Meanwhile, webOS 3.0 also borrows from the Synergy capabilities of its smartphone-based webOS predecessors with tablet-based E-Mail Synergy and Photo Synergy capabilities. Oakes told me that both of these features use technologies that include synchronization through HP's cloud servers and an underlying software framework supporting multiple APIs (application programming interfaces) to outside apps.
In Photo Synergy, you can access photos from multiple Web sites such as Facebook and Snapfish, for example, in a single place. Similarly, through E-Mail Synergy, you can work with messages from multiple email accounts -- for example, Gmail, Yahoo, and Microsoft Outlook (through Exchange ActiveSync) in a centralized space.
Personally, I'm sure I'd find E-Mail Synergy useful just about every day of the week (like many people, I suppose, I tend to spend a lot of time jumping in and out of my three or four favorite mailboxes). The HP TouchPad's roomy screen clearly offers plenty of real estate for viewing photos and emails from all of your various accounts and Web sites.
Four Soft Keyboards
Meanwhile, webOS 3.0's four virtual keyboards are in four different sizes. You might choose the "extra large" keypad if you're typing in a lengthy email, or the "extra small" if you want to use most of the screen for looking at photos or videos.
The soft keypads in webOS 3.0 also depart from tradition by offering a number row on top. "This makes it easier to access URLs containing numbers, for example," illustrated the TouchPad product marketing manager.
The HP exec also showed how webOS will display a status light when the HP TouchPad is connected to its charging dock.
Following the Palm buyout, HP first adopted webOS for use in its printers. Then, in February of this year, HP announced that its own first phones the HP Pre3 and the tiny HP Veer - would run a revamped mobile OS called webOS 2.2, while the TouchPad would be outfitted with the tablet-oriented webOS 3.0.
HP's new OS for the tablet also uses the same gestures, such as webOS-specific swipes, as previous editions of the OS. This will surely come as welcome news to users of Palm Pre phones, but it will likely pose a bit of a learning curve to those unfamiliar with WebOS gestures.
Earlier on, new Pre owners were so mystified about touchscreen operations that Palm created a users guide specifically for gestures.
Actually, the swipe gestures used for navigating the RIM PlayBook's screen also seem to echo those developed previously for webOS.
Kind of surprisingly, Oakes did not demo Pivot, a new monthly digital publication for TouchPad announced the same week. As touted in HP's press materials, Pivot will offer content highlighting the TouchPad's capabilities and developer community while educating users about an app store for webOS.
Other features set for inclusion in the tablet-optimized webOS 3.0 include Adobe Flash, hardware acceleration for faster image rendering, and touch-to-share, a capability for sharing URLs between the TouchPad and other webOS devices.