Nokia XpressMusic devices such as the Nokia 5800 or 5530 have a touch button on the top corner to bring up shortcuts to core apps. This functionality has been introduced to the Nokia N900 thanks to MohammadAG from the Maemo forums. The shortcuts are activated by holding the proximity sensor on the Nokia N900.

MohammedAG says this app is more of a proof of concept for now. Head over to the Maemo forum thread for installation and feedback.

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Amazon.com today released its “Best of 2010″ lists, which include the bestselling, most-wished-for and favorite gift products as determined by Amazon.com customers in 2010. The Nokia N900 was the most frequently purchased as gifts in the wireless category! Yay for Nokia and Maemo!

The Nokia N900 started shipping in the US last November. The data from these lists came from January 1st, 2010 to December 15th, 2010. When I reviewed the N900, I liked its web browser and camera. The lack of polished apps and the introduction of newer, slimmer devices made me stop using it though. Do you still have your Nokia N900? How many of you got it as gifts from Amazon?

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TwimGo, the best Twitter client for the Nokia N900, was just updated to version 2.0.15. It now includes old and new retweets, and the ability to view original tweets when viewing reply details. You can download the new version at twimgo.com, but make sure to remove older versions before installing the new one.

TwimGo is a clean and simple Twitter client for your Maemo-based Nokia N900. Tommi Laukkanen, the developer of the app, says that it runs on Qt Web Runtime and we might see it running on other devices in the future. Download the app if you haven’t tried it yet and let us know what you think.

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There’s a huge geocaching scene around us that I can’t believe I just stumbled upon. The basic idea is to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, outdoors and then share your experiences online. I was introduced to this treasure hunt by some of the attendees here at the Meego Coference. Here’s my first experience hunting caches around Dublin.

We used an app called GPXView on the Nokia N900. I don’t know if there are geocaching apps for Symbian, but there are definitely apps for Android and iPhone. GPXView is available for the Nokia N900 in the Application manager.

GPXView told us there were many caches nearby. The nearest one was only a couple minutes away. The app gave us the GPS coordinate, comments by others who previously found it, and even some hints. None of us had local SIM cards, but the app worked flawlessly on the streets of Dublin after preloading maps data with hotel wifi.

The first cache we found was attached to a green box in a random street. Inside was a log of people who found the item. After placing it back for another person to find, we went hunting for other caches. Another cache we found was under a bench with a great view of the Grand Canal Docks.

Geocaching is really fun and I’ll be playing it now every time I travel. I’ve included more photos below. Have you geocached yet?

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There is a new update for the Nokia N900 dubbed PR 1.3, but you’ll see it in the device as version 20.2010.36-2. The update adds support for PC Ovi Suite to access and sync files and messages between your Nokia N900 and desktop. There are also tweaks and fixes that should make the Nokia N900 perform better. The OTA update wasn’t available for me, but Nokia Software Update via PC worked fine.

The PR 1.3 update is about 200MB. I don’t notice major changes so far, but I’ll update this post if a changelog pops up. On the backend, the Maemo team mentioned on their blog that this update aligns the Qt application and UI framework with the planned version for the MeeGo 1.1 platform (Wt 4.7). It includes Qt Mobility 1.0.2 APIs too. Make sure to read their post if you’re a developer.

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All things Digital claims that Ari Jaaksi, the former Head of Meego and Maemo is joining Palm as Senior Vice President of webOS. He’s expected to start in November. Ari Jaaksi resigned from Nokia earlier this month for personal reasons. I guess now we know what those reasons are.

Ari Jaaksi taking a photo with the Nokia N900 at Maemo Summit 2009

Maemo is the OS running on the Nokia N900. It was released late last year. Meego is the new platform Nokia has co-developed with Intel. We’re expecting to see Nokia’s Meego device, the Nokia N9, by the end of 2010 or early 2011.

There’s no official confirmation yet, but All things Digital cites sources close to Palm. On a sidenote, Ari Jaaksi’s blog and twitter account haven’t been updated yet. The profile still says, “I run MeeGo and Maemo @ Nokia.”

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Don’t forget about the Nokia N900! Word on the net (the Meego blog to be specific) is that PR 1.3 update is coming soon and that you’ll be able to dual boot between Maemo and Meego. The last update, PR 1.2 was released last May. Do you still have your Nokia N900? Post updated with Nokia’s response.

Here’s a quote from the official Meego blog:

On the Maemo side, there have been interesting, supporting developments going on, as well. The PR 1.3 update is quite close now, and with that you can easily dual boot between Maemo and Meego on your N900. There is also a possibility of developing applications supporting both operating systems, based on Qt and Qt Mobility APIs on the Maemo side. It means that you can develop once in PC with Qt Creator, and test your applications on both Maemo and MeeGo, directly on your N900 device!

This is exciting news since a lot of Nokia fans are looking forward to the new Meego OS. We also love getting firmware updates on our devices, so Maemo fans are going to be happy. Dual booting different OS sounds great too. That means we can change the user experience if we don’t like one of them. We’ll keep our eyes open for updates on this development.

UPDATE I asked Nokia for a statement regarding this topic and here’s their response:

The Nokia N900 is used as development hardware for platform developers working with MeeGo on ARM hardware architecture. While the software from the MeeGo project runs on the Nokia N900 for development purposes, Nokia does not intend to provide a dual-boot OS option to consumers in upcoming N900 commercial software releases as we want to ensure that we provide the best possible experience designed for that device. The meego.com blog post was primarily targeted to the audience reading the blog: MeeGo developers.

So there you have it. No dual boot option to consumers.

Thanks Ivan for submitting the tip!

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Researchers at the University of Manchester revealed a real-time face tracker on a mobile phone this week and decided to use the Nokia N900 for demo. The aim for the research is to do both face and voice verification using the camera and microphone built into mobile phones for secure access to apps without passwords.

Video is embedded below. Click here if it’s not visible in your RSS reader.

The face tracker use landmarks on the face using a technique known as the Active Appearance Model. The positions of these landmarks relative to each other define the shape of your face and indicate where you are looking, your expression and who you are. As you can see in the video, the tracker does a pretty good job following the face even when the phone pans or rotates. Let’s hope this technology evolves from the Nokia N900 into other mobile phones as well.

For more information on this video, see this page from Dr. Philip A. Tresadern.

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Joikuspot, an app that lets you turn your device into a wifi hotspot is now available at the Ovi Store for the Nokia N900. The Maemo version came out of beta last March and has been ready for purchase and download at Joiku’s own site. Its presence in the Ovi Store now makes it even easier for users to download this great app.

Joikuspot for the Nokia N900 costs $9.99 and is definitely worth it. The only question I have is, “why did it take 3 months to show up at the Ovi Store?”

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Hermes for the Nokia N900 is an awesome tool that fills in your contacts’ missing info and photo with data found from social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Gravatar. It was a pain doing it manually for unmatched names, but the new version 0.8.2 now contains find-as-you-type contact matching for faster results.

Hermes is a must-have app for the Nokia N900. I’m glad I had the opportunity to speak with the developer, Andrew Flegg, when the app was still in early development. You can watch that video below if you haven’t seen it yet.

Find-as-you-type contact matching makes it much faster to connect the dots between your unmatched friends and their online profiles. After Hermes does its magic, there might be a few people in your contacts list that remain unmatched. All you need to do in the new version is start typing at the screen with the online profiles. The N900 will try to filter the list for right person, and the user selects which profile matches the contact.

In the example below, I have a contact in my phonebook named Norm. Hermes could not automatically match it with an online profile. I start typing “Norman” and now the list shows 2 possible matches from my Facebook friends list. I click on the right person then click Update.

Now Norm from my contacts list gets a photo, birthday info, and even a webpage link instead of just the telephone number that was initially there.

Hermes is available for download within the Application Manager on the Nokia N900. It is also free.

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