Rating: Beating the non-US block on a webOS device
It’s just like Google’s Music beta service which the search engine company is determined to restrict to US citizens only. For some reason Amazon in its infinite wisdom has decided not to allow non-US citizens to use the Kindle app on webOS devices. This seems to be despite the fact that the iOS and Android versions of the Kindle app are global. So GoMo News had to search for a way to beat this blocker. And thanks to a posting on Amazon’s own Kindle forum here, we’ve discovered a solution. This solution will cover installing other webOS apps which for some reason aren’t available via the HP App Catalog. It assumes you’re using a Windows based PC to install apps onto a webOS device.One of the casualties of this particular exercise will probably be software you originally installed for a Nokia handset.
That’s because apps designed to work with webOS on your PC are Java based.
So in our case the Nokia Ovi suite application installer attempted to launch itself every time we tried to install a Java app. You’ll probably have to remove it to carry on.
It’s also a jolly good idea to install the latest version of Java. We went to Java.com here to install the latest version and you should download a file called jxpinstall.exe in order to do so.
Next you’ll need a copy of webOS Quick Install. We obtained our copy from here following instructions from the XeonWales blog here.
The webOS Quick Install app will need to install Novacom drivers so just let it do so. This is where you need to follow the instructions very carefully.
For starters, in the case of a TouchPad, you need to place the device into developer mode. To do so go to the Just type prompt and type ‘upupdowndownleftrightleftrightbastart’ or ‘webos20090606′ – without the quotation marks, of course.
Then – and this is the really important bit – when you connect your TouchPad or other webOS device, don’t put it into USB mode – press cancel instead. Then it will work!
Finally you need to get a copy of the beta US version of Kindle for webOS. It’s called com.palm.app.kindle_0.10.494660_all.ipk and you can obtain it from here.
The app takes quite a time to install, incidentally.
The good thing about this whole exercise – as we mentioned before – is that you’ve now got the means to install any webOS compatible app you come across.
We assume that all of this will work on the HP Pre 3 as we haven’t managed to obtain one yet here at GoMo Towers.
Does anybody know whether this still works?
Well, it worked for me!
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Just so you know, the Kindle app for the Touchpad only shows books, and no other media. It does not show magazines, or newspapers or anything else. The app is also in Beta with no plans or finishing the product.
Thanks for this. Now that I can run Android Ice Cream Sandwich on y TouchPad, I can get the genuine British version of the Kindle app!!