I was thinking that the 2nd 'anniversary' of my blog, Mobile Tablets! had to be around the corner.  It turns out that it is today, June 4th!
My first post was a short intro on what I had envisioned for my Nokia Tablet related blog - mostly talking about my usage in the daily grind.  The Wimax trials were my first feature (in 6 parts), but my  first break was the interview of qwerty12, which allowed me to test my interview skills.  Since then, I've had the privilege of interviewing several Maemo heavyweights (Andre, Ryan, Randall and Peter), published features related to Mer, and even some pre-election coverage for the recent maemo.org Community Council elections.  The interview sparking the most contentious comments was the one of GeneralAntilles, and the post with the most tweets and thumbs on maemo.org was related to the N8X0 drivers announcement at the Summit.  And recently, I have begun a series of "Maemo Minutes" - which are small tidbits related to Maemo, anecdotes and/or tips.
The blog was my main karma source, allowing me to attend Maemo Summit 2009 in Amsterdam (thanks Jaffa, for encouraging me to apply for sponsorship).  At that time, I was one of a few Maemo bloggers around.  In this N900 era, there are dozens of blogs related to Maemo.  It is difficult to separate yourselves from them.  I do not and cannot compete with professional bloggers - that is something that just does not interest me.  I have tried to create content of interest to me and the community (I hope!) instead of 'retweeting' it.  It becomes difficult, but that is where I like to delve....in areas untouched by others.  I have not spent any effort blogging about my Maemo 5 application, MaeFlight (now in extras-devel).  But I think I will start to.  I do not develop software in my day job, so I am mainly tinkering, hoping to round out my Maemo contributions, and learn more about this platform I love from 'the other side'.
I would like your feedback - what do you think I should focus on for new content now.... Maemo, MeeGo, community stuff, news, no-change, etc.  My buddy, Texrat, gave me a few interview ideas recently.  I want Mobile Tablets! to be relevant to the community, so I humbly ask for your input.  Many thanks!
I'll close with a quote from a Facebook exchange I had with a friend of 19 years, who did not know that I was 'EIPI' until last month:

"Woah, I cannot believe you are EIPI!!! You are famous (well at least in a pool of 30,000 people). Very cool."

Not sure I agree with the 'famous' part, but that made me laugh, nonetheless.

Last night, I attended the Mobile Geeks of Toronto (MGoTO) meetup. The featured guest was Samir Agarwal, head of Nokia's Maemo Operations in Mountain View, CA.

There were about 15 attendees, ranging from talk.maemo.org members, mobile enthusiasts, wireless carriers, and of course Howard Chui, of HowardForums fame.

I was in "EIPI-mode", and asked Samir some very pointed questions relating to Maemo/Meego. Some takeaways:

1. Nokia is commiting to the North American market with Meego
2. Meego devices from Nokia will be both mainstream and high-end in the hardware department.
3. Meego is not replacing Symbian
4. Samir would not answer if Nokia's Meego would have the 2-way pannable desktop, saying it may be damaging to his job if he answered! I am fairly certain that it will though based upon what we know of Harmattan.
5. Skype video coming to N900 .... It was demonstrated between Samir's N900 and his Booklet 3G.

Samir was asking for our feedback. I had my NA peeps in mind when I strongly said that Nokia must be committed to MeeGo's success in North America. Two things, IMO have been strikes against the N900 here in North America: 1) still being a geek device, and 2) choice of AWS HSPA bands which severely limit its adoption in 850/1900 land over here. If Nokia puts in the 5 band chip from the N8 in the first MeeGo device, it will go a long way to securing North American adoption, IMO.

The N900's MfE client can sync with a number of MfE servers, but is not Google-friendly, since Google's implementation of Mail for Exchange (MfE) is not standard. I for one would like to use Google Calendar and Google Contacts as my main PIM database. I had my N900 calendar syncing for a while with Google, and then I found it to be unreliable, so I turned it off. Another annoyance I found was that MfE would download my Google contacts, but would not sync them afterwards (I reported Bug 5835 for this).

There have been several threads on Talk about this, including the long winded one started by Vitaly Repin. The short of it all: MfE on the N900 does not officially support Google. A business decision by Nokia, and unfortunate for many of us Maemo enthusiasts who happen to use Google's services for basic PIM.

Enter NuevaSync.

The service offered by NuevaSync is free (for basic usage), and provides a nice bridge between the N900's MfE client and Google. I am a NuevaSync user for about 2 days now. I have not used it to sync e-mail, but Calendar and Contacts sync like a charm. The free account allows you to sync calendar entries up to 2 weeks in the past. If you are like myself, and have years of calendar entries that you want to sync once to the N900 (to retain your calendar history), you will have to 'try' a premium account for 5 days to get past the 2 week sync restriction that NuevaSync has in place on the basic account. The premium account has other niceties, but for me, the basic account is just enough.

It's another service to add to your already large list of accounts you manage. But if you use Google like I do for almost everything, then NuevaSync is a must for your N900. As I posted on Texrat's blog, I hope that major 3rd party services (such as Google) work out of the box with the first MeeGo product from Nokia. I want to be able to open the Harmattan device's box, fire it up, and connect to my entire online life in a few minutes - 100% reliably, and using the default clients. Hopefully, my dream will be a reality shortly!


Note: I am in no way affiliated with Nuevasync.

The Maemo Community Council election is drawing near, and the nomination process is closed.  As you have probably heard by now, the candidate list is quite strong, comprising former and current Council members, community veterans, and relative newcomers with strong community contributions.  With the hype surrounding Maemo, the N900, MeeGo, and our uncertain future, this is the hottest political arena that our community has ever seen.

July 2009 saw a glorious moment for Maemo unfold - one that was met with great enthusiasm by the community - the creation of the 'Maemo Devices' organization within Nokia.  Melding both software and hardware under one corporate umbrella was a very welcome sign for the future of the Maemo platform, and its importance within the Nokia corporation.  Maemo 5 and the Nokia N900 were the first fruits of the Maemo Devices organization, as the Linux OS was brought into mainstream spotlight.

Mobile Tablets! is pleased to present this interview with Peter Schneider, head of the global marketing team for Maemo Devices at Nokia.  For those who have not seen Peter in person - suffice it to say that he is a passionate and charismatic individual, and is a true champion of the Maemo platform.  Some have likened him to a rock star.  As head of marketing for Maemo Devices, he is also very busy.  Therefore, his participation in this interview is greatly appreciated.
This is Part 1 of a 2-part interview, and focuses on Peter's background, and the development of Maemo 5 and the N900.
1. Peter. can you give us an overview of your educational background?

Click to read 4692 more words

In case you have not seen it, there is a new Nokia N900 video, starring some of the maemo.org community members.

http://www.n900-mobile.co.uk/

To see the video, go to the above link and click on 'Developers' on the right side.

Can you identify everyone in the video?

The Nokia N900 has everything going for it. Killer hardware that makes mouths drop, a great OS enabling you to be as connected as possible while out and about, all in a package that fits in your pocket.

This week, we can also add another feather in the cap, so to speak - the opening of the N900 OVI store. This has brought the N900 into the spotlight as a platform for commercial developers. The maemo.org community is sure to benefit from this as the platform finally has the 'public' cachet it deserves. We've been fortunate to have a large community developer-base, and this is a welcome addition to that existing talent. Expect fun games, eye popping whiz-bang gizmos, and who knows what else. I've already entertained myself with a few games like Airport and Discs. Meanwhile, it is fun to show off gizmos such as Anglemeter and Level. I received the comment last night that "no phone should have a protractor in it!", after showing off the Anglemeter application to a friend.

Maemo's future is looking great! Hopefully, in short time, the OVI store will be chock full of apps for our Maemo-powered handhelds. Whatever it is we desire, I certainly hope there will be an app - no, a .deb for that.

Philip Langdale's bluetooth dial-up networking daemon (BT-DUN) for the Nokia N900 is a real godsend. Now I can tether my N800 and my laptop to my N900.

OK... What does that mean for an average N900 user?

I setup a BT-DUN connection to the N900 on my Win XP Pro laptop for those times at the airport when I need more screen real estate than the N900 affords. For a single user, this is a great way to share an internet connection.

I'm planning on setting up my N800 as an in-car computer with OS2008 maps, Canola and Carman as the 3 anticipated usage scenarios.

Why not the N900 for in-car use? Simple. Screen Size! At arms length, the N800's screen makes manipulating buttons much more friendly.

In addition, on long trips, I can pass of my well used N800 to my passenger to surf while the shiny N900 sits in its cradle or jacket pocket (no selfishness there).

Interestingly, while a device is connected via BT-DUN, the N900 is able to maintain its own internet connection. Either the same connection as the tethered device, or a different one (wi-fi, for example). The screenshots below show that the N900 is connected to wi-fi while the N800 is tethered to it using the cellular data connection.

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Figure 1: N900 IP while N800 is tethered (N900 on wi-fi and N800 on cellular data)


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Figure 2: N800 IP while N800 is tethered (N900 on wi-fi and N800 on cellular data)

Carsten Munk, our maemo.org distmaster sent me an IM this morning. It looks like he and his Mer team have received the fabled OMAP2 graphics drivers from Texas Instruments. They have had some success in meshing the drivers into the OS, and things are going forward on that front.

I'm sure it is not a straightforward task, so let's give the Mer team some space while they work this all out. Things will get interesting for the legacy N8X0 devices!

Happy Holidays to all !

(Post created on my N900 using the wonderful MaStory blogging application)