So, I’ll attend FISL this year. I’ll be giving a talk about Maemo and another about the latest news of GNOME. The latter is part of the GNOME brazilian community meeting where we’ll also have a talk by the pt_BR localization team and some discussion about marketing activities, how to bring more brazilian contributors to GNOME and so on. If you’re planning to attend FISL next week and love GNOME, you can’t miss it! :-)

I’m really excited about FISL this year because it will be a nice oportunity to go meet some of my best friends and nice free software people (well, those two groups overlap in many cases).

Since I compiled and tested Aircrack-ptw for my N800 for Erik as a benchmark anyway I now made a Maemo 770/N800 package for it.

Just add the right repository from my Maemo page and install it.

If you also want Aircrack-ng for your 770/N800 you can get it here: Aircrack-ng_0.5-1mad_armel.deb

You may expect a xdm will display when you open a vnc viewer to a server, there are at least two benefits:

1. no need vnc to maintain its own password
2. automatically start vnc service

There are some links you can follow to set as you desired:

• http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=259448
• http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/morelnxsvrhks/chapter/hack13.pdf
• http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_RealVNC,_TightVNC,_XF4VNC

I am using kubuntu 7.04, and found some gtk applications always complain vnc4server, for reasons such as xinputextension is missed, or 109 erros (I do not know what's these). But tightvncserver works well. So, I choose tightvnc, and my /etc/xinet.d/vnc is:

{
socket_type = stream
protocol = tcp
wait = no
user = nobody
server = /usr/bin/Xvnc
server_args = -inetd -ac -query localhost -once -geometry 1300x900 -depth 16
}
The reason to use 16 depth instead of 8 is eclipse cannot run on 256 colors.

Hi all,

I don't know when I will find time to finish a new release of the tuner tool. I've some new features partly written.

I tried the current build today in my N800 and seems to work as expected.

Chris Jones noticed me that there's a problem with the audiotestsrc gstreamer element which is not provided by default on N800. To solve this issue you should install the gstreamer0.10-plugins-base-extra package manually.

An interesting article on LWN about the “WONTFIX. No fixes to N770 anymore.” dispute and Nokia’s closed / open source dilemma:

Two examples of abandoned hardware (subscription required, non-subscribers have to wait a week.)

“It’s tempting to say that, since the 770 is a Linux-based device, the community should be able to support it into the future. As long as people care about the platform, it should continue to work. The problem is that the 770 contains a fair amount of non-free software at all levels. [..]”

“That will severely limit the degree to which the community can support the platform; it’s a slow death sentence for the 770 tablet. [..]”

“There are hints that more components will be opened in the future as well, but no promises. The end result is that the 770 will, for many users, hit the end of its useful life much sooner than it should have, and that the N800, while hopefully lasting longer, may well encounter similar issues. This state of affairs is unfortunate, it makes a nice piece of hardware less valuable than it really should be.”

It’s a chicken and egg problem, though. Developers and users claim that they would like to work on the 770 sources to extend the hardware’s usefulness beyond Nokia’s support.

But do they? Nokia counters that even those driver sources they did release haven’t found much response from outside developers.

In the meantime, users enjoy insulting Ari Jaaksi in his blog because of this issue. Yeah, I’m sure that will help the community making friends at Nokia…

Oggi e' successa una cosa incredibile: mi scrive Andrea una mail chiedendomi se conosca una tale Monica Leggio a Roma. E io: - Monica? No, non mi risulta -

- Impossibile, la devi conoscere! -
- Ti dico che non la conosco! -

La sera mi chiama e rettifica: - Conosci Benedetta Leggio? -
Eccome no!!! Ci sono stato insieme fino a un paio di giorni fa a Ragusa (evento di cui diro' in seguito nel mio blog). Come e' piccolo il mondo! Benedetta lavora con un amico del fratello di Andrea.
Combinazione incredibile di eventi...

Hello world! This is a new blog of the Nokia Maemo user interaction design team. Maemo is the software platform that is running in the current range of the Nokia internet tablet products. Since many of our software comrades are already blogging about their own work, it’s high time that we start our own blog.

We’ll be blogging about the various topics and issues relating to the user interface and user interaction design that we come across in our work.

However, since blogging is about direct feedback and communication, if you have any suggestions on what kinds of issues and topics would you want us to blog about, please comment and give your ideas. We’ll try our best to answer and discuss the topics that you want to hear about.

This WordPress account will be our temporary home away from home. Once we get the official Maemo site upgraded and fully functional, this blog will then probably move to that address. This will be a shared blog, with multiple persons writing entries and giving replies. We are individuals with differing personalities, so take everything we say with a healthy grain of salt. Absolute truths are very rare in the world of interaction design.When we’re not blogging, we’re busy designing new things and improving the current designs, so please have some patience with us.

It’s nice to watch feature-films on the N800 while on the bus and subway; usually, I record them from TV using vdr and transcode them using 770-encode (with slightly higher bitrates, since the N800 can handle higher quality settings than the 770 could).

Problem is that other commuters on the subway notice that you are watching a film, especially if the player screen is as big as the N800. They’ll try to catch a glimpse of it.

Recently I recored John Carpenter’s Vampires from German TV and transcoded it for the N800 to watch it later. Didn’t know much about the film. Expecting a tongue-in-cheek B-movie, it turned out to feel uneasy to be on the subway, watching a film about a group of professional vampire hunters on a gory killing spree, using a bitten prostitute to lure the vampire master…

Never thought of that situation before.

The media player for the N800 works nice, but it needs a bit of polish, though. It doesn’t save the position to continue watching a film later, playback can get jerky or freezes, the player sometimes turns unresponsive for unknown reasons. And once again: Please, Nokia, with the next hardware revision, please make 800×480@30fps playback possible. That’d be wonderful!

If you are in some countries, when you search in Google, it may auto-redirect you to search results specified according to your location. For example, if you are in Hongkong, Google will automatically search from google.com.uk, which is undesired for many of us.

I just submitted a search plugin to Firefox community, you can install it to avoid Google to do that, i.e., it always search from google.com.

Please search "Li, Zhao", and install the plugin with id=16536 (when mouse move over, the ID will display) from:
all google's search plugins

It is not convenient to print duplex pages on Brother DCP-115C, here gives the tips.

• Print duplex, long edge:

1. print odd pages, with reverse order
2. remove the printed papers from output tray
3. rotate the papers 180'C
4. insert the papers to input tray
5. print even pages

• Print duplex, short edge

1. print odd pages, with reverse order
2. remove the printed papers from output tray
3. insert the printed papers to input tray
4. print even pages

For word, the print dialog may have no options to print odd/even pages, so:

• Word's extra setting to print odd pages in reverse order

1. check manual duplex option
2. click option button in print dialog, to open option dialog
3. check the front side box

In breve in italiano: il nuovo governo finlandese di centro destra ha promesso interessanti novita', e speriamo che mantenga le promesse: riduzione dell'IVA sui beni di prima necessita' al 12% (tanto, lo so, ma tuttora si e' al 17%!!!), riduzione delle tasse di successione (o piuttosto, aumento della soglia di esenzione) e donazione. A quando la riduzione o abolizione della famigerata tassa sull'auto?

The new Finnish goverment is (almost) born: it will be formed by the winning Centre Party, the National Coalition (right wingers) and two smaller parties, the Greens and the Swedish People's Party, in order to ensure a stable majority (vero, Prodi?).

According to Yle, here are some of the most important actions:

Income and Food Taxes Decrease; Alcohol Tax Rises. The government is planning to reduce income tax by 1.1 billion euros over the next four years. It also plans cuts worth 280 million euros in inheritance, gift, dividend and value-added taxes.

The plan sounds awfully good to be true: raises alcohol taxes (Estonia, we're) coming and lowers VAT on food from a obscene human-rights offending value of 17% to a more potable (italians will sure understand my free translations. For foreigners: more normal) value of 12%. Still far from 4% in Italy but better than nothing. Let's only hope that big distribution chains will not decide to keep the saved VAT for themselves...

Nicely enough, and the hand of the National Party is clearly seen here, inheritance and gifts taxes will be lowered, according to the program (or more likely, the non-taxable treshold will be raised). Is this the first step towards the final cancellation of such an unfair tax? When will they lower the AUTOVERO, tax on the car purchase, if ever?

Let's see if the government will keep the promises.

Come promesso, descrivo come ho passato la Pasqua: la prima Pasqua siciliana da 6 anni a questa parte, e scusate se e' poco!

Ho potuto riassaggiare il cibo tipico della Pasqua ragusana: focacce, 'mpanate di agnello e turciniuna di interiora di agnello (va be, questi ultimi no che non mi piacciono), e cassate di ricotta. Le cassate non sono quelle a cui tutti magari sono abituati quando si parla di cassata siciliana, ma un tortino di pastafrolla e ricotta insaporita con scaglie di cioccolato o cannella o canditi. Eccone una foto:

Cassate di Ragusa


Ecco invece una foto delle 'mpanate (a sx) e delle focacce di pomodoro, o scacce (a dx):


Oltre al buon cibo, a Ragusa ho potuto godere anche di un clima tipico della piu' torride delle estati finniche, e ne ho approfittato per scendere a mare con i miei amici. Ecco un paio di foto:


Il litorale di Playa Grande


Riva rocciosa a Marina di Ragusa

Inutile dire che con questo tempo ho preso il sole stando a dorso nudo... :)

For once in a lifetime, Finnish politicians had proposed to lower some tax, the VAT on food, before outrageously set to 17%, to a more civil 12%.
Well, this is what I have to read from Yle News:

The government's plan to lower the value added tax (VAT) on food could lead to hundreds of job cuts in the restaurant industry and increase the sale of take-away food.

E ancora:

The Finnish Hotel and Restaurant Association believes that lowering the VAT on food will lead to more take-away businesses, a trend already seen in Sweden and Norway. The Finnish government has promised to reduce VAT on food from 17 percent to 12 percent. The VAT on food at restaurants would remain at 22 percent.

But this is unbelievable! In Italy it's 4% and still restaurants do very well. Why in the heart in Scandinavia restaurants should go out of business? Hilarious the issue on the take-away food: Finnish kitchens often remain anew no matter how many years they have been used. What gets overused are micorwawes, to warm the countless number of ready made crap that is possible to find from the supermarkets. The kitchen of our house, where a finnish family had lived 5 years before us, was NEW! It was enough a month of normal use from me and my girlfriend (Finnish, but luckily enough cooks very well and likes to cook and try out new things!) and it was in a state of non-return, no matter if we clean it.

And I'd like to investigate how much is the VAT in Italy on food consumed at the restaurants...

Incredibile ma vero: con una volta che in Finlandia avevano deciso di abbassare qualcuna delle oltraggiose tasse che vessano il consumatore, l'IVA sul cibo dal 17% (!) al 12%, subito qualcuno ha deciso di protestare. L'associazione dei ristoratori dice che perderebbero clienti se l'IVA sul cibo fosse abbassata al 12% (sti cazzi) perche' i finlandesi inizierebbero a consumare cibi pronti! Mah!

Interessante. Guardate qua:

Interesting take a look:

UFO!


Jokes besides, looks like it's a (small) meteorite.
Scherzi a parte, pare sia solo un piccolo meteorite.

Hi everyone. This blog as such might not be the most ideal forum for this, but if you have specific comments (rants/raves/questions) about individual parts or aspects of the current UI design, feel free to give your comments here.

However, if you have found something that is clearly a bug, please use our public bugzilla tracking system, found at http://maemo.org/bugzilla . Yes, we could and should do a better job of tracking and utilizing that system, but we’re trying to improve on that also.

Didn’t expect that… What a surprise: Intel and a few hardware partners are betting on a hildonized Linux-UI for a new class of consumer devices very similar to Nokia’s Internet Tablet. Check out UMPCPortal’s coverage of the news from IDF. The first batch of these devices is slated for summer 2007, but they claim that even smaller devices will be possible with their new chipset in early 2008.

A PSP-sized x86 UMPC prototype, scheduled for 2008. Image via Golem.de.

Leafpad is a simple GTK+ text editor that emphasizes simplicity.

• 
• 

License Free (source available, Open Source license) Version 0.8.10 Status Development OS version IT OS 2007, IT OS 2006 Submitted by

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Rated by Eduardo Lima:

The .install file for the 770 is the following:

http://repository.maemo.org/extras/dists/gregale/install/leafpad.install

Rated by Eduardo Lima:

The link to .install files for 770 is the following:

http://repository.maemo.org/extras/dists/scirocco/install/leafpad.install

Rate the application:

You must be logged in with your Maemo Garage account to make ratings.

The latest release of the Universal Media Server "TVersity" just keeps going from strength to strength. Release 0.9.10.1 (April 19, 2007) is the first to provide Video transcoding-streaming support for the PS3, Wii and Nokia N800 with video-transcoding-downloading for the Sony PSP.

I must stay in home today to wait a cleaner, our home is so dirty now.

While I was so boring that I wander around to find anything interesting to do, I recalled today is the first game in the series of houston VS. utan.






I haven't subscribed any sports channel like ESPN, so the only chance is to try whether those P2P network TV can work.

I downloaded sopcast and installed its GUI gsopcast on my kubuntu.

So great that free China sports channels are broadcasting this game and can play smoothly using sopcast. What even better is the result. :-D

Nokia’s Maemo-Team seems to be using Bugzilla primarily as a tool to collect hints where they should improve the firmware. Would be nice if they would comment on Bugzilla more often, though.

So submit your bugs and enhancement requests, but please make sure that noone else already did! And vote for those you want fixed!

Here are my favourites. Vote for my bugs, please!

Hi. One thing that we would also like to do is to promote and review some of the best and most interesting installable applications from our Maemo users and community developers that are currently out there. Naturally there are many available (check out the Maemo site or your local Application manager app), and we can’t unfortunately highlight all of them, but let’s start anyway. This is not a official Nokia company endorsement or a seal of approval, but just a review from one designer and user.

Long time, no news.

I'm working now on a (new) set of libraries called Graff. Graff is a lighweight high-performance graphics rendering library. I guess it falls into the category of canvas — as currently discussed on the gtk mailing list. It’s a bit more generic though and focused on providing ways of animating graphical elements over time. It knows about motion paths, timelines, animating parameters, etc. The use case here is building new rich custom UI’s, providing a building-block for higher-level toolkits and abstracting hardware-specific quirks. It provides a basic model-view-controller environment with the UI elements (“faces”) being cleanly separated from the “motors” driving them. “Touches” provide event sources.

Graff can currently render using two runtime-selectable backends — a hardware-accelerated OpenGL backend or a software-only driver. The software backend is extremelly highly optimized using all the ugly demo-scene tips&tricks straight form the ‘90ties. It performs suprisingly well and the demo applications mentioned below can actually run good on our existing hardware (nokia 770, nokia n800).

Speaking of demos, I made a few simplistic test applications to sketch the idea of what Graff can already do. Video recordings available below. It’s a work in progress, early on.

 

 

Image viewer: a basic image viewer controlled with thumbs.

Dancing emotes: an example showing objects running along morphable paths.

Scrolling list: contact list with inertia scrolling.

Drag: trivial drag and drop with some smooth blending.

The image viewer example uses Jakub’s nice photos. Icons come from our awsome Tango artists.

AutoScan is an application designed to explore and manage your network. It features OS detection, automatic network discovery, a port scanner, ...

License Free (source available, Open Source license) Version 1.00 Status Stable OS version IT OS 2006 Submitted by Thierry Lagarde

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Nobody has rated this application yet.

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Claws Mail is an email client (and news reader), based on GTK+, featuring

• Quick response
• Graceful, and sophisticated interface
• Easy configuration, intuitive operation

License Free (source available, Open Source license) Version 2.9.1 Status Stable OS version IT OS 2007, IT OS 2006 Submitted by Jean-Luc Biord

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Rated by Tim Samoff:

Claws-mail is definitely the best (most feature rich) email application available for the Nokia Internet Tablets... It still has a few bugs/lack of features that need to be ironed out, but overall, it's the one app that's always open on my N800.

Rated by Christos Saturn:

1. It works perfectly with my IMAP account (which holds several thousands of mails).
2. Very good support from the developers.

Rate the application:

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AGGIORNAMENTO: interessante commento sul tema nel forum di Beppe severgnini. Leggetelo!

Il Corriere della Sera riporta che

secondo uno studio condotto nel 2004 da scienziati della Cambridge University su un campione di 20.000 cittadini del Vecchio Continente residenti nei 15 Stati che nel 2004 facevano parte dell'Unione Europea, gli italiani sono il popolo più infelice fra quelli che originariamente formavano l'UE!!!

Guarda un po'...

Indovinate chi guida la classifica dei popoli piu' felici e piu' soddisfatti? Ma ovviamente le popolazioni scandinave, Danimarca in testa, con la Finlandia che si piazza seconda. In compenso, gli italiani sono addirittura solo quart'ultimi nella classifica dei popoli piu' soddisfatti.

Secondo il Corriere:

I danesi si sentono felici perché hanno una grande fiducia nelle istituzioni e nel loro sistema sociale.

Lo stesso si applica ai finlandesi. Questo popolo ha una cosi' tale fiducia nelle proprie istituzioni (non a torto aggiungo io, soprattutto se compariamo queste istituzioni a quelle italiane) che vede tutto rosa, nonostante inverni a -30, clima che e' quello che e' e cibo che non e' neanche quello...

Gli italiani invece? Il primo a non avere fiducia nelle istituzioni sono io, e l'ho scritto un paio di righe sopra, ma significa forse questo essere infelici? Evidentemente non bastano buon cibo, clima mite, e il piacere di saper stare insieme a giustificare fiducia nel futuro e quindi felicita'.

Quanto conta il lavaggio del cervello fatto dai media finlandesi, secondo i quali tutto va sempre bene, e che fanno vivereil cittadino finlandese medio sotto una cappa di cristallo? Chi lo sa? Quello che conta e' quello che il cittadino avverte sulla propria pelle, e se i finlandesi si sentono felici, meglio, molto meglio per loro.

Io italiano in Finlandia come mi sento? Beh, non conta solo la nazione, conta anche l'ambiente che ti circonda, famiglia, amici, ambiente e condizioni di lavoro. Per ora mi sento felice cosi' e in futuro si vedra'.

According to a study of Cambridge University Italians are the unhappiest folks in Europe! Finns, and Scandinavians in general, are the happiest ones!

Why is it so? An important happiness and satisfaction reason seems to be the trust on the government and institutions, which calls for a more serene and happier future. Clearly, good food, pleasant weather and richer social relationships are not enough, as Italians are the prototype of citizens mistrusting their institutions (and we're right I'd add), while Finns do (blindly) trust their government (and results are in everybody's eyes).

So, yes, Finns believe in their future because their governors are people who do their job. What can I say as an Italian living in Finland? It's not a black/white issue, as always, the truth is gray. The environment that surrounds one, family, friends, work conditions, has importance. For now, I'm happy here, tomorrow, I don't know... Time will tell

Maemo WordPy is a Wordpress client for Internet Tablets.

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License Free (source available, Open Source license) Version 0.2 Status Stable OS version IT OS 2007, IT OS 2006 Submitted by Daniel Martín Yerga

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Last week I found Johannes Schmid blog entry about new libgda3 packages. I downloaded package's sources and recompiled it for gregale on N770. Well , I tried to recompile. These libgda3 package have some major issues:

• Can not use debian files with gda 3.0
• Sections in control files are incorrect

The latter case seems to be the most common issue I can found in debian package built for armel architecture. But maybe this is my fault. Anyway , I can not install package from file using AM. It always complain "Incompatible package" when package's section is for example lib, while it should be user/lib.

I have no idea how packages can be installed via AM directly from repositories as AM always is getting and refreshing packages list and then throws a warning "Can not refresh packages list".

Anyway , I need libreadline4 to install gda packages ( those ones I had to recompile myself ). Unfortunatelly, it seems that only bora supports libreadline4 and I need to build another packages for myself. I hope this one will be the last one. In any other case I am afraid I will have to compile plenty of packages for myself.

My big wishlist ( one wish to be exact ) is to have usable AM on N770. I have at least 4 or 5 repositories added. AM doesn't complain that repos' locaions are invalid, and I have no idea if those are good or do not trigger conflicts. Well... I should be happy anyway, as I have about 5 applications listed in AM that can be installed. None of these is the one I want.