Our winner this week is…

Starter by Marc Chardine of ScienceApps

Starter is an app you can use to start several apps at once, and for the App Hack, Marc has added position detection to it. So what, you say? Well, this means that you can make Starter start your apps when the device has a specific orientation, e.g. on the TouchStone charger or flat on a table. We think this is a great concept. Congratulations, Marc! We’ll be in touch about your TouchPad.

Honorable Mentions

SkyOrb by Stephane Denis of Realtech VR

This impressive PDK app takes you on a tour of the solar system (or the galaxy) and also serves as a star map. With Stephane’s App Hack update, the app now uses the PDK Sensor API instead of SDL accelerometer tracking. That way, GPS, compass, orientation, and gravity sensor classes are used for augmented reality tracking of planet and stars.

Map.3D by Henk Jonas of MetaView

Well known developer Henk Jonas has taken his app MapTool to the third dimension. As you hold the TouchPad in front of you and move it around, the Map will follow you and always point in the direction you’re looking…in all three dimensions. We love it!

Tumblewords by  SqueakyDogSoftware

A new app for kids, combining spelling and tilting, and based on a letter block theme you’ll recognize instantly.

After catching our breath from the first of many open source releases of webOS, we needed to get back to work to deliver on our commitments for February.

A key part of those commitments, as we shared in our roadmap, are extensions to QtWebKit. We are very fortunate to have a great WebKit team, led by Leonid Zolotarev. You will see an enhanced QtWebKit, a first look at the webOS governance structure (which will based on Apache methodologies), as well a few additional surprises, in the February release.

Last week, I had the opportunity to meet with our Developer Relations team. I am very pleased by their level of enthusiasm, and their dedication to the developer community. Like the rest of the team, they want to make an open webOS pervasive in the market, and they understand that our developer community is key to making this happen.

We are also very excited by the work that Rod Whitby and the homebrew community are doing porting Enyo 1.0 to legacy products. I also want to thank all of the developers who have submitted their Enyo-based applications to other platforms! You are really helping to get the word out. Developer adoption of Enyo has been phenomenal, and we expect it will only increase after our upcoming 2.1 and 2.2 releases.

Some of you may have seen the announcement that Bill Veghte has been named Chief Strategy Officer of HP. That’s important to know, because one of the teams he will be overseeing is the webOS group. He has already jumped right in, and is proving to be a great coach. We are learning from Bill’s past experience running Windows and Microsoft Live, and he is learning from our team’s expertise in open source, which has made this process rewarding for everyone involved. Bill is extremely enthusiastic about this effort and his guidance will be key to helping us along the path to success.

I am truly gratified to be leading the technical effort here in Sunnyvale. The excitement is growing throughout the team, and I’m convinced that the fun is only beginning!

Sam

In December, HP announced that webOS would be made available under an open source license, with continued support from HP. We’re proud of webOS and its potential to harness web standards to improve the next generation of applications, web services, and devices.

Today, we’re taking the next step on this journey by releasing Enyo, our JavaScript app framework, under open source licensing, allowing developers to distribute their Enyo-based webOS apps across other platforms. In this post, we’ll also provide a first look at our open source release roadmap.

In any large project, it’s imperative to communicate the plan for achieving the project’s goals. This plan is usually presented in the form of a roadmap, which outlines the steps necessary to achieve project goals and shows the path forward. For an open source project to be a success, that roadmap must be public so all contributors have a sense of where the project is headed.

In subsequent posts, and on the new Enyo website, we will share more details about our roadmap for webOS, including our plans for release phases, governance, tools, documentation, and more. So with that in mind, let’s step into an overview of some of the pieces of the release plan.

Our first contribution is Enyo, our lightweight, cross-platform framework aimed at mobile devices and web browsers.

This initial open source release includes Enyo 1.0, which allows current developers of Enyo apps for webOS devices to distribute their apps to other platforms. While this release is not intended to be expanded any further, there is considerable utility for our current developer base in releasing it.

Today’s release also includes the core of Enyo 2.0, which will be the foundation for Enyo going forward. It expands Enyo’s “write once, run anywhere” capability to even more platforms, from mobile devices to desktop web browsers. It works on many of the most popular web browsers, including Chrome, IE 9, Firefox, and Safari.

While 2.0 does not yet include any UI widgets, the core will support a wide variety of libraries and add-ons. A UI widget set for 2.0 will be released in the near future.

Upcoming releases include our distribution of WebKit, which will support not only HTML5, but also Silverlight and Flash through the use of plug-ins. It will enable the rendering of webpages to HTML Canvas and 3-D textures, and will support a wide range of application interfaces, including multi-touch.

We will also release a new kernel based on the Linux Foundation’s standard kernel. As we continue through the roadmap, you will see enhanced integration with JavaScript through register callbacks and custom multi-process architecture for security, load balancing, and recovery availability.

Look for us to introduce LevelDB to replace our prior database.

Along the way, we will also share our tool sets, and we expect that many of you will want to share yours as well.

In closing, I want to thank the great engineers who have worked with me on creating the open webOS roadmap and let you all know that we look forward to collaborating with the community. As my friend Eric Raymond stated as I embarked on the open source adventure, “It takes a village to create a complete solution.”

The sensor API can be used with PDK (details in the PDK documentation), but is also available to the SDK, as webOS 3.0.5 implements the DeviceOrientation and DeviceMotion Event Specification. Let’s see what we can do in a simple Enyo app.

DeviceOrientation Event

The device orientation event returns rotation data—how much the device is leaning side-to-side (beta), front-to-back (gamma) and the direction the device is facing (alpha).

DeviceMotion Event

The device motion event is a superset of the device orientation event; it returns data about device rotation and also acceleration information. Acceleration data are returned in three axes: x, y, and z, and are measured in m/s^2. Although some devices might not have the hardware to exclude the effect of gravity, the event nevertheless returns two properties, accelerationIncludingGravity and acceleration, which excludes the effects of gravity. (When including gravity, whichever axis is vertical registers the 1g effect.)

This is where the gyroscope on board the TouchPad comes into play; with its help, the effect of gravity can be removed from the acceleration values.

Our example, we will explore the deviceorientation event:

Let’s start by implementing the function that does something with the orientation data:

onSensorData : function(event) {

    // gamma is the left-to-right tilt in degrees, where right is positive
    var tiltLR = event.gamma;

    // beta is the front-to-back tilt in degrees, where front is positive
    var tiltFB = event.beta;

    // alpha is the compass direction the device is facing in degrees
    var dir = event.alpha

    // when using the devicemotion event, try these values:
    // event.acceleration.x/y/z
    // event.accelerationIncludingGravity.x/y/z

    var rotation = "rotate(" + dir + "deg) rotate3d(1,0,0, " + (tiltFB * -1) + "deg)";

    this.$.myImage.applyStyle('-webkit-transform',rotation);

    var res="Gamma="+Math.round(tiltLR)+" Beta="+Math.round(tiltFB)+" Alpha="+Math.round(dir);
    this.$.resultWindow.setContent(res);
}

Here we are rotating an image on-screen in response to device motion, using the alpha orientation to rotate the image and the beta (front-back tilt) data to rotate the image around the x-axis. To do this, we’re using the rotatate3d CSS3 Transform. The first three values indicate direction (0,1 or -1) and the fourth the number of degrees to rotate. In our case, we’re only rotating the X axis.

Finally, we add an event listener to call our function every time the orientation data changes:

window.addEventListener("deviceorientation", enyo.bind(this,"onSensorData"), true);

That’s the basic idea! We’ve put the source for our demo app here for you to study more closely.

The Challenge

Your task for this week’s App Hack is to create something cool with the Sensor API presented here. You can follow the basic outline we’ve provided here, or stretch it to imagine something nobody’s thought of before!

The Rules

1) Submit your app based on the sample above to the App Catalog by January 31st at 11:59pm Pacific Standard Time. We will be accepting both new apps as well as new incorporation of the theme into existing apps as an improvement. A submission to the Beta catalog is acceptable.

2) Notify us that you want to participate in the App Hack by sending us an email containing your app redirect link (it’s generated automatically and placed on the app’s detail page in “My Apps”) and any extra information you want to share with us at apphack@palm.com. This is also due by January 31st at 11:59pm Pacific Standard Time. If you do not send us this note, your app will not be considered for the App Hack.

3) By the end of the day on Monday, February 6th, the Developer Relations team will announce the winning app (along with honorable mentions and other entrants). The winner will get a blog post dedicated to him/her and his/her fantastic app.

4) For this round, the winner (and only the winner) will also receive a 16GB TouchPad!

Additional terms and conditions

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY AND PURCHASE WILL NOT INCREASE CHANCE OF WINNING. OPEN ONLY TO REGISTERED DEVELOPERS. HP reserves the right to request additional information for consideration. False information disqualifies you and your app from consideration, making it subject to review under applicable laws. Violators may be prosecuted. This offer is void where prohibited or restricted by law. Taxes, if applicable, are winner’s responsibility. HP employees are not eligible. Winner may have to sign and return an eligibility and liability release, unless prohibited. If eligible winner fails to sign and return required documents, prize may be forfeited. HP is committed to protecting your privacy. Your personal information will not be passed on from HP without your explicit consent. Visit our Online Privacy Statement to learn how we use automatic data collection tools and your personal information to tailor your communications. Neither party acquires any patent, copyright, mask work or trademark rights during this event. Participation imposes no obligation on either party to purchase, sell, license, transfer or otherwise dispose of any technology, services or products, and does not create any agency or partnership relationship. The terms herein may be added to or modified by HP at any time at its sole discretion. Additional terms and conditions may apply. Entry constitutes agreement to rules and HP’s decisions. Entrants release and hold harmless HP, its subsidiaries, affiliates, and their officers, directors, employees, agents from any claim arising out of entry or prize receipt or use.

Highlights include a new Sensor API, the ability to have plug-ins use both processor cores, and improvements to audio and video playback, plus various updates to Enyo we think you’ll like. We’ve also incorporated a homebrew patch to the Bluetooth SPP service to support binary data, so we expect to see some hardware hacks soon. (Hmm—new App Hack theme?)

Enjoy!

Color Tangle by Will Hankinson

Just what you wanted—another puzzle game to steal hours out of your life, right? Well, Will has brought his popular game Color Tangle to webOS. In this game, you must untangle pairs of balls attached by strings. As each pair is untangled, it disappears. When you’ve cleared the balls, you win the level. The catch is that not all colors of strings allow all colors of balls through. It is thoroughly addicting, with a simple, cheerful design.

BTW, it looks like he’s using Haxe NME as his development tool of choice, which is definitely worth a look if you like to do cross-platform games the easy way. Thanks, Will! We’ll be in touch about your new TouchPad.

Honorable Mentions

Quad Word by David Whittaker

As a word guy, I love word games, and Quad Word is quite a challenge. From each of four quadrants, grab a single letter and drag it to the center, forming a word. You can grab multiple letters at a time for speedier results and a higher score. It’s a real trick to sort out a word from all the possible combinations. And if your letters spell more than one word, you’ll get an extra point for each word.

Shooty by Erik Weitnauer

A nice tribute to Space Invaders. We love the hand-drawn design of this little gem. Erik adds one great feature (although we found it inconsistent in real-world use) by providing an optional separate app for your webOS phone to control the game. Erik makes use of node.js, built into webOS since version 2.0. Great concept, Erik!

Powfish for webOS phones by Oli Coombs

Oli wanted to create a puzzle game that combined the best of games like Tetris and Bejeweled. We think you’ll like his final result. There’s also a version for the TouchPad, though it’s not full-screen.

Other notables

If you have small kids you need to keep occupied, check out two additions to the Make a Scene series, Safari and Under the Sea.

LowDef Invaders brings back fond memories for me, because it’s the first game I cloned as a young developer. It’s hard to beat these retro games!

Once again, thanks for making this a very challenging App Hack to judge!

We also start this year looking forward to the Open Sourcing of webOS. We are very excited about the promise of this new direction, and are working hard to make it a reality. No, it’s not going to happen immediately. While there are those who would like us just to post the source on Github, it’s not that simple. We need to work out issues of governance, licensing, contributions, non-open source components, etc. However, we are committed to making it happen, and to taking an active role in the future of webOS.

While we are working on these details, we are interested in your thoughts and opinions. Are you interested in or planning on contributing to webOS? What areas would you like to focus on (core OS, apps, etc.)? Let us know in the forums—we’re listening.

Again, Happy New Year. Let’s make it a good one!

Big thanks to all of you who submitted entries for the “Got Game” App Hack. Keep an eye out for the results. See you in the New Year!

Gliders Data Tracking by Jacques Piquard

No doubt inspired partially by the fact that one of the Wave Gliders is named the PiccardMaru, Jacques gives us a very nicely laid-out app, with the ability to select the desired data and glider, and color coded data display with prominent decoding key. Nice job, Jacques!

Don’t forget that there’s still time to enter the latest App Hack with your new game. We’ve even given you extra time—entries aren’t due until December 20th. We’re already getting entries, though, so keep them coming!

We also know that featuring apps is useful both to consumers and developers. Today, customers in the US will find an update to the “Featured” section of the App Catalog to help consumers find great apps for the holidays.

We are committed to growing the app ecosystem (there are a lot of webOS devices out there, after all), and will continue to use a variety of means to promote the best apps we can find. So keep your eye out for upcoming promos, discounts, and showcases!