I always tend to lean more towards SSH for VPN stuff than other tools like openvpn. With this mindset I was working out how one might get access to servers on the Intranet while on the move. Having created a bunch of nice little apps that do things on my network is all well and good, but I wanted to also use them while on the move.

My current solution is to use two socks servers on the phone. It might seem strange to need two, but this allows routing depending on source address and destination address. The first SOCKs server is dante which routes all "normal" traffic directly to the chosen Internet connection on the phone. Traffic which wants to go to selected addresses on my Intranet is instead forwarded to a second socks proxy on the phone. This second socks proxy is implemented with ssh "DynamicForward" to send traffic over the SSH link to the Intranet.



The glory here is that Internet traffic goes directly, and Intranet traffic is sent over an encrypted pipe to the Intranet. If on the other hand I connect to any router on the Intranet, the phone gets a local IP address and dante is instructed to "route" traffic from that local address directly to the target instead of to the second local ssh socks server. Thus I don't have to concern myself with the details of which side of firewalls I am on, the phone automatically does that for me and chooses the most efficient route for packets.

Having a phone that runs so much like a proper Linux distro makes this sort of thing fairly easy to get going. No need for funky NDKs, NDAs, or TLAs.

If you want to play around with this stuff I have dante debs in my repo:
http://fuuko.libferris.com/maemo/n9/
Using non privlidged ports on the phone means you can run danted as a normal user. I have an icon on the n9 home screen that makes sure dante is running instead of using init.d at the moment. Also, an icon that runs a bash encapsulated with tsocks can be handy for tinkering:
Desktop file segment:

Exec=meego-terminal -n -e /bin/sh /home/user/bin/create-tsocks-env
...

$ cat /home/user/bin/create-tsocks-env
export http_proxy=http://1.2.3.4:1313/
tsocks bash

Using a similar style Exec in a desktop file one can start the SSH client in "-N" mode and use the passphrase to connect and setup an SSH connection with a socks server on the phone. It is quick and dirty without shiny QML interfaces, but it works^TM.

Due to a major change in the geocaching.com website, AGTL became unusable a few weeks ago. Today, I present version 0.9.0.0, which fixes this problem. Downloading the geocaching overview became a bit slower, because AGTL now needs to download more data to get the geocache positions right. Together with the map overview, all data except logs, images and waypoints of the geocaches are downloaded. While it now takes longer to see what geocaches are around you, the filter and sort feature is more u...

Due to a major change in the geocaching.com website, AGTL became unusable a few weeks ago. Today, I present version 0.9.0.0, which fixes this problem.

Downloading the geocaching overview became a bit slower, because AGTL now needs to download more data to get the geocache positions right. Together with the map overview, all data except logs, images and waypoints of the geocaches are downloaded. While it now takes longer to see what geocaches are around you, the filter and sort feature is more useful than before (because more data is available).

This version runs on the N9 and N900 thanks to Rob Kouwenberg, who sent me his spare N900. The next versions will all be released for the N900 at the same time as for the N9.

This is to be considered as a BETA version, i.e., it will contain bugs. However, I can't comprehensively test both versions on my own, so please file any bugs here! Really, that's the fastest way to get them fixed!

I'm also looking for a designer who is willing to design a new logo for the app.

Now get the N900 version (also available in extras-devel) or the N9 version and start heavy testing!

As always, your donations via PayPal are welcome.

Update: How to send me debug logs?

Debug logs can now be send by the application itself. All you need is your mobile device with a working internet connection and a terminal command. On the N9, open up a terminal and enter agtl-meego --remote On the N900, open up a terminal and enter /opt/advancedcaching/core.py --hildon --remote The application should now start (except if it has a bug in the startup phase, that is). You can file a bug report, send me an e-mail or write me on twitter. What I need is the IP address of the device (yours is currently 213.128.137.20) and the date on which you've created the debug log.

Update 2: If the application doesn't start at all, try moving the file .agtl/caches.db to .agtl/caches.db.old using the following command in the terminal mv .agtl/caches.db .agtl/caches.db.old I hope to fix this bug for the next version.

Update 3: Some early birds had a problem with AGTL not starting on the N9. Please download the file again, I had the wrong .deb in the wrong place. The new file has an md5sum of 78cbea1b32f5200b253bb8218f63d33e.

This is a feature that I personally wanted for a long time. Interrupted by FOSDEM, some Wayland research and many other things, I finally managed to get word prediction and error correction beyond prototype quality. The video shows just how amazingly good the Presage word prediction can be, even without extensive training (in fact, for the video we used the minimal language model training that comes with a regular Presage installation). The second part of the video shows how combining Presage with a spellchecker such as Hunspell further improves the provided word candidates.

Presage uses a very scalable approach called text n-grams. There is a lot of research in that area, but language models of contemporary language usage are either well guarded or cannot be freely distributed. Luckily, Presage comes with training tools such as text2ngram. Users can feed arbitrary language corpora to it, though one should be careful to perhaps not mix different languages too much.

Matteo Vescovi, the author of Presage (formerly known as Soothsayer), started the work as part of his master thesis a couple of years ago. The heart of Presage are the different predictors. They can be queried in parallel and the result lists are merged, using probability analysis.

Presage certainly has a lot of potential. It comes with an easy to use C++ API but also provides bindings for C and Python. In fact, it even provides a D-Bus API, which would make it possible to run it as a system service. The user could then benefit from (and train!) the same language models from different applications.

Hunspell probably doesn’t need much introduction. It is used in many Linux desktops. It’s a fine library and comes with many dictionaries. However, one should be aware that Hunspell itself cannot provide word prediction, which is why it wasn’t enough for mobile text input. As a fallback for Presage, it works very well though.

Of course there are a couple of things we could do from here. As Jon mentioned in the video, the virtual keyboard’s word ribbon UI could host word suggestions from other applications, such as the Google search in the browser. For Unity’s dasher input or Gnome Shell’s search, the application names could be shown instead. Or we could hook it up to Bash completion.

PS: Anyone up to package Presage for Fremantle or Nemo? It could be pretty interesting to see the next release of Maliit running on the N900.

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A new version of gPodder has been released, and the package is already available from Nokia Store here, and waiting for your QA feedback in Apps For MeeGo here. This works for both N950 and N9 users. To get access to Apps For MeeGo, go to http://apps.formeego.org/ on your device, and install the Client from there.

The new gPodder version comes with some improvements for Harmattan users:

• Redesigned artwork for the main window and episode list
• Better arrangement of podcast list and cover artwork there
• New preferences menu, containing gpodder.net and orientation settings
• New empty state UI for first-time users
• Various other changes to be more in line with the UX Guidelines
• Context menu item to delete episodes without downloading them

I hope you enjoy this new release - please report any issues you find or ideas you have at http://bugs.gpodder.org/ - and don't forget to QA the package in Apps For MeeGo.

The Nokia N9 firmware upgrade rate has been rapid. Now is the time for developers to move their own application testing and verification from Harmattan PR 1.0 to Harmattan PR 1.1.

The original Harmattan software release (PR 1.0) is now in an ever-diminishing minority. Harmattan PR 1.1, the first update release (introduced on week 45) took over the installed base in less than two months. Now four weeks old Harmattan PR 1.2 release has continued in the same groove, or even faster.

Hence, we have initiated steps to change the principal test environment from Harmattan PR 1.0 to Harmattan PR 1.1 in the Nokia Store. If your application previously has been rejected on account of PR1.0-incompatibility, those issues are now automatically waived.

The SDK and corresponding sysroot in the Harmattan target is not (yet) updated from PR 1.0. In other words, you will still compile against Harmattan PR 1.0 sysroot for time being. Availability of a newer sysroot and instructions on how to take it into use will be announced at an appropriate time.

And if you have already updated your device to PR1.2, you can utilize the remote device access functionality or one of the multiple QEMU variants (now available with the update to the Harmattan target) to pre-verify your application's correct behavior.

My growing collection of Qt/QML applications has now hit 6 apps with the inclusion of a Zoneminder client for the n9. As I still have ideas for more apps I wonder how long until I fill half a screen with my own apps on the device ;)



Anyways, the Zoneminder app uses server side scaling and jpeg generation to keep bandwidth down and CPU/RAM very low on the device. I have modified some of the images for example purposes. The app is basically as shown but will display your real camera data instead of Koalas... Unless you are lucky enough to have some furry little friends. The first camera starts a live view right off the bat when the app starts, so there is as little finger use needed to get some useful action from running the app.

Only active cameras are listed. The play button changes the image on the right to be a 1 second rolling "live view" of that camera. The little watch moves to the recorded events for that camera which is shown below. The config is quite simple; the Zoneminder server URL, and the user/password to login to that server.



Alarm events are shown on the left side and the play button rolls through that event with the progress bar showing how far through the alarm you are. Naturally both the lists scroll to show more cameras or events if there are more than 5. By default only 25 of the most recent alarm events are shown in the list. A future expansion might allow paging back to see older ones.

GNOME 3.4 is around the corner, and with it a new version of its little web browser that could. This is for sure one of the most action packed releases in a long time, so let’s do a recap of the last 6 months of development.

Firefox for Mobile Device Light Sensor - http://dougturner.wordpress.com/2012... March 26, 2012 from DougT » mozilla - Comment - Like

Front Page

Android ICS (Ice Cream Sandwich) gets alpha release for Nokia N9

allboutn9 summarises the progress made so far on getting Android running on the N9: "Those who don't want to be limited to MeeGo might soon have a very well running port of Android ICS ("Ice Cream Sandwich") called NITDroid which allows to use two systems on the N9 with dual-boot."

"NitDroid might always remain a project which is rather dedicated to experimental users. But it's very impressive to see what the N9 is able to do and why not having two platforms on one phone than buying two different devices? The recent Alpha-version shows that the port was successful. Many drivers for the N9 were found and basic tasks are already possible."

Read more (allboutn9.info)

In this edition (Download)...

1. Front Page
   • Android ICS (Ice Cream Sandwich) gets alpha release for Nokia N9
2. Applications
   • Extraplugins for additional IM accounts on N9 removed from Nokia Store
   • Importing OPML files into N9 feed reader
   • Another review for Firewall+ - a call & SMS blocker for N9
3. Announcements
   • Smoke the Bugs game in pure QML in Nokia Store for N9 and Symbian