"The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated." - Mark Twain

There is a runaway thread on InternetTabletTalk that started with Krisse reporting three Nokia departures. What followed was a great deal of speculation about the death of the Internet Tablet team.

Having just returned from Bossaconference, I can honestly say that the development of the tablet platform is VERY strong. I personally met with a good number of developers working on the next generation of enhancements and improvements on the tablet platform. I wish I was in a position to talk about all of them, but I promised some secrecy. Still ... JUST WAIT. It'll be NEAT.

To the three departing Nokians, I wish you the best in your future endeavors.

I have two photo sets from Bossaconference 2008. The first is on my Flickr account and those are the photos taken with my Nokia N95-3. The second is over on Picasa with photos taken with my Canon Powershot S5-IS. I hope you enjoy them.

My presentation at the conference, "Noise to Signal - Improving User Feedback in Open Source Software Projects," could have gone better. The Monday morning crowd was not as lively as I had hoped and I mistakenly prepared for more audience interaction. I am going to restructure the presentation and make it available online.

The biggest take-away I have from this event: Developers are real people. They have challenges and goals and do the best they know to meet them. Sometimes they have writer's block, flashes of inspiration, and corporate BS to balance. The best part: They know their responsibilities to the end users and do their best to meet them.

I had a fantastic time at Bossaconference 2008. I found great inspiration in simply listening to developers talk about their ideas and challenges. Thanks, INdT, for hosting this event!

If you want to track my trip to Bossaconference 2008, watch my Jaiku. I an currently at Miami International awaiting my plane to Brazil.

If you're wondering why I haven't weighed in on every other tech blog's WiMAX N810 speculation, it's because readers here know how this is last year's news. Yes - they may show a black-and-orange N810 at CTIA and say it's the WiMAX tablet, but it won't mean anything until WiMAX service is available for purchase. I hope to have a functional WiMAX N810 by the end of summer but, in the meantime, I'm happy with my Bluetooth tethering to AT&T's HSDPA network through my Nokia N95-3.

Also in the news that I am not ready to cover: Nokia promised Microsoft Silverlight functionality on both Internet Tablets and phones. It's interesting to see a Linux implementation of a Microsoft product coming from an ACTUAL PARTNERSHIP with Microsoft. I contacted Microsoft's PR and will see what they can teach me about Silverlight. I call Silverlight "Flash on lots of steroids." I don't yet know if Silverlight will suffer from "steroid rage" though. If you need to know more about Silverlight, read here.

What is ACTUAL news: InternetTabletTalk has a fantastic post on noBounds which promises to extend the tablet (and phone) display over USB and WiFi to large, high-resolution displays. THAT could be handy. Read the post!

That's not all InternetTabletTalk gave us lately. Ari Jaaksi is speaking again on what Open Source means to mobility. Look. Listen. Comment!

On a final note: I cannot personally attend CTIA to get the scoop on the products there, but am in direct contact with others on two different fronts regarding what is coming. No, I can't tell you about any of it. However, attendees to CTIA MUST check out Nokia's display. Whether or not there's a WiMAX tablet at the show, we'll still see something for which we've been waiting.

It's been a while since I've done a poll! The last asked what readers thought of Nokia's purchase of Trolltech:

It's great! The more Linux development, the better! 98 (56%) I'm indifferent. 48 (27%) It's bad! Qt and Qtopia are not open source! 26 (15%)
Even though my answers were slightly faulty (There are more open components to Trolltech's software than I thought) still the majority cheered for the merger.

As I mentioned a couple days ago: Podcasts on technology are taking over music listening in my life. I subscribe with iTunes not because it's the best solution but because I happen to have my iPod touch with me everywhere and sync it regularly. Now I'll ask my readers: What are podcasts to you?

• What's a podcast?
• I am not interested in podcasts.
• I listen to a few regularly.
• I listen to at least 5 podcasts per week.

If you read me through RSS (as at least half of you do,) head to TabletBlog.com and cast your vote in the right navigation bar.

I hope I can get enough bandwidth to keep blogging and stay up-to-date while I am in Brazil next week. For those tuning in late - I am giving a lecture (which will likely be more of a guided conversation) called "Noise to Signal" at Bossaconference in Porto de Galinhas next week. The topic will be about how developers (through tools and community interaction) can facilitate good feedback from users and filter out the garbage. If you (as a user or developer) have any comments to make as I polish up this speech, leave them here. Also leave comments on your thoughts about podcasting and why it rocks and/or sucks.

p.s. Yes, I know I recycled the image in this post from the iPod touch vs. Nokia Internet Tablet article.

If you don't read UltraMobileGeek, check out this editorial on the death of the WiFi Hotspot.

A tip came into my Email from Harriv (Thanks!) showing me this thread on InternetTabletTalk. User sgoerg got DVB-H television to work on his N800! It's a fantastic post and an even more interesting thread. In this particular post, he explains what is needed. I was unable to reach Stefan before publishing this, but I hope to do a more in-depth feature on it soon. The photo above is his.

In case you missed the software/hardware you need to get USB Host functionality working on your N800 or N810, check this post.


A reader requested I test out a USB to Ethernet adapter on the tablet. I did as requested, but was unable to get the network stack to recognize it. The screenshot below shows more information.


My guess is that it would take a lot of manual configuration even if the kernel or modules supported the USB to Ethernet device directly. That particular USB Ethernet adapter is my favorite as it has worked on every machine and operating system I've tested it on to date. In fact, I used it to bypass some strange firewall issues in Mac OS on a Parallels virtual machine by simply having the virtual machine take over the USB Ethernet adapter.

Engadget's official 2007 Engadget Awards aren't posted, but the vote count shows that the N810 won the Handheld of the Year tally. Of course - they have to do some tallying for fraud and then announce their own picks. I think they're going to choose the Kindle, but it's good to see more people chose the N810.

My friend Urho Konttori is at it again - this time making a USB Host Mode program to switch between USB Client, USB OnTheGo, and USB Host. It's fantastic.


Installation: Now that it's added to the repositories, it's a one-click install and worked fine for me. The hardware requirement is the included USB cable with the Internet Tablet and a "Female to Female" USB adapter. I got one at Fry's Electronics for $4.


The application is simple: Three buttons on the bottom allow you to select host mode, OTG mode, and (the default) Peripheral mode. OTG mode is for cameras and related devices supporting that protocol. Peripheral mode turns your tablet into a card reader to look at the internal and card storage. Host mode allows other devices (such as flash drives and keyboards) to be connected.

I tested it with a variety of devices:

• USB Flash Drive - Success
• USB Hard Drive - Limited success: External drives must be both fully powered externally (not just through one of those USB power splitters) and must not be formatted with NTFS. I tested an ext2 filesystem and a FAT32 filesystem and they worked fine.
• USB DVD-ROM - The device recognized, but the filesystem did not.
• USB keyboard - Worked fine.
• USB Mouse - Was recognized but did nothing.

When an error like the above appears, it means the filesystem is not recognized. To save space and speed, the N810's kernel was compiled with only a few types of file system supported.

Thank you for making the tablet that much more functional, Urho.

I just got the Nokia newsletter in my inbox and it featured the N810 at buy.com for a special deal. If you were waiting for a price break, now is your chance.