As part of its version 11.3 release, openSUSE now includes initial support for MeeGo, as part of a wider effort to improve support for netbook devices. It is based on the netbook user experience version of MeeGo. The effort has been led by the openSUSE Goblin team; according to the release notes MeeGo on openSUSE (code named Smeegol) adds additional multimedia (codecs, Amazon store) and social networking (Digg, Facebook, MySpace and Flickr) support. Read on for further details.
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The relationship between the network and manufacturer has always been one of the more opaque areas in the history of the mobile phone – and as the demands of modern smartphones push the capacity of the networks, the discussions and bartering on both sides continue behind closed doors. Which sometime open a little bit. Wired author Fred Vogelstein has posted a detailed look at the marriage of AT&T and Apple. See below for a quote.
What's the next step for mobile phone and car integration? One option is Nokia's Terminal Mode technology, which proposes an industry standard for the integration of mobile phones (and their applications) into the car environment. Nokia has developed Terminal Mode in conjunction with CE4A (Consumer Electronics for Automotive) and recently held the Terminal Mode Summit at their Espoo offices in Finland. This gives us a good opportunity to review what Terminal Mode is about and what progress has been made to date. Read on....
Last week Qt quietly rolled out the public beta its new developer website, Qt Developer Network, which aims to provide a one-stop portal for Qt developers and consolidate resources that were previously spread across the main Qt website. It also provides a more vendor neutral destination for developers than Forum Nokia, something that could be important in helping drive adoption of the Symbian and MeeGo platforms by manufacturers other than Nokia.
Forum Nokia recently took the covers of Forum Nokia Projects (projects.forum.nokia.com), a free service providing online project hosting for collaborative software development, documentation, or any other project. The service is built on top of the open source Trac software and is fully integrated with Forum Nokia. The service includes the usual tools such as source-code browser, wiki, forums, tickets and support for three version control systems (SVN, Git, and Mercurial).
Downloads from Maemo 5 Extras, the primary repository for Maemo applications, have now passed the 15 million mark. The 10 million mark was reached in late May. This means there have been an additional 5 million downloads in around six weeks, suggesting the rate of downloads is accelerating. The numbers are impressive for a community led repository aimed at a relatively niche device.
Last Thursday MeeGo announced the first update for the MeeGo 1.0 Core Software Platform and Netbook User Experience project release (the version of MeeGo designed to be run on netbooks). The updated version contains more than a hundred bug fixes, greatly enhances the 'visuals' of MeeGo, improves 3D support, enhances several applications and updates the kernel to 2.6.33.5. Read on for more information and illustrative screenshots.
Rob Glaser has a new word – 'superphone' – to describe the latest batch of mobile phones on the market. Given the fun we’ve had defining the smartphone in the last few years, adding a new level to the nomenclature might seem a cheap marketing move, but it has allowed Glaser, chairman of RealNetworks, to expand his view on where mobile technology is moving. Read on for my thoughts.
Christina Warren has put together an interesting selection of tips for mobile application developers over on Mashable. It’s cross platform, and is worth printing out and pasting in front of whatever ever big printed PDF you use while coding.
Chippy, from Carrypad.com, has been given access to an Aava handset running an early version of MeeGo 1.1 Handset Experience. The Aava phone, which uses Intel's Moorestown processor, is a reference design, which helps further platform development and allows companies to carry out assessment and testing of the MeeGo platform ahead of commercial device releases. It represents an opportunity to see the MeeGo UI running on a device and get an impression for where MeeGo powered handsets are headed.
Playing devil's advocate, but only to a degree, Steve Litchfield turns the entire smartphone world on its head by rejecting its latest darling - large touchscreens. Ask any pundit in the mobile world about smartphones and you'll get the answer that it's all about touch. About large displays that can be caressed and programmed and manipulated with your fingers. Except that traditional, non-touch form factors have these 2010 'flagships' well and truly beat - here are the Top 10 Reasons Why Touchscreens Suck.
Anssi Vanjoki, marking his first day as Nokia's Head of Mobile Solutions, and in the face of recent widespread criticism of Nokia's high end device performance and strategy, has come out with some hard hitting statements in a feature on Nokia's Conversations blog. He underlines the importance of Symbian for Nokia, suggests that a Symbian^4 powered Nseries device is 'a very strong possibility', says that, for consumers, MeeGo will mean having 'true computing power in your pocket' and that MeeGo gives Nokia the ability 'to take mobile technology beyond the smartphone'. Read on for further details.