That picture up top is myself and Reggie from InternetTabletTalk. The Internet Tablet community owes him quite a bit for that portal. Thanks! And no - we didn't match in black on purpose. See! I wore a shirt with buttons!
What was he thinking when he mentionedthis cool toy on planet gnome? Didn't he know that a few of p.g.o readers can't possibly resist it. Believe me i tried very hard but failed miserably to convince myself that I can't afford it yet. So I placed the order today. I should get it in a week or two. If I get lost in this toy, please send lots of hate mails to Philip, subscribe him to lots of porn websites etc etc.
Seems I'll be flashing the brick with brickOS at some point but I guess in the beginning I'll keep it's 'mind' running on my laptop, controlling it's body over bluetooth.
I just Emailed my favorite press contact with Nokia. My query - I know the third tablet is coming. I want to have a review ready with pictures, videos, and a total power-geek breakdown of the device including use-case scenarios like business use, navigation, entertainment, mobile information retrieval, mobile content creation, and more. I'd sign any embargoed releases and NDAs required. I want to have this review posted simultaneous to the official announcement and release.
Yes, I know. I'm bold for asking but it's my job to do so. There have been so many wonderful comments to the FCC filing, speculation on InternetTabletTalk, and commentary in other blogs. I won't even be able to tell you all if I get one much less what's on it, but I want you to keep talking about it and throwing questions my way for when I do have it in-hand ... even if I have to pre-order it from a retail outlet.
I also have every intention of buying a spare 3rd generation tablet and GIVING IT AWAY.
That's right. Here on TabletBlog, I have a concept for a fun contest and the winner will be decided by votes. I already have a couple judges in line to help choose the finalists. The only thing I will say about it now is that I hope to post the final voting location on InternetTabletTalk.com forums and will only count votes from people listed as "member" or higher (that's 30 posts, people) to make sure the winner is chosen by the active community. If you're not already a member and want to get in on the voting, go over there and start taking part in the conversation. There's still plenty of time as we don't even know when this new tablet is coming.
The contest is not sponsored (yet) but we'll see if I can scrounge up some more prizes either from my personal stash, blogging partners, my budget, or from sponsors. Anyone wishing to contribute to the prize pool should contact sponsorships[a]thoughtfix[.]com.
While not as exciting as last time, the latest N800 firmware is here. Included are some memory card bug fixes, but nothing else is mentioned. Don't forget to back everything up before flashing!
Recently, me being the idiot that I am, I busted my installation of the first release of the 2007 Hacker Edition OS. (The first one with a real fiasco image, anyways). I also managed to corrupt my memory card, so... I got to reflash everything, which gave me the opportunity to try out this new release of the N800 operating system hacked up for the N770.
Aside from having to reinstall all my favorite programs (VNC Viewer and Server, MaemoFTP, OpenSSH, UKMP, Xterm, Links, and various others) I really enjoyed this new rendition of the OS. There is so far one word that sums it up nicely: Clean.
This new release is more like a real operating system than a hack. It now tells me that a own an N770 running the 2007HE, instead of an N800 that has no FM radio and web cam ;)
Some menu icons have been updated to fit the N800's too (RSS reader and some others). Not to mention, for some odd reason, the browser loads faster, and is rendering pages as quickly or more so than before. Not to mention the built-in media player seems much more stable. Not one crash yet.
A big thank you to everyone at Nokia that still cares about us 770 owners!
(PS. Just to let everyone know... RMUG has survived it's first month, and everyone who has read and contributed has my undying appreciation :) )
Only 48h ago I was wondering GNOME Mobile: where are we? I got fast & precious feedback via Earth, Wind & Fire (can’t link to the improvised lunch shared with 6 GNOME+maemo hackers caught in the SMS corridors). Also some thoughts appeared in my laptop screen, surely pushed by the GNOME vivid source code itself.
I [...]
Nokia have just released a new update of the N800 firmware with a fix for a MMC/SD corruption bug. This was discussed quite a bit in the comments to my last N800 post, so I know a lot of people are glad to see it sorted out. As soon as the new kernel source is released, I’ll check it out to see if any of the extra patches from my kernel have been incorporated. It’s definite that the 48MHz bus speed will not be in - Nokia have observed problems with it and TI (the chip manufacturer) don’t speak highly of it either. I’ll continue to offer it as it works fine or me and for others.
This attempts to be a common response to a meta-thread with instances in maemo-users and InternetTabletTalk.
- Sorry for the SDHC bugfix release, but the other option would have been just to wait for Chinook. We thought it was worth going ahead to avoid more hassle to certain SDHC owners doing certain long downloads over the [...]
I should say trying to build instead of building it for maemo. Though libmidgard10 and libapache2-mod-midgard are already installed on my N800. Again, list of dependencies is the key for success.
I changed debian files ( rules and control ), so rules file generates control file correctly when package is built. For example when I build package for maemo a section is replaced with user/libs' and architecture type witharmelinstead ofi386` which is generated when I build package for x86 architecture
Big issue with packages builds is naming convetion, so it's impossible to create correct debian files ( mostly Depends: section ) for every architecture.
Your package might depends on apache2-mpm-prefork, while someone called it just httpd for maemo. This package also includes header files, so you do not have to install apache2-prefork-dev, and also apr binaries, but weird thing is that it doesn't include apr header files.
As maemo packages are built as debian packages, one could also keep any naming convention so apxs2 could stay apxs2 and apr includes could be defined for apr-1.0, and not for apr-1.
MySQL used everywhere on debian distros with version 5.0 is build with version 4.1 for maemo.
Those are issues, one might and can to resolve quite quickly. But the real problem I found with php5-fastcgi package. To build php extension I need header files ( those I can just copy ) and phpize tool. Lack of latter is an issue :)
I need to investigate it more. And for those interested I used these packages:
https://garage.maemo.org/projects/mysqldatabase/
https://garage.maemo.org/projects/apache/
And debian repository:
deb http://maemo-hackers.org/apt bora main
BTW, if you need to install php5-fastcgi in your scratchbox, you might to want to change default httpd port. I changed mine from 80 to 8080. Without it I got `Permission denied' when being logged in as fakeroot and "wanted to bind" to port 80.
I should say trying to build instead of building it for maemo. Though libmidgard10 and libapache2-mod-midgard are already installed on my N800. Again, list of dependencies is the key for success.
I changed debian files ( rules and control ), so rules file generates control file correctly when package is built. For example when I build package for maemo a section is replaced with user/libs' and architecture type witharmelinstead ofi386` which is generated when I build package for x86 architecture
Big issue with packages builds is naming convetion, so it's impossible to create correct debian files ( mostly Depends: section ) for every architecture.
Your package might depends on apache2-mpm-prefork, while someone called it just httpd for maemo. This package also includes header files, so you do not have to install apache2-prefork-dev, and also apr binaries, but weird thing is that it doesn't include apr header files.
As maemo packages are built as debian packages, one could also keep any naming convention so apxs2 could stay apxs2 and apr includes could be defined for apr-1.0, and not for apr-1.
MySQL used everywhere on debian distros with version 5.0 is build with version 4.1 for maemo.
Those are issues, one might and can to resolve quite quickly. But the real problem I found with php5-fastcgi package. To build php extension I need header files ( those I can just copy ) and phpize tool. Lack of latter is an issue :)
I need to investigate it more. And for those interested I used these packages:
https://garage.maemo.org/projects/mysqldatabase/
https://garage.maemo.org/projects/apache/
And debian repository:
deb http://maemo-hackers.org/apt bora main
BTW, if you need to install php5-fastcgi in your scratchbox, you might to want to change default httpd port. I changed mine from 80 to 8080. Without it I got `Permission denied' when being logged in as fakeroot and "wanted to bind" to port 80.
is easy installable via repository, while it's incompatible while installed via file file manager with double click. In such case, package has to have:
Section: user/libs
Does it mean that when I double "click" (doubleknock) on package file I invoke different Application Manager?
It's just today when I thought that phpize is a big issue when I tried to install php5-midgard and midgard-data package on N800. I thought that simplest solution could be the best and just copied all required files ( like phpize, php-config, and few others ) directly to my armel target host.
And now it looks like it's not best solution because php-config should clearly points to extension_dir for example and this is quite weird ( in debian sense ) in php5-fastcgi package. At least this package could provide php-config to save plenty of other's time.
Anyway, at last I finally installed all midgard packages.
Even tried datagard, but this one fails because of lack of pear:
And I wrote simple php script which loads midgard extension via dl and prints midgard version:
It's just today when I thought that phpize is a big issue when I tried to install php5-midgard and midgard-data package on N800. I thought that simplest solution could be the best and just copied all required files ( like phpize, php-config, and few others ) directly to my armel target host.
And now it looks like it's not best solution because php-config should clearly points to extension_dir for example and this is quite weird ( in debian sense ) in php5-fastcgi package. At least this package could provide php-config to save plenty of other's time.
Anyway, at last I finally installed all midgard packages.
Even tried datagard, but this one fails because of lack of pear:
And I wrote simple php script which loads midgard extension via dl and prints midgard version:
To get the most out of this tutorial, watch the video above and then read the text below.
If you want to comment on this tutorial, please post in the comments section at the end. If you have any questions or problems regarding your tablet, please post about them on Internet Tablet Talk's Newbie Forum.
The N800 has 256 megabytes of on-board memory, but you can greatly expand this using memory
As I posted a while back, there was a serious problem with the Nokia N800 and some flash cards. So much so, that I was getting rather frustrated. I managed to get a few SD cards that didn’t seem to be affected by the problem, and I have been using these successfully. However, Nokia have just released an update for the software that fixes the problem. Thank you Nokia!!!!
My problem now is, can anyone tell me is this just a kernel fix, or do I have to reflash my entire N800, thereby losing all the programs I have been installing over the last few months. Also do I just leave it for a while as it seems to be working fine on these cards, or am I tempting fate, not that I believe in fate per se.
The last days I have used my free time to read about cairo and X acceleration. I created some tests to verify cairo performance on N800, because this is the main component for a GtkCanvas, this need be fast, cworth[1] and another cairo guys have helped me a lot in irc channel. I am still working on some tests and making some optimizations to get the best results and very soon I will publish the results.
The problem is that in N800 device the current version of cairo does not have full support for RGB 565 surfaces, and these days I read in the blog[2] from openmoko[3] guys that they have the same problems.
Another great thing is the current performance of EXA acceleration, you can see this on this benchmark[4] posted by cworth[1].
In my recent trip to LA, I was a guest of WOM World. I had to ask myself - what is WOM? WOM stands for Word of Mouth. It's the idea that the consumer's word speaks louder than the word of any marketing campaign. In this Web 2.0 world, it's more true than ever.
The Nokia Internet Tablets did very well in this regard. The community, developers, and consumers were heard by Nokia and software updates, next generation hardware, and programs were built in response to this chatter.
Word of Mouth is good and bad. Sometimes some of the loudest voices scare off consumers and sometimes people are so excited and dedicated (like me) that you wonder if you can trust them. With enough voices speaking, though, the "middle truth" emerges and consumers can make up their own minds.
As Nokia Internet Tablet users, let's keep our WOM loud. If something is great (like the screen resolution and Skype,) tell a friend about it. If something sucks (like the camera or lack of a "sunlight readable" display,) keep the conversation alive and suggest solutions.
p.s.
Am I biased? Heck yes. I think the 770 was fun and the N800 is a vast improvement to it, but also can promise you that I've never received a dime from Nokia. If I did, I'd lose the freedom to post FCC filings, comparisons with other devices, and more. Keeping a relationship with Nokia as a journalist (even as a close friend) still means I have to wait for a lot of my information. That's why you find me groveling to them as I did a few posts back. I can admit bias to the internet tablets just as I can toward Toyota because I love my Yaris - even if i still have several years left to pay for it. In short - my bias is based on experience.
Thanks to a tip from reader makoto13, I see that Amazon.com and Target recently both slashed the prices of the N800 (original MSRP $399) to US $279.99.
Good news for both prospective N800 buyers and those who were still unsure about the third tablet. For those of you who very recently purchased an N800 - check your store policy, receipt, and even credit card agreements to see if there is a price protection agreement. My Bank of America card has one. Yours may too.
Jammie Thomas, 30-year-old single mother of two, has just be fined to pay $220.000 to Capitol Records, Sony, BMG Music Entertainment, Arista Records, Interscope Records, Warner Bros Records and UMG Recordings. She was accused of sharing 24 (twentyfour) songs copyrighted by those majors. This makes about $9.200 for every single song.
Won't comment it, just take your conclusions and remember it when you buy your next music CD...
In my recent trip to LA, I was a guest of WOM World. I had to ask myself - what is WOM? WOM stands for Word of Mouth. It's the idea that the consumer's word speaks louder than the word of any marketing campaign. In this Web 2.0 world, it's more true than ever.
The Nokia Internet Tablets did very well in this regard. The community, developers, and consumers were heard by Nokia and software updates, next generation hardware, and programs were built in response to this chatter.
Word of Mouth is good and bad. Sometimes some of the loudest voices scare off consumers and sometimes people are so excited and dedicated (like me) that you wonder if you can trust them. With enough voices speaking, though, the "middle truth" emerges and consumers can make up their own minds.
As Nokia Internet Tablet users, let's keep our WOM loud. If something is great (like the screen resolution and Skype,) tell a friend about it. If something sucks (like the camera or lack of a "sunlight readable" display,) keep the conversation alive and suggest solutions.
p.s.
Am I biased? Heck yes. I think the 770 was fun and the N800 is a vast improvement to it, but also can promise you that I've never received a dime from Nokia. If I did, I'd lose the freedom to post FCC filings, comparisons with other devices, and more. Keeping a relationship with Nokia as a journalist (even as a close friend) still means I have to wait for a lot of my information. That's why you find me groveling to them as I did a few posts back. I can admit bias to the internet tablets just as I can toward Toyota because I love my Yaris - even if i still have several years left to pay for it. In short - my bias is based on experience.
Thanks to a tip from reader makoto13, I see that Amazon.com and Target recently both slashed the prices of the N800 (original MSRP $399) to US $279.99.
Good news for both prospective N800 buyers and those who were still unsure about the third tablet. For those of you who very recently purchased an N800 - check your store policy, receipt, and even credit card agreements to see if there is a price protection agreement. My Bank of America card has one. Yours may too.
The internal N800 battery is pretty studly, but there are contexts
in which I don't want to have to swap out the battery for a spare.
Have to reboot the machine to do that and if you're trying to run a
program for a long time or continuously, that's not acceptable. Plus
you have to notice that the battery has run low and replace it.
The internal N800 battery is pretty studly, but there are contexts
in which I don't want to have to swap out the battery for a spare.
Have to reboot the machine to do that and if you're trying to run a
program for a long time or continuously, that's not acceptable. Plus
you have to notice that the battery has run low and replace it.
Hi readers! I need your help on a piece of mobile technology about which I know little.
I'll be covering a big event later this month and realize I need to stop using my Exilim EX-S500 for video and actually get a real digital video camera. Hard drive or Flash memory is preferred, but it doesn't need to be high definition as I am only composing video for YouTube. An optical zoom of at least 8x, good macro mode for those screen videos, and anti-shake is greatly preferred. Of course, "the smaller, the better."
Here's the rub: I only have a few hundred bucks to spare for it. I also would have to order it quickly to get it and learn to use it before I go. The beautiful N93i is out since it isn't available in the US.
We intend to release the 0.1 version next Mounth. At this first version Mamona won’t be compatible with Nokia’s ITOS neither have Hildon or Matchbox. However they are on our plans.
Mamona doesn’t have binary compatibility with Maemo yet because we were thinking ahead, and hoping that when we have our first stable release, Maemo would be catching up on us in terms of package and toolchain versions. By taking a look at Chinook Beta, we can notice that Maemo is almost there. So, Maemo and Mamona will have very similar
packages at some point in a not so distant future.
At this first release we will have a Enlightenment window manager with a keyboard and my dream is to release with the Gustavo’s Keyboard but we will try the Matchbox-keyboard and others to see which one fits better.
What am I doing?
I’m in Berlin attending OEDEM 2007. I’ll write about it latter…
We (in maemo team) have received some negative feedback about the quality of the current Application Catalog on maemo.org. Among other things people complained that some install files do not work and they can not install the selected applications at all.
The Application Catalog is pretty much like a wiki page: the community members are inserting the content there, and as the name implied it is only a catalog of links, most of which are pointing to 3rd party pages and repositories outside of the maemo.org domain. As part of the general maemo.org site improvement process we decided to come up with a solution that automatically checks that the links provided in the Catalog are alive and correct.
if the provided .install files are accessible, then fetches the install files and
tries to install the application in a fake ARMEL environment.
It is a work in progress, because the sript still miss the functionality to notify the owners of the applications where problems are found and it was not tested very extensively. Since in bora and before install files can contain only one repository some failures might be caused by the fact that the application depends on some other package which is in a different repository, but it is a good start anyhow.The script will be executed regularly and the owners of the problematic applications will be notified. The result of the latest run can be found here:
If you have applications in the Application Catalog, please take a look and check if your application passed the test or not.
Green background means everything was working fine
White background means that the application was not tested for some reason
Red background means that there were some issues
If you have components in multiple repositories we recommend that you move them to one repository or give very good instructions about required repositories. Give us feedback how we should solve this problem?
To get the most out of this tutorial, please watch the video above and then read the text below. If you have any questions or comments, please click on the "comments" link at the end of the text below.
The N800's screen is rather good: it's big, it's bright, it's sharp, and this makes it very suitable for viewing photos and videos. Its storage capacity is also fairly large, particularly if you
I did my first guest piece on GottaBeMobile.com. Depending on reader reaction and the proliferation of Linux tablets, I may be doing more work with them in the future.
I’m not having much time to work on my personal projects ( pychord by example ) cause I’m having a lot of tasks to do ( and to learn ) on my college and on my new job.
But I’m here to talk about pychord, so let me do it! =)
Timwrotea lot of good suggestions on garage’s foruns. So, I’m working on their ideas now. I need to say “thanks” to Tim cause he gave me a lot of good suggestions to make pychord better. Thank you Tim!
On this last weekend I worked in “Zoom IN/OUT ” feature and change the font of the chord’s screen. I think that pychord is a little better now.
You can get it here, or do a “upgrade” on your device.
There is no such thing as Mango Lassi. There is Lassi and then there is Mango, both very delicious but separate objects and both lose their taste as soon as you combine them. Unfortunately, many Indian/Nepalese restaurants in europe are spreading the wrong message just to simply their task of selling both on the same ignorant (of Indian cuisine) customer. I was already annoyed enough by the Waiter bringing me a Mango Lassi each time I order a Lassi in Nepalese restaurant and now I'll be seeing (maybe also using) a nice free software project by the same name. :(
As my regular readers will be aware, Nokia released a bug fix kernel for the N800 last week that fixes a data corruption bug in the SD/MMC subsystem. They just released the source code for this new kernel build, so I’ve been able to take a look at what’s in it - and despite the official description, there’s actually a lot of new SD/MMC backports in it. The most notable inclusions are two patches that I had in my previous custom kernel - one that adds MMCplus 4bit bus support and another that adds formalised support for high speed modes. This infrastructure patch is not terribly profound when you read the code, but it has the interesting side effect of doing a few more sanity checks which have the effect of introducing delays into the card initialisation sequence that accidentally help some flaky MMC cards to work reliably.
That leaves my patch set down to just two patches - one of which just adds some debug output, so it doesn’t really count. The one remaining patch is the one that enables 48MHz highspeed support. As I’ve mentioned before, the 48MHz mode is not supported by Nokia because they’ve observed problems with it and TI aren’t confident that it really works. So, this patch will never be accepted by Nokia, and I don’t blame them. Nevertheless, it works for me and many other people, so I’ll continue to offer patched kernels here.
In the world we live in today, there are so many different kinds of hardware, software, and whole devices. At the moment, applications are for whatever hardware a developer feels worthy or notable enough to produce a binary for, or sometimes even to take the time to port the entire program to a certain device. This doesn't have to be the problem any more in the Internet Age.
But, of course, "web application" mean you must be connected to the internet, right? Of course not. This is no longer a problem due to the small size and footprint developers have been able to shrink Web and PHP servers down to. (Under a megabyte in the case of Nginx for the N800 and N770, I believe).
If every device had one program, a web server, then every web application created could run on every device. No re-compiling, and the only porting might be changing one or two lines of HTML.
Now, the next problem would be: Who would bother to download all the files, unpack them, then place them in some hidden directory on their device? No one ;)
But, this is a simple one.
+ A developer could simply package his files into a tarred or zipped file. + Then, the end user could download that and open to see a nice little folder in it called ExampleApp. + In this folder would be a file named install.php. + The user clicks on it.
And presto! A graphical installer could place the correct files in the correct directories and install anything that need to be installed. (The kind of installer I'm talking about would be exactly like the Fusion News installer, which, by the way, is one of the cleanest and best apps ever.)
In order for this to be so convenient, though, the whole device would have to be encompassed by this local web server that has been installed. No problem at all, instead of simply having one directory controlled by the server (/usr/var/www or whatever else) simple have root (/) or C (C:\) or whatever it might be covered by the server.
This general idea needs to go forward in order for devices to be compatible. Because hardware makers will never settle on one standard, and neither will software developers choose one OS. But, the Web is for everyone and everything.
So...
When you (a brilliant and genius developer) want to create a new application, don't limit it to one device, write it for the world ;)
If there are some experienced Mac users on my readers, I would appreciate help how to get full resolution HD out from iMovie. It only seems to allow output that resolution in Quicktime format which is pretty much incompatible with everything. I would need to get the video in a format out from iMovie that I could then convert in Linux into whatever format I like. Any experience/advice on that? I would prefer to use iMovie rather than sticking alltogether with mencoder from command line as I would like to do some basic editing and I have not seen any easier way than iMovie.
After a hard time working for MicroB development we're ready to announce Greasemonkey (GM) extension. Allows you to customize the way a webpage displays using small bits of JavaScript. Hundreds of scripts, for a wide variety of poular sites, are already available at http://userscripts.org.
We are currently recruiting Senior Software Tools Developer at our facility in Helsinki, Finland. As a key member of our development platform team, you will help provide SDKs, tools, documents and services for our fast growing, Linux-based maemo community. Your expertise will be crucial in creating new software components and tools. To perform your tasks effectively, you will work together with open source developers and do your utmost to stay fully up-to-date with software development issues.
To join our talented team, you have at least three years of software development experience. This is combined with a good working knowledge of C development on the Linux platform. We also value your detailed understanding of Linux OS as well as various software development tools and SDKs. In addition to this, you are familiar with all aspects of open source software, from communities to licenses. It will also help your application stand out if you have any ARM based development skills, such as a good grasp of QEMU and cross-compilers or embedded device debugging and profiling. Any expertise you have with programming languages like Java, C++, Python, and C# is also much appreciated. Ideally, you have already contributed to an open source project and have a background in Debian package management, build systems and system integration. On a more personal level, you have the ability to see the big picture and communicate it effectively to your peers. Besides being a talented problem solver, you are continuously looking to improve quality. If you want to develop your career with the best in the business, apply today.
Find out yourself by reading the very recently publishedmaemo 4 Quick Start Guide! This document strives to give an overall picture of the maemo platform to application developers in about 30 pages. Feedback is very welcome, drop a line at documentation@maemo.org or post a comment here.
I have this nice script running every night to collect all unique User-Agent (aka. the name of the web browser) strings
that contain interesting keywords one of them is arm. So today I
checked the output of this script and I found the new Nokia tablet. The thing
to look for is RX-44 since this is the new device code (see full analysis of ljprx 44).
Also this seems to be some kind of transition firmware since it says RX-34 and R-X44. Also the OSSO part is newly added part of the User-Agent string. I have 3 different
User-Agent strings containing OSSO.
Of course this could also be the new Maemo 4.0 build running on a N800.
Many apologies to my readers for being late to the party on this announcement:
SAN BRUNO, CA October 10 , 2007 – Devicescape Software announced today that it is working with Nokia, the world’s largest mobile device maker, to make its industry leading software available on selected Wi-Fi enabled Nokia devices. The Devicescape Connect software, now available via the Nokia Download! application in the United Kingdom and the United States and globally in the Tableteer folder, makes Wi-Fi access effortless for consumers at home or on the go.
That's the first paragraph of a press release. The general summary is that Devicescape is working with Nokia to continue to enhance their service on Nseries devices, including the N800.
Devicescape simplifies the login and authentication procedures on wireless networks - especially municipal and commercial networks. I have been using Devicescape for a while to track my connections, but do not currently use any subscription based networks. I think I may try this with T-Mobile Hotspots for a month and see how it works at a dozen or so Starbucks locations. For those of you who subscribe to commercial or municipal WiFi, give Devicescape a shot. It may save you a couple minutes each time you connect, thus making "instant internet" more accessible.
Devicescape is installable from the Tableteer site or direct from Devicescape.
The cat is out of the bag. Next week, I will be reporting live from the Web 2.0 Summit. I'll be meeting with other media, rubbing elbows with key players in the "User Built Internet" space, and attending attending some functions. Also, I will spend yet more time thanking WOM World for making this possible for me.
I was keeping quiet about this because there may or may not be some exciting news coming out of it. I have confirmation of absolutely nothing, but Jonathan Greene has the same speculations I do.
In either event, I will be microblogging this live using Jaiku, so make sure to watch my Jaiku channel especially on Wednesday, Oct 17 when I expect to have the most to post. That's where you'll get up-to-the-minute news between larger posts here.
Thanks to all the readers who suggested camcorders. I actually ended up buying a Canon Powershot S5 IS camera. Eight megapixels, image stabilization, and 12x optical zoom goodness, plus it does all the movie modes I want. In addition to microblogging with Jaiku, I am also considering setting up a photo stream for the event. Do my readers have a preference between Photobucket, Flickr or other photo stream sites?
Stefan notes some intrigue regarding next week’s Web 2 Summit in San Franciso and highlights Nokia’s Platinum Sponsorship of the event as well as the following …
“Nokia will also be hosting a stylish party in the adjacent Twin Peaks room, which will showcase their next generation of Web 2.0 offerings, launched earlier that afternoon.”[IntoMobile]
While I can’t say for sure at this stage, my money is on the new tablet and possibly some new integrated services from the Ovi Ecosystem. I’m guessing that since the FCC information spotted by Thoughtfix contained GPS and we believe WiMax as well as a slider keyboard that this will be the official preview of the device. It’s just prior to the FCC’s required confidentiality ends and seems like the perfect moment to announce things on their terms rather than let the FCC site reveal their plans.
smart2go is new: the software turns mobile computers, smartphones and PDAs into local mapping and routing engines with a navigation option, providing worldwide mapping free of charge. In so doing, the unique hybrid solution combines the advantages of on-board and off-board navigation. Maps and location-aware content only need to be loaded once - they are then always available on the client. As smart2go will carry the application name “Nokia Maps” across many future Nokia devices, it will also be available for a diversity of other operating systems such as Windows Mobile 5 and Linux, in the future. [Nokia PR]
I’ll actually be at the Web 2 Summit as well as this party so you can count on some (as close to) live coverage of things as they go down. I’ll definitely be using Jaiku and will try to moblog snippets from the conference and party. It may be hard to reply in real time, but I will post as much as I can before settling into a more official post here. My N95 will be snapping pics and uploading to my photostream on Flickr. I am also sorting out ways to possibly stream some video as well if possible. It looks like I will have full 3G coverage - not sure about inside the venue though and I won’t know until there whether there will be accessible WiFi access. Stay Tuned!
here is a version of xkbd-bthid (my Bluetooth HID-Keyboard software)
that works on the Nokia N800 (Maemo 3.2). I've finally found the time to fix it, also the number of users
writing me emails to report that it doesn't work grew quite large in the last weeks.
xkbd-bthid still only supports the BOOT protocol which basically means no Windows and no MacOS X support.
Linux is supported if you add -B to the hidd command line. Ubuntu users can do this in
/etc/default/bluetooth.
Support for the REPORT protocol will defently come to xkbd-bthid.
Also please read the the package information before installing. Since you have to perform one small step
manually before xkbd-bthid works. This is setting setuid to the wrapper executable. This is because
dpkg on Maemo still doesn't do setuid.
To get the most out of this tutorial, please watch the video above and then read the text below. If you have any questions or comments, please click on the "comments" link at the end of the text below.
Today's tutorial on the Internet Tablet School is a very special one, as it was devised and filmed by a special guest video-maker, Thoughtfix. He's more famous for his site TabletBlog.com, which
I finally manged to go through the maintenance pain and migrated my blog to a completely new system and design. I put effort into making sure that all links & serivces work like they did but in some corner cases the RSS feed might stop working for you. If that happens and you’re still interested in reading, please re-subscribe.
I'd also like to appologize to all people who commented and put their opinions on my blog in the past despite the commenting system being completely bolox. It’s finally fixed now and works as expected.
Sorry for the inconviences. More interesting service to follow.
Some press people are wonderful. I've talked to a good number of them (you know who you are) and they are very helpful to me. Some are terrible - like the ones who drafted this press release for Island Def Jam and mSpot.
Sure - I like the fact that Nokia is working with others to promote their MOSH service, but the PR people on the other side shouldn't have been so casual in saying that Nokia will be showcasing their "new Nokia N810 Internet Tablet" on October 23. Of course, they don't say they'll be "launching" or "announcing" the device at that time, so that will still likely happen sooner. Hope they don't get sued for such an "oops."
There it is, dear readers. Absolute confirmation that the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet will be here by the end of the month. Excited?
I tried to download the N810 manual from nodevice.com but it was mistakenly mislabeled. The actual manual they had was for the old Nokia 810 carphone kit. I contacted them about it and very quickly they contacted me back, thanking me for the correction, and offering to hunt it down and provide it when it arrives. It was nice of them to own up to the mistake and I like their attitude.
OH! Let me not forget that I did a guest piece for NeonCherry's "Tablet School" video blog! She is doing quite well in making HOWTOs for tablet beginners. My contribution was a quick video HOWTO on getting all your Google Reader subscriptions into your N800 RSS reader. Watch Tablet School!
During these days I found this patch[1] from Dan Amelang about a Xorg optimization to work with pixbuf composite (888 over 565). This patch makes Xorg about 3x faster. I made a little change in the patch for optimization of another function too.
I've exchanged some e-mails with Dan, and apparently this patch has a problem with small images but I didn't find this problem yet. If someone would like to try this patch you can install the package[2] above and if you get the bug, please report to me. But be careful because this patch is an experimental code and can freeze your X server.
You can verify the performance with this example code[3].
I think all the rumors are collected and we're all on the edges of our seats, awaiting the announcements over the next several weeks. Now I'm going to step back from my excitement, pretend I am Nokia, and take a look at what we have and what we want. Again - This is me PRETENDING I am Nokia, so it's all in the first person.
Sure - I like the fact that Nokia is working with others to promote their MOSH service, but the PR people on the other side shouldn’t have been so casual in saying that Nokia will be showcasing their “new Nokia N810 Internet Tablet” on October 23. Of course, they don’t say they’ll be “launching” or “announcing” the device at that time, so that will still likely happen sooner. Hope they don’t get sued for such an “oops.”
[Tabletblog]
The Gutsy release is coming closer and this will be the final draft version of the Guide.
New
+ updated the 'Setting up the Development Environment and Creating Images' section with info on fsets, 'Speeding Up Image-Creator by using a local mirror server' and 'Test the target image UI on the Workstation'
+ added 'Porting Python Applications to Ubuntu Mobile' section
+ added 'Porting C Applications to Ubuntu Mobile'
+ added package dependency information onto 'Using Glade and Python to create an Application for Ubuntu Mobile'
Also there is now a 'ToDo' documentation list on the working area Any areas missing in the UME documentation should be added to this list.
For some reason, I am unable to connect the mindstorm IDE to communicate with the mindstorm using bluetooth so I use USB for downloading my programs to NXT. Didn't get a lot of time to play with it but the first thing I would want to build is a rover that move in a straight line but turns left (or right) if something comes in front of it (already done) unless if it's a red ball in front of it and pick it up instead and keep going.
gadgetbag Originally uploaded by thoughtfixThis is what I am taking to Web2Summit. That's right - four keyboardless touchscreen slate devices in there.
Click on the image to go over to Flickr to see the mouseover notes on all the devices.
If you are interested to see Kate flying Cirrus in Palo Alto, I uploaded one HD video to our server. I may edit it a bit further such as cut more frames out from the place where I am mispointing the camera. If you want to have a look, you need to have either Quicktime or mplayer (on Linux mplayer obviously). The original video was taken at full hd 1920×1080 with a Sony HD videocamera and edited on iMovie 08 on Mac, but I downconverted this to 720p (so it is playable on even lower spec computers). There is plenty of details on the video visible even if it is medium resolution high def and not full hd.
Use the -monitoraspect -parameter on your mplayer if the image looks odd (to define the aspect ratio of your monitor). The aspect ratio is supposed to be 16:9 and if it is scaled to fill a 4:3 monitor, it will certainly look odd. Black bars on top and bottom on 4:3 screens is what you should see. On 16:10 monitor if stretched to full screen the aspect ratio is not 100% correct, there should be small black bars on top and bottom, use on such monitor -monitoraspect 16:10.
I am headed out the door, but wanted to make a quick post in response to some constructive criticism I got in my last post about my geek bag:
kkpaul said...
man, you´re so cool...
I don´t know why but I am really not interested in your geek-show-off...
In the beginning I liked all your "tutorials" and stuff like comparisons you did between the N770 and N800... This was stuff that matters!
But you start to post too post too much show-off stuff which is of no real interest for others! The same with you car-sho-off with all your cool devices like the iPod touch, your 2 internet tablets and so on...
So, do not take this as an personal attack, but to "improve" your next posts please...
kkpaul is right. I posted this because some people asked what I am bringing. It's not a show-off type thing - just a catalog of what I will use to travel, blog the event and to interact with others. The 770 is there because so few people outside the early adopters are aware of it and they are curious about the tablet roots.
Many of the showy posts are "proof of concept" experiments to bring more attention to the abilities of this platform. They get popular with people outside my normal reader base. Hopefully those people get pulled in to know more about these. That's a good thing.
Once the news settles down on the next tablet, I promise to get back to HOWTO and reviews. I realize I HAVE strayed from my roots and look forward to getting back to that. In the meantime, hope you are following Neon Cherry's "Tablet School" blog for tips on getting the most out of your tablet.
Bear with me until the next tablet is launched - then I'll go back to real world use-case scenarios.
Piotras requested a php package with phpize and php-config, so I decided to change the packaging and add a -dev package. After a couple of tries I also added -pear and -cli package. I also upgraded to newest upstream (5.2.4) and the fastcgi-binary had changed name, so I needed to upgrade the packages once more. If you happened to hit this gap, upgrade the packages to get it working.
Had some spare time, so I upgraded the nginx package to newest upstream (0.5.32) too. Both packages available as .install files: nginx and php5.
A blog post suggested that mh-shot-tool should have the ability to snap timed screenshots. Trying not to let the audience down, I added a “re-grab with <n> second delay” functionality. Just refresh the catalogues and check for updates. Install file available as usual.
Finally! I found a person who claims that Mango Lassi and Milk-shake taste different to him: Daf. So I see no choice but to change my claim to:
Mango-Lassi is the name of a typical 'western' drink that consists of two extremely delicious items: Lassi and Mango. However, the drink is completely unknown to people who are born and raised in a particular town in the south-eastern part of Sindh which is famous for it's production of Mangoes and a particular Lassi shop all around Pakistan. IMHO, those people should not be blamed for their ignorance since they are quite far from the western world to know about such new inventions.
It looks like tomorrow will be quite exciting. I will let you all know as soon as I do.
Reggie from InternetTabletTalk and Jonathan from Atmaspheric Endeavors are here and we spent most of the evening talking, eating, wandering, etc.
I have a mass of inbound pictures to post, but they're only for travel and not for tech. Tech is tomorrow. That's why these photos are going to Picasa and not flickr.
To get the most out of this tutorial, please watch the video above and then read the text below. If you have any questions or comments, please click on the "comments" link at the end of the text below.
If you want to type text on the Nokia N800, the default option is a small on-screen keyboard designed for use with the stylus. Alternatively, you can press the direction pad's button (the "
Ari has some more gory details about what’s new and cool. From the toolkit point of view one thing worth mentioning is that we’re now running the full gtk-2.10 stack in Chinook (the OS release powering the n810). Now, there are two things to that:
The bad thing is that due to the consolidation efforts the API compatibility is broken. Let me stress that again: if your application uses UI, it won’t run at all on Chinook without (often trivial) modifications. We have documents and tools to assist you in porting the applications. So go ahead, download Chinook beta and update your app — there is a lot of cool stuff in maemo garage that we need to make run on Chinook also. You can nag us on the IRC channel or mailing lists for help on specific issues. We’ll help.
The good thing is that we’re now very much closer to the gtk upstream and you can expect the toolkit stack to behave in a much more sane and predictable way. We’ll also now be able to actually track the API stability more closely.
As Ari also mentioned, Chinook is going to be available for n800 also. While it’s common for companies to provide firmware/bugfix updates for legacy hardware, it’s pretty rare to get a full new OS release + new features for free. I'm glad we did it since… well… it’s exactly the right thing to do!
So we fooled you! I bet you expected a new Internet Tablet in January but we worked overtime and will get it ready earlier! It has been fun to watch how things have leaked out and everybody knew about it already before the launch ;-) It's been fun to make it, too.
So what is Nokia N810? From the hardware point of view, the basic engine is the same as in N800. But we added GPS and a nice sliding keyboard. The on-screen kb works, too, of course. And it is a bit smaller than N800.
From the maemo based software point of view, a lot of new stuff. On the top of my list:
UI improvements. Looks and feels better. Eye candy, functional improvements
new browser
faster updated Flash 9
more multimedia formats supported
improved finger usage
nice set of 3rd party apps and services
So full multimedia on the move
the best browser on any portable device!
instant messaging
VoIP
music and videos
GPS with maps and downloadable voice guided navigation
WiFi + Cellular (through bt enabled phones)
And, you can update your N800 to run the new maemo based OS2008, too!
As others have alread commented, the new tablet is now out. But I’m a software guy, so I’ll talk about the software it runs and let others dissect the hardware.
As Michael says we had to break the API to unfuck cleanup the mess that was our stack until now. This sucks, but I think the benefits are worth it: we now use a slightly modified (but ABI compatible, unlike before) GTK+ 2.10.12, the most egregious crack is gone from Hildon, you have cairo, which is used to render almost all the text you see on the device (but use it with moderation please, it’s not a speed demon yet :)), the theming infrastructure is greatly improved, etc.
The differences in our GTK+ are documented for a change, and there’s an on-going effort to provide a coherent start page for the platform at live.gnome.org/Hildon. Now we need the validation of the community, so please port your apps and write new and excellent free software for Hildon.
New hardware features: GPS, sliding keyboard and a 400MHz CPU (specs. from Engadget). The device is a little smaller then the N800 (which I think is nice).
The software is called OS2008 (who would have guessed?). They finally kicked out Opera and use a Gecko-based
browser (see my older blog entry).
Another interesting thing for N800 owners is the fact the Nokia announced a OS2008 version for the N800.
This means people who don't like to buy a new device will be able to get all the new eye candy for free.
This basically is possible because the N800 and N810 hardware is very similar.
I'm really looking forward to the N810. For me as a Linux (shell) hacker a hardware keyboard will be extremely
interesting. The N810 is supposed to by sold starting mid November.
N810 image view, but you can also see the new task navigator, and a much better theme
This morning I saw the pictures of the brand new Nokia Internet Tablet on engadget. I was quite happy with the industrial design. It looks so much better than the N800 and it's ...
The next revision of the internet tablet from Nokia, the N810 looks like one sexy beast. I certainly hope they manage to get this out into retail outlets quick, seeing as how Nokia can’t manage to sell me things online. I did actually consider for a while if my disgust should extend to the Linux devices as well, but I don’t think I have to do that. After all, selling something like a laptop is “much different than selling an unlocked phone” according to NokiaUSA. I wonder if selling an internet tablet is more like selling a phone or like selling a laptop? I bet that discussion could get pretty meta pretty quickly. Doesn’t matter though, I want me an N810, I just know where I’m definitely NOT going to try getting it from.
One of my main concerns is that the dpad seems to be on the slider and just the back and home buttons are on the side when the slider is collapsed. The way I have opera on my N800 configured I use the dpad a lot. Just easier to activate links on pages with small type and close spacing. I’m concerned about how that might work out with the pad on the inside. Still looks like a minor annoyance when compared to a well positioned camera, full keyboard, and 2gig of memory. Oh baby. I’m not sure I would say it makes the iPhone look 5 years old though. Seeing as how it lacks a, you know, phone. Kinda essential feature they keep leaving out on these things. I bet all the folks at the NRC in Palo Alto have a lot to say about that, maybe someone should ask them what they think. Hmm, maybe?
The new NSeries Internet Tablet N810 saw the light today at around 8 pm (EEST). I'm really proud and happy of this product, we spent a lot of work on it to make it happen and... hey we made it! :DIt sports a lot of features but I won't list them here since you can find them in the official press release.What I want to emphasize here is the incredible human capital that is behind the creation and
There is so much to read about the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet (text, pictures, Flash, maemo announcement). Sorry for throwing another blog post, although this one is targeted to developers only.
Today a third Nokia Internet Tablet was unveiled. It goes a step further/higher in the Nokia & Nseries channels. Expect more people to know [...]
You heard it, the new N810 internet tablet is there, and together will come a new OS for both N800 & N810, based on Chinook beta SDK.
On the UI toolkit side, we now proudly ship gtk-2.10, a clean stable hildon API, and a much improved theme framework. The fork of gtk-2.6, experimental code and historical names are now gone!
This colossal tedious work has been done by fer, mdk, tko, and xan
As you may have heard, Nokia recently announced their latest Internet Tablet model, the N810.
To put things briefly, the N810 is NOT a next generation tablet, but a variation on the current N800 tablet. It's a same-generation alternative model.
The N800 and N810 will be receiving equal software support from Nokia and other software makers because in computing terms they're exactly the same
I am in bed but cannot put the N810 down. I can get used to the keyboard quick.
Two hours ago, I was dropped off at the hotel holding the summit, six blocks from my hotel. San Francisco looks very different at night and I realized I was going the wrong way. no idea which way the right way was. The N810 GPS saved me and walked me to my destination.
Less than 24 hours old and it already rescued me from a cab ride. Tall buildings made satellite signals spotty, but I found my way.
Next Tuesday at 6 pm Arizona time, I will have a fully interactive live video on ustream.tv and will answer all the questions you have left by then.
Nokia just announced the brand new internet tablet called N810. It runs our latest software release.
Hildon Desktop was updated in the latest OS release with a major rewrite. It means for developers API change for Home, Task Navigator and status bar applets but also shows up pretty obviously. Now the desktop supports real transparency/translucency (X composite is enabled now), applets are movable on Home, everything looks nicer than before. This version has the coolest looking desktop ever made for Internet tablets. The old N800 version looks quite boring as comparison. The default theme is now also pretty much different than it used to be - it was previously full of things, now it is simplified.
The feel of N810 indeed is a lot more robust than the feel of N800 or 770, it now compares to e.g. to the latest communicator model, this certainly does not feel like a plastic toy. Yet despite of the added robustness, the device is a bit thinner than N800. The styling of the case to me looks a lot better than the earlier models (IMHO).
I can not take pictures by myself currently because I borrowed my device recently to Mohammad and currently I have unfortunately no N810 protos in use, so please look at the posts of other authors on the planet.maemo.org to see pictures.
Control Panel is more maintainable after a full rewrite;
Hildon Desktop uses indirect rendering to take advantage of alpha masks from the themes, has a new plugin system (with optional Python support) and brings an improved task launching and switching experience.
From my “user experience” with this device, I think the keyboard improves a lot the messaging and web browsing experience, the GPS is an excelent addition and the general UI polishing brings a smoother interaction with the device.
Last but not least, this is a device full of hacking possibilities! Yay!
"The call is addressed not only to open source programmers, but also to designers, documentation writers, community supporters, maemo evangelists, bloggers…"
I have a stack of photos, a couple videos, more comments, and more event details prepared. I am just stuck on verizon evdo so don't have the bandwidth.
I will be home by 7 AZ tme so will ramp up the volume then. Then I need sleep.
Post composed entirely on the N810 Internet Tablet.
My blog has been rather quiet for the last few months,
but I'm still working on maemo-software. This is my latest
project.
There's a new media
center frontend
for mplayer
appearing
on the horizon, ready for release in November. So let me
tell you some more.
I like controlling tablet applications with my fingers
instead of the stylus,
so the media center (and eventually my other project, the
Obscura
Photo Manager)
will feature a purely finger-driven interface with those
helpful bells and whistles such as big buttons, responsive
UI, kinetic scrolling, etc.
Oh, and I'm also merging in some code from my Obscura Photo
Manager project
for image viewing, enhanced with kinetic image scrolling.
I know that many critics of kinetic (or organic) scrolling
call it just some
other iPhone-like useless eye-candy, but I have to disagree.
Kinetic scrolling did
appear long before the iPhone and it really helps dealing
with handling large
lists of items (such as your music albums or video clips) on
limited screen
estate. Now that I'm using it daily in my media center on
the N800, I don't
wanna miss it anymore. Well, I can't deny that it's
eye-candy, too! :)
I will post screenshots soon, but for the time being, you'll
have to live with
these buzzwords: mplayer (meaning a wide range of supported
audio and video formats),
responsive finger-driven UI, GTK+, Python, theming, plugin
architecture for adding new
viewers (think of FM-radio, YouTube, ...), kinetic
scrolling, thumbnails.
I am proud to announce that there finally are Maemo Music Player Clientpackages built for the N770 (OS2006). It is thanks to Christopher Klein, who did the required code changes and the rebuild, that my inbox will be delivered from requests about this apparently important missing piece.
IMG_0430.JPG Originally uploaded by thoughtfixUnsorted and untagged so far, but all the pictures I took on my Canon Powershot S5 are now on Flickr. Coming soon - yet more pictures from another camera.
>250 people have applied to the N810 maemo device program in the first 24h. Read the announcement if you want to enroll. Don’t post your proposals as comments, don’t send emails. Apply through your maemo profile just as it is explained in the annoucement. The deadline is November 4th. We have 500 discount codes, so [...]
IMG_0335.JPG Originally uploaded by thoughtfixPardon my finger smudges, but here's an example of the N810 on the streets of San Francisco in direct sunlight. I will keep going through my Flickr photos for some gems like this to post.
So I finally got round to building a package for the Maemo (bora) build of Hercules, and setting up a Debian repository for it and future builds of other stuff for Maemo. You can add the repository by clicking here, and then find Hercules under user/Emulators in Application manager. Or if you prefer you can just download the package here. Since this is my first attempt at building a Debian package any feedback would be much appreciated.
Disclaimer: This is provided as-is, without any warranty of any kind, and don’t blame me if this bricks your device or you find yourself addicted to vintage IBM mainframe operating systems.
Everyone asks about hardware easter eggs. The 770 has a microphone and the N800 has an FM tuner. Does the N810 have any secret hardware? LinuxDevices seems to have a tidbit not reported elsewhere - an FM Transmitter. I checked with them and they sourced a product manager in a phone interview. InternetTabletTalk users, of course, already discussed this. I keep thinking of my discussion with the Nokia designers and how the switch from SD to MiniSD was an "internal space" issue, so am hesitant to think there will be any extra hardware in there. Time will tell.
On a final note: Deliverator was present for my live video webcast on ustream.tv and posted his notes on the experience. Thank you, Deliverator! Next live web feed: Tuesday, October 23 at 5 PM Arizona (Pacific) time.
Today I've finished the port of abiword[1] to new maemo SDK. In this screenshot you can see it running on scratchbox. With this new SDK is much more simple to port the currents GTK applications as the changes in maemo_app_view make this more similar and you do not need create "workarounds" :).
If you want port your application, in maemo.org[2] you can find a lot of documents to help in this task, this doc[3] is very helpful.
I have been working on this both before and since I got an N810 in my hands. I'm collecting a FAQ and will be writing some articles. Some of the FAQ is complete. Some needs more work. The articles are all forthcoming when I have time.
Most of “my” applications are now chinook ready, at least in the svn. However, I prefer to keep them compatible with mistral and bora, so I need to do little quirks. Let’s investigate osso-xterm’s modifications for example.
What was previously known as hildon-libs, is now hildon-1, so we need to tell configure.ac about this. Before the change, I had:
Now, as we need to also check for hildon-1, and due to the fact that we need to know it in source as the include paths have changed, it goes like this:
#ifdef HAVE_CONFIG_H
# include <config.h>
#endif
#if HILDON == 1
# include <hildon/hildon-window.h>
#else
# include <hildon-widgets/hildon-window.h>
#endif
There are also some real changes, but with this I get to compile stuff and get warnings/errors for the other stuff that has changed. Those I’ve, again, separated with #if HILDON == 1.
For projects that don’t use autotools, I use this kind of stuff:
Edit: thanks to Loïc for pointing out, the AC_SUBSTs aren’t actually needed, PKG_CHECK_MODULES already does that. You may omit them and it will still work.
As you know by now I was lucky to be invited to the N810 launch last week and additionally have one to play with and test prior to the official launch in a few weeks time.
The N800 comes with a package called docpurge that deletes files which for most users are just cruft. I end up installing some packages that install stuff I actually want in places like /usr/share/doc. I want to keep them around, but I also don’t want them sucking up core memory either. Fortunately the script that cleans up the files is just a shell script that gets called by the package manager, its located at /usr/sbin/docpurge. I modified mine to check if the internal MMC card is present, and if so copy the files from /usr/share/doc out to the card before removing them. Good enough for what I want.
Jordi Mas and Guillem Jover have been writing recently in the maemo-developers list about the limitations for localization (L10n) in the maemo platform. They are two of my preferred local heroes and they know well what is to be a user of an unsupported language. Being also a Catalan speaker myself, I don’t need to [...]
Despite the fact that the maemo sdk “installer script” is the “preferred” way of installing scratchbox and the roostraps, I have never used it. I prefer to have my dpkg aware of the scratchbox. What I do instead, is grab the scratchbox packages with apt and download the rootstraps manually. These instructions are for debian/ubuntu — on other distros/platforms you’re on your own, sorry.
Clutter is a new cool toolkit (kind of, quite low level though, there is currently not even button widget implemented, to make button, you have to create your own) for creating appealing user interfaces with full utilization of the GPU. The Clutter demos found from clutter project svn look cool, but I decided to create a more basic example for people to get started. I made it on purpose with C++ (Clutter can be commanded from C++ also with no problem). If you are not yet familiar with Clutter, please go to the project home page here. Clutter is available obviously for Linux and apparently also MacOSX port may be coming (there is a bug in clutter bugzilla about it). Anyway, here is the hello world example written in C++ which creates two labels and rotates the another label.
I'm very pleased to be able to announce the initial version of "mediaserv", an on-demand transcoding server for videos, targetting the Nokia Internet Tablets.
What's that mean? Well, you don't have to worry about transcoding your video collection in advance: you can just select the video from a web page and get it streamed to your 770, N800 or N810. It's a bit like Orb, apparently, but doesn't require you to sign-up to a third-party website and works on non-Windows platforms.
Even better, it provides RSS feeds which can be used by Nokia's beta Video Center allowing you easy access to files as they are added to your collection.
No fancy web page for it yet, but the tarball for Linux/Unix and Mac OS X (probably) machines is here: mediaserv-0.01.tar.gz (20KB).
As I just posted on Jaiku, Mauku has been updated for the N810!
This is truly a killer app for anyone who’s active on Jaiku and something I would strongly recommend you check out. Since my iniatial post on Mauku, it has advanced quite a bit and offers, icon support, individual thread updating and kinetic scrolling among other niceties!
Many people recently purchased N800 internet tablets after the price drop and they're asking if the N810 is going to take over that space. The simple answer is no - The N800 and N810 will be sold and developed side-by-side. This article is for those interested in internet tablets and wonder which is "better." Again - I will post the disclaimer that I am using a pre-release N810 so some details will be wrong, but I will do my best to avoid specifics and focus on what is known hardware and software.
10 000 miles Originally uploaded by thoughtfixMy little Yaris rolled 10,000 miles yesterday. Just in time for my scheduled oil change and free annual detailing. I dropped it off two hours ago and have already checked Email, read my feeds, shot the footage for the N810 giveaway contest, chatted some, and wrote this post. The keyboard and sunlight readable display make a huge difference in mobile blogging. Don't forget the live Q/A tonight!
Greasemonkey is a powerful Mozilla Firefox extension that can be used to customize web page content, layout and functionality, fix rendering bugs, combine data from multiple web pages, and numerous other purposes. This is done using JavaScript.
I’d love to have local copies of posts in wordpress on the tablet for offline composition and sync back to the cloud… I recall seeing both sqlite and Wordpress as possible downloads on the N800, but was never successful at getting things to install properly. Looks like this might not be so impossible after all.
The tablet works great when you leave your home or office connection and automatically switches over to your cellphone so you can stay connected. If you’ve set the connection preferences to auto-connect on any connection this “just happens…” though is not the default setting.
What I’d really like to see is a way for the cell connection to switch back to wifi when I walk into a known area so I maintain the best connection at all times. Ideally this would have preferences to let the user confirm they in fact wanted this to occur and even on which networks. This would let you stay on 3G if you wanted or prevent you from auto-switchng to open public networks (default, linksys, netgear etc) you might have added.
I know Devicescape and Boingo can help aggregate your wifi connections, but currently they do not work with your cell setup. The iPhone auto-switches back and forth between cell and wifi since it only supports EDGE and this gives the user a better sense of speed. Our Internet Tablets offer considerably more potential and should have this feature as well.
I normally don't do articles on phones. There are PLENTY of other good bloggers (Darla, Ricky, and others - I am talking to you) who have that honor. However, the N810's Web 2.0 focus has led me to explore one a bit here. Actually, it was several Nokia employees at the Web2Summit who gave me a hard time for wielding my Motorola Q too. I was invited to use an N95 to capture the event and experiment.
Pablo with the N810 Originally uploaded by thoughtfixIntroducing TabletBlog Turbo Edition. I am generating way too much content to do full editorials and analysis of all, so I am making some into fast fun posts. These will be short videos, photos, or other minor updates. Here are some people at a coffee shop having fun with the N810.
About a dozen people played with it and three agreed to short interviews. Here they are.
Do people want more of these type videos? I am trying to broaden perception of this. One young lady (Hunter) said she would never use it because her eyes are bad and it's just way too small. Another man (Wayne) said he loves it simply to look at pictures.
A friend of mine (Jyrki Kasvi) invited me to Facebook and I discovered that it is very interesting networking service that I can even access on my Internet tablet anywhere (because Nokia Internet tablets can use phone as a modem, the connectivity is available even where there is no WLAN access). I wasn’t really into social networking until I got into this service. The mobility of Internet tablet allows me to set mood, status etc. anywhere which brings a new meaning to it. The mobility creates the services like facebook make more sense - you don’t need to spend your time looking at computer at home, but you can be outdoors having fun with friends and still be online. I think that is pretty cool.
Here is my N810 running facebook and showing my profile:
Exciting news for Internet Tablet users this am! The email client, widely regarded as the weakest link will soon get a complete overhaul and be replaced by the long awaited Modest project.
- Modest (open source and based on the Tinymail framework) is going to substitute the current email client that is still being shipped in OS2008. The sources are out there and being refreshed regularly but compile them is not easy at this point.
- We are going to make releases under development through one-click install for public testing and feedback, as we did with the Mozilla based browser and SIP features. The first release will come at the same time as Chinook final and the N810 hit the streets. There will be additional releases until we get the final one.
- About Modest: API for applications in place, IMAP no problem and good integration with popular web based services. Just to make things clear, the address book component is not part of the Modest project.
- Once we release the first version under development we will open the typical channels of communication: garage news, bugs in Bugzilla, developers available through planet blog and maemo-developers list.
We can't have one of those cool N810 yet, but we're already able start developing/porting applications to the new API. Renatokicked off the ball and updated the Abiwordpatch to make it compatible and also removed the code which used so long deprecated HildonApp and HildonAppView API. Some days ago I set up the Chinook SDK environment and decided to start with something simple or, in other words, Leafpad.
Thanks to everyone who gave me lots of good, positive, constructive feedback on the first version of mediaserv. I've just uploaded mediaserv-v0.02.tar.gz (24KB) where:
The 770-encode preset can be specified.
The location of 770-encode can be specified.
Video Center config files are created, should make adding directories to Video Center that much easier.
Usage counting works: so transcoding stops when nothing is reading from the result.
A bug whereby the reading could fall off the end of the result has been fixed: if you had videos stopping too soon, this is almost certainly it.
Quick links to the RSS feed and Video Center configs added at the top of the page.
Hidden files and directories are not shown, instead a breadcrumb trail is created in the banner.
While historically I’ve sorta ignored this one I tested a beta build of ScummVM tonight and am happy to report that it’s working just fine in OS2008 on the N810. Here’s a photo of Beneath the Steel Sky playing the intro movie…
My character was killed within a minute after getting started…
By popular request, mh-shot-tool now remembers the last selected method (save to disk vs. flickr) and the last save path. Also, an activity indicator was added for image saving/compression, uploading is still missing one though.
Keep your ideas coming, they just might get implemented.
A small update for the lucky ones: mh-shot-tool is available for chinook. Just click on the install link.
Spim is a self-contained simulator that will run MIPS32 assembly language programs. It reads and executes assembly language programs written for this processor. spim also provides a simple debugger and minimal set of operating system services. spim does not execute binary (compiled) programs.
I made a port of spim for the Nokia 770/800 device just for fun and to start learning how to do ports.
Maemo is an opensource development platform for Linux based devices. Actually is the base for the operating system installed on NokiaN770, N800 and the upcoming N810 but it could be adopted, with few changes, even by other similar devices.
I don’t really remember how we got there, but a couple of days ago at the office we ended up talking about the complexity of the codebase we have to deal with. Tommi mentioned the McCabe cyclomatic complexity, “which may be considered a broad measure of soundness and confidence for a program“. According to the Wikipedia article it “directly measures the number of linearly independent paths through a program’s source code“. And there’s this little table, with some pre-defined thresholds:
Cyclomatic
ComplexityRisk
Evaluation
1-10
a simple program, without much
risk
11-20
more complex, moderate risk
21-50
complex, high risk program
greater than 50
untestable program (very high
risk)
Well, fair enough. You always have to be a little skeptic about this kind of data, but it might give you some insights about a codebase. So “apt-get install pmccabe”, a tool to “calculate McCabe cyclomatic complexity or non-commented line counts for C and C++ programs“. The man page says:
The obvious application of pmccabe is illustrated by the following which gives a list of the “top ten” most complex functions:
pmccabe *.c | sort -nr | head -10
Sounds like fun! Let’s run it on the gtk/ directory in gtk+… (drum rolls):
Some of the functions are way past the threshold for intractability (and all of them surpass it), and GtkTreeView has 4 of the 10 most complex functions in gtk according to McCabe. I suppose you can extract many lessons from here, but I’ll only give one humble suggestion: we need regression testing for gtk, and we need it yesterday, as it seems that no human being can hack on some parts of gtk without breaking something
Would you like to win a Nokia N810 Internet Tablet?
Thoughtfix has posted the following video explaining the general idea, but head over to the Tabletblog site to get the scoop with all the rules. I’m one of the judges and I look forward to seeing your entries! The deadline to submit your videos is November 16 so get going!
Yesterday PyMaemo was released for OS2007 (Bora) and OS2006 (Gregale). Today it's time to enjoy PyMaemo for Chinook Beta. Just add the following lines to your /etc/apt/sources.list file (only chinook target inside scratchbox):
deb http://repository.maemo.org chinook free non-free deb http://repository.maemo.org/extras chinook free non-free
After this, run: apt-get update apt-get install python2.5-runtime
The full version of the Wayfinder application was preinstalled in my pre-release N810 model. I didn't intend this video to go on for 17 minutes, but had a lot to show.
This isn't a review - just a live demonstration. Hope you enjoy it. I'll answer any questions that appear in the comments.
Luciano tipped my off to the release of Python for Chinook as well as the fact that the repositories for Chinook (OS2008) are open.
Yesterday PyMaemo was released for OS2007 (Bora) and OS2006 (Gregale). Today it’s time to enjoy PyMaemo for Chinook Beta. Just add the following lines to your /etc/apt/sources.list file (only chinook target inside scratchbox):
deb http://repository.maemo.org chinook free non-free
deb http://repository.maemo.org/extras chinook free non-free
Because I have a live OS2008 device rather than the scratchbox dev environment, I added the repositories directly into the Applications Manager… Not that I know the root password to get this going in the terminal anyway!
Python 2.5 is there as expected as well as he ipython shell and libmiaouw-example which is a representative piece of code to show the kinetic scrolling that’s seen in Mauku. The Plankton theme is also there, though it does not seem to be fully baked. I’m back to Glasser which uses the transparent black borders.
I hope we’ll soon see quite a few more applications load in …
If you are using the MicroB browser (you are of course right?) then you might be very interested to learn about the release of Greasemonkey for MicroB! Yes it’s exactly what you think it is and works exactly like Greasemonkey does on Firefox.
Be sure to read the directions for getting going. There’s an odd bug that requires you restart the browser twice in order to get it working. I missed that myself the first time and could not figure out why others were reporting success… pilot error it seems.
I love this…. I know have Gmail Macros rocking on the N800 via bluetooth keyboard which gives me a great idea of how well it will work on the N810 when the next update comes … hopefully soon! There are a ton of scripts to try — hacker delight!
Here in INdT, my first task was make enlightenment run in n800 over Mamona! Vivi helped me with this task and we make it work! More details look here. Some ajustments in BitBake files were necessary (to use CVS version instead of snapshots). Other new bb files were created to match with enlightenment dependencies. Now [...]
The N800 is a fantastic device for web and IM, but I’ve been poking around with how to make it more useful as a production device. Or something more like a personal dashboard. I would like to have the device sync with my server and other services out on the net when it goes online and pull in a bunch of info. Pull down stats from the web server, comments and links from the weblogs, a few slices of info from my inbox, stats from AdMob and Adsense, juicy stuff from the newsreader.
The way I’ve been dealing with that stuff in general is with an IM bot, which works out pretty well from the device. The IM support in Maemo is pretty sweet. However I’m having some information density and interaction issues. So I’ve started fooling around with the Python port to see if I can make something useful. Just need a few independently updating ‘windows’ and some nice small buttons to change views. Should work till I can get data glasses.
N810 is out. One step further. It has the slide/in-slide/out keyboard everybody was asking. It has integrated GPS. Plus lost of others HW goodies. The Browser is Mozilla based - which is the result of the effort that we put on N800. The device is thiner better, more optimzed and has got a brand new revamped look.
I was looking in the past (and some more) at various solutions for efficient hardware-aided curve rasterization methods. Those ideas mostly focused on using the graphical hardware for accelerating the geometry generation process. But what happens, when we completely skip the geometry generation step? Even more blazing performance and totally resolution-independent rendering. Thanks to some tips by Jon and interesting math discussions I had in the past weeks, I'm glad to present my current thinking.
I have ported the latest upstream version of Mirage to Chinook.
Have some improvements that can be found in the changelog.
The most important for the end user are:
Support for tap and hold.
Thumbnails pane, without kinetic scrolling
Ability to open remote images (http and ftp).
If someone with a N810 or N800 with ITOS2008 might try and give me her impressions would be great.
Especially on the tap and hold support, if translations (en, es, fr, it, de, pl, ru) are working properly and if all dialogs are shown correctly.
And any bug that might have.
Chances are high that a project that was being planned will be canceled or at least delayed for weeks. This of course means that I will have to find myself something else to do with my time. Since finding another project usually takes a few weeks, I started with putting together that TMut thingy.
If you want to have some electronic -sounding ring tone with the classic Karoliina-style (resembling Jean-Michel Jarre), read on:
I created a new ring tone for N810/N800 Internet tablets (you can use it on the VOIP client). You can download it from here: Karoliina’s ring tone 2
If you liked Oxygene 7-13, you’ll probably like this.
Instructions: Save the wav-file to your memory card, place it on the device, select sound settings applet from Status bar, select Ring tones tab, select browse, locate the file karoliinan810b.wav from your memory card and click select. This can be a bit slow as the N800/N810 wants to play the sound immediately and this is a bit longer sound than the stock ones. Because this is complex track where lots of things are happening, you may need to increase the volume over the stock ring tones to make this useful. The wave file is highly compressed and equalized to make it as loud as possible with the little loudspeakers on the device without sacrificing the original sound too much.
Equipment used: All sounds: Access Virus b
Sound recording and mastering: Mac
I've been using the same sad old Blogger template for nearly two years now so I decided it was time for a new face to the blog. I also like green pages. With this, I am adding new features:
Polls! The first poll is about the most desired N810 feature that is not present.
A minor feature addition is a break-down of all the article labels I've used on this blog, sorted by popularity.
Reduced front-page articles to 10 for faster loading
Better archiving method
For posterity, here's the old and busted version. I need to make a few more tweaks and changes, but the site is now optimized for an 800 pixel wide display (including a scroll bar.) If you read from an RSS reader, it's time to hop back to TabletBlog.com and take a look.
Now, I love my N800. Everybody will tell you so, but I’m a little frustrated at the moment. I want the ability to transfer files to and from it over the network, but how best to do it I wonder. It’s a tricky idea. Do I go with a synchronised option, and use svn, which is available on the N800. Or do I go with a less managed option and have a system where I can just dump files off of and onto my Nokia. Either way, at the moment, unless I’m very much mistaken and I may very well be, there isn’t anything that really meets this. There is Grsync and unison, but neither of these are really what I want.
So…..Since I’ve been playing round with webdav the last few days, I figured a webdav system may be cool. Just to drag and drop the occasional file. Like a network file server. So…..cadaver is a great command line tool for accessing webdav and it’s already available on Maemo. My idea….wrap a python/other GUI around it and have nice tree like structures to move files too and from the system. All those in favour…..say EYE!
Or if you have a better idea. Let me know. WebDAV seems to be a good idea, as it’s web based and the whole idea of the N800 is to be an internet tablet.
mediaserv has now reached v0.04. Thanks to everyone for providing feedback. Here's a demo of my N800 playing back a DVD rip in 720x576 1000kbps video, 192kbps audio DivX off a 1GHz Via C3 processor box transcoding to 770-encode's "average" preset:
Easy-to-use web UI, and integration with Video Center.
Playback in standard Media Player or mplayer, depending on the configuration of your Web Browser and/or Video Center.
Automatic thumbnail generation.
Meta-data from MythTV and Freevo for subtitles and descriptions.
Tested on Linux, Mac OS X and other Unix-like OSes.
It's fully documented, but obviously since it's only v0.04 there are almost certainly still bugs and enhancements which can be made. So comments are, as ever, welcome.
As regular readers may have noticed, it's been a week or two since our last tutorial was published. Don't worry, we're still here! :-)
The Internet Tablet School is taking a break from new tutorials until the middle of November. You'll still be able to see all the existing tutorials of course, but we're holding off doing any new ones for a couple of weeks.
The reason why is the imminent
As some of you already know, I've been working on a simple AV-specific control-point as part of gupnp-tools. While at it, I've been trying to keep the UPnP AV parts as separate and generic as possible so that they could be move to a separate library later on. One of the first things that everyone wanted to create a nice wrapper for is the ugly DIDL-Lite. Jorn tried his best to convince me and others to not create a GObject for representing each DIDL-Lite object but I didn't listen and ended-up writing a very resource hungry API. To see what i mean, please look at memory usage of gupnp-av-cp after populating it's treeview with the content hierarchy exported by coherence:
I was quite sure that most of this 28M is taken by xmlDoc and I was right. Now that I have got rid of xmlDoc usage and replaced the gobjects with an API to deal with xmlNodes, here is how the memory usage looks like:
For people who are curious on how this simple AV control-point would look like, here is a screenshot:
One reason why the development of GUPnP might seem much slower compared to that of other UPnP projects out there is that we (especially Jorn) are trying our best to provide a nice and simple API while making sure that no part of the project is resource hungry as we are targeting embedded systems where saving bytes is more impotant than providing lots of features. Jorn already have a plan and some half-baked code for the handling of DIDL-Lite xml and contents on the server-side (ContentDirectory implementation) without wasting lots of memory and CPU.
I don’t really care much for browser wars, but since this post touches on so many aspects of the browser that I’m working on, like Cairo graphics, native widget styling, transparency and complex script support, I thought I’d give a reply.
WebKit/GTK+ doesn’t really attempt to compete with Mozilla or Firefox in the browser space. It instead targets application developers who want a full-featured browser engine with a fun, powerful GTK+-style API. gtkhtml and gtkmozembed have proved to be inadequate, too heavy or un-portable.
In the mobile and embedded space, WebKit/GTK+ is mostly competitive with Opera and NetFront rather than Gecko. I can think of only once that a vendor has come along and asked how it compares to Gecko on mobile devices.
We’re working with the developers of general purpose browsers like Epiphany and Midori, as well as domain-specific Web applications like the GNOME documentation browser Devhelp, and mobile platforms like the Maemo browser EAL and OpenMoko‘s browser and feed reader to make sure WebKit can provide all the features they need. It turns out they don’t need a UI toolkit like XUL since GTK+ provides the functionality they need, so we aren’t attempting to bundle a toolkit with our browser engine.
WebKit/GTK+ is not tied to Linux. It’s portable to OS X and Windows. Behaviour on those platforms is intended to be similar to that on Linux, and the API on all platforms is identical.
It can render that “Hello” button correctly. It also supports a bunch of fancy features from HTML5 and CSS3 that Gecko does not and loads pages faster before optimisation work has even started, but I don’t think we need to go into a feature-for-feature debate here.
An implementation of Freedesktop notifications using Growl WebKit styles (incidentally, work is ongoing to provide integration with various Freedesktop specifications where appropriate):
These days I have been working on Vagalume: a Last.fm player for the Maemo platform (Nokia N800 and N810, though it’s designed to work on a regular PC Gnome desktop as well).
It’s still very small and doesn’t do much (I started it just a few days ago) but since it already works and has the most basic features that a Last.fm player must have I decided to release it.
Don’t expect a UI with lots of colours and shiny buttons in this release: I have been concentrating mostly on the protocol so the UI is stripped to the bare minimum.
Here’s a sample screenshot (taken from the scratchbox):
Features:
It plays Last.fm radio streams (using the Last.fm protocol v1.2)
You can select any radio (Personal, Neighbours, Loved Tracks …, or any arbitrary URL)
It scrobbles tracks (so you’ll see what you’ve been listening to in your profile).
It is stable, I’m using it everyday and I haven’t experienced hangs or other strange behaviours so far.
It’s small (the binary is less than 50K).
What it doesn’t do (yet):
It doesn’t have the ability to Love/Ban/Recommend tracks
It doesn’t have a nice UI
It doesn’t show album covers on the screen
…and many other things
You can install Vagalume in your N800 (with Internet Tablet OS 2007) using this package.
I plan to release the source code under the GNU GPL later this week and I’ll probably build packages for Debian and Ubuntu as well, so you can use this program in your PC. And of course there will be packages for the upcoming Internet Tablet OS 2008 (N800 and N810) too.
I received my new Nokia N800 last week, and I found that a new owner should really spend some time getting things set up before starting to use the device.
Thanks to Dynamism, the Nokia N810 contest is now open internationally! We are also working together to offer additional entry prizes for ALL finalists, but that's not set in stone yet. These prizes are most likely to be geeky novelties also offered by Dynamism. I'm partial to the infinite bubble wrap keychain myself. The grand prize winner will get a voucher for Dynamism good for one Nokia N810 Internet Tablet and international shipping, all paid for by ThoughtFix LLC.
At this point I will send you over to an article (on my UMPC blog) I wrote about Dynamism long before we talked about this contest. Not only will the grand prize winner get an N810, but they'll also get the support and experience of a Dynamism customer. Good news all around.
Finally, the judges and I talked and we believe it's fair for friends of judges to enter into the contest. The caveat is that any judge cannot nominate their own friends as finalists. If the other judges agree to nominate that entry and the users vote it best, it will win.
VOIP
All the sessions are being broadcast over a VOIP connection, so fire up
Ekiga or your favourite SIP client, get a login and join the
discussion.
Collaborative editing with Gobby
All the specs while they are being talked about are being edited in
Gobby, a collaborative editor. If you want to join in, grab the gobby
package via your favourite package manager and join gobby.ubuntu.com.
IRC
As per usual, those who are at UDS tend to be on IRC, in the #uds-boston channel on the Freenode network.
Show up
Of course, if you can make it to Cambridge (the US one, not the UK one)
, come by. Registration is free and the sessions are open to all. Just
remember, we need your contribution, as this isn’t an event for
spectators.
I know Tinymail has been a far-from-my-bed show for a lot of people. Especially since Modest hasn’t yet been released, it’s taking ages for me to do a first Tinymail release, etc etc.
Contest News - Don't forget that the deadline for submissions on the Nokia N810 Giveaway Contest is November 16th. The first video submission is up and it's a good idea. That video is exactly what I hoped to see: An interesting and innovative use of a pocket Internet device that may not be obvious right out of the box. Remember that this contest is now open to anywhere Dynamism ships!
CES News - With the last point in mind, I launched what will become a high-volume microblog during the show at ces.thoughtfix.com. Unless you're really interested in following my preparations for CES and watching my test posts, don't worry about subscribing yet. I'll remind you later when the show nears.
Information/FAQ News - This project was outed a little prematurely (though I still love you, WOM World) because I wanted to start it with feedback from InternetTabletTalk readers first. It's my own little wiki (thoughtfix.com/wiki) in which I will keep my notes, FAQs, HOWTOs, and more. There's already a wiki on maemo.org and a wiki on InternetTabletTalk, but I set up my own because I know MediaWiki's markup much better. Users are welcome to contribute at their option. In the meantime, drop questions into the talk pages on any of the articles.
Maemo roadmapping, revisited. Now it’s better connected to our internal reality. The development platform plans are exposed, although more details should be still provided via wiki pages and enhancement requests. Our aim is also to provide more details about the maemo linux platform itself. We’ll see. The application level (Nokia supported & maemo garage) has [...]
The three of us got together over Skype and talked for almost an hour about our experiences with the tablets over two weeks. Three guys, three N810's, two weeks. Your hosts:
Tonight I got together with Dan and Reggie to talk about the past two weeks with the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet. We ran through quite a few topics from the applications we like and want to see as well as the platform in general.
Dan is hosting the MP3 of tonight’s discussion, but you can do a save as right here. Enjoy and please let us know what you think!
The broken English error message above came when I tried to upgrade the firmware on my Linksys WRT350N router. Following that, it rebooted and the power LED blinked rapidly. Nothing worked.
I grabbed my N810, used my phone's data connection, and started searching for solutions. After an hour and a half of experimenting, I finally found one that worked: Using manual address assignments, tftp -e 192.168.1.1 from my Mac's terminal window and manually force the new firmware in, then wait for it to finish upgrading/rebooting.
For a guy who lives on the Internet, a router failure is a major loss. In this case, the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet literally rescued me.
When the 770 came out it closed connections when you slid it back in the case which was a nice feature since it automatically switched into a more power efficient mode. When the N800 arrived and now with the N810, we have the opportunity to leave our tablets on at all times.
Clearly this takes a toll on battery life over the course of a day, but in my usage it seems well worth it. I actually have had both my N800 and N810 set to auto-connect to both WiFi and cellular connections so when I walk out the door, my tablet switches over to my phone as the wifi drops.
This system worked incredibly well with the N73 as my phone since the battery in that phone was hard to kill even with a full day of tethering. The N95 has a considerably less powerful battery — even the newer N95-3 which I’ve been using for a month or so. I find I’ve got power in the car as well as a Proporta Mobile Power system that lets me recharge or maintain charge on the phone while the tablet enjoys a very long day of use. If needed I can top off the tablet with the Proporta of course as well.
Last night on the Podcast, I discovered I was the only one of the three of us keeping my tablet in always on mode. I’m curious how others use their devices… since the tablet is predominantly positioned as a second device (phone being the first) I would think most users are using it as aggressively as I am, though this is clearly a personal thing.
I tested the On Demand method today and found that while it saved a bit of battery life on both devices, I prefer to be able to look down and see live updates to my mail and rss feeds. The tablet is a direct extension of how I use the internet and just like my laptop it’s always connected and powered on.
We have been jointly hacking clutter-button with Kate and now we got something working. It has highlight effect which is triggered on button release and it fades out the highlight. With the button textures (the button and highlight) drawn by Tigert, it even feels now quite superb. However, it is not finished yet, it dumps core right now (after the effect finishes). But it is getting close to be a basic button. Clutter is quite cool. I think I will use it in my next hobby software project (I have been thinking of doing an airplane design software). Clutter would be quite overkill for it as it does not require such sophistication, but on the other hand, why wouldn’t I? Clutter is a demonstration how user interfaces should behave in the future and I give up nothing by using it since in addition to the eyecandy, it is a cross-platform toolkit. To get started, I will need at least button, label and edit box and soon I’ll have all of them .
man, you´re so cool...
I don´t know why but I am really not interested in your geek-show-off...
In the beginning I liked all your "tutorials" and stuff like comparisons you did between the N770 and N800... This was stuff that matters!
But you start to post too post too much show-off stuff which is of no real interest for others!
The same with you car-sho-off with all your cool devices like the iPod touch, your 2 internet tablets and so on...
So, do not take this as an personal attack, but to "improve" your next posts please...