Compared against the Droid Eris, the decidedly secondary, little-advertised rebranded Hero that happens to be launching alongside the Droid Droid, the Pixi’s hasn’t been driving much Google traffic at all, according to Google Trends. More odd is that even with reviews starting to hit, exciting deals showing up online and a release date rapidly approaching, the Pixi’s buzz is flat.

A couple of points: Although I searched for “Droid Eris” in quotes, there’s a good chance the Eris is getting a leg up on Google searches by piggybacking on the hyper-hyped Droid Proper. Also, I’ve seen three people, two of whom work with gadgets for a living, write “Pixi” as “Pixie” in the last 24 hours, which is funny! Also probably a bad sign, for the buzz. But still, that explains a disparity, not totally flat interest, or the weirdly tiny bump in attention the phone got when pricing was announced back in October. What gives? [Google Trends]

The $US30 Pixis (Pixies?) are back-ordered already, probably because this is the best deal in town. This news does two things: It raises the possibility of a free-on-contract Pixi sometime in the near future, and calls into question again whether or not the Pixi can ever be a truly good deal. Today, the Pre is $US100 at Amazon, so a $US30 — or even free — Pixi might not be worth the loss of screen size, speed, Wi-Fi and camera quality. And as BusinessWeek crunches it:

Amortised over the required two-year contract, with the cheapest offering being Sprint’s $US70 a month unlimited data, 450 voice minute Everything Data plan, the Pixi works a out to $US74.15 a month and the Pre to $US76.25. Not much to choose from there in budgetary terms.

And that’s at $US100 and $US150 prices for the Pixi and Pre, respectively — not the new bargain basement rates. What does that leave in the Pixi’s favour? Size? Style? The fact that its name actually sounds like a noun? [EverythingPre]

Makes tossing a phone into a cupholder seem so inelegant, doesn’t it? [EverythingPre via MAKE]

We heard of LaLa’s iPhone app a year ago, but now, along with their connection to Google’s music service, we’re hearing that the app is going through the approval process with hopes of availability by year end.

Songs are a mere ten American pennies through Lala because they would be streamed to your phone, but there’s more to the app than streaming. It would allow for your own music collection to be uploaded to and accessed through the cloud for free. No more fretting over music storage.

There’s good news for the non-iPhone users too. LaLa intends on coming out with an app for Android, Palm Pre and Blackberry phones as well. [Wired]

Finally, it’s looking like Verizon is going to get a decent phone selection. Between this and the Android Devices we could see any day now, it seems like Big Red is finally getting with the times. [BGR]

Full HotSync compatibility is the highlight, and it works over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. As for the pre-installed apps and games — some are freebies, while others are limited trials; see the link below for the full list.

Other useful tweaks include quick keyboard mode switch, improved reset functionality and reduced power consumption. As was the case before, Classic runs side by side with other WebOS applications. It’s not a replacement OS and doesn’t limit its features, it just runs the Palm OS apps inside the WebOS environment.

The Classic emulator is available in the App Catalog for $US30 bucks, and there’s a demo you can try out first. [Motionapps]

Why Homebrew?

Paid apps are due in the official App Catalog any day now—actually they’re running a little late—meaning that the app selection is probably about to get a lot wider, and basically better. But webOS development is limited in scope, and App Catalog applications will never be able to theme your device, access 3D APIs that aren’t in the MojoSDK, change your homescreen layout, or add an onscreen keyboard. Pre homebrew is as much about adding apps that Palm has been so slow to approve as it is tweaking your handset. Think of it like jailbreaking an iPhone, except that it’s easier to do, and the benefits are much, much greater.

(This guide owes a huge debt to the PreCentral forums, where the developer of WebOS Quick Install, with others, have collected most of the necessary resources. Recognition is nice, but donations are better. If you find WebOS Quick Install useful, send Jason a few bucks.)

What You Need

Some downloads! The only app you’ll need to run on your computer is a Java app, so it’s completely cross-platform. This guide should work for Windows, Mac or Linux.

1. WebOS Quick Install:
This is the desktop program that effectively opens up your Pre for business. It’s got quite a bit of power on its own, but one of its greatest talents is the ability to install package managers like Preware, which make installing homebrew apps to your Pre, from your Pre super-easy.

2. WebOSDoctor ROM: This is just a restoration ROM for webOS, which WebOS Quick Install needs to work. It should be saved into the same directory as WebOS Quick Install, then left alone.

3. Java SE 6: Make sure you’ve got Java 1.6, or SE 6, so you can run these apps properly.

And one trick:

4. Dev Mode: Switching your Pre to dev mode is either sort of fun or sort of tedious, depending on your capacity for nostalgia.

All you have to do is type “upupdowndownleftrightleftrightbastart” on the keypad. That’ll open a search query that’ll uncover a new app on your Pre called “DeveloperMode.” Run it, and it’ll switch your phone into, you guessed it, developer mode.

Running WebOS Quick Install

5. Plug your Pre into your computer. When prompted for connection type, select “Just Charge”

6. Open WebOS Quick Install, making sure that the WebOSDoctor ROM is in the same directory as the Quick Install JAR.

You’ll get this message:

Heed it.

7. When you reopen WebOS Quick Install, you’ll be prompted to choose which kind of device you want to access. Choose “USB Device,” which’ll install the drivers necessary to crack into a physical Pre, not just an emulator.

8. Follow the driver installation prompts through to completion.

9. Open WebOS Quick Install again. You should see the app’s home screen. Click on the bottom button in the right panel, as indicated here:

10. Select “WebOS-Internals Feed (all)” from the download list. Select both “Package Manager Service” and “Preware” from the resulting list. These will enable you to download and apply the tweaks and apps you want.

11. After download, they will be added to the previously empty list in the app’s homescreen, where you should highlight both, then click “Install”

There you go!

Getting the Most Out Of Homebrew

Now that you’re set up and ready to go, it’s time to do stuff. Launch the Preware app on your Pre—at first load, it takes a while to sync up with all the repositories, so be patient—and explore the 200+ apps included by default. (You can add other repositories on your own, but most of the good stuff is already here.)

The “Package Manager Service” installation doesn’t just enable downloads through Preware — it enables a whole range of WebOS Quick Install tweaks, which you can access through the Tools ->Tweaks menu. WebOS Quick Install may prompt you to install a few patches; just go along with it, it’ll only take a second.

Once you’re in the panel, you’ll see a wealth of useful tweaks, from a 4-icon-wide app launcher, to a browser ad-blocker, to a user agent string changer, so your Pre asks for snazzier iPhone mobile pages instead of standard mobile fare. Generally, each tweak will restart your Pre.

Themes are managed either through Preware, which has a selection of over 200 that you can install with a single button press, or through the WebOS Quick Install menu, at Tools -> Themer. To install a new theme from WebOS Quick Install, you’ll have to manually download from an external site, which you’ll be directed to automatically. Once you’ve downloaded the theme, it’s just a matter of loading it into the app. Preware is probably your best bet for this, though there isn’t really a way to find out if a theme is any good without actually trying it.

As for that onscreen keyboard? You can install that through WebOS Quick Install: It’s in the same place you found Preware, in the “WebOS-Internals Feed (all)” section of the package downloader. A word of warning: It’s only officially supported up to WebOS 1.2.0, so you might be best advised to wait a few days until the developers have worked out any bugs with 1.2.1.

Anyway, the Pre Homebrew community is rich and fast-moving, so I’ll let you all take it from here. Some great resources to get you started:

• PreCentral
• WebOS-Internals
• PimpMyPre
• PreYourMind

And again, a gajillion thanks to WebOS Quick Install Developer Jason Robitaille and the users over at the PreCentral forums.

If you have more tips and tools to share, please drop some links in the comments. Happy homebrewing, folks!