Ok, so admittedly, something very cool just happened for our maemo community: the ACCESS Garnet VM (virtual machine) was just released. Garnet (formerly PalmOS) is a one-click install that instantly provides access to the over 30,000 applications available for Palm devices on the maemo platform.

Many heartfelt thanks from me to the maemo crew:

N810 maemo submission accepted

Congratulations! You have been accepted to the N810 maemo device program. We will send your discount and instructions as soon as the device is available in your selected shop (soon).

maemo team – http://maemo.org

So, what does this mean exactly? Well, I’m one out of 500 lucky maemo members/contributors who will get to purchase the new Nokia N810 Internet Tablet for under half-price! (When it’s released, that is.)

Wait a minute… Wasn’t I just complaining about not being able to afford one of these? Yes, but at roughly $150 US, I think I will now be able to! This is such a serendipitous coincidence — I am so stoked!

I only choose to spotlight those maemo apps that I truly love. If you’ll remember, a recent one was PyChord (you can read what I think about it here). Now, I must take some time to thank Alberto Garcia Gonzalez for developing Vagalume Last.fm Player for maemo.

Vagalume is pretty bare bones as far as the user interface is concerned. But, that is perfectly fine, since the app just works. Alberto has taken standard (and pre-existing) maemo/Hildon UI elements and assembled them into a functional and easy-to-use application. There are no frills here, but this is exactly how I would recommend any programmer who doesn’t want to deal with graphic design to begin (honestly, there is a lot of value to rapid development and not getting caught up in minor details). And, that’s exactly what the maemo SDK is for. (Anyway, I’ll stop myself here and just say that if you’re a geek for this type of stuff, I wrote a whole lot more about it here.)

Vagalume contains all of the functionality you would expect to find in a Last.fm client. It scrobbles. You can love and ban songs. You can tag artists, songs, and albums. You can play your songs, others’ songs, songs with specific tags, or songs by similar artists. You can play recommendations… You’re basically getting what you get on Last.fm.

As I say for every app, there’s always room for improvement. As a graphic designer, I would like to see a few more frills (even something as simple as an application icon). It’d be neat to see the Last.fm logo somewhere. It would be really cool to have a page where you could view user/neighbor profile avatars.

But, those are minor desires for an application that works as well as Vagalume does (and things that Alberto himself plainly admits) — not to mention that this project is still very brand new.

If your a Nokia Internet Tablet owner and a Last.fm user, I highly recommend installing Vagalume.

Many people think it’s pretty amazing that I have been able to lay in bed for two weeks and not go out of my mind — especially knowing that I have 4 +/- weeks to go…

I am so happy about an application that has just been released for maemo. It is called PyChord and it has already changed my life…

“Seriously?!” You might ask?

As a musician, I have oft struggled with how I should write songs and efficiently store them in a way that I can always have them with me, easily accessible at any time. Likewise, when I do happen to have my (huge) notebook full of songs, written or typed on paper, I always have an issue of how I’m supposed to hold them while I play them and how best to flip the pages when I need to…

Most of you probably won’t relate, but if you’re a singer/songwriter who also possesses one of these said notebooks, you will agree: it’s not a very good system.

Of course, I have tried to keep all of my songs saved on a computer — which is definitely more efficient than wasting a bunch of paper — but how, then, do I take the songs with me? A laptop? Well, yes, that would work, but even with a laptop, a person is forced to reach down and scroll through the song as it’s being played. (And, honestly, a laptop is way too big!)

Enter PyChord, developed by Danilo Cesar Lemes de Paula.

But, what am I talking about anyway?

Take a look:

(Click it, it’s a YouTube video.)

Like all new apps, PyChord still has some things to work out, but it’s pretty much at a stable, useable state right now.

Thanks, Danilo!