CC Photo by {eclaire}
February is drawing to a close and the big question on everyone’s mind is: Where is webOS 1.4? Unfortunately, we don’t have an answer for you. But, we do have a rundown of the news from the last week. The news this week is all about apps. We’ll cover them in quick succession and clean up any leftovers in the Roundup. Let’s get going…
gDial Pro Halted
The developer of gDial has stopped all work on the popular Google Voice client for webOS. According to a blog posting the underlying mechanisms for accessing Google Voice are not open and available for developers of 3rd party clients. Faced with providing a service that wasn’t as reliable as a phone app should be the developer decided it would be better to halt development until such time as the APIs are published and accessible. Users who paid for a subscription should already have been refunded their money. PreCentral has a bit more information on the API situation here.
Epocrates Arrives
Medical app maker Epocrates just released their first webOS application. The self-titled Epocrates app (which the description calls Epocrates Rx) provides drug dosing, interaction and pricing information. Epocrates is an essential application for many in health care so it is good to see this appearing on Palm’s newest phones. For those interested a review may be coming soon. The app is free to try and in the App Catalog now.
ScummVM Available for Download
A ScummVM interpreter is now available for download from the Homebrew feed on PreCentral. Users of Preware and WOSQI can download the interpreter though they will have to acquire the games separately. As pointed out in this PreCentral post, ScummVM is not, itself, a game. There are a number of freely available games so feel free to check it out.
Grooveshark Attack
Streaming radio service Grooveshark is now available as a native webOS app. Available as a free download in the App Catalog, Grooveshark is just the latest streaming radio app to hit webOS. What sets Grooveshark apart is its comprehensive playlist features, including the ability to search others users’ playlists. Check out the video below for shots of the app in action (courtesy of PreCentral).
Roundup
Zsoc, who originally brought us the homebrew video recorder, has been working on bringing extra codecs to webOS. According to the PreCentral article GSM WAV support is available as a download through Preware. They also have a good article about AUPT, which we discussed a bit last week, and what will happen when the webOS 1.4 update comes out. In more somber news, Palm stock has taken a beating lately as related in this Engadget piece. Palm’s certainly been on a rollercoaster with the analysts. Got some other news to share? Use the comments below or tweet to us on Twitter.
