Using the concept of ’short blog entry’:

InternetTabletTalk said that Nokia 770 has been released for sale in Europe for standard customers. Interested users can buy it online!

Spanish final price is 349€ (Taxes included) + shipment cost.

Also you are invited to bookmark Nokia’s opensource corner URL.

Happy surfing and… happy hacking too!

Nokia just came out with a great new device: the Nokia 770.  It is a Linux based device running Internet Tablet 2005 software edition. It has a small form factor and 800x480 resolution, with 225-pixel-per-inch in 65536 colors. It is a computer, not a swiss army knive. So no phone, no camera. I think this is a pré… you don’t want such a larger device against you ear… use the tool where it is made for, use your telephone!. Make sure you phone has Bluetooth, so you can communicate with the 770 through your phone. Use Wifi when you are at home, that’s what this thing is made for: Bluetooth and Wifi.

Today, after having been left out of the initial round of the Nokia 770 Developer Device Program, I got a very uplifting mail from the Maemo team; My 770 has been shipped to me free of charge! This very nice surprise was thanks to the fact that; “we have no billing infrastructure in place for successful participants residing in countries other than that where Nokia 770 Internet tablet is
available.”

As Nokia is donating the proceeds from the developer program to the GNOME Foundation, they encourage me to donate manually instead, which I plan to do.

Thanks, Nokia!

Well the Nokia770 has been released officially on the 7th, but the official release date has been pushed back to the 10th. And guess what.. it’s already sold out in the US.

To judge the size of the unit, here’s a good example of comparative size from engadget.

More info on release date from engadget

How not to do a Customization of Bugzilla How not to do a Customization of Bugzilla after

sub LogDependencyActivity {
...
}
# this loop iterates once for each bug to be processed (eg when this script
# is called with multiple bugs selected from buglist.cgi instead of
# show_bug.cgi).
foreach my $id (@idlist) {
...
            # Release Notes
            if ($col eq 'release_notes') {
                if ($old eq '1') {
                    $old = "Yes";
                }
                elsif ($old eq '0') {
                    $old = "No";
                }
                if ($new eq '1') {
                    $new = "Yes";
                }
                elsif ($new eq '0') {
                    $new = "No";
                }
            }
            # End

What's wrong with this?

Well, the result of this clever code is this wonderful output in view bug activity:

            <td>release_notes
            </td>
            <td>No
            </td>
            <td>
                 
            </td>

for just about each time any user touches any bugs i.e. you have in show_bug:

      <tr>
          <td align="right" valign="center" width="35%"><b>Release <u>N<u>otes:<b></td>
          <td valign="center" align="left"><input type="checkbox" name="release_notes" size="1" value="1" ></td>
      </tr>

From this excerpt,

1. you can see that it's obviously not checked.
2. you're obviously not checking it (well, 99% of the time you click commit you aren't making something a release note).
3. but each time you change the bug, the code decides your new value is empty and that your new value (empty) doesn't match the old value "No"

What happens?

Bugzilla is going to log that you changed it

What's the best thing to do when you encounter helpful code like this?

I changed the logic to:

# Changed on 11th Nov 2005 By timeless because this code is broken
            if (0 && ($col eq 'release_notes')) {

What's the result?

Well, I am now much happier

What should people have done instead?

Just use keywords. <Sample chaos>

Using PAM for authenticating users in Bugzilla Using PAM for authenticating users in Bugzilla

Is there a PAM Module for Bugzilla?

No, but you could probably write a pam module. We mostly support our internal database and LDAP.

Shouldn't it be simple to use PAM with Bugzilla?

What happens when a new user magically appears in PAM?

At what point should Bugzilla know about it?

1. when the user tries to log in?
2. when the user tries to create an account?
3. when someone tries to cc someone to a bug?

Could the user can be created by the useradd script?

That might work.

So, I got my Nokia 770 today. Liking it alot so far. More later.

So, I’m one of the lucky people who got a Nokia 770 through the Maemo Developer program. Actually I got my device on October 20th already, but I wanted to test it before I write my first report.
And now, I don’t wanna be another “first impressions” blogger
All I want to say is that the N770 really is a great device.
You can surf the web, check your emails and stocks, update your blog, listen to music and play games from almost everywhere.
Of course it is still in it’s early stage of development and it still has a few bugs (for example: I can’t connect to my WPA secured WLAN currently, because it only connects when it finds at least two WLANs; but as far as I know this problem is already fixed in the next firmware update), but seeing how many motivated developers write new applications for it, I’m very sure it will be a success.
I mean officially it doesn’t even have VoIP, Instant Messaging and stuff yet, but it’s already sold out everywhere, so I’m really curious about future versions.

So, for everyone who is still waiting for his N770 to arrive:
It’s worth it, because it really is fun to surf the web from school or work

More articles and pictures/screenshots will follow from now on and I plan to write a simple stocks application with some charts and stuff currently.
If anyone is already working on that, please let me know.

Lets have this said first: I really don't want to advertize for Nokia, and I'm in no way affiliated to Nokia, I'm just a happy user!
In a previous post I already described the Nokia 770 device. Within 24 hours of ordering UPS came at my door to deliver my "present".
I'm not really a gadger guy, I just wanted a device to read books and browse the internet while moving around the house and lying in my bed. And I must say: it absolutely goes far beyond my expectations! Browsing is flawless, you can read PDF files perfectly, and the RSS news reader works good enough to follow the blogs I read. What more do you need? No: it's not a phone! Who cares? I have a nokia phone to make my phone calls!

The good thing is that you boot up the device in the morning and can keep it in "standby" all day. Within seconds you have access to your documents and the internet wherever you are (as long as you have Wifi access). And with a 800x480 resolution with 225 dpi the display is as sharp as paper!! What a difference with those lousy 320x200 resolution devices!

I did not try the email functionality of the device yet, I just use outlook web access, works great!!

Being a developer I wanted to know how I could develop for the Nokia 770 device. It is running a modified version of Debian linux, and all development is also done on linux. In comming post on the Nokia 770 I will explain how I did set up the development environment.

The development environment for the Nokia 770 linux-based device has to run on.. you guessed: Linux.
As a developer the best place to go to is http://maemo.org. From here you can get all the information to get you started.
Even if you don't have the device yet you can start developing for it. Setting up the development environment is NOT easy, it's not like on Windows for developing for Windows CE: starting an msi and done, you really need to dive into Linux, and I must say it became a lot better but also complexer since the last time I used it (quite some years ago!).

Ok, whats happening on Maemo GAIM
1. I opened berlios project for maemo gaim, so now if someone wants to join in improving the port for maemo feel free https://developer.berlios.de/projects/maemo-gaim/
2. Made another minor update release which is available from http://download.berlios.de/maemo-gaim/maemo_gaim_1.5-dk-1_arm.deb

New features
- Hildon stype toolbar and menues (did a real bad hack) more on that in a bit
- Preference dialog is now a Appview, so its quite convinent to use
- App should now be able to also work in non-fullscreen mode
- Should be more stable :) [since when has stability become a new feature ;)

Ok, now about the hack
GAIM makes extensive menues using the factories, and I just couldnt find to sew the existing menu widget to the appview. while there is an API to get the menu widget e.g to attacj menuitem etc, there is no API I could find for repacing the menu with a user provided menu.

So I started to dig into the hildon_appview.c file to see what is the magic. The widget is having a pointer to priv struct , the first member of it is the menu widget, which I wanted to change, so using brute C pointer force, I just changed the pointer of the internal structure to contain pointer to my menu widget :)

void **ptr = HILDON_APPVIEW(app_buddy_view)->priv;
*ptr = gtk_item_factory_get_widget(gtkblist->ift, "");

Hopefully I wont have to rely on this hack and HildonAppView widget would have an API to enable this.

This had been pending for a while, gathering dust. I wrote a small utility originally intended for Maemo , but I found it quite useful for my Linux desktop too, especially when I have to transfer tons of pics from my phone to laptop. There are offcourse other utilities and tools for the same purpose, but then I just decided to test how quickly can I write one.

Now on Nokia 770, the device announcement is turned off, but now with so many developers with root access, can simple turn that on in their /etc/bluetooth/hcid.conf

BtXfer
- Simple UI for discovering devices
- Select a device and select files (you can select multiple files), and send. It will send if the other receiving device has OPUSH profile. The utiltiy also has SDP query capability to get the right channel number on the receiving device
- You can also receive
- Nice little progress bar for send/receive progress
- Multithreaded so, send and receive happens independent of each other

I ripped most of the code from the obex-apps
Some features I really would like
- a simple tray for droping files for transfer

Code exist here : https://stage.maemo.org/svn/btxfer
so feel free to hack

Some time ago just to dig into hands on maemo programming I started to write a control plugin which would allow me a easy way to rip streams. So I started with Streamripper and modified it to run as a daemon and controlled by DBUS. Then wrote a simple UI and control panel plugin to rip streams

I started a berlios project here https://developer.berlios.de/projects/streamripper-ui/ which still awaits for me a cleanup code and import in SVN. some day !! (well code is quite dirty, so I dont think it will every get into mainstream, but the changes to streamripper itself are quite small, just modification to the console utility). Code could also be useful to people looking for sample D-BUS code and sample code for writing Maemo Control Panel Plugin

At some point I thought I could also put some nice feature like the Streamripper32 where it can list the stations and tracks available for ripping.

While Nokia denies rumours of 770 shortage, The guys at the register have this to say:

The INQ spoke to Nokia (UK) who told us, “The Nokia 770 tablet started shipping on November 7th, but this means that this is the date it leaves the factory in Finland - it isn’t the date from which it’s available in the shops.”

“There are 1,000s of orders for this in the UK as you would expect – as when any handset starts shipping. Nokia is currently increasing production to meet these needs.”

So here it is, my first Nokia 770 Review:

While you’re waiting, here are some pictures of the inside of the Nokia 770. These images were filed by Nokia to the FCC when going through the approval process for the device. Nokia submitted a number of documents, including the 770’s user manual and a number of internal and external photos.

View all the photos in this LinuxDevices.com article.

After seeing a comment on Freakman’s N770 report, I got curious about the possibility of watching movies on the device.

So first I downloaded a movie trailer of Final Destination 3, which has a size of 13 MB and is 1 minute and 24 seconds long. Then I read the Maemo Video Encoding article and converted the trailer with this command:

mencoder final_destination_3_h.640.mov -oac mp3lame -lameopts abr:br=64 -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:mbd=1:vbitrate=300 -vf scale=352:208 -ffourcc DIVX -ofps 15000/1001 -o final_destination_3_converted.avi

That took about 30 seconds on my notebook (Pentium M 1,73 GHz; 512 MB RAM). The final file is 4.1 MB big. I moved it to the N770…
Result: the “movie” was more of a slide show than a movie.

Next try, same computer, same trailer, new command:

mencoder final_destination_3_h.640.mov -oac mp3lame -lameopts abr:br=64 -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:mbd=1:vbitrate=300 -vf scale=240:144 -ffourcc DIVX -ofps 25000/1001 -o final_destination_3_converted2.avi

Took 28 seconds, the file is 3.9 MB in size.
Result: awesome! better quality than before imho and that with a smaller size and no “slide show”

I wanted to test it with a bigger movie though. So I took a DIVX encoded episode of “The O.C.” which is 42 minutes and 54 seconds long and has a size of 350 MB. Took 8 minutes and 15 seconds to convert and has a size of 114 MB. Well, of course that didn’t fit on my 64 MB RS-MMC card I assume the quality is the same though and it gives you a hint on how big the movies will be and how long it will take to convert. If anyone wants to buy me a 512 or 1024 MB RS-MMC card for birthday (17th November) though, go for it

Conclusion: I think one can watch movies on the N770 pretty good, but I still prefer to go to the movies.

So, I have played with the new toy over the weekend, and I must say that overall, I’m fairly impressed. There are some stability issues, but the software is still under development, so I’m not going to panic because of that.

For some time now I’m looking into building rich internet applications using Flash. I’m very impressed by Flex 2 and did some adventures in developing with it. Flex 2 is still alpha and targets the new Flash version 8.5. Now I have a Nokia 770 device, and the Flash version on it is 6.0.82.0.

I’m also looking into how applications can be developed for the Nokia 770 (yes, I’m a busy man without much focus;-) ). I installed the C/C++ development environment, but I actually don’t want to go back to C/C++ development with all its difficulties. Other options are Mono and Python which I’m also currently invesigating.

Today I was at the first day of first European Flash conference http://www.sparkeurope.com/. There was a very interesting session on the open source community for Flash.One of the sessions was by Edwin van Rijkom on Screenweaver, an open source project for building Rich Desktop Applications. He is wrapping Flash in a host application and provides access to the host OS and native code on the host OS through the Screenweaver host application. Because the Nokia 770 also has Flash installed I was dreaming about the possibility to create such a host application for Flash that provides access to all Nokia 770 features and the possibility to hook it into the Nokia 770 menu structure. I discussed this idea with Edwin and he thought that it would be a great idea.

I searched for people who tried such an approach on linux. I ended up on a blog post by Darron Shall who created a C# host for Flash, wasn’t happy with it and searched for a more cross platform approach. He looked into XulRunner to host the Flash application. I just looked into this approach, but I’m afraid that running XulRunner on the Nokia 770 would be to havy. The runtime is big, and on top of that you get the additional Flash runtime which is something like 1.5 Mb as well. Way to much for creating small apps for the 770.

It would be great if a really small Flash hoster could be created for the Nokia 770. I think Flash is a great platform for creating applications. Maybe someone did already something in this direction? If this is the case, please let us know!

To use groups such that a user in a given group is limited to only seeing bugs in that group, the group name must match the product name?

I recently discovered and reported that packages and binaries from the ARMedslack Linux distribution work more or less out of the box on the Nokia 770. Even the package management tools worked perfectly, and I found this so handy that I decided it was worth a bit more attention. So I have written a small article about my findings, and you can read it here.

As a bonus, I have thrown in instructions on how to set up your Nokia 770 as an NFS client. It’s very easy. Instant storage space!

so I finally got my 770! And from the first second I loved it! It's small, black and has a big screen. WiFi and Bluetooth work like a charm. The first thing I did was: enabling the R&D mode (to get root), installing xterm and dropbear-sshd.

The Nokia 770 is really nice, it boots fast. The UI seems pretty usable, sometimes a little to slow for me (I'm an old Palm user) but since I'm used to PocketPC it's fast :-)

The first thing to test was of course web browsing (since it calls itself an internet tablet). WiFi setup was fast and easy (it found a tone of access points around here (I haven't looked for some time now)), so I could kick it of right away. Browsing is real fun thats clear. Most of the web pages I checked showed nicely.

So Bluetooth, the sad thing is no GUI support. But it works once you have the shell. OBEX, when I first setup my network connections the device asked me for the phone setup (for dial-up and file transfer). File transfer is OBEX, so I fired up sobexsrv on my laptop and told the 770 that it is a phone. And whups I can browse the files on my laptop from my 770 with the built-in file manager, this is awesome! This makes installing applications really easy, just double tap the .deb file and it gets installed (from your laptop). The next step was then to compile sobexsrv for the 770 so I can browse the files on it from my laptop. It of course supports regular push/pull too. In the next weeks I will try to port all my Bluetooth applications to the 770.

Thats it for now. I'll keep writing and porting new applications for my new toy, so keep reading!

so I just did the sunlight test (to see if the display is readable under direct sunlight [I used genuine Californian sun]). In the default brightness setting it is very hard to read anything (images are ok). If you crank up the brightness setting to the maximum setting the text is actually readable. I guess the battery wont last as long in the max setting.

I guess the display passed :-)

I played around with WiFi (802.11) over the weekend. And found that promisc mode is not working on the 770, this means no fun with tcpdump or dsniff (which I spend hours on building). Also the whole monitor mode thing doesn't seem to work right now. When asking on the developer list about this issue, I got told that they are currently working on these things (due to popular demand!), which is nice to hear.

Also changing the MAC address of the device seems to work, its not really a feature that is needed by many people but I happen to need it.

Last week I had a great time to talk about the Nokia 770 and the Maemo Story at MIT, and as usual Nokia 770 evoked a great response. It was also great to meet and discuss with the handheld guys about maemo. This was also my first time to Boston and weather being excellent I enjoyed the city and especially the duck tour ,which is basically a world war II amphibious vehicle which gives a great tour of boston on and off the road (when it plunges into the charles river)

so I started pulling my 770 apart. First I flashed in the developer rootfs, which turned out to be very striped down - so I decided to immediately switch back to standard and add a few things on the way. But first I needed to get the original image back, to do this you have to go here. And by the way, this nice awesome hardware is made in good old Germany!

I started going through the filesystem, a modified stuff like /etc/sudoers to include user ALL = NOPASSWD: /bin/sh so I can just get a root shell, without calling gainroot.

Searching further I found all the images, like the big Nokia logo that you see on startup (/usr/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/hildon/qgn_indi_startup_nokia_logo.png) and the Nokia hands (/usr/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/hildon/qgn_indi_nokia_hands.png). Guess what, of course I replaced them - no big magic. I also found this funny logo - actually its not funny if you get to see it (/usr/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/hildon/qgn_indi_startup_failed.png).


Also all the themes are nicely split up into multiple files, so modifying or creating new themes should be easy (I can't do graphics).

I guess I'll built me a real nice image over the next days. Also I don't know how the licensing is - can modified images based on the original firmware be redistributed?

Finally we got Tapioca VoIP 0.2 released. This release has a lot of improvements compared to 0.1, such as multiple codecs support, a totally rewritten UI and a lot of other cool stuff. But a lot more needs to be done, and we intend to release new versions more frequently. Some features you can expect for the folowing releases are support for Proxy/Registrar, STUN support and Presence. The release notes and instructions on how to install it can be found here.

Screenshots at Tapioca VoIP homepage.

Hope you enjoy it.

I wanted to start writing my first maemo application but instead I ended up porting xtris a very cool Tetris implementation. The package is available here. The nice thing about this game is that it supports multiplayer mode, the foto shows me playing against myself (laptop vs. 770). To play in multiplayer mode you need to start xtris by hand from the console (xterm) like this: xtris x.z.y.a where x.y.z.a is the IP address of the host running xtserv. If you start it via the menu the server is started for you, so your opponent just needs to know your IP and your good to go.

Now I want a second 770 :-)

Nokia released a new version (0.2005.45-8) of their Nokia 770 software image today. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any changelogs around,
so I took the liberty of whipping together a small script that
compares it to the last, and lists files that were changed or added. The list can be found here.
(I have cleaned it up a bit manully; some gconf updates (which where mostly “mtime” differences anyway) and PID files have been removed.)

Next up is an attempt to upgrade my old installation to the latest one. I will hopefully get around to posting an upgrade how-to if I succeed.