Overview

A while back a wrote a little game for the Nokia N9 and N950, mostly as a way to explore the QML Box2D bindings. However, whilst packaging up my StatusNet client I thought I might as well release this as well since it can be a fairly enjoyable distraction. Below is a short video demonstrating how it works, and at the end of the post you can find details on where to get hold of it.

Download

You can either download it via Apps for Meego, or get hold of the package directly here: http://mikeasoft.com/~mike/seagullstrike_0.1-2_armel.deb.

Source

License: GPL version 3.0 or later
Gitorious repository: https://gitorious.org/seagull-strike
Ohloh project page: https://www.ohloh.net/p/seagull-strike

As part of my work at Igalia I had to work with video and GStreamer for some years. I always used Gtk+ for that so when I needed to do things with Qt and QML, things were different. In my projects I always used pure GStreamer code instead of the Qt bindings for GStreamer because at the moment those bindings were not ready or reliable.

Overview

StatusNet for MeeGo makes it possible for Nokia N9, N950 and similar phones to connect to StatusNet compatible microblogging services such as Identi.ca. It supports viewing statuses in the phone’s event feed alongside Twitter and Facebook updates, viewing conversations, posting new status updates and replying to other people.

New Features

• Support for followings links in posts.
• Links to groups, tags, and users.
• Support for posting messages using UTF-8 characters.
• Slight improvements to the clarity of the login screen.

Download

Ovi Store: StatusNet for MeeGo
Direct download: statusnet-meego_0.2.1-1_armel.deb

Source

License: GPL version 3.0 or later
Gitorious repository: https://gitorious.org/statusnet-meego-plugin
Ohloh project page: https://www.ohloh.net/p/statusnet-meego

We have published an updated version of the MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan API showcase application.

This version contains the following new features:

 

• Internet radio (including recording of streams and featuring events feed and notification APIs).
• Seven wonders of the world (featuring the use of the landmarks API)
• Accelerometer / tap sensor visualizer (featuring sensor APIs)

You can get the binary from harmattan-dev, and the source code is also available.

 

Front Page

Maemo Community Council meeting outcomes

On Tuesday, a Maemo Community Council meeting was held with the following agenda:

A Quick Look at Extras in Bugzilla
2012-04-16 through 2012-04-22

I've been in Copenhagen in January (creating a 20-controller PS Move installation game with friends) and more recently in Evora, Portugal for the Science and Technology Week, talking about the history of gPodder. With some sightseeing squeezed into each trip, and no compact camera around, the N9 did a great job making some nice photos that work great as wallpapers of the standby screen.

Just in case you're looking for a way to spice up your standby screen, have a look at the wallpaper photo set for all wallpapers or click on one of the preview images below.

Copenhagen

 
Evora
 
Find all images in the photo set on Flickr. In related news, a small update for gPodder should be ready soon that fixes some minor bugs since the last release in March.

Users of the Nokia N9 have longed for a Whats App client for their device since a long time, but it finally looks as if their prayers are close to being answered. While Whats App isn’t doing an official version of the app, the community has come up with a solution of its own called Wazapp.

Wazapp is a community port of the hugely popular IM application, and its developer Tarek Galal has realsed a first look video of it running on the N9. The video is proof that the project is progressing nicely, and shows messages being sent and received between the N9 running Wazapp, and a Samsung Android device running the official WhatsApp application.

When is it coming out you wonder? The developer has this to say:

If you cannot wait, a dedicated website for the project has been setup at wazapp.im and you can keep checking in, otherwise rest assured that I’ll let you know once its out. I hope that the makers of Whats App support this development, and not try and kill its functionality with an update to their official clients.

[via: My Nokia Blog]

I have in mind an app to use RFID over the NFC hardware on the n9 to allow the phone to be unlocked by an RFID tag. This way the password can be nice and long for locking the device, but I don't have to interact with the virtual keyboard in order to use the phone. If the phone locks, I just tap the RFID tag to it, it unlocks, and I'm away. Yes, two phase would be a logical next step, but that assumes that the "lock" on the phone is very hard to break.

Reading the RFID on the n9 is the simple part, I have that working fine with physical keys. Unlocking the phone is proving not so simple. I was hoping that MeeGo::QmLocks::setState would do the trick, but it is not to be so as the API docs explain.

Anyone stumbled on a way to unlock the n9 from a program?

The world hasn’t heard much about Tizen since September, when it was first announced. To refresh your memory, Tizen is the brand new HTML5 centered OS that is backed by Intel and Samsung, a partnership which was forged after Nokia and Intel’s ambitious MeeGo project was stopped in its tracks in February 2011.

When the announcement was first made, an initial release was supposed to come out in Q1 2012, with retail Tizen devices only later in the year. While that hasn’t happened yet, there are promising signs. A visit to HTML5test.com shows that Tizen 1 is well into internal testing and its HTML5 test results are off the charts. It scored a very impressive 408 points, with 15 bonus points. That’s better than Chrome for Mac that manages 400 points with 13 bonus points. A few weeks ago, Tizen was at about 363 points with 15 bonus points. So the development seems to be progressing nicely and the upcoming Tizen Developer Conference scheduled for May 7-9 in San Francisco should be a perfect venue to show it off.

The first annual Tizen Conference engages and educates developers on Tizen technology and HTML5 app development for Tizen devices. This conference is for Tizen developers, app developers, platform designers, operators, OEMs, hardware vendors, software vendors, open source enthusiasts, and anyone engaged in Tizen. The Tizen conference will be hosted at the downtown Hyatt in San Francisco, CA on May 7-9th, 2012.

The Linux Foundation isn’t giving away much about what will be shown off, if anything. The agenda has now been posted, and all we can tell is that the keynote sessions are scheduled for 9 am onwards on May 8th. No info yet on who will be present and if Samsung will finally show off their Tizen device. An important thing to note is that a lot of the sessions mentioned in the agenda will be hosted by Intel and Samsung employees, so the companies will definitely be there in full force. There has been talk of Samsung merging its Bada OS with Tizen, but there has been a bit of back and forth on that as well. The upcoming Tizen Conference should serve as a good opportunity for all involved to clear the air about all these questions, and finally get to what its about – great software on shiny hardware. Registrations are now open, and free.