N900 users have been able to change their boot screens for a while, but earlier it involved tinkering with code and that meant you needed to know how to use the terminal to get this to work, not anymore. Valério Valério has published an application called BootScreen that lets you change your N900 boot video with a single click and requires no hacking skills.

All you need to do is install BootScreen from the extras-devel repository in the N900 Application Manager (here is how to enable it with one click), transfer the boot video you want to set to the N900 and select it from within the application.

• Simply transfer the boot video of your choice to the N900, then select options by tapping the ‘BootScreen’ menu and click on add.

• Next select the boot video from where you have saved it. Make sure it has a one word name only.

• You will see it added in the list. Here you can move it up or down to set play order if you want to play more than one boot video. To select a video for playback on bootup, it has to be selected/highlighted. Tapping on the video name toggles the highlight.

• You can even choose to have a random boot video from the options or remove one altogether.

• There are a number of N900 boot videos on the internet, YouTube has previews to a lot of them and a download link in the sidebar. Here’s the one I am using, and a link to download it.

• Here are links to a few others – 1, 2, 3 and you can lookup this thread for more.

If you enjoyed this, you might also like:

• Tweakr Helps Add Custom Profiles To Your N900
• The Comprehensive Beginners Guide To The N900
• How To Block Unwanted Callers On The N900
• First Look: TweetGo.net – Twitter Web App For The N900
• How To Wirelessly Update the N900

The story of the N900 and other operating systems continues, after running Android, Win NT 4.0, Win 3.11, Win 95, Win 98, Debian & Mer it has taken on Ubuntu Mobile this time, Ubuntu Mobile 9.04 with LXDE (Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment) desktop specifically.

The port has been carried out by @lifenexus by modifying the N810 method. It is running on top of Mer, and has been installed natively on the micro SD card. The phone offers a bootmenu at startup where you can choose whether you you want to boot into Mer or Maemo. Unlike some of the other OS’s this one’s running at a pretty reasonable speed as well, charging, WIFI and limited keyboard operation is present, and obviously you cannot make calls within it. At this rate whether or not Nokia decides to give MeeGo to the N900 will become immaterial, the community will take of itself.

Note: This is not Ubuntu Mobile per se, but more of MER + LXDE.

[via: Maemo Arena]If you enjoyed this, you might also like:

• What Does MeeGo Mean For Maemo?
• Register & Log Into Meego.com With Your Maemo.org Account
• Its Official: Nokia Is Dropping The Maemo 6 Brand
• noBounds! & N900: Full HD Video Out Via WiFi Could Become A Reality
• Huge: Nokia’s Maemo & Intel’s Moblin Combine To Become Meego

How many times have you wanted your Nokia device to pause the media player when the headphones are pulled out? Not only does this keep your music taste private, it also saves you from possible embarrassment when the headphones come out accidentally and the phone starts blaring loudly.

Fortunately there’s  a small application called ‘Headphone Daemon’ that lets you do just that. I’ve tested the application on myself and it works perfectly, the music player is paused instantaneously. It doesn’t even play for an extra second. To download this app, enable the extras-devel repository on the N900 if you already haven’t. (Here’s how to do it with one click.)

Look for ‘Headphone Daemon’ under ‘Multimedia’ and install it. Enjoy. Kudos to Thomas Perl for the hack. It works with the default Media Player, Mplayer and Panucci.If you enjoyed this, you might also like:

• How To Use Mplayer On The N900 To Play Unsupported Video Formats
• BootScreen Lets You Change The N900 Boot Video With One Click
• How To Enable Application Repositories On The N900 With One Click
• How To Block Unwanted Callers On The N900
• Turn Your N900 Into A PS3 Controller & More With BlueMaemo

I’ve just stumbled on an incredible application for the N900 that can translate text from images into various languages. So in a foreign country you can simply take a picture of a boarding/sign/menu, put a box around the text and the application will extract that text and translate it for you.

The knowledge about the existence of this app comes from a video uploaded by CybercomLab on YouTube, this does not look like a community project and my guess is that we should be seeing it on the Ovi Store soon. Here’s the application’s ‘official’ description from the YouTube page:

Imagine yourself walking on a street somewhere in a foreign country and you face a warning sign, but you have no idea what it says. Just take a picture of the sign and open it with PhotoTranslator, crop the text in the sign and PhotoTranslator translates the text to your language. In addition the PhotoTranslator can be used also for translating copy/pasted or typed text, not just for text from pictures.

Enjoy!

[via: My Nokia World]If you enjoyed this, you might also like:

• Brief: ‘Maemo.Gitorious.org’ Has Gone Live
• TV Out Makes The N900 The True MultitasKING
• How To Hard Reset The N900 To The Factory State
• Demo’ing The N900 Browser – Music Video Style
• How To Enable Application Repositories On The N900 With One Click

At the MeeGo announcement there wasn’t much clarity on whether Nokia was going to keep the ‘Maemo 6′ brand for now and then transition into MeeGo, but a simple post from Quim Gil, of Nokia’s Maemo Division requesting the renaming of the Maemo 6 / Harmattan sub forum at Maemo.org to MeeGo / Harmattan has brought much needed clarity to the picture.

The Nokia N900 has received a new firmware in the form of PR 1.1.1 (version 3.2010.02-8). This looks like a minor update and is available as an image from N900 firmware section as well as over the air if you search for updates. The OTA option is a 16.2 MB download and looks like a precursor to the major PR 1.2 update.

This update adds a number of regions to the N900, as quite a number of countries were earlier missing from the N900’s list. Apart from that there is no changelog available. I will update this post if I see something new.

The changelog is now available here, this firmware fixes the battery drain issue when connected to WIFI and browser improvements among other minor things.

Update: If you get a memory error while trying to update the N900 over the air, trying rebooting the device once. If that still doesn’t solve your problem then disable the Extras-Devel and Extras-Testing repositories and try again.

Update 2: The update is also available via the Nokia Software Updater, however when you update using it, you will loose your applications and settings, while the contacts and other data including photos will remain intact. So please make sure you backup before you update.

[via: Sittiphol and Maemo Club on Twitter]If you enjoyed this, you might also like:

• How To Enable Application Repositories On The N900 With One Click
• How To Turn Your N900 Into A Flashlight
• How To Hard Reset The N900 To The Factory State
• New N900 Firmware v1.2009.41.13 Coming Soon
• Rant: Why Did Nokia Take Away The Clear Device Mode On The N900?

In terms of branding? Uncertainty. Otherwise? Potential.

• First things first, if you are not sure Meego is, I suggest you read this post – What is MeeGo?

• Back to Maemo. We already know that Maemo 6 will be completely compatible with MeeGo, and according to Ari Jaaksi, we even can consider Maemo 6 already a MeeGo instance.

• We also know that the MeeGo announcement will not affect the Maemo 6 rollout schedule.

• The one interesting thing is that Nokia has still not decided if they want to call Maemo 6, Maemo 6 or MeeGo something. Nokia has already spent considerable time and money populating the Maemo brand name, it may still not be as visible as Symbian or Android, but it is a well known commodity among the geeks at least and a small fraction of the mainstream users.

• Changing to MeeGo will mean that the last six months’ work will go down the drain and leave people even more confused with the sheer fragmentation.

• We also know that the Maemo.org community and the Moblin community will be aggregated at MeeGo.com, the new home of the open source OS.

• Two lines that stood out for me in Ari Jaaksi’s post were, ‘We will put all our force behind making MeeGo THE operating system‘ and that ‘Nokia will ship tons of MeeGo devices‘. A re-branding exercise seems inevitable after reading this.

• MeeGo builds upon the Moblin core software platform and reference user experiences, adding the Qt UI toolkit from Maemo. Maemo was based on ARM, while Moblin on the X86 architecture. This merger will mean that users get the best of both worlds.

I am sure we all would like the Maemo brand to stay, it definitely sounds better than MeeGo, but if you consider the fact that Intel is giving up Moblin, this possibility seems even more remote. Calling Nokia’s MeeGo iterations Meamo MeeGo or MeeGo Maemo sounds silly and it looks as if the community will have to get over the brand.

In its new form, Maemo (MeeGo) is sure to improve by leaps and bounds. Nokia’s MeeGo devices will be powered by cutting edge hardware that will deliver superb speed, multitasking and everything that you need in the palm of your hand. Since MeeGo is targeting not only mobile devices but also Connected TV’s, in-car infotainment systems, Media phones and so on, the reach will definitely grow. Will you see MeeGo on your N900? I don’t think so. Should you get excited about MeeGo? Yes, but now’s not the time for that.

It will be quite sometime before we see the Maemo go away completely, but one thing is sure – Maemo is dead. Long live Maemo.

In what is huge news coming out of the MWC, Nokia and Intel have come together to create Meego, a mashup of Nokia’s Maemo and Intel’s Moblin. You grab the press release here, but to give you a better idea of the direction Nokia is going to, read the following extract from Ari Jaaksi’s post.

MeeGo is an open software platform – an operating system – for a wide range of devices. It’ll run on X86 and on Arm based hardware. It will be developed as an open project hosted by the Linux Foundation.

Joint development

We will merge Maemo and Moblin projects. Their architecture is already very similar. They share many components but sometimes use different versions. But they build and integrate releases independently. And while Maemo is for ARM, Moblin is for X86. Now we merge them to get the best of both. A good Moblin build and integration, Maemo’s mobile optimizations and ARM support, Qt etc. We can also now make the bright engineers of Intel and Nokia to work close together.

And even more. I invite all active Moblin and Maemo community members to now join the MeeGo project. It’ll give you all a much bigger pond to swim in. And it’ll get your work into much wider use than either of these projects separately.

Freedom

MeeGo is free. Code will be available for everybody under proper open source licenses. No strings attached other than making your contributions also free. The development and integration will be open, too. Everybody can invest in MeeGo and participate. It is a genuine open source project. Free for everybody to participate, contribute, and enjoy. Free. No papers to sign. Just show up!

Compatibility

MeeGo offers the broadest possible compatibility for application developers. It uses Qt as the framework and toolset for application developers. It means very good tools and possibility to run your apps in a wide range of devices. Code once – deploy everywhere.

MeeGo also means compatibility and full compliance with leading open source projects. We will not fork projects if we can possibly avoid it. We will work with leading open source projects using the open source best practices.

A perfect target

MeeGo will aim high. Nokia and Intel are the biggest investors in mobile Linux based technologies and now – together—even more significant. We will put all our force behind making MeeGo THE operating system.

So, for chip-set companies, hardware vendors, software companies, application developers, device manufactures, operators … this is the place to go. Make you stuff work under, inside, or on top of MeeGo and you get your stuff deployed all over the place. Nokia will ship tons of MeeGo devices, Intel, too. And others will use MeeGo in their devices. It is open, free, powerful and compatible.

Devices

So what’s with Maemo6? Maemo6 will be MeeGo compatible…..consider Maemo6 already a MeeGo instance.

Okay, so did you know that there are Maemo based devices that Nokia doesn’t make? If not, its time to meet the Optima OP5-E, a MID that is made by China Optima. The device was primarily made for the Chinese market, but the company not has plans of making a HSPDA variant for the rest of the world as well.

It incorporates a SIM card slot and is telephony capable, much like the N900 but is its OS is no where as pretty Nokia’s Maemo 5. Although the specs hardware wise are pretty impressive:

• 4.3″ 800×480 resistive touch screen
• 806mhz Marvell PXA310+ ARM processor
• 128MB RAM,
• Built-in 3G CDMA, HSDPA expected
• Built-in GPS, Bluetooth
• A 2600mAh battery.
• Expected price around $500 unlocked
• Support for voice, SMS and VOIP.

Here is a unboxing and overview of the Optima OP-5 if it has managed to pique your interest:

Want to see more of it? Click here for some pictures and info and here for a video demoing application installation on the Optima.

As I have mentioned before, unlike Nokia’s Symbian devices, the N900 does not have a code that you can enter to format the device and restore it to the factory state. However, if you like playing with software in the extras-devel repositories, chances are that sooner or later you will like a fresh start and want the N900 to be restored to the state in which you first picked it up.