New Gadget 2011

webOS 2.1 released. Rejoice Palm Pre 2 owner, you can now update your devices. This new update give support for the Touchstone's Exhibition mode, Voice Dial, and a plethora of updates to existing apps throughout the system. Classic, The old-school Palm OS emulator for webOS which is dropped by HP in webOS 2.0 is coming back in webOS 2.1.

webOS 2.1 has already made its way to older devices like European Palm Pre Plus phones, but now it looks like it’s finally making its way onto newer devices, namely the Palm Pre 2. We’re admittedly a little surprised it’s taken this long for webOS 2.1 to be released for the Pre 2 (especially the unlocked Pre 2), but we’re glad to see it finally hitting, at least for the Rogers Pre 2 (where we've already seen 2.1 glimpsed before). Yeah, it’s pretty silly that the Pre Plus got 2.1 before the 2.0 launch vehicle Pre 2. Regardless, even though the changelog hasn’t yet been published, we can tell you that webOS 2.1 brings the usual basket of bug fixes along with probably-not-noticeable speed and battery life improvements, and also finally brings Exhibition mode support to the Pre 2.

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There was a piece of news that didn't happen to get mentioned at last night's developer event. HP has made a donation to a charity on behalf of the WebOS Internals homebrew group that is valued at over $10,000.

A few weeks ago, it became clear that future growth in webOS would outpace the server infrastructure that WebOS Internals currently has in place. They were going to need some beefy hardware to keep up with the demands of acting as the a central repository for webOS homebrew apps, patches, and kernels.

So they asked HP's Phil McKinney, who has arranged to donate an HP Proliant DL385 2u server with 32 gigs of RAM and 8 terabytes of disk space. They made the decision a few weeks ago and the server is en route. Notably, this is a straight-up donation, no strings attached - so WebOS Internals will remain how they always have: completely independent from the company whose OS they hack on.

That's how you support a homebrew community, good on you HP.

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