I was at Mobilize 2010 yesterday. Fantastic event! Congrats to the whole GigaOm team, great job. Here’s some of the stuff that really stuck out for me:

This is a continuation of my previous post. Based on the feedback I decided to do two things; investigate the strange FLAC high CPU usage with FFmpeg, and get more accurate measurements.

GStreamer sucks

It turns out that GStreamer flac parser uses four times more CPU than FFmpeg’s decoder. Thanks to perf, I was able to quickly figure out the biggest offenders: GStreamer’s horrible bitstream reader (GST_BIT_READER_READ_BITS) was by far the worst.

53.03% libgstbase-0.10.so.0.26.0
24.78% libavcodec.so.52.72.2
17.35% libgstxiph.so
1.52% libc-2.12.1.so

This is on my laptop just running the parser (filesrc ! flacparse ! fakesink), in total it was taking 2.67s.

After reading the code and trying different things, I decided to go for something similar to what FFmpeg is doing, and I also borrowed pieces of the architecture-specific optimizations, now it even looks ok:

72.68% libavcodec.so.52.72.2
14.20% libgstxiph.so
4.00% libc-2.12.1.so

And it takes 0.81s.

But how much would this affect battery life on the N900?

Smart battery script

I tried different ideas, and after refreshing myself on statistics I wrote this script in Ruby that runs all the tests, gathers the battery capacity in a separate thread, and finally generates a report per test. Much easier than before.

Since I’m already working on FLAC, I decided to also apply some patches that split the decoder from the parser, and optimizations from Måns Rullgård (good thing I grabbed them because he seems to have left the project and deleted his repos).

Battery life

Battery drain

So, yeah, much better now

But how credible are these results? Well, judge by yourself, listed below are the raw measurements, the samples are the differences in capacity (mAh) measured each 10 minutes, from which the drain and battery life are calculated.

== baseline ==
samples: 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 5
drain: 21.00±1.87mA
life: 65.39±4.77h
== av flac ==
samples: 9, 8, 8, 8, 7, 8, 7
drain: 47.14±1.45mA
life: 28.19±0.87h
== flac ==
samples: 11, 11, 11, 11, 11, 11
drain: 66.00±0.00mA
life: 20.00±0.00h
== av mp3 ==
samples: 11, 11, 11, 11, 11, 10
drain: 65.00±0.91mA
life: 20.33±0.30h
== nokiamp3 ==
samples: 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12
drain: 72.00±0.00mA
life: 18.33±0.00h
== av vorbis ==
samples: 10, 11, 11, 10, 11, 11
drain: 64.00±1.15mA
life: 20.67±0.38h
== vorbis ==
samples: 19, 18, 18, 19, 18, 19
drain: 111.00±1.22mA
life: 11.90±0.13h

If you are interested in the code: gst-av, gst-maemo-xiph. Enjoy

FaceBrick was down for about a month earlier due to some unannounced changes to the Facebook API which caused FaceBrick, amongst other Facebook apps, to stop working.

The latest update to libqfacebook (0.1.3-2) contains a fix for this - in other words, FaceBrick is up and running again! Thanks to Ahmad Mushtaq for fixing this. :-)

If you're still experiencing problems with FaceBrick, feel free to stop by the FaceBrick thread for support :-)

I don’t have an N8. Apparently some folks at Nokia are surprised by this. Maybe they bought into the corporate line about Nokia really caring about developers these days. Nokia gave Om a phone at Mobilize (and his “Thanks, but do I have to use it?” response probably sums up one of their flaws in gauging the right avenues for promotion), a few of the business folks at Mobile 2.0 had one, but I don’t have one. Normally, this wouldn’t surprise me actually. Despite all the talk about companies who love developers, what they really mean is they love folks who blog about developing. Those of us who just keep building high value businesses and aren’t necessarily quite so vocal, not so much.

A few months ago, we started a competition on FoneArena, which is known as the FoneArena Smartphone Championship. There were total 16 contestants, and today we have the winner, and before announcing, FoneArena want to ...

FoneArena Smartphone Champion: Nokia N900 is a post from: Fone Arena

Nokia's N8, a Symbian^3 device, comes with a service called Here and Now. This reads the cell tower information you're currently connected to and opens a web page detailing the current events (cinema listings and weather, for example) near you. I've done a quick port to Maemo 5 and the N900.

Once installed, you can launch it like any other application:

Without using a GPS, it sends your approximate position to Nokia's servers and shows you what's currently going on:

Nokia's N8, a Symbian^3 device, comes with a service called Here and Now. This reads the cell tower information you're currently connected to and opens a web page detailing the current events (cinema listings and weather, for example) near you. I've done a quick port to Maemo 5 and the N900.

Once installed, you can launch it like any other application:

Without using a GPS, it sends your approximate position to Nokia's servers and shows you what's currently going on:

At first I want to say, that I truly believe that it’s really important to understand unit testing and how to implement a good unit test. I’m not a unit test puritan or a professional in that area, but I think it’s very unprofessional to be a software developer without any knowledge of unit testing [...]

A Quick Look at Maemo Official Platform in Bugzilla
2010-09-27 through 2010-10-03

A Quick Look at Maemo Official Applications in Bugzilla
2010-09-27 through 2010-10-03

A Quick Look at Extras in Bugzilla
2010-09-27 through 2010-10-03

A Quick Look at Documentation in Bugzilla
2010-09-27 through 2010-10-03

Front Page

No Terminal, email client or third party apps in MeeGo 1.1?

In a surprising turn of events, the next major release of MeeGo (1.1, which is due this month), may not ship with an email client; a terminal to access the underlying OS or the ability to run any third party Qt applications. A number of bug reports in these critical pieces of software, and a bug in a common part of the UI, have been commented that they are "not targetted for 1.1". Carsten Munk, a member of the MeeGo ARM adaptation team, says on bug #7881: "Frankly, it's a marketing disaster waiting to happen. MeeGo Handset UX will be a joke if we can 'only' run MTF applications and not Qt apps in MeeGo 1.1 Handset UX - ruining the goal of multiple verticals with a common API to write against." It's worth bearing in mind that this is MeeGo 1.1, which should not be confused with Nokia's "MeeGo 1.0 N", aka Harmattan, aka Maemo 6. This is also due in the final quarter of this year (although with a much less firm release date), but apparently does not suffer from this bug and, almost certainly(!), will ship with an email client and support for third party applications.

The current analytical buzz about Nokia’s mind and market share issues tends to be pessimistic, presupposing that the company has no chance of reclaiming its former glory days due to the unwitting tag-team onslaught of Apple and Android.  But this negative assumption arises from ignorance and forgetfulness.

Despite what the title of this post might suggest, I really like Qt. But as a developer, I also know that "write once, run everywhere" isn't realistic without writing some special-cased platform-specific code. Qt does take care of many platform-specific things, and I think it's the closest you can get to "write once, run everywhere" right now.

My network blocks SIP on 3G, so when I start using its 3G service after leaving a wireless network my N900 goes absolutely crazy about not being to connect. Although this is a specific annoyance I have, it's a general problem with loads of similar cases, such as "I only want my work jabber/skype/MSN/etc. account enabled when I'm at work".

So, I wrote a small daemon and a fun UI to make this easy. It's actually really simple: once you configure which connections accounts should listen for, it uses libconic to listen for connect/disconnect events and enables and disables accounts as appropriate. You should also be able to override its actions temporarily without it clobbering your setting.

A sneaky peek at the UI. See if you can guess where I've been visiting recently.

I think the UI is pretty easy to use, and should cover most use cases.

I just uploaded it to extras-devel. It's called Automatic Connections.

Firefox for Mobile What's different about Firefox for Android - http://limpet.net/mbrubec... October 4 from Matt Brubeck - Comment - Like

I've had the chance to play around a bit more with the MeeGo Handset UX on the N900 yesterday (1.1.80.0.20101001.1). Carsten provided experimental graphics drivers, which still crash at a few points, but for the first time provide acceptable performance in the UI. I also decided to build the gPodder MeeGo Touch Prototype UI against libmeegotouch. Unfortunately, there's no SDK yet, so I had to use zypper on the device (via SSH) to install libmeegotouch-devel, make and gcc-c++ and then take a long coffee break after entering qmake ; make. As it's using plain Qt, the TRG binary built from the Fremantle SDK worked fine on the device.

If you don't see the embedded video, click here: MeeGo Handset UX on a N900 (w/ TRG, gPodder UI test, HW-accelerated).

The heads just keep rolling at Nokia. After OPK and Anssi Vanjoki, Ari Jaaksi becomes the latest of Nokia’s top brass to leave the company. Ari Jaaksi was the VP incharge of Nokia’s MeeGo devices and had been at Nokia since 1998. Since 2003, he had been working on the Linux-based Maemo OS that first powered Nokia’s Internet tablet devices and then the N900.

According to Nokia spokesperson Tapani Kaskinen, Jaaksi’s resignation won’t affect MeeGo’s rollout with the first device still expected before the end of the year. The move does come as a huge surprise, specially when the results of the years of hardwork are just about to come out with the N9. Reports suggest that his departure has nothing to do with the change in management. One reason could be creative differences between Peter Skillman and him, the ex-palm man that Nokia’s hired to make the MeeGo UI awesome (pure speculation). The point is that we may never know the real reasons for his departure, but the timing sure shocks.

Change is good, but not when the entire old guard leaves.

Hit tip to @mwkn.

Similar Posts:

• What Does MeeGo Mean For Maemo?
• Intel Disappointed With Nokia’s Move, But Puts Its Weight Behind MeeGo
• Its Official: Nokia Is Dropping The Maemo 6 Brand
• Video Demo Of MeeGo For Handsets – An Installable Version For The N900 Is Available
• What Is MeeGo?

Ari Jaaksi, the vice president of MeeGo device at Nokia, has resigned according to a report in Finland's Talous Sanomat (via Engadget). Jaaksi has been at Nokia for 12 years and has been one of the driving forces behind the adoption of open source at Nokia, one of the most profound underlying changes in Nokia's software strategy in recent times. The move comes ahead of the widely anticipated release of the latest iteration of Nokia's Linux based device.

I’m going to  Qt Developer Days 2010 next week.It’s be my first time there, and I can’t wait to see all the interesting presentations. My employer is paying my trip so I’ll write something about the event to Cybercom Channel. Here’s the list of technical sessions that I have planned to check out: Scene Graph: [...]

Depois das constantes quedas da LGE, tivemos baixas significas na BRISA Tecnologia. Agora, estou mudando novamente de empresa. Obrigado BRISA pela oportunidade e desafios que tivemos neste período de 4 meses.

Dentro de alguns dias, inicio uma nova busca por desafios no Instituto Eldorado, que possui excelentes parceiros como Motorola, DELL, HP e Positivo. Estou bem ansioso para ver os projetos que terei por lá.

Espero poder trazer excelentes novidades nas próximas semanas! \o/

I'll keep this one short, since technically it isn't my baby any more.

Facebrick is back, much kudos to Ahmad Mushtaq for his work in locating (and fixing) the problem caused by some Facebook change or other, and also to Kamilla Bremeraunet, former GSOC student, for her work in packaging and distributing the fixed library - as well as offering to take up Facebrick maintenence, an offer I have (gratefully) accepted. :)

So, Facebrick is back in operation. Enjoy! It's great that the source is open so that someone interested can continue on with this - this is what OSS is all about.

Aproveitando estes dias em que estou em casa de folga. Resolvi mexer um pouco com os equipamentos por aqui. O N810 andava meio solitário, depois que passei a utilizar mais o Nokia5800 para acessar a internet.

Outro problema é o fato de não gostar de ficar ligando os cabos do meu HD externo no netbook para acessar músicas e filmes.

Decidi compartilhar os arquivos meu HD externo via SMB usando meu N810. As principais passos seguem abaixo:

1 – N810 + HD

Gostaria de lembrar que o N810 possui um limite de energia que pode suprir para o equipamento plugado. Estou usando um HD externo com alimentação de energia. Instalei o aplicativo “usbmode” ou ative o modo “host” executando o comando abaixo:
echo host > /sys/devices/platform/musb_hdrc/mode

2 – Instalar Samba

sudo gainroot
apt-get install samba

3 – Configurar samba

cat /etc/passwd | mksmbpasswd > /etc/samba/smbpasswd
chmod 600 /etc/samba/smbpasswd
smbpasswd user
vi /etc/samba/smb.conf # download smb.conf HERE
sudo /etc/init.d/samba restart

Depois disto, use Windows Explorer para acessar seus arquivos. Você pode executar videos e músicas diretamente.

I was asked about giving an update on the status of the appdownloader, what is planned in the near future or has been changed already. Besides the bugfixes and small enhancements, like saving the user-credentials, some bigger improvement-ideas came up during the summer. Most of it is in proto-type stage, but once implemented properly it might add some value to the application itself and the process of downloading and installing applications on Fremantle.

We had our Apps vs Web Apps discussion at Mobile Monday SV Monday night, and unfortunately lots of folks thought we didn’t really do the topic justice. I want to thank Raj and the panel participants for making a go of it, I think they did a great job of covering a ton of ground. This is by no means a criticism of them, just an attempt to summarize and extend the conversation and feedback that came up after the panel. Which actually is a fantastic sign. Most of the time when I talk to folks after a discussion at MoMo they don’t have a strong opinion. But this time we definitely got some reactions! So maybe we did do our job well after all :-)

This will be the last post for this week, I promise ;) After playing around with the MeeGo Handset launcher and task switcher, I decided to have a look at how this could be implemented in Fremantle, because the big previews and the paginated launcher are easier to use in some cases (you can also checkout the contents of a window while scrolling by without having to activate it). hildon-desktop manages the task switcher and launcher, among other things. The results of two days of hacking are two patches:

• Single- and double-column task switcher and the
• Paginated launcher icon grid

What I'm missing right now and did not succeed in implementing straight away is the "snapping" of TidyFingerScroll to page boundaries, so that whenever a scroll operation is finished, it automatically scrolls to center the icon page (for the launcher) or a preview window (for the task switcher). Obligatory demo video (.debs and patches are linked from the threads above if you want to try it out yourself) here:

If you happen to have experience in Clutter, why not give it a try? I suppose you would just need to implement another scroll mode in TidyFingerScroll and then request this mode in hd-task-navigator.c and hd-launcher-page.c. Who's up for the challenge? :)

Random observation: Hidden in hd-task-navigator.c one can find a geeky gem:

  xthumb = ythumb = 0xB002E;

A new gPodder release should be ready next week. And now back to some Uni stuff :)

This has been a known fact inside Nokia (MeeGo) for quite a long time due to various performance issues we’ve had to workaround, but for some reason it wasn’t acknowledged as an issue when it was brought up in the mailing list.

Mr. Elop, I’m sure by now you’ve read your fill of these opinion pieces.  Since your hiring by Nokia was announced, analyst after analyst has offered their view on how you can save the company from impending doom.  So I’m not going to regurgitate what’s already been tossed your way.

The Nokia N900 was one of the first devices on while Flash 10.1 was demoed and this got a lot of people very excited. However a few months down the road its already available for a bunch of other devices, but the N900 has been out cold. However, there may be a silver lining after all.

A very interesting page appeared on the Texas Instruments website (the company behind the N900′s Cortex A8 processor) titled ‘Adobe Flash Plug-In – Evaluation and Demo for TI ARM CortexA8 Devices’. That was picked up by cfh11 on the TMO forum, following that Carsten was able to request a copy of the plugin from TI and has been testing it on the N900. As Andrew points out in the comments below, Carsten (Stskeeps) is one of the leading hackers in the Maemo community – and, indeed, sub-contracts to Nokia to work on the MeeGo adaptation for the N900! What were the results?

(As you can see, that’s Flash 10.1 on the N900 after all!)

According to Stskeeps, this was done by moving out the old libflashplayer.so in /usr/lib/browser/plugins and dropping in the new one. But before you get your hopes up, there seems to be no hardware acceleration and more importantly, the plugin isn’t available publicly. If you are interested, you can request a copy from TI here. You can also follow this TMO thread for updates.

Hat tip to @mwkn.

Similar Posts:

• Demo: The N900 Dual Booting Maemo & MeeGo
• Register & Log Into Meego.com With Your Maemo.org Account
• How To Install MeeGo On The Nokia N900
• What Does MeeGo Mean For Maemo?
• MeeGo 1.0 Is Here, Even For The N900 – Although Nokia Will Not Be Officially Supporting It

Even though I am testing out the Nokia N8 and using it almost exclusively with my T-Mobile SIM I still find my Maemo 5 Nokia N900 to be an excellent device. The service integration and web browser are awesome and today we hear that Firefox 4 beta for mobile is now available to download and install on the N900 and Android devices. This latest release is designed to increase performance and responsiveness, which is always a good thing.

You will find that Firefox Sync is included to sync browsing history, bookmarks, tabs, passwords and form-fill data so you can have a consistent experience between your PC/Mac and mobile phone. I have personally gone on to using Chrome as my preferred web browser, but still will have to try out this latest beta on my N900.

The Awesome Screen is supported in this release too. Have any readers installed it and tried it out yet?

Although with SQLite WAL we have direct-access now, we don’t support direct-access for insert and delete SPARQL queries. Those queries when made using libtracker-sparql still go over D-Bus using Adrien’s FD passing D-Bus IPC technique. The library will do that for you.

After investigating a performance analysis by somebody from Intel we learned that there is still a significant overhead per each IPC call. In the analysis the person made miner-fs combine multiple insert transactions together and then send it over as a single big transaction. This was noticeably faster than making many individual IPC requests.

The problem with this is that if one of the many insert queries fail, they all fail: not good.

We’re now experimenting with a private API that allows you to pass n individual insert transactions, and get n errors back, using one IPC call.

The numbers are promising even on Desktop D-Bus (the test):

$ cd tests/functional-tests/
$ ./update-array-performance-test
First run (first update then array)
Array: 0.103675, Update: 0.139094
Reversing run (first array then update)
Array: 0.290607, Update: 0.161749
$ ./update-array-performance-test
First run (first update then array)
Array: 0.105920, Update: 0.137554
Reversing run (first array then update)
Array: 0.118785, Update: 0.130630
$ ./update-array-performance-test
First run (first update then array)
Array: 0.108501, Update: 0.136524
Reversing run (first array then update)
Array: 0.117308, Update: 0.151192
$

We’re now deciding whether or not the API will become public; returning arrays of errors isn’t exactly ‘nice’ or ‘standard’.

You are in a maze of twisty little packages, all alike.

These are my notes to get useful cross-compilation, even with autotools, and GStreamer stuff.

The last SeriesFinale version was released before I went to GUADEC and then on vacation which means that it’s been a while since you have had news from this nice little app but today I’m releasing its 0.6.5 version.

This version has some nice new features apart from regular bug fixing and code improvement.
Juan has added the portrait mode (borrowed from the great gPodder) which surely pleases many users.

To control the rotation and other forthcoming preferences, I’ve rewritten the settings class and created a settings dialog:

Sometimes I get sick of getting the “Special” season on every shows, basically because I never watch those; so, I added a check button to the settings dialog where one can tell if the special seasons are to be considered or ignored, when adding new shows or updating existing ones.

But, if you’re like me and have a bunch of shows already added, it’d be a pain to delete episode-by-episode from the Special seasons in every show in order to delete these seasons… To solve this and to fill a missing/neglected action, I’ve added the “Delete Seasons” view which makes it easy to delete seasons.

Some problems with the threads have been solved as well, so, maybe weird issues like missing shows’ full title and stuff will likely be solved after this version.

Finally, a feature that has been requested a few times has been added: list shows by recent episode date. This means that now there are two filters in the shows’ view that list the shows by most recent episodes or by name. This is really useful because selecting the recent episodes’ sorting you can now update your shows’ list and the ones that got already aired, unwatched episodes will be listed on top of the list.

Here’s the changelog for this version:

* Add sorting shows by most recent episode or name
* Add auto-rotation support
* Add settings dialog
* Fix problems with threads
* Fix episodes highlight when checking/unchecking all episodes
* Rewrite settings
* Add special seasons addition preferences
* Make returning to the shows view faster
* Add delete seasons view

Soon, in a Maemo Extras repository near you!

(Oh, and the next time I touch SF’s code it’s very likely that it will be to port it to GNOME, so, stay tuned…)

Yes, yes, I’m painfully aware that it was ages ago I promised a “Season Three” about Hyakutake that has, so far, failed to materialize.

What didn’t fail to happen, however, is something I anticipated in a previous post… Since that time I became ever more engrossed with the speed of Python on the N900, the release of a Nokia-sponsored, beautifully “Hildonized” version of PyQt for Maemo5, and the wealth of great community applications that ensued : KhtEditor, DropN900, GRead, to name but a few.

Until, of course, I found an “itch to scratch” and a plausible excuse to make my own.

The itch was Simplenote, a web service that lets you jot down quick text notes and access them from anywhere. Think of it as a KISS version of Evernote that handles only plain text, but fast and well, especially when used off-line through native clients. There are quite a few such apps, for Windows, Mac OS and some mobile platforms : iOS and Android obviously, also Palm webOS, but no Maemo, as usual.

That was bait enough for me to take the plunge. After all, it did have “simple” in it, didn’t it ?…

So here is version 1.0 of SnXM, my very first PyQt app for the N900. And onwards, I hope : I’m confident it’s almost as future-proof as a web app, and the name reflects that — XM is 990 in Roman numerals :-)

It may not be the most polished UI out there (I still have much to learn about Qt), but it works. If you are a Simplenote user, or were waiting for a Maemo client to try it out (as I did with Evernote, Dropbox and Google Reader), check out the talk.maemo.org release topic and pipe in…

Enjoy!

Yesterday I attended and participated in a subsection of the CTIA show organized by Jai from Open Mobile Solutions called developer pitch sessions. There were some interesting presentations in there, and some great conversations. Here are a few of the bits I thought were worth mention:

A Quick Look at Maemo Official Platform in Bugzilla
2010-10-04 through 2010-10-10

A Quick Look at Maemo Official Applications in Bugzilla
2010-10-04 through 2010-10-10

A Quick Look at Extras in Bugzilla
2010-10-04 through 2010-10-10

A Quick Look at Documentation in Bugzilla
2010-10-04 through 2010-10-10

Front Page

Ari Jaaksi resigns from Nokia

Ari Jaaksi can be considered one of the fathers of Maemo (and hence MeeGo). As the vice president of Maemo Software, Maemo Devices and MeeGo Devices at Nokia; his enthusiasm for mobile Linux was palpable; and though no Steve Jobs, he did a fantastic job of talking to press, developers and enthusiasts at events like Nokia World, OSiM World, Maemo Summit and more.

However, he's handed in his resignation at Nokia for "personal reasons". All we can do is wish him luck in his future endeavours, thank him for his work bringing us this platform and hope that Nokia's MeeGo teams will get someone as open, personable and committed as Ari to fill his shoes. Many news articles are reporting: "Jaaksi's exit won't affect Nokia's coming MeeGo device launches or its strategy for further development of the platform, [spokesperson] Huovinen said, adding that the company is looking for candidates to fill his position."

Read more

Nokia says MeeGo announcement still set for 2010

Chuong Nguyen, of PocketNow, asked some common questions of the Nokia folk at the telecommunication industry's CTIA event last week: "I did my best to push, prod, and shake out the gossip of MeeGo's release date from Nokia's representatives in San Francisco over the last few days at CTIA, especially in light of rumors of a delay until 2011 given my MeeGo's other parent Intel. Nokia's reps on hand continue to say what they've said in the past--that we'll see an announcement from the Finnish smartphone maker--who's committed now to MeeGo and Symbian^3--by the end of the year. Now, whether that will mean just an announcement or an actual shipping product at that time is still unclear, but the good news remains that Nokia intends to keep us in the loop on MeeGo development efforts." With no sign of the Harmattan platform SDK yet, and with constant changes to the Qt and MeeGo Touch frameworks, your editor's hopes for people getting their hands on the Harmattan device before the end of the year are dimming.

Read more

In this edition (Download)...

1. Front Page
   • Ari Jaaksi resigns from Nokia
   • Nokia says MeeGo announcement still set for 2010
2. Applications
   • appdownloader: next steps
   • Flash 10.1 working (unaccelerated) on Maemo & N900
3. Development
   • Qt: Write once, #ifdef everywhere?
   • DQuest for object relational mapping in Qt
   • Hacking on hildon-desktop to get MeeGo-esque task switching
4. Community
   • Twitter List for MeeGo Conference
   • Keynote speakers and programme announced for MeeGo Conference
5. Devices
   • Experimental graphics drivers speed up MeeGo UI on N900
6. Maemo in the Wild
   • What U.S. app makers says about Ovi Store
7. Announcements
   • Automatic Connections: enable/disable IM accounts based on connection
   • Firefox 4 beta for Maemo now available
   • SeriesFinale 0.6.5 released
   • ...and 3 more

A new release of gPodder is out. Test it and vote! It has got some fine-tuning of the UI for Maemo 5 users that you will discover one by one. I just want to highlight two UI changes that should enhance the user experience, and compare them to what the previous version had.

The episode list

gPodder 2.8 introduced MAFW integration, and with it came the ability to save position and duration information for each episode. This was displayed in the episode action dialog, but not in the episode list. We now display the position and duration in the episode list, which allows you to quickly scan for an episode depending on its duration (or check how far you have come for a given episode). In the "All Episodes" list, we also display the podcast name for each episode so that it is clearer from which podcast an episode is coming (the content of the episode "Mini Book Reviews" is much more predictable if you know that it comes from "Python411").

Updating feeds

Previous versions of gPodder changed the "Check for updates" button into a combined progress indicator and cancel button. It was not really obvious to first-time users that you can cancel the feed update, and if you accidentally tapped the button twice, the feed update would be cancelled and you might be confused. gPodder 2.9 introduces a fancy new progress bar that appears (and even slides in and out thanks to hildon.AnimationActor) during the update and has a more obvious red cancel button. With the gained screen space (the progress bar is much bigger), we can also show more information about the update process, like the name of the updated podcast.

A detailed changelog can be found at http://gpodder.org/changelog/2.9. Of course, the Maemo 4 (N800, N810) package has also been updated, and is available from Diablo Extras right now.

Well, as I’ve had the surprise (and honour, thanks Jaffa!) of appearing in today’s Maemo Weekly News, I guess I might as well expand a bit on that “packaging issue” Andrew mentions, and the subsequent “plea for help”. In my view there’s quite a bit more to that issue than shown in the quick exchange in the SnXM topic on t.m.o.

Getting people to build mobile websites has been an uphill battle for a long time. We had a chicken and egg problem. People didn’t browse the web from their devices because the experience was horrible, and website owners didn’t make mobile optimized versions because people didn’t browse from their devices. That’s all changing now, quickly and drastically. I just want to pause for a second to recognize both Twitter and Facebook for their role in making it happen, cause between the both of them they’re the major drivers of adoption of the mobile web based on what I’m hearing.

Don’t forget about the Nokia N900! Word on the net (the Meego blog to be specific) is that PR 1.3 update is coming soon and that you’ll be able to dual boot between Maemo and Meego. The last update, PR 1.2 was released last May. Do you still have your Nokia N900? Post updated with Nokia’s response.

Here’s a quote from the official Meego blog:

On the Maemo side, there have been interesting, supporting developments going on, as well. The PR 1.3 update is quite close now, and with that you can easily dual boot between Maemo and Meego on your N900. There is also a possibility of developing applications supporting both operating systems, based on Qt and Qt Mobility APIs on the Maemo side. It means that you can develop once in PC with Qt Creator, and test your applications on both Maemo and MeeGo, directly on your N900 device!

This is exciting news since a lot of Nokia fans are looking forward to the new Meego OS. We also love getting firmware updates on our devices, so Maemo fans are going to be happy. Dual booting different OS sounds great too. That means we can change the user experience if we don’t like one of them. We’ll keep our eyes open for updates on this development.

UPDATE I asked Nokia for a statement regarding this topic and here’s their response:

The Nokia N900 is used as development hardware for platform developers working with MeeGo on ARM hardware architecture. While the software from the MeeGo project runs on the Nokia N900 for development purposes, Nokia does not intend to provide a dual-boot OS option to consumers in upcoming N900 commercial software releases as we want to ensure that we provide the best possible experience designed for that device. The meego.com blog post was primarily targeted to the audience reading the blog: MeeGo developers.

So there you have it. No dual boot option to consumers.

Thanks Ivan for submitting the tip!

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like...

• Nokia N900 PR 1.3 Update Now Available
• Meego Now Available For Nokia N900 But End Users Should Stay Away
• TwimGo for Nokia N900 Updated to 2.0.15, Adds Old/New Retweet & In Reply To

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I LOVE my Nokia N900 and it is saying a lot for a device if it stays in my collection for a full year or longer and I have now had the N900 for just about a year. I was disappointed to hear it wouldn’t get Maemo 6 or MeeGo, but according to a post on FoneArena the N900 may get support for dual booting Maemo and MeeGo with a PR 1.3 update in November. I don’t know if this is just someone dreaming of the best scenario for N900 owners or what, but if it happens that will make me very happy. I will probably end up getting the N9 or whatever MeeGo device comes out, but if I can try MeeGo on my N900 first that would be fantastic.

 I have taken several months away from my N900 due to the fact that Meego was coming.  I saw Maemo as a dead platform.  I still do see Maemo in that way but not the N900.  I have been tinkering with designing a Meego theme for a little while now but haven’t done much until recently.  Now with the announcement of Dual Booting Maemo and Meego I have starting digging into Meego theming even more.  I hope to have a Meego Theme done very soon even though the control panel to change themes wont be in Meego until Meego 1.2. 

I can’t wait to give Meego a try and get some Meego themes out.  I’ll keep everyone updated on the status of my first Meego theme.

Beat Maker is my “pet project” with Allyson Soares at INdT.

It is, basically, a drum loop emulator to be used by musicians during practicing sessions.

You just need to select the samples, define a BPM value and listen to the rhythm ;)

If you can’t wait for the official release at Ovi Store, you can try the beta version for n900 devices.

Remember: it’s a beta version of an open source software. The code can be found linked to my gitorious account.

The technical point of view:

I’m a little bit disappointed with phonon. After a long discussion I’ve realized that phonon could not be used on Beat Maker.

At this time I’m using an approach suggested by Adriano Rezende: play the sound using pulseaudio’s API. I know, it’s not portable. But hey, my target is N900 devices and it worked pretty well at the time.
However, it doesn’t scale. So, now, I’m working on a kind of “in-app-mixer”, which should solve this problem.

There is another problem, related to QTimer. Qt can’t guarantee the timing between the beats using QTimer events. Especially when you generate mouse events. Anyway, the mixer controller loop should solve this as well.

Big thanks to Adriano for the tips, and Allyson who made the excellent UI design.

I hope you enjoy it.
Suggestions are welcome =)

ps.: youtube video bellow

All things Digital claims that Ari Jaaksi, the former Head of Meego and Maemo is joining Palm as Senior Vice President of webOS. He’s expected to start in November. Ari Jaaksi resigned from Nokia earlier this month for personal reasons. I guess now we know what those reasons are.

Ari Jaaksi taking a photo with the Nokia N900 at Maemo Summit 2009

Maemo is the OS running on the Nokia N900. It was released late last year. Meego is the new platform Nokia has co-developed with Intel. We’re expecting to see Nokia’s Meego device, the Nokia N9, by the end of 2010 or early 2011.

There’s no official confirmation yet, but All things Digital cites sources close to Palm. On a sidenote, Ari Jaaksi’s blog and twitter account haven’t been updated yet. The profile still says, “I run MeeGo and Maemo @ Nokia.”

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like...

• GSM Palm Pre Announced – Threat to Nokia N900?
• Nokia E71 Plays Paparazzi & Snaps Palm Pre’s In the Wild
• Palm’s Eos Almost Super Thin – Nokia E71 Still The Thinnest Smartphone

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Firefox for Mobile Desktop Notifications in Fennec - http://dougt.org/wordpre... October 14 from dougt's blog » mozilla - Comment - Like

I was at the Qt Developer Days 2010 in Munich last week and it was my very first Qt Dev Days ever. If I understood it right, the location was also different than it used to be (but not sure about that). The Dolce hotel was very crowded, but all the audience seemed to fit [...]

A Quick Look at Maemo Official Platform in Bugzilla
2010-10-11 through 2010-10-17

A Quick Look at Maemo Official Applications in Bugzilla
2010-10-11 through 2010-10-17

A Quick Look at Extras in Bugzilla
2010-10-11 through 2010-10-17

A Quick Look at Documentation in Bugzilla
2010-10-11 through 2010-10-17

Front Page

PR1.3 almost ready and MeeGo calling on the N900

In a post touching on a number of topics in the N900, Maemo and MeeGo arena; Harri Hakulinen summarises:

* The state of the MeeGo project on N900

* The improvements in dual boot support coming in PR 1.3 (shortly)

* The announcement of Carsten Munk's new role as maintainer for N900 adaptation

* An overview of MeeGo 1.2 plans

Some choice quotes: "MeeGo is an open source project and if you choose to install the MeeGo image to your N900 device, you do it completely at your own risk. If you are not confident that you know what you are doing with it and why, please don't use it at all. Especially now, if you start playing with call software under development, you need to watch after your phone bill, as well. [...] On the Maemo side, there have been interesting, supporting developments going on, as well. The PR 1.3 update is quite close now, and with that you can easily dual boot between Maemo and Meego on your N900. There is also a possibility of developing applications supporting both operating systems, based on Qt and Qt Mobility APIs on the Maemo side. It means that you can develop once in PC with Qt Creator, and test your applications on both Maemo and MeeGo, directly on your N900 device!" This blog post was greeted with hysterics from the "blogosphere" and sections of talk.maemo.org. It does NOT signify that Nokia have changed their mind about commercial support for MeeGo (or, more accurately, MeeGo-Harmattan) nor that MeeGo is finished, end-user ready or will ship with PR1.3. It means that developers will be able to reboot between MeeGo and Maemo, without having to have a PC nearby to temporarily flash the MeeGo kernel.

Read more

Ari Jaaksi hired by HP to work on WebOS

Ari Jaaksi, former vice president of MeeGo Devices at Nokia, has - it seems - been hired by HP to work on WebOS. According to All Things Digital: "Sources close to the company tell me that Jaaksi has been hired on as senior vice president of webOS at Hewlett-Packard’s Palm division. He’s to start in November, after relocating to the Bay Area, and when he does, he’ll lead Palm’s webOS engineering team." Hopefully there was nothing coming up in Nokia/MeeGo which pushed him out; his hiring adds further credibility to the platform that was recently acquired by HP to differentiate themselves from the other Android-toting manufacturers.

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In this edition (Download)...

1. Front Page
   • PR1.3 almost ready and MeeGo calling on the N900
   • Ari Jaaksi hired by HP to work on WebOS
2. Development
   • Bid for contract to port Gtk+ well to MeeGo
3. Community
   • Introducing the new Maemo Community Council
   • Submit your MeeGo Conference lightning talk proposals now
4. Announcements
   • TwimGo v2.0.10 alpha released
   • Communi: lightweight IRC client
   • Beat Maker: drum loop maker
   • Travelapp updates

Finally, the last Friday the Pandaboard arrived to the office. Thanks to all the guy in TI who generously decided to give me one, specially to Jayabharath Goluguri and Rob Clark.

The next Saturday, Ryan Lortie and I came to the office to fool around with the new toy. Just one word: Impressive.

Ryan set up the Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat image for the Pandaboard. At the beginning we ran with a couple problems, but with the help of Ogra we couped  them. First lesson learnt:

The SD for Maverick must be, at least, a 4Gb card, not less.

Second lesson learnt:

The USB is unable the power the Pandaboard. Thou shall power the board with a normal 5V power supply.

Also we found that my monitor, a LG Flatron W2261VP, is not well handled by the PVR X driver, but still it’s usable under 640×480. Ryan filed a bug about this issue.

It was great start up experience. The next stage is play with syslink and DOMX. Anyway, I won’t use Ubuntu for it, my plan is go with the minimal-fs stuff.

Greetings, and welcome to another term for the Maemo Community Council. This is the first of what I'm hoping will be an ongoing "State of Maemo" series (that will most likely come out periodically rather than regularly). As we begin our new term, the Council has already come up against a few immediate concerns. Thankfully, those members of the Council who have expertise in these areas have been able to handle most of it from the Maemo perspective (which, of course, where the strength lies in the Council to begin with). Still, there will be times in which we do not have the collective knowledge or know-how to be able to tackle issues sufficiently. As always, we look to you, the Maemo Community, for help in this regard. And, even more so, we look to you for guidance in which items are of interest or at crucial points of development (or break down). This being said, before continuing with this address, I'd like to personally thank you, on behalf of the entire Council, for your diligence and help in making the Maemo Community a world class open source community of end-users and experts.

#leftcontainerBox { float:left; position: fixed; top: 60%; left: 70px; } #leftcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; clear:both; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; padding-bottom:2px; } #bottomcontainerBox { height: 30px; width:50%; padding-top:1px; } #bottomcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; height: 30px; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; } As the Nokia N900 and Maemo 5 project advances, users don’t sleep. Sometimes we should have a closer look on what more advanced users are wodking on, recently I ran into few interesting articles about customization and MeeGo running on N900. User interface customization is what I really like, that’s why when I’ve found that someone [...]

Its rare that I review someone else’s theme work because I rarely uses someone else’s themes.  As I am sure most of theme designers use one of there themes.  I did how ever notice when D-Iivil released his Plastic Theme that came with a settings page to change some things around.  I though man that would be cool to have on my themes because I’m always getting people asking me to tweek certain font colors or sizes, remove icon backgrounds and many other things.   In the past I stayed away from making several versions of my themes to make these people happy. 

I talked to D-Iivil once about making a Scheme for the Plastic Theme that looked like maemo-org theme but used his settings window.  Soon after that I took a break for Maemoand theming.  I just recently got started back up and I saw his new Theme Customizer that does what the Plastic Theme did plus more.  I was so excited I installed it right away and started playing with some of my themes.  I even used this to fix a bug on one of my unreleased themes that caused text to be unreadable do to font color. 

This application really is one everyone needs on there N900.  Check out the Screenshot and Features List below then check out the t.m.o thread here

Here is a list of things you can change using Theme Customizer

- change system font family
- change system font size
- change font colors
- save, load and delete color presets
- change icon theme
- change application shortcut sizes at homescreen
- show or hide the backgrounds for application shortcuts at homescreen
- change web bookmarks sizes at homescreen
- adjust snap to grid value at homescreen
- import .ttf and .otf fonts to be used with the device
- change opacity of built-in homescreen widgets
- change background image for clock, app manager, lockscreen and media player

I think this prototype of an open web app system from the folks at Mozilla is quite interesting. First thing to note is that it works currently on Android and iPhone devices even in the prototype version they have up. Not mobile specific rendering on some Android devices, and there are a few issues with links in overlays, but the core is working.

Firefox for Mobile Mozilla Try, made simple. - http://dougt.org/wordpre... October 20 from dougt's blog » mozilla - Comment - Like

I have been using Nokia N900 as a primary mobile phone for nearly a year now and I am quite happy with it. However, quite recently I’ve also bought the best value-for-money Android 2.1 device you can currenly get, which is Orange San Francisco aka ZTE Blade. I won’t go in too much details about [...]

I have been using Nokia N900 as a primary mobile phone for nearly a year now and I am quite happy with it. However, quite recently I've also bought the best value-for-money Android 2.1 device you can currenly get, which is Orange San Francisco aka ZTE Blade. I won't go in too much details about the phone itself, as anyone could easily look it up, but if you're after joining Android world cheaply, yet without much (any?) compromise in hardware area, then ZTE Blade is definitely way to go. Anyway, I have never intended new phone to replace my N900 because of lack of hardware qwerty keyboard which I'm very addicted to, nonetheless I gave it a shot and put my main SIM card into it for few days. That experience made me cry and I'm just about to tell you why...
Read more »

The phone itself isn’t new, nor is the idea of installing Android on a Nokia N900. However, I took a slightly different path which I figure some of my geekier friends might find interesting.

Nokia has released their Q3 2010 results, reporting an operating profit of €529 million, with net sales of €10.3 billion. Nokia's device and service division's profits were €807 million, up 3% year on year. Margins in devices and services were 10.5% (down 0.9% YoY and up 0.9% QoQ). The figures beat market expectations. Converged devices sales (smartphones) were significantly up, at 26.5 million, compared with 16.4 million units in Q3 2009 (up 61% YoY) and compared with 24 million units in Q2 2010 (up 10%, QoQ).  Worldwide smartphone market share was 38%, down 3% sequentially but up 2% year on year. 

Watching the feeds and blog sites in the last week would get a hypochondriac very worried, as multiple sites are reporting a “dangerous and new threat” from touchscreen smartphones, specifically that there are highly infectious virii being transmitted by sharing phones (stories like ”The Ultimate Bacteria Carrier” being typical). Really? You know, a bit of research and some common sense proves exactly the opposite. If you want to read more than the first paragraph, that is.

Qt Creator and Scratchbox

 

Qt Creator and Scratchbox

 

A month ago I integrated into Akregator the “share” feature that uses Plasma’s microblog service to help you to share news with your friends using the microblog services (identi.ca and twitter). The good thing about using identi.ca is that all your data belong to you and you can easily replicate your posts to twitter too. Another place where identi.ca is better than twitter is that it provides RSS feeds for all kind of information.

You may be asking yourself: “why the heck is this useful?”. The answer is: everytime you share some article on Akregator it publishes the title of the article, the link to the article and put’s a tag “#share”. This way you can use the tag feed to retrieve the news that your friends are sharing: just add the RSS feed to your feed reader and voilà This provides a feature that looks like the one that Google Reader provides, but in completely open environment!

If you are interested in reading my shares, just add this to your reader: http://identi.ca/morpheuz/tag/share/rss .

I’m on vacations so it has been hard to keep doing any development as I’m busy traveling with my fiance but I can post about some stuff that I’ve been developing before my vacations!

See you!

The very most basic way to find good apps is by popularity. Both iPhone and Android have the option to find the most popular apps, and in fact it’s the default. This is so brain-dead simple that in the app store review videos they just mention it: you can see popular applications (sure, as you would expect).

Maemo, on the other hand, doesn’t even have a concept of popularity. This ensures both that users would not be able to find cool apps, and that cool app writers would not be rewarded for their efforts.

This has to change.

Evidence

If you go to the Maemo downloads page, you would find a link that says “Popular“, but when you click it, you go to the “Hot” section. Is this really the same?

Well, let’s compare:

msn-pecan
downloads: 200390
download rate: ~700
votes: 29
stars: 4.3
page: 18

rulerjinni
downloads: 38742
download rate: ~450
votes: 1
stars: 3
page 1

givemefive
downloads: 51025
download rate: ~500
votes: 1
stars: 3
page 1

So, no, whatever measure is being used to determine the place in this list, it’s definitely not popularity. msn-pecan is clearly a more popular project, and it appears on page 18, which is like place #450, while both rulerjinni and givemefive share the page of the #1.

Could it be hotness? Nah, msn-pecan has a higher download rate, and it actually has comments and votes. So what is this listing is beyond my comprehension but it’s not useful.

In fact, if you look at the download stats of rulerjinni and givemefive you would see that they are almost identical, which is probably due to the fact that they come from the same author, so perhaps he made releases at the same time, which is the only kind of activity these projects get, and then, they get to the front page, where they get downloaded at the same rate, because they get the same visibility.

Totally unfair.

Fix

Three months ago I filed a bug report. The only response is basically saying that popularity is not measured in popularity.

Please, vote on the bug report so that this has a chance of getting fixed.

My guess is that the only way the community is finding good apps is through word-of-mouth, social media, blog posts, etc. Because clearly, there’s no place to find popular apps.

There was a decent amount of discussion about the virtual goods vs advertising numbers that Flurry released. Awesome set of numbers they put together there, thanks for sharing them!

When I started to blog about one year ago, I thought that it would be only a small experiment how to use social media such Twitter, Youtube and WordPress together and then sit back and watch what happens. It wasn’t like that. It actually requires quite a lot of effort to blog. Now that I’ve [...]

We released today a game called 5-in-a-row. It's implemented with Qt Quick / QML and designed for 2 players playing next to each other:



Want it? Package for N900 as well as source codes are available from here!

Are you interested about Qt Quick? Want to get jiggy with it and develop mad skillz? Wanna become first Qt Quick OVI Store millionaire? Good news, we have a (partial) solution!

We've been working with Qt Quick / QML for quite some time now and decided to write ~30 pages short tutorial which goes through step-by-step the implementation of 5-in-a-row game. My recommendation would be to read the tutorial while browsing game sources and reaching towards Qt Quick API documentation whenever interested in more details.

Download the "Qt Quick Game Programming" tutorial from here!

A Quick Look at Maemo Official Platform in Bugzilla
2010-10-18 through 2010-10-24

A Quick Look at Maemo Official Applications in Bugzilla
2010-10-18 through 2010-10-24

A Quick Look at Extras in Bugzilla
2010-10-18 through 2010-10-24

A Quick Look at Documentation in Bugzilla
2010-10-18 through 2010-10-24

Front Page

Make sure you're properly signed up for the MeeGo Conference

It seems there's been confusion about registering for meego.com vs. registering for the MeeGo Conference. Michael Shaver, one of the maintainers of the meego.com infrastructure, explains: "Many people believe they have signed up, but we have found that they have only registered for an account and have NOT signed up for the conference." The email clearly lays out what you have to do to check. If you want to attend the free conference in November, please check your status by following its instructions. As attendence slots are limited, be sure to check soon.

Read more

"No product announcements" at MeeGo Conference

Sanjeev Visvanatha has revealed that as part of his press pack for the conference next month contains the disappointing - but not altogether surprising - announcement that no product announcements will be made there: "The Media Advisory I received from the Linux Founadtion along with my invitation to Meego Conference next month says that there are no product announcements, just a developer and community conference." With Stephen Elop referring to Nokia's MeeGo device as "a 2011 event", hopes for an N900 replacement before Christmas have been largely dashed.

Read more

In this edition (Download)...

1. Front Page
   • Make sure you're properly signed up for the MeeGo Conference
   • "No product announcements" at MeeGo Conference
2. Applications
   • preenv lets Palm Pre games run on Maemo
3. Development
   • Using Qt Creator with Scratchbox
   • New draft of MeeGo Compliance Specification - still no third party dependencies
4. Maemo in the Wild
   • Stephen Elop, Nokia's new CEO, talks Qt & MeeGo

Toodledo is an online task manager with a vast array of options for managing everything from mundane tasks to large projects. While they do not yet offer a Symbian application, their "Slim" website offers a compelling browser-based replacement to the standard Symbian task manager. Read on to learn more about the wealth of features.

Well in time for the MeeGo Conference next month, Nokia has just started the rollout of the all new PR 1.3 firmware (v20.2010.36-2) for the N900. The update is available over the air (OTA) in the UK with other countries expected to follow suit tomorrow. It should also be available via Nokia’s Software Updater in the coming days.

Once the firmware images become available, you can also simply grab the vanilla version for PR 1.3 for your region and get flashing using this guide. If you are on a Mac, this is the guide to follow. The new firmware brings bug fixes, stability improvements and support for Nokia’s Ovi Suite. The Nokia Music Store will also be accessible from the device allowing for DRM free downloads.

This firmware is also supposed to aid developers (& power users?) in dual booting their devices into MeeGo and I suspect this would be the main draw come November and the MeeGo Conference.

If you are developer, you should be pleased to know that the new firmware:

‘It also aligns the Qt application and UI framework with the planned version for the MeeGo 1.1 platfrom (Qt 4.7).  Qt Mobility 1.0.2 APIs for mobile development are also included’. Essentially, even without MeeGo1.1 handsets, you can built now apps for it using the N900 running  PR1.3, and Qt4.7.

Fortunately, I’m headed to the MeeGo Conference and will be keeping a eye out on the latest. Make sure you follow @TheHandheldBlog on Twitter or grab our full feed RSS to keep on top of the latest.

Similar Posts:

• Live From The MeeGo Conference
• MeeGo Gets A Second Conference: May 23-25 In San Francisco
• Registrations For The MeeGo Conference In May Now Open
• Demo: The N900 Dual Booting Maemo & MeeGo
• The N900 Finally Gets The PR 1.2 Firmware

Some of you are bound to have realized that there is a new update for the N900, PR1.3. This is primarily a consumer update containing many tweaks and improvements to the N900 user experience. It also aligns the Qt application and UI framework with the planned version for the MeeGo 1.1 platform (Qt 4.7).  Qt Mobility 1.0.2 APIs for mobile development are also included.

Software development using scratchbox for the new platform will be supported right away.  For those using the Nokia Qt SDK, we have tested Qt 4.6 applications on PR1.3 and did not encounter any major problems, so you can continue to distribute apps developed with the current toolset. Support for new N900 apps with the Qt4.7 framework will be available with a Nokia Qt SDK update that will be available soon.   Until then, Ovi Store will accept applications built using Qt4.6.

Qt 4.7 comes with Qt Declarative libraries and QML support. This cutting edge technology allows the fast creation of impressive application UIs.  It also supports interaction with C++ objects, allowing developers to create dynamic UIs in QML and link them to background C++ code.  There have been many examples of Qt Quick already posted at maemo.org and at qt.nokia.com.  Full Qt Creator support for Qt Quick development will be available when Nokia Qt SDK 1.1 is released.

We’re happy to announce that Qt 4.7 was released with the latest update (PR 1.3) for the N900. This makes the N900 the first device to ship with Qt 4.7, and most notably, Qt Quick. In addition, we’re also happy that Qt Mobility 1.0.2 comes pre-installed. We’ve created a small teaser video demoing Qt Mobility and Qt Quick on the N900:

Some useful Qt for Maemo 5 links:

• Official landing page
• Documentation main page
• Maemo 5 specific documentation
• Platform Notes
• Maemo 5 specific examples
• Community wiki

As always, thanks to all Nokia internals and externals, our community for providing valuable feedback and everyone else who made this release possible

I just read over on The Handheld Blog that PR1.3 for the Nokia N900 is rolling out across different regions right now. This will bring the firmware up to v20.2010.36-2 and is available over the air. I don’t have my N900 with me at the moment so I cannot confirm if it is available in the US yet, but will try when I get home tonight.

I understand the new firmware has some bug fixes, stability improvements, and support for Nokia’s Ovi Suite. It is also supposed to aid developers in dual booting their devices into MeeGo. It is doubtful that any MeeGo hardware will be coming out this year so this should give enterprising users the capability to try out MeeGo for themselves on the N900 and it is something I will be looking into on my N900 soon.

After I get my Nokia N900 updated I will look around and see if I can find any other specific updates and if an official changelog is posted I will include that as well.

There is a new update for the Nokia N900 dubbed PR 1.3, but you’ll see it in the device as version 20.2010.36-2. The update adds support for PC Ovi Suite to access and sync files and messages between your Nokia N900 and desktop. There are also tweaks and fixes that should make the Nokia N900 perform better. The OTA update wasn’t available for me, but Nokia Software Update via PC worked fine.

The PR 1.3 update is about 200MB. I don’t notice major changes so far, but I’ll update this post if a changelog pops up. On the backend, the Maemo team mentioned on their blog that this update aligns the Qt application and UI framework with the planned version for the MeeGo 1.1 platform (Wt 4.7). It includes Qt Mobility 1.0.2 APIs too. Make sure to read their post if you’re a developer.

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like...

• Nokia N900 PR 1.3 Update Coming Soon With Dual Boot to Meego
• Nokia N900 Firmware Updated to 2.2009.51-1 – Changelog Included
• Nokia N900 Firmware Updated to 3.2010.02-8

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So, the latest update to the firmware for the Nokia N900 came out today, and I figured I’d give it a shot to see what works and what doesn’t. As I did for my experiments installing NitDroid on the N900, I am writing this as a log so people can see what worked and didn’t for me. It will be geeky, so non N900 users may want to skip this post.
<!--break-->
My biggest concern was whether PR 1.3 would conflict with NitDroid, Multiboot, Power Kernel or other things I had running. On the Maemo Users mailing list, I found that the default PR 1.3 kernel returns 2.6.28-omap1 Sure, it is an August build, but I guessed that it wasn’t all that different from the Nitdroid or Power kernels. So I tried an Over The Air or OTA upgrade.

I usually have the Maemo SDK running inside a VM - either completely remote or on the same machine (so I can have a 32-bit minimal Debian install containing Scratchbox independent of the host system). I can then SSH into the development VM from my working machine using public key authentication and the SSH agent. I also have agent forwarding set up, so that I can SSH from the SDK machine directly to the N900 (to deploy binaries and .debs) or to some server requiring SSH access (e.g. drop.maemo.org) without having to generate lots of keys and distributing the key to all kinds of different machines.

Using -A (or ForwardAgent yes in .ssh/config) when SSHing into the SDK machine makes it possible to connect to other machines from it, utilizing your SSH key. This sadly does not work when starting scratchbox, because it opens a new environment, and the $SSH_AUTH_SOCK environment variable is lost. To fix this, I simply write the contents of this variable into a file accessible from Scratchbox and then export this variable in the Scratchbox login script. I usually also have a symlink in $HOME pointing to the SDK $HOME:

ln -s /scratchbox/users/$USER/home/$USER ~/sdk

With this in place, I can now edit the "normal" user's login script by adding the following line at the end of .bashrc:

echo $SSH_AUTH_SOCK >~/sdk/.ssh_auth_sock

Scratchbox has its own login script (also called .bashrc, but sitting in the Scratchbox home folder), so we edit this and add the following line:

export SSH_AUTH_SOCK=`cat .ssh_auth_sock`

After this, logout of Scratchbox, logout of the SSH session and then connect again with SSH forwarding:

ssh user@maemosdk -A
scratchbox
ssh-add -l

The last command should display the fingerprint of your SSH key. You can now connect to remote hosts from within your Scratchbox session while your SSH key still resides only on your local machine, loaded into the SSH agent.

I just saw the below video over on Engadget and am pretty amazed at how well the games are running. I purchased about 20 games for my Palm Pre Plus, but no longer own it and cannot use any of those games. The Engadget post shows webOS games running on the N900 and it sounds as if some enterprising developers made it work with some kind of Preenv utility. I am not sure what was done to make this happen and would love for there to be some way for us to purchase and install games on our N900 devices.

I would like to see Dungeon Hunter and H.A.W.X. on my N900. If you could play webOS games on your N900, which ones would you like to try?

Nokia's Linux-based phone, the N900, has received an update to its Maemo 5 operating system, which fixes a long list of bugs and performance issues. The PR 1.3 (v20.2010.36-2) update is currently available to UK (and others) users via Nokia Software Updater (NSU) and over the air (OTA) download. However, as an alternative, users can also download images for their region from Nokia's tablet firmware repository. The update also offers support to MeeGo developers, wanting to develop applications ahead of device releases next year, by including the Qt 4.7 development framework and Qt Mobility 1.02. Read on for more details.

There has been a lots of discussion about the QML recently, so I decided to look at it myself as well. I think that QML is a very good new technology in the Qt and it makes it very much easier to implement out of the box UIs which are not bound to traditional UI logic, e.g. to what for example traditional desktop toolkits (like gtk+) tends to limit.

There is no easy to use noob guide to dual boot between Maemo and MeeGo on the N900 yet, but if you want a sneak peak at the signs of things to come, Carsten Munk (@stskeeps) has put together a brief demo showing the N900 booting between Maemo and MeeGo pretty seamlessly.

Carsten is the official maintainer of the MeeGo Nokia N900 hardware adaptation and goes on to say:

MeeGo 1.1 isn’t out yet, give us a little bit of time. What will happen if things go right:

* Package install from extras-devel that enables the u-boot boot loader.
* Upon startup, if there is a SD card that’s bootable, it will boot the SD card, with MeeGo. Otherwise, it will boot Maemo.

More customized setups are possible for the daring.

MeeGo will not come to the N900 officially i.e. Nokia will not provide it via the Nokia Software Updater or any other sort of download. However, like I have said before, there will be a community based version which you will be able to install by following a brief tutorial. The pieces are almost in place, its only a matter of time.

Note: Carsten (@stskeeps) had originally uploaded the video to blip.tv, YouTube upload via Simon. Follow this TMO thread for the latest.

Similar Posts:

• Flash 10.1 Comes To The N900, Well Sort Of
• How To Install MeeGo On The Nokia N900
• What Does MeeGo Mean For Maemo?
• Register & Log Into Meego.com With Your Maemo.org Account
• What Is MeeGo?

After reading Albert's thoughts about the state of openness in Qt, I felt like I had something to contribute, and contribute I did in the comments on his post, but I don't think it is enough.

One of the annoyances with task lists on mobile devices is that there is no easy way to view or edit your task list on your computer as well (there are some web services that allow for these things, but you have to trust your data to these services, and not all these services have a full-featured Maemo client app, and they mostly need to synchronize data between different clients).

So, what about having a simple HTTP server that you can start on your N900 and access from your computer's web browser to view and edit your MaePad checklists? Here's a short video of how it works at the moment:

Here's a screenshot of how the checklist view looks right now:

The MaePadWeb application will be available soon. On a related note, MaePad 1.8 is out now with live search support for the memo list - check it out and test it/vote for it!

The nice thing about Qt development is that you can get a taste of the latest bleeding edge technologies (QML, Qt Components, MTF) if you take a peek at what's going on at gitorious. The downside is, sadly, that you either need specialized SDK installs or suffer building all those packages from source, packaging them, and not blowing up your install in the process. This can be a time-consuming and daunting task. Well, if you have Ubuntu Lucid or Maverick, you're in luck as there is a shortcut to having a quick taste of the bleeding edge: the Forum Nokia Qt PPA, containing all the new and shiny goodies in a convenient form, compiled for desktops. Read on how to get the fresh-from-the-oven stuff !

The MeeGo 1.1 images for the N900 have just been released into the wild and are now available for download. But before you get too excited, do keep in mind that MeeGo 1.1 not ready to be used as a primetime OS on the N900 and that the images have been released following a release cycle, rather than waiting for everything to mature first.

MeeGo 1.1 is a stepping stone to MeeGo 1.2 which will make the user experience to an acceptable level. There is active discussion happening about the present release on the TMO forums, have  a look if you are interested.

Follow @TheHandheldBlog on Twitter for the latest or grab our full feed RSS.

Similar Posts:

• Nokia N900 PR 1.3 Firmware Now Available
• Live From The MeeGo Conference
• All The Nokia Blogs Now Under One URL
• MeeGo 1.0 Is Here, Even For The N900 – Although Nokia Will Not Be Officially Supporting It
• How To Install MeeGo On The Nokia N900

It looks like it is time to put my SIM back into my N900 and start messing around with the device again. I just uploaded it to the PR1.3 firmware and that went well. We now see that MeeGo 1.1 for the N900 is available so you can dual boot your N900 and check it out.

It seems this process still requires some developer skills, but we will keep an eye out for a process to share with you all. If you find out how we can do it fairly easily, then please share with the group. So now it seems you can dual boot into MeeGo or play webOS games, isn’t it great to have a Nokia N900?

The topic for November at Mobile Monday Silicon Valley is Top Startup Legal Mistakes. I’ve been talking to a whole boatload of startups lately, and this seems like a really timely topic. There are a lot of folks out there looking to strike out in a new direction. While there are some awesome resources out there to give folks a bit of a lift (see the Series Seed public funding documents for example), there’s still a lot to wrap your head around if you’re starting out for the first time. So we pulled together a few lawyers who have been through the process plenty of times before to point out the common things to be aware of and discuss how to make sure you avoid the most difficult issues.

After its October 6th release, the Smeegol project (an openSUSE interpretation of MeeGo, which we reported on), has been told by the Linux Foundation that it must find a new name. In a reply to the project, the Linux Foundation said the project's use of the Smeegol name would not beneficial to MeeGo. Read on for more details.

The MeeGo project reached an important milestone today with the release of MeeGo 1.1. It aims to create a solid baseline for both manufacturers and developers to devices and software across a broad range of categories (netbook, handset, IVI and) across both the ARMv7 and Intel Atom chipset architectures. The current MeeGo releases remain mainly of interest to device manufacturers, developers and those wishing to take an early look at MeeGo before it arrives on commercial devices.

Moved to http://www.zionsoft.net/2010/10/hybrid-application-qml-qt/

So the other day I posted that the Nokia N900 was able to run webOS games as shown in the video on Engadget. A reader, Kumar, submitted a comment to my post that linked to his installation guide that gives you step-by-step instructions for getting your N900 up and running. Be aware though that this process is not for the faint of heart and I haven’t personally gotten around to doing it myself yet.

I bought several games when I had a Palm webOS device and I need to check to see if there is anyway to install those games on my N900 since I technically “own” the licenses to them and am not using them at the moment.

Have any of you tried this out yet? Thanks a million to Kumar for posting the instructions and sharing them with everyone.

This is a nice initiative that Nokia is spearheading with Capgemini and The World Bank to explore and foster the innovation eco-system in Africa.

It's called the Open Innovation Africa Summit and it's happening the week of November 29th 2010 in Nairobi, Kenya!

The summit aims to promote creation of new innovation services and collaboration models, which ensure continuous alignment between different players of the innovation ecosystem as well as to embed end-user driven co-creation and open innovation as critical elements to African innovation systems.

They've launched a great ideation platform as part of it that revolves around the four main streams for the event:

• Ecosystem for Innovation
• Emerging Market Business Models
• Mobile Services Revolution
• Human Capital - Education for All

You can check out the website and find more information here: www.innovateafrique.com

We're launching official communication about the event next week but I wanted to let readers of this blog know about this extraordinary initiative and to get your help providing insights and ideas (there are also 8 seats dedicated to the top contributors and readers here could for sure contribute greatly at the event itself, so I thought I'd give you all a heads up :)

The road mapping meeting for the 3.04 Nokia Data Gathering release takes place directly after this event at the School Of Computing And Informatics, University of Nairobi.

We had a session about application QA in last weekend's GSoC Mentor Summit. I explained how the Maemo Downloads approval process works in a completely open, crowdsourced way. This differs from many distributions where approval of new packages involves obscure decisions and secret handshakes.

Some guidelines:

• Separate your core distribution and application packages
• Approval process should have three layers: development, testing and stable, individually for each application targeting a particular distribution version
• Anybody can upload packages to development status, and then promote them to testing
• On their way from development to testing packages should pass automated tests
• Anybody can install and test packages that are in testing, and vote for them
• Testing guidelines should be clear and easily available to anybody interested in testing
• Quarantine period for applications being tested (ten days in case of Maemo)
• When quarantine has passed and application has enough positive votes, developer can promote the package to stable

Hopefully these ideas will prove helpful for other distributions like MeeGo, Ubuntu or Debian. See also my slides from an earlier talk on the same subject.

Yeah, I did not write for a while, but that does not mean I’m dead or changed interests, just that running an always growing company is taking lots of time, with the spare time I get being invested in something interesting and relevant, usually that does not translate to blog posts  However I felt like doing it today.

A lot has been written in German media about the WeTab. Mostly, every news magazine tried to compare the Tab to Apple's iPad and came to the conclusion that it's not an iPad. What a surprise!

After recently writing about the broken contribution process in Qt, I got a little bit inspired to see what the current 'lay of the land' of the Qt contribution ecosystem looks like. So, I did what any self-respecting hacker would do, and wrote a quick script over the course of a few hours to generate the statistics I wanted. Beware, gitstats takes a long while to run over repositories with a big history. If you want to skip the work of running it over Qt yourself, grab a copy of the CSVs I generated.

The Perceptron (Rosenblatt, 1957) is one of the oldest and simplest Machine Learning algorithms. It’s also trivial to kernelize, which makes it an ideal candidate to gain insights on kernel methods.

A Quick Look at Maemo Official Platform in Bugzilla
2010-10-25 through 2010-10-31

A Quick Look at Maemo Official Applications in Bugzilla
2010-10-25 through 2010-10-31

A Quick Look at Extras in Bugzilla
2010-10-25 through 2010-10-31