As a company well-known for its attempts to nickel and dime consumers through the implementation of extra fees and particularly enveloping provider commitments, Palm saw its webOS suffer as developers proved that they were not particularly eager to create apps for a platform that would force them to pay to submit.

Palm (ne, HP) is making new attempts to woo developers by not only dropping the $50 submission fee associated with App Catalog software but actually refunding the 2,684 apps that were forced to pay it. At a total of $134,200 USD, the offered refund follows up on the waiving of the fee and review process for open-source apps initiated last October.

Exactly what direction Palm and its webOS will take now that HP has purchased the company has yet to be seen but this is certainly a welcome start.

Apple’s reluctance to publish the official Google Voice app in its iPhone App Store hasn’t stopped Google from making its Voice app available to users of all kinds, as announced yesterday by the web giant.

Google revealed that it has already launched a web app compatible with both the Apple iPhone and Palm’s webOS (which powers both the popular Pre and Pixi smartphones), powered by HTML5 and allowing users of those handsets to make cheap calls through the Google Voice service.

The new app is freely available for download at the Google Voice site.

Despite not including iTunes syncing in the webOS 1.2 update last Tuesday, Palm has released version 1.2.1 to include just that option today.

Functional with both the Palm Pre and the upcoming Palm Pixi, webOS 1.2.1 flies in the face of Apples efforts to eliminate media synchronization with iTunes 9.0.1 in offering that features, along with repairing a bug with Microsoft Exchange.

Palm has been at odds with Apple over its marketing the Pre as an iTunes-compatible phone and the USB Implementers Forum has recently joined the fray in Apples defence, suggesting that Palm may be legally unauthorized to offer such a service. No resolution has come yet and it would appear that the Pre maker is prepared to battle it out in the meantime.

Palm has stated that this update will roll-out to users over the air over the next few days.

Palm has begun pushing the webOS 1.2 update over-the-air to users of their flagship Pre handsets. The update brings new functionality, improvements on existing features and several bug fixes.

Some notable increases to functionality include the ability to purchase and download via the App Catalog and download over-the-air from the Amazon MP3 store. The expected re-addition of iTunes media sync support was not added following opposition from Apple following the last webOS update.

A full list of features and fixes can be found on Palm’s official web site.