Although the primary focus of the Summit was Maemo 5 and the N900, there was some very welcome and long-awaited news for legacy OMAP2 devices. Texas Instruments announced at the Summit on Friday that they would be releasing the graphics drivers for the processors powering the N800, N810 and N810WE in the next 2 weeks. This is great news for the community, as it means that it will be possible to jazz up the UI for Mer and Maemo 4. Classic tablet owners may have some fun in store for them in the near future.

I would like to publicly thank the Maemo Community Council and the Maemo Devices team for all their hard work in organizing the Summit at Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam. The event was a great success.



Not only were all the arrangements well done (hotel, airfare, food, summit venue, photo/video recording, after hours party), but so were all the presentations by Nokia, Distinguished Guests, and Community Members. Of course, the most tangible thing from the weekend in Amsterdam was the loan of the beautiful N900 from Maemo Devices. Everyone was Ecstatic when Ari announced that all 300 non-Nokia participants would receive a pre-production N900 for 6 months for evaluation. I am still pinching myself ... did that really happen?!



Listening to all the talks on Friday and the Community talks on Saturday and Sunday left me with the feeling that Nokia is building some serious excitement around Maemo 5, and in particular, the N900. With the N900 in stores soon, Nokia can start to shift some attention to Maemo 6 (Harmattan). Indeed, that appears to be the case, as evidenced by the number of Maemo 6 talks that were there. I've said this before, but the future of the Maemo line looks promising - Thank You.

I am fortunate enough to be able to attend Maemo Summit 2009 as a sponsored attendee. I am an ordinary community member, like a lot of you out there. As such, I am hoping to share as much as I can with you all via Twitter and my blog.

To see my tweets: http://twitter.com/maemo_minute

For all tweets from Maemo Summit, follow the #maesum hashtag, or look at http://twitter.com/search?q=%23maesum

It is an exciting time for Maemo, and I am excited to be a part of it.

One of the most amazing, yet largely untapped avenues in maemo.org is Brainstorm. That is the place to dream up ideas, propose solutions, and shape the future of Maemo applications. Recently, Community Member zerojay, dreamed up a dataplan monitor widget for Maemo 5. Soon after, a Brainstorm idea was filed, and work began. With fiferboy (of Personal Menu and Personal Launcher fame) doing coding, and joshua.maverick helping with graphic design, it was a truly Canadian solution. The result is an awesome dataplan monitor widget for Maemo 5 - see for yourself:


It is fitting that a dataplan widget for Maemo 5 is brought to our community by a bunch of Canadians - have you looked at the price of our data plans recently! Congrats guys! I am looking forward to using this when I get a Maemo 5 device. When will that be? Hopefully soon.

Thanks to chilko, from talk.maemo.org for linking to pictures of the elusive RX-51 aka Rover. Looks like it is marketed still as a N Series device. Waiting for an announcement and release dates now! Stay tuned...

http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=309831&postcount=290

FYI, Engadget reporting the RX-51 passes FCC for T-Mobile USA

http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/07/nokia-device-passes-fcc-for-t-mobile-usa-looks-an-awful-lot-lik/

How soon can I get one?!

The former internettablettalk.com (now talk.maemo.org) has had its share of discussions 'gone wild' with respect to new product launches, no product launches, rumours on next products, d-pad location/absence and the like. And usually at the centre of those discussions was our very own Texrat. Randall Arnold (Texrat) is a proud user and promoter of the Maemo based Internet Tablets. Formerly employed by Nokia, where he was involved with the successful launch of the N800 at CES 2007, Texrat brings a unique combination of persuasive discussion, technical insight and plain old humour to the discussions in the forums. Let's get to know the rat a bit better, shall we?!

Many of us were excited when Nokia officially unveiled a few features for the newest Maemo 5 operating system at the Maemo Summit in Berlin in September 2008. The feature list for Maemo 5 included support for TI OMAP 3 processors, Cellular Data Connectivity, High Definition Camera and Hardware Graphics Acceleration. The future looked bright for Nokia's Internet Tablet line. Then reality set in for some of us: Nokia would not be officially providing Maemo 5 and future OS releases to the N8X0 and 770 lines of Internet Tablets. Significant hardware differences was one factor leading to this decision, and Nokia's future business strategy was likely another. Rage ensued in the tablet community! This so-called sham was compared to the 770-to-N800 transition, where Nokia support for 770 users initially stopped at OS2006 (later, 'Hacker Editions' of OS 2007 and 2008 appeared, and were made available on Nokia's own firmware upgrade site).

Mobile Tablets! is pleased to present this Q&A session with GeneralAntilles, the first Maemo Community Council Chair. GeneralAntilles is one of the most infamous characters in the internet tablet scene - largely for his dry and matter-of-fact demeanor. He might rub some people the wrong way, but there is no denying his love for this platform as well as the effort and energy that he volunteers into all aspects of these devices. Considering his very busy schedule, especially over the holiday season, I feel fortunate that he agreed to do this interview.

1. As I understand it, you are in your early 20's. Can you tell us what you are currently doing outside of the Maemo world (i.e. are you working, getting educated, a combination of the two, or something else)?

Currently I'm a Junior studying Computer Science at Florida State University. I don't work during the semester, so I usually work at a local new & used bookstore over breaks to scrape together enough cash to get me through each semester.

2. As with many of the members of the Internet Tablet community, you appear to be quite knowledgeable in the areas of Linux, computer hardware, etc. Is this self-taught, or do you have formal education in any of these areas?

Mobile Tablets! is pleased to present this exclusive Q&A session with maemo.org's Andre Klapper.

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