A Quick Look at Extras in Bugzilla
2011-11-14 through 2011-11-20
Planet maemo
The next article in the series about Qt Quick best practices has been published (but don't miss out the other one about property bindings). This time, I talked about Components, and how they can help to keep your QML code clean and maintainable. The team behind the N9 Developer blog has been a great help to me, especially Ville Lavonious and Matti Airas. I am also thankful for the additional input (and proof reading!) from Jon Nordby and Sauli Kauppi. Thanks guys!
The MeeGo Harmattan running Nokia N9 may be the last of its kind, but there seems to be no death of quality apps that are coming out for the device. It already has apps for Facebook, Twitter and a few games like Angry Birds and Need For Speed built in, but there are a few key apps which are missing.
As promised before, here is the first release of SeriesFinale for MeeGo Harmattan.
Nokia N9 is very weird kind of beast. It is running MeeGo Harmattan OS and has been released after so-called elopocalypse when Nokia's new CEO Stephen Elop has announced quite sudden and controversial turn towards Windows Phone platform, ditching both homegrown smartphone platforms - Symbian and Maemo/MeeGo - into gloom. Nonetheless, Nokia N9 has received positive reviews from mobile technology blogosphere around the world, which posed the question whether pivotal turn in Nokia's strategy was actually right move? As a former user and fan of Maemo-powered devices, including the latest N900, and also being quite sceptical about Microsoft partnership, I was particularly interested to see N9 myself. Once again, thanks to Nokia Connects I've had a chance to use N9 for past couple of weeks and see how it performs in real life.
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I recently pushed the 
The unexpected lack of lectures today (Tag des Landespatrons) left time for some one-off hacks, and here are two for you:
First up is Tap Tap N950, a very basic QML prototype of what could become a funny DDR/TTR clone - no code published yet, it still need some more polishing (and touch area support for multi-touch, plus scoring is also missing).
The other one is a simple hack to make the Calendar app icon always show today's date (day-of-month). The existence of calendar icons for each day (1-31) in the theme on the device lets me suspect that this feature was either planned and then abandoned or that it will come built-in in some future firmware. For now, you can grab this lame shell script and execute it (ideally with "nohup" - see the comment inside - also needs customizations if you changed your root password, and you definitely need developer mode for now) to have an auto-updating calendar icon until the next reboot. Watch the accompanying video for a quick demo. There's now also a forum thread for support and discussion. Sometimes I really wish cron was pre-installed on Harmattan..
Bonus exercise: Store your app's .desktop file in /home/user/.local/, generate the icon dynamically via code and update the .desktop file for some icon overlay action / new items notification ;)
First up is Tap Tap N950, a very basic QML prototype of what could become a funny DDR/TTR clone - no code published yet, it still need some more polishing (and touch area support for multi-touch, plus scoring is also missing).
The other one is a simple hack to make the Calendar app icon always show today's date (day-of-month). The existence of calendar icons for each day (1-31) in the theme on the device lets me suspect that this feature was either planned and then abandoned or that it will come built-in in some future firmware. For now, you can grab this lame shell script and execute it (ideally with "nohup" - see the comment inside - also needs customizations if you changed your root password, and you definitely need developer mode for now) to have an auto-updating calendar icon until the next reboot. Watch the accompanying video for a quick demo. There's now also a forum thread for support and discussion. Sometimes I really wish cron was pre-installed on Harmattan..
Bonus exercise: Store your app's .desktop file in /home/user/.local/, generate the icon dynamically via code and update the .desktop file for some icon overlay action / new items notification ;)
As you know, Austria is one of the few lucky countries in which the N9 is officially available - I even spotted an ad in a local cinema last week (which made me very happy, and I'm usually not very happy about ads in the cinema ;). Now, Nokia Austria is running a campaign until November 27th where you can win a photo shooting and show off your N9 style. If you use the code RHWMZE on the contest website you can get extra points (and you'll find more codes on local bloggers' websites) :)
As you might have heard in the video above, you can go to http://nokia.at/n9style to find all the details about the contest. While you are at it, if you have a N9, try out my free apps in Nokia Store. Two more are currently waiting for QA: Tennix and Plonk - yep, that's right: our Pong-style game formerly known as Mong (developed in collaboration with Cornelius Hald and Tim Samoff) is coming to Harmattan - with swipe locking - you can grab the source already now from our Git repository. And your favourite 2D tennis game is also celebrating a comeback, so be prepared for more casual gaming quality time :)
As you might have heard in the video above, you can go to http://nokia.at/n9style to find all the details about the contest. While you are at it, if you have a N9, try out my free apps in Nokia Store. Two more are currently waiting for QA: Tennix and Plonk - yep, that's right: our Pong-style game formerly known as Mong (developed in collaboration with Cornelius Hald and Tim Samoff) is coming to Harmattan - with swipe locking - you can grab the source already now from our Git repository. And your favourite 2D tennis game is also celebrating a comeback, so be prepared for more casual gaming quality time :)
Some personal news: I’m joining the Qt team to help making the Qt Project rock. A small change of floor at the Nokia offices in Sunnyvale (California) and barely a change to be noticed by my relatives and non-geek friends. Still, for me it is a big change, the end of a phase and the beginning of something fresh.