurt that you can get the Droid on Verizon who, despite recent bad press concerning fees, is the most desirable network in the country (though T-Mobile is probably a close second with its new plans).

Hopefully it's onward and upward for the Droid. I'm not personally a fan, but success of the handset means good things for Android, and that's something I can get behind.

Source: Boy Genius Report

Joe Hewitt's been unhappy with and outspoken about Apple's app approval process since about the time he started working on the Facebook app. Well he's finally had enough. According to a recent, tweet he's done working on the app and ready to move on.

Time for me to try something new. I’ve handed the Facebook iPhone app off to another engineer, and I’m onto a new project.

Hewitt also said in very clear language that he left iPhone development because of Apple. Speaking to TechCrunch he said, "My decision to stop iPhone development has had everything to do with Apple’s policies. I respect their right to manage their platform however they want, however I am philosophically opposed to the existence of their review process." As are a lot of people, but to this point no one with Hewitt's resume has made the same decision (Arrington left the iPhone for a different reason and he's not a developer).

Hewitt's in a better position to "quit" then some developers, though. He's got a swanky gig at Facebook, where he'll still be developing after his announcement. A house like Tapulous, on the other hand, is making enough money off the App Store that it's unlikely it will leave, and we probably wouldn't hear about one of its developers quitting because of a philosophical opposition like Hewitt's.

Instead we'll probably continue to see the trickle of policy changes Apple has made over the last several months. The most recent allows developers to see real time status updates about the app, so when it's sitting in "waiting for review" you can start throwing around some lawsuits.

Remember that free Photoshop app for the iPhone? Adobe's finally released a version for Android, roughly a month after the iPhone version became available.

It's basically the same app, though with a few differences for both better and worse. For starters, the Android version displays the phone's entire photo library within the application. With the iPhone version you have to go through an extra step to select your photo. Not a huge difference, but it's nice.

On the flipside, the Android version doesn't have the pinch or twist functionality for straightening out your pictures. The feature is still there, just as a menu item instead of the multitouch. Again, not a big deal, and frankly the Photoshop app probably won't be the pivotal factor if you're deciding between the two platforms. For either OS, it's a nice app.

The iPhone is mostly dummy-proof, at least in the sense that you won't find yourself accruing hundreds of dollars in fees because you stumbled on a bug in the mobile version of Safari. Or so I thought. As it turns out that very thing is possible, and not all that hard to pull off.

As I'm sure you know, Apple allows very few apps to run in the background on the iPhone. The iPod is one, but you might not be aware that Safari is another. Safari will continue to stream data from some web pages even while the app is "closed." It can be extremely useful for playing internet radio stations that don't have their own apps, but in the case of motion-jpegs, a filetype used for things like cam feeds, the user might not know the app is still streaming content, and potentially racking up some crazy data charges.

Obviously there are some pretty specific circumstances surrounding this problem. For one, you'd have to be in data roaming or traveling or somehow or another not on an unlimited plan. That's not something we'll see stateside too often. If you were caught in that situation, though, it would be pretty easy to generate a grand or two in overage fees I'm sure.

Luckily the solution is as simple as the problem. Just make sure you close any pages with auto-refreshing content if you're worried about it.

Source: MobileCrunch

In the rush to release an iPhone app, a lot of publishers have missed the mark, omitting their best content for something quick and dirty that kicks your ass outside after you've had your five minutes of fun. FHM's iPhone app is different, though. It's loaded with content, frequently updated, and it only costs $1.99.

I was more than happy to consider reviewing the app since I knew what hid between FHM's magazine covers. Everyone knows FHM gets the hottest women alive - just look at the Megan Fox shoot - and that's the bulk of material the app delivers to the iPhone. The app works on a card system that's actually a lot like the Palm Pre's OS. The two most prominent cards are "Non-stop Honeys" and "Girl of the Week." Each section allows you to view FHM photo content in a grid of four per screen, or zoomed to full-screen. You can then save or share the pictures you like and vote on your favorites.

The app also has a videos section with behind-the-scene content for a lot of the photo shoots. Again, content is updated regularly, so you should be able to find something new to watch as often as you come back to the app. To top things off, FHM feeds articles into the "Take Once Daily" sections, and adds that special FHM flavor with the "Useful/Useless Facts" section (who knew a five-minute kiss was illegal in Iowa?).

The whole thing is delivered in a slick little package courtesy of Zumobi. If you're a fan of the FHM magazine, there's no way you'll be disappointed in the $1.99 you spend on this app.

FHM provided the software for this review

It's hard to say just how I feel about the new app from Harvard Medical School, called the Swine Flu Center. On the one hand, it's certainly important to keep the public educated about H1N1. As a national emergency level virus, people should know what they're up against. Are outbreak maps on our phone the best way to do that? Maybe not.

The new application is part of Harvard Medical School's mobile initiative to get people educated about current medical issues. At $1.99 it's pretty cheap, and certainly has a lot to offer. The app has videos, diagnostic tips, prevention tips, and an interactive symptom checker.

As with any interactive medical tool, make sure you're talking to a physician before making rash decisions. These are guidelines, people, guidelines. Let's not freak out.

Source: TechCrunch

Military defense contractor Raytheon is apparently as interested in Android as the rest of us. The company has created an application that works like a mashup between a buddy list and Google Maps, giving users the ability to locate "buddies" anywhere on the battlefield.

The system, called Raytheon Android Tactical System (RATS), was developed on Android for the openness of the platform. Raytheon sees RATS expanding to uses like biometric scanning and off-site suspect identification. By developing on Android, Raytheon was also able to keep the cost of the software down. Think a couple hundred dollars per user, versus the typical tens of thousands per mobile terminal, something taxpayers are sure to be happy with.

Source: Forbes

Wolfram Alpha just released an iPhone app that differs in one major way from the web engine - it costs $50. And the WA guys think people will buy it, though they aren't sure how many.

A rep for the company contacted Gizmodo and said the following:

How many people will buy it? We're not sure, but looking at the other apps that are $50+, we think that we're of at least comparable in utility and functionality, if not more. And, part of what the company is also doing is making a statement about the non-trivial nature of WolframAlpha's capabilities, and how much the system has matured since launch.

So what does that mean for the future of the web version of WA? Does the company really expect users to pay $50 to take that free service mobile?

When I had the thought that someone should do some app organizing, giving consumers a way to find the very best iPhone apps out there, I didn't think it would be a high school sophomore. Jordan Satok had plans to surprise me, it seems. The 15-year-old web entrepreneur started appoftheday.com, a site that aims to give exposure to the very apps many of us are looking for.

The daily recommendations come courtesy of community nominations. You get just one nomination per day, and since the site ties in with Gravatar, the hope is that users will just log in with an email, keeping developers from going in to spam their own apps with votes.

There's a good read up on Wired's Gadget Lab about Apple's recent removal of in-app purchase restrictions for free iPhone apps. The article suggests that the move, when implemented with the Apple tablet, could be the defib the publishing industry needs.

There are already a couple apps out there using this model, though they weren't free to begin with. The McSweeney's app, for instance, allowed you to purchase six months of content on installation. From there it was a subscription service for more of the premium goods. Wired thinks newspapers and magazines could use this model to differentiate premium quality content from the everyday stuff like blogs and user content.

The key to the publishing transformation, though, is the Apple tablet. For my part, I really don't like to read content exclusively on my iPhone. I love the flexibility to do so as I please, but having content limited to just that little screen is exactly the reason I've avoided the McSweeney's app. It's just too small to use for all of my daily reading. A tablet would change that, offering the real estate necessary to make daily reading an enjoyable experience.

For more on Apple's plan to pluck a struggling industry from the brink, check out the original post at Wired.

Apple has decided to lift yet another App Store restriction, one that has bloated the App Store (that app count isn't entirely accurate) for some time. Developers are now allowed to have in-app purchases in free apps, a move that spells the demise of all those "lite" apps.

As things used to be, developers were required to charge for the download of an application if they also wanted to charge for content to be added later. By lifting the restriction, Apple has finally enabled developers to make just one version of an application that can then be unlocked through in app purchases.

I know this makes trial or limited downloads a lot more appealing. Downloading two apps for one purpose always seemed like a hassle to me. I'm glad things have finally turned the corner.

It's been pretty hilarious to watch all of the fake "there's an app for that" ads come out, just to see an actual app released a few months later. Such is the case with SmartStart from Viper. The free app hooks your phone up with a starter kit installed on your car and essentially turns your iPhone into your keys.

SmartStart does more than just ignition. You can start your heater, lock and unlock doors, pop your trunk, and set the alarm. Since the signal is carried over cell networks you can use the app from pretty much anywhere without range limitation.

All that convenience comes with a pretty hefty price tag, though. It's $299 for the car module if you've already got a Viper system, $499 if not. You get a free year of service but after that you're looking at $30/year to keep things running. Even at that price, though, I'd imagine a lot of people would be willing to buy. I mean, really, your iPhone controls your car. Now you just need to replace your Ford Focus with an Aston Martin.

If you've been waiting for Adobe to put Photoshop on the iPhone, your wait is over. It's about what you'd expect (and certainly all you need) from an editing application on your cell phone, though calling it "Photoshop" is a bit misleading. The app is free, though, which was a nice surprise.

The interface is probably the best part of the app. It's simple slider controls for most effects, which include standard adjustments for saturation, exposure, tint, and all that. You can also crop and use filters, which makes it pretty easy to put together a decent looking picture for a quick Facebook upload. Oh, did I mention the app is free?

The app includes integration with Adobe's online system and allows you to upload photos or just save the changes right on your phone. As I may have mentioned, the app is free.

It seems Apple has one less straw man to throw at investigators over the Google Voice rejection. AT&T has decided, at long last, to allow VoIP calling over 3G connections. VoIP over 3G has been the reason behind a whole slew of app rejections for the iPhone. The change probably comes as a result of the net neutrality discussion, but even so, it's something I expected AT&T to fight aggressively, not acquiesce to.

The policy change means you can now do some pretty cool stuff, like use Skype anywhere, or the new Vonage app that heralded the VoIP announcement. It also puts a lot of pressure on Apple to push the Google Voice app through. We all know the "duplicating iPhone features," defense is a load of crap, and this leaves Apple with very little reason for the rejection.

Of course, the policy change also means a lot more data traffic on AT&T's overtasked network. It'll be interesting to see how well that holds up.