Top Ten (Free) Touchpad Apps

I have been playing with the HP Touchpad for a few months now and there are quite a few good (free) Touchpad apps that I thought I would share with you folks.  So here they are in no particular order:

1)  USA Today- The iconic newspaper has done a fine job exporting their site/app to the Touchpad.  Easy to navigate with a clean, crisp look.  A very nice job.

2)  Zite Personal Magazine- The "Flipbook" of the HP Touchpad, this app aggregates many other sites and puts it into a "personalized" magazine.  Sadly it does not allow the user to select which sources it pulls the RSS feeds from.  But still a nice job all the same.

3) Zinio - The magazine app makes an appearance on the Touchpad.  It is version 1.0 and missing some fairly obvious functions (like being able to delete a magazine is one that comes to mind) but I am hopefully they will get the bugs worked out soon.

4)  Rev3 webOS - All the Rev3video podcast in one single location.  Now I can watch Cali Lewis, Veronica Belmont, Patrick Norton and the rest of the Rev3 kingdom in one easy location.  Nice Job, folks!

5) TechTV - Being a fan of the old TechTV, I was very excited when I saw this app.  Like the Rev3 app, it has a bunch of tech video from various source and present them very well.

6) VPN - Holy Cow!!!  HP created the app that allows me to VPN into my network on the Touchpad.  I was simply amazed that this worked after having little to no success getting my Cisco 3005 to connect with any android product.  Works very well.

7) NPR Reader- Being a fan (and supporter) of NPR, I am always impressed with the quality of apps that NPR puts out across all platforms, and they did not disappoint with the Touchpad's NPR reader.  Clear, concise, and easy to navigate.  Well done!

8) Robotek HD - Just a cool little game.  You have a robot and you must battle another robot using various weapons, shield, and effects.  Simple yet addicting.

9) TuneIn Radio - Like NPR, the folks at TuneIn don't disappoint.  Navigate local radio stations or listen to radio from half way around the world.

10) AccuWeather - A very nice weather app.  Not much more to say other that it is simple to read and use.  Live radar, weather alerts, allergy information, and more, it is an "all-in-one" weather stop.

If you have any more free apps that you would like to recommend for the touch pad, please let me know.

**Edit**  Late Entry:  Facebook now has an app for the Touchpad.  Very nice export but lacking one fundamental thing:  you cannot logout, allowing anyone that picks up the touchpad be able to post as you.  Not good.  Major oversight.  But still, it is functional and looks great.

HP Touchpad App Catalog issue

Just an update to the app catalog issue. To recap, I was getting an error message in the App Catalog that said "The action could not be completed. Try again later" when I tried to get in to the app catalog. This persested for a few days (longer than conventional wisdom stated which had it pegged at 24 hours.). But now after about five days into it, the App catalog seems stable and relaible. The issue persisted for me for about four days.

I have three possible theories on what could have resolved this issue:

1) It took a while to get registed with HP (which is what the other folks mentioned saying there was a 24 hour waiting period.) The delay may be attributed to the hugely increased volume of Touchpads sold.
2) The app catalog itself was just overwhelmed with new users.
3) One other thing that happened (although I don't think this was the resolution, but I'm throwing this out there in the name of computer science) is that I ran the battery down completely and then recharged. It was after this recharge that I noticed the App Catalog working correctly.

Hopefully this will be useful to someone.

Good luck! Feel free to discuss anything you may have experienced here. I'd love to hear if anyone has a similar experience.

My $100 HP Touchpad experience

I was fortunate enough to get in on the $100 HP Touchpad experience.  I got it yesterday an played around with it most of last night.

My experienced is mixed.  While I like the look and feel of the device (despite it's plactic back), the hardware seems woefully under powered.  Even out of the box, launching things  like the configuration control panel and the wi-fi settings manager seem pokey.  But I am jumping way ahead of the experience at this point...

When I received it I was impressed by the packaging.  It looked like HP had, by all accounts, taken a cue from Apple's legendary packaging team.  It was slick and well thought out and the touchpad was well presented.

Once the box was opened, the instructions in the box said to fully charge the Touchpad before use.  Really?  It couldn't come mostly charged like the iPad so I can use this puppy right way?  So I charged it for a couple of hours and fired it up.

First it asked me for language and country and then wanted to connect to my wi-fi.  Normally this would not be an issue, but as I MAC address filter my wifi network, I had to disable the MAC address filtering and then  get it on my WPA2 secured network.  The, after agreeing to the terms of service, it asked me for my webOS account credentials or to create a webOS account.  The final step was to agree to the Google terms of service.  One that was done it was up and running.

The first thing I tried was a simple web search.  It worked well, but seemed a little pokey.  Then I went to the "apps" section and went to the "apps catalog>"  This is where the trouble began.  Almost immediately I was greeted with a message "The action could not be completed. Try again later."  Great.  So I try again.  And again.  And again.  Like Pavlov's dog I keep hiting it for a while.  So I turn to the internet to see if anyone else had this issue.  Yes...yes, they do.  Conventional wisdom (and the forums) say a 24 hour wait is customary for this issue to resolve itself, so I decided to wait.  The suddenly it worked!

I downloaded half a dozen apps to get started and to see what it could do.  I downloaded Angry Birds, iheartradio.com, Pandora, USA Today and a few others.  Then I exited out of the App Catalog to try these new found treasures.  Suddenly I realize a couple of apps I forgot.  So I went to go back into the App Catalog and was again greeted by the "The action could not be completed. Try again later" message.

Again I tried and try again and eventually I did get in.  So something is very flakey with the app catalog that I will need to look into if it doesn't resolve itself by tomorrow.

The Touchpad hardware seems  slow.  One I dig into it more, there are some tweaks I am going to try to getting it running a little better.  IBut out of the box and with no other apps running it takes 15-20 seconds to even open the settings "app."  I do like the "cards" that it opens each browser/app in.  I am also trying to figure out how to customize it a bit more.

One annoyance with the App Catalog is that there seems not to be a way to apply a filter so only the touchpad apps show.  I mistakenly downloaded a few non-Touchpad apps and quickly deleted them.  Unlike the iPad, which allows a user it increase the size of iPhone apps, the Touchpad does not have a method of taking advantage of the larger screen size for webOS phone apps.  This is a  big oversite in my opinion.

The selection of apps seems satisfactory, but I am hopefull that the rumors of a android emulator come try and this is developed sooner rather than later.  If so, this will be a huge boon to the HP Touchpad crowd.

Finally, I hope HP learns something from this debacle.  I hope they learn that they cannot compete with Apple with a new device at the same (or close) price point.  Had HP introduced the Touchpad at $199 and made the difference up in the App Catalog, they might have had a chance against the iPad.  It's not that other companies cannot compete with Apple, it's just that they cannot compete at that price point with Apple.  Any competition will need to come in sub-$200 and make up any losses in the App marketplace.

Like Marlon Brando, the HP Touchpad could have been a contender.  But it wasn't really given a chance, and at $599 market entry point, it was fighting with one arm behind it's back.  May HP will revisit the Touchpad and rethink their market strategy and their decision to kill off the Touchpad.  I hope so.  Because at first blush, it looks pretty decent.