It’s nearly Thanksgiving in the US so for this special Turkey-day edition of the News Roundup we’ll cover some things you can be thankful for.  For those who get a little too aggressive with patching their phones, webOS Doctor 1.3.1 is available.  For the Europeans, there’s webOS 1.3.1.  We’ll wrap up with a wide selection of side-dishes in the Roundup.  Pull out the cranberry jelly and let’s tuck in.

webOS Doctor 1.3.1 Available

webOS Doctor is Palm’s tool for restoring your phone back to a ‘factory default’ condition.  webOS Doctor is able to restore a Pre or Pixi by replacing the entire operating system of the phone.  On some other devices it’s been possible to ‘brick’ the device by making changes to the operating system.  Thanks to webOS Doctor that doesn’t happen to webOS devices.   Reportedly, this version of webOS Doctor doesn’t even wipe out the files stored on the media partition.

Although webOS devices back up to the cloud you should always be careful before doctoring a device (See this article at PreCentral about backup woes).  The doctor will wipe out all non-Palm application settings.  It will also remove all the apps you’ve installed (though apps purchased through the App Catalog will be redownloaded once you sign in with your profile).  webOS Doctor is really a last resort.  If you’ve had a run-in with a bad patch you should try uninstalling it first.  If that doesn’t work, check out webOS Repair Utility.

webOS 1.3.1 Crosses The Ocean

Good news for those in Europe!  Palm has gotten webOS 1.3.1 approved for carriers in Europe.  If you haven’t yet received the download launch the Updates app and check for updates.  We covered 1.3.1 last week.  Unfortunately, some apps that were available in Europe prior to the 1.3.1 update are now no longer available. We expect that as the developer program gets finalized in December we’ll see more options for developers wishing to distribute their apps in Europe (as well as more apps made by Europeans now that they have devices to test on).

Roundup

Here’s a small sample of some other things to be thankful for:  The WebOS Internals folks have released an alpha version of Precorder, a video/audio recorder for webOS (with a little help from yours truly).  For everyone (with a Windows PC) looking for another media sync application, there’s MediaMonkey 3.2, which now syncs with the Palm Pre.  For those who enjoy holiday apps, there are a number of apps available in the App Catalog, including our very own Match ‘Em – Christmas Edition (download link).  Be sure to check out Shotgun Santa, Snow Globe (I heard from the developer that you may want to download the update when it becomes available to avoid a lag issue after loading images), Always Christmas Wallpapers, Thanksgiving, Christmas and Christmas Music Trivia.  If you’ve heard of something interesting happening be sure to tip us in the comments or via twitter.  Happy Thanksgiving!