Qt developers have a lot of new tools to explore and play with over the weekend, as Nokia has announced a major update to the Qt SDK. The headline change is the introduction of Qt Creator v2.3 (full details on Creator 2.3 can be found here), other changes include Qt 4.7.4, a new UI and features in Qt Simulator, updates to the notifications API, and the various components for running Qt apps on Symbian, MeeGo and the desktop. Existing Qt developers can update from within the SDK application folder, otherwise the links are in the Qt Labs.

Yesterday the contracts were signed to acquire Infigo as part of Nemein. Infigo, is a consulting company focused on mobile development and web using open source tools. You'll probably at least know their CTO, Jerry of the USB finger fame.

Even in the ten years of history of our company this is quite a significant move - it allows us to combine Nemein's traditional expertise on content management with Infigo's mobile offerings. As smartphones and tablets are becoming popular, more and more services we build will have a mobile element, which is now easier with lots of in-house expertise.

This also means more focus on the interplay between the Midgard content repository, NoFlo workflows, Node.js and Symfony web services, and mobile applications built in Qt.

Petri Rajahalme (with me in the photo) will be the CEO of the merged company, and I will focus on leading the R&D efforts.

Is that empty chair yours? Credit: Fleury.

A Quick Look at Extras in Bugzilla
2011-08-29 through 2011-09-04

Front Page

Rumours of Intel "pausing" MeeGo work - not true they say

A number of sites have picked up a news story quoting unnamed "industry sources" saying that Intel will temporarily halt work on MeeGo, to focus on OEMs requiring Android and Windows. CNET quote an unnamed "Intel spokerperson" saying they remain "committed" to MeeGo:

"Intel plans to "temporarily discontinue development of its MeeGo OS due to a lack of enthusiasm for the platform from handset and tablet PC vendors." Instead, Intel will focus on hardware that is paired with either Android or Windows Phone in 2012, according to the report, citing industry sources."

""We remain committed to MeeGo and open source, and will continue to work with the community to help develop and meet the needs of customers and end users," an Intel spokesperson told CNET"

Although denied by Intel, such a move would make some sense: MeeGo's brand has been tarnished by Nokia's change of strategy and the openness - touted as MeeGo's unique selling point over Android - has disappeared as Intel have withdrawn from public, and open development, into corridor- and watercooler-based discussions in Intel offices (along with private mailing lists and bugtrackers).

Although MeeGo still remains open source, its promise of open development processes and open governance has fallen apart.

Read more (news.cnet.com)

Public Maemo Community meeting to be held on September 6th

RM Bauer calls attention to the upcoming Maemo Community meeting

"A September Maemo community meeting has been scheduled for September 6, in #maemo-meeting, at 15:00 UTC. It appears this will be the last meeting before the next election. The tentative agenda for the meeting is: Election *operation* (so election runs smoothly and *not* to discuss issues that may be debated in the election); *Current* status of maemo.org"

There is also a need for a trusted community memember (skilled in SQL) to learn the opertation of the election from Dave Neary for use in any future elections.

Read more (lists.maemo.org)

In this edition (Download)...

1. Front Page
   • Rumours of Intel "pausing" MeeGo work - not true they say
   • Public Maemo Community meeting to be held on September 6th
2. Applications
   • RC Flyers Toolkit Box
3. Development
   • javispedro gets the N950 FM radio working
   • Proposed patch to add colour theme support to Qt Components
4. Community
   • Nokia N9 hackathon in Vienna next month
5. Devices
   • MeeGo developer devices
6. Announcements
   • Virtual MIDI Piano Keyboard for Harmattan
   • Orientation game for Harmattan

The Nokia N9 has captured the attention of the technology press and blogosphere more than any other recent Nokia device. This is the first phone built on the MeeGo operating system (well, 'MeeGo Harmattan'). However, the device faces an uncertain future with Nokia firmly stating it will not return to MeeGo for future devices. There is even no clear message about which international markets in which the device will be released. There are many unanswered questions. We at All About MeeGo have done our best to compile the information you need by putting together a definitive frequently asked questions article about the Nokia N9.

The press is writing a lot about a "post-PC ecosystem" these days, and while many dismiss tablets as simple toys, I think the world of computing is undergoing a major shift. Tablets may not be good for writing, but they are good, probably better than PCs for a lot of other things. And it turns out, people want to be doing these other things.

Hello everybody.

NuevaSync is a paid-for Mail for Exchange service tailored to help all kinds of mobile devices synchronise successfully with Google’s PIM services. We reviewed NuevaSync last year, and found it to be a great help with getting Nokia devices to work painlessly with the Google cloud. NuevaSync has now added support for adding events to multiple Google calendars. Read on to find out how well it works and how to set it up.

It's a problem, to be sure. You're on holiday and you want to take your Nokia N8 or X7 or similar onto the beach. But, rightly, you're utterly paranoid about sand and splashed seawater ruining your expensive smartphone. Or perhaps you like hiking - or canoeing or any other outdoor pursuit that involved water in any quantity. What you need is this, the BeachBuoy Waterproof Case - I have to say that I'm enormously impressed.

As announced by the fearless accessibility leader himself Joanmarie Diggs will be joining Igalia. I just want to direct your attention to one tiny detail. From this:

To this:

in less than 4 hours. We are just that cool. Welcome Joanie!

Ever since the February 11 2011 Nokia event cheekily tagged as #NoWin and known colloquially as The Elopocalypse, I’ve struggled to cover Nokia’s present and abandoned strategies here with equal care.  Don’t be misled by my attempts of objectivity over Linux and Microsoft activities, though– it hasn’t been easy.  I’ve been moderating an internal conflict between a growing invasion of open source love versus a legacy of Microsoft development experience combined with strong curiosity.  Neither side has a clear advantage over the other for me and therein lies a conundrum.

I was interested to see the starting of the "Near Field Connectivity Blog", under the auspices of Nokia's Developer program, along with some titbits about Nokia's plans for NFC and its devices. Read on for more links and quotes.

FileTea is a simple way to send files to other people: drag a file into your web browser, give the link to your friends and they can start downloading it right away.

This is not a substitute for DropBox and the like. FileTea is not a file hosting service: the web server is only used to route the traffic, no data is stored there.

You can see it as a web-based P2P file sharing system, or a replacement for good ol’ DCC SEND. You don’t need to worry about firewalls or redirections: if you can surf the web, you can send the file. The only client that you need is your browser.

FileTea is a project developed by my fellow Igalian Eduardo Lima, and you can see more details about it here. It was written on top of EventDance, a peer-to-peer inter-process communication library based on GLib and also written by him (see also The Web jumps into D-Bus).

FileTea is free software and you can download it and install it in your machine.

We have also set up a server at http://filetea.me/.

Important: this is still an alpha release and our bandwith is limited so bear with us if you find any problem

I keep hearing about how great QML is to learn so I'm a bit baffled as to why I am still having such a hard time with getting more than a toy program written.  I'm trying to save my rant about that once I've gotten an application completed and can help provide more useful feedback.  In the mean time I wanted to cover a set of changes to my python code that will made the QML port a bit easier.  This is regarding code to make it easy both for users to provide good bug reports and for me to figure out what went wrong.

The Nokia Developers blog has announced a range of demonstration applications showcasing what can be achieved with Qt on the N9. There are fourteen applications to download, along with their source code for developers to learn how each was built. Many of the applications demonstrate how to utilise hardware interfaces. For example, the guitar tuner shows how to address the audio API, the compass application interfaces with the N9's magnetometer, and several games show how to interface with the accelerometer, all in Qt, Qt Quick and Qt Mobility. Read on for more.

A Quick Look at Extras in Bugzilla
2011-09-05 through 2011-09-11

Front Page

Measuring MeeGo activity?

Jarkko Moilanen has a thought-provoking article that sets out to try to measure MeeGo community activity by the participation in various mailing lists:

"I noticed someone mentioning that mailing lists seem to be quite quiet. I agreed with the statement. In the past months there has been a lot more activity, but lately not so much. One obvious reason came to my mind immediately: holidays. Yet I was not completely convinced that all can be explained with that. So I decided to take a closer look."

The author acknowledges that a straightforward conclusion cannot be drawn simply by looking at mailing list participation, but he offers some interesting insights as to why the numbers may be trending the way they are.

Read more (blog.ossoil.com)

In this edition (Download)...

1. Front Page
   • Measuring MeeGo activity?
2. Applications
   • Wordsler updates
3. Community
   • Follow forum.meego.com with forumemail bridge
4. Devices
   • MetaWatch shipping
5. In the Wild
   • Nokia N9 commercial leaked
   • Samsung buying MeeGo? (No.)
6. Announcements
   • glol - global orientation lock on MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan
   • Developing Harmattan sharing plugins
   • Spectrum, NES, GameBoy and TI emulators now available for Harmattan

You know, I'd got heartily fed up of explaining to all and sundry why the 'FM transmitter' in my Nokia smartphone was so insanely great. Not because my enthusiasm for the feature was waning - far from it. But because just about everyone heard the 'FM' bit and switched their brain off - surely it had to be a radio receiver, as featured in just about every phone since 2004? "No, no, no!" I would exclaim - "it's the exact opposite!" If you, too, are still confused then you might like to read on - it seems that Nokia has finally put an end to the confusion by renaming the feature. Thankfully!

After having improved the movie showtimes support and updated the UI so it aligns better with the Swipe UX, this Saturday I submitted Butaca to the Ovi Store. Yesterday (yes, that quickly!) I got a notification that it had been accepted. I'm really satisfied with this release: I use the application myself a lot, and it's great to be able to check which movies are playing on the cinemas and later review their details and the crew's.

Searching movie showtimes

I've uploaded a screencast to Youtube, displaying how the application works, and -as usual- screenshots are available at my Flickr gallery. You can also review the release details at the project page (where you'll be able to file bugs or get support as well).

If you wonder what's to come next, here's some insight:

• Localization
• Check for extras after and during the credits (now that I have an API available for that)
• Offline mode / better data caching
• Embed trailer playback in the application
• UI improvements

Download Butaca for free from the Ovi Store!

The Nokia N9 can now be pre-ordered from Nokia's flagship store in Helsinki (Finland). The 16GB variant is available for €599 (£516 / $817) and the 64GB variant is available for €699 (£602 / $954). This is the first pricing we've seen from an official Nokia source. Typically Nokia's flagship and online stores are the first to receive stock of new devices.

Nokia has announced that the Qt Project, the outcome of open governance work that started in June 2010, will go live on October 17th 2011. Qt governance, roadmapping and releases will proceed the auspices of the Qt project, open to all stakeholders who are willing to contribute, with decisions taken by a community of Contributors, Approvers and Maintainers. In practical terms the hosting of Qt will move to a new domain: qt-project.org.

Today, at the IAA (a car industry event), Nokia announced Car Mode, an application designed for the in-car use of Nokia smartphones. It offers simplified access to Nokia Drive (voice-guided car navigation with Nokia Maps), music and voice calling functionality. In addition, the application also supports MirrorLink (previously known as Terminal Mode), which allows for a rich connection between phone and car. The application, which has been developed in Qt, will be available for download from the Ovi Store in Q4 for Symbian Belle devices and the Nokia N9. Update: added screenshots of Nokia Car Mode.

Taking a photo of that family member, friend or scene is the obvious function of your smartphone camera. But a little lateral thinking sees quite a few extra uses for this equipment - your phone camera isn't just for Christmas (and holidays), you know. See if any of these examples ring true in your experience... Can anyone remember life before we all had cameras with us 24/7? Me neither!

It has been a while since my last post and a lot happened in the meantime. Just to point a few (in no special order):

• 11th February for Nokia;
• Tokamak;
• GSoC;
• Qt Contributor Summit;
• Qt Open Governance announced;
• Desktop Summit;
• Release of N9;
• Google acquired Motorola;
• Plasma Active;
• Netflix in Brazil;
• Use of Tiny Tiny RSS (my share feed)
• …(many other stuff!)

The sad part though is that I haven’t been able to contribute much code to KDE lately. Next month I’m getting married and as you can probably guess, there is a lot of planning going on (and we can’t forget the famous “bridezilla” effect that usually happens with girls before weddings

On the bright side I’ve been working on awesome projects, trying to eat our own dog food (mainly QML). With these projects we are feeling the pieces of Qt/QML that needs some love and we plan that for the next year we will be able to help the Qt Project to solve these small issues that you can only find when you develop real world applications and not developer/designer-wanna-be demos

IMHO that’s one of the skills that is hard to find today on framework developers: most of them didn’t contribute much to KDE in the last years nor developed real applications. Because of this sometimes it gets harder for them to understand a use case or a “complain” about the technology they develop. I hope that with open governance we can get more help about this (and also use more the rule of the “3 examples” before adding new APIs).

I’ve been following closely the development of Plasma Active and the rest of KDE. I still have one item on my TODO list (related to one of our scripts that get the content of qml files that need translation) that I promised to tsdgeos that I would fix ASAP but I just didn’t have the time unfortunately . November seems the month that I will be able to get back to KDE development (after the honeymoon!!).

Well, I think that’s it. I just wanted to make a simple blog post and update my KDE friends

A couple of weeks ago, I was chatting with Michael Banck about DebConf. He told me that one of the sponsors provided everyone a SIM card with 5 units of credit, and that the first time he established a data connection was also his last: he got bit by Maemo's automatic repository update misfeature; because, he had gone more than 24 hours without checking for software updates, Maemo checked even though he was using a cellular data connection and only had a few megabytes worth of data transfer credit.

A simple workaround for this bug is to disable updates. This has the unfortunate side effect that the user is no longer informed when updates become available. A better solution is one that fetches updates when background updates are acceptable. This is exactly the type of scheduling problem that Woodchuck was designed to help applications with.

Over the past few days, I've developed APT Woodchuck, a small Python script, that does exactly this: APT Woodchuck lets Woodchuck determine when it should check for updates. On installation, APT Woodchuck disables HAM's automatic update feature and registers itself with Woodchuck. When Woodchuck decides APT Woodchuck should perform an update, it starts it (using DBus). APT Woodchuck then updates the package list (it uses HAM's apt-worker utility to ensure that all of HAM's usual update mechanisms are performed, including tickling the update widget, if necessary). APT Woodchuck also prefetches packages for which an update is available.

In total, APT Woodchuck is about 700 SLOC and took about 2 days to write. Most of the time was spent figuring out how to use Python APT. That seems to me like a pretty easy solution to a hard scheduling problem.

I've made packages for APT Woodchuck for Maemo available.

If you are thinking about including Woodchuck support in your application, APT Woodchuck is a fairly good example of how to go about going it.

By popular request, here are my tips on shooting better videos on your smartphone. If you've been to an event, whipped out your phone and been disappointed later by blurry, jerky, muffled, badly lit footage, then these tips are for you! From light to movement to mundane practicalities, it's all covered below.

While most projects praises portability with fancy things like “gchar” (Gtk), fancy names like “LightHouse” (Qt) or completely new abstraction concepts, The Enlightenment Project always choose a simple approach to use POSIX and fill the gaps as required. This requires much less work and yields the same or better results, as we could see in the past and now being the first toolkit to be ported to PlayStation3 (native, no Linux)!

As announced by the the developer, KaKaRoTo, in our official news the port was done on top of our existing SDL backend in a couple of days, then being migrated to native PlayStation3 using unofficial SDK PSL1GHT for jailbroken systems. There is still no hardware acceleration, yet it runs fine a physics game at Full HD.

Right now we have port to MacOS and Windows, including WinCE. Given our scarce resources we do not lag behind Qt or Gtk in portability front. Basically what we have is one brave developer called Vincent Torri that is a Math professor and do it on his spare time!

Vincent could do it by keeping our approach: use POSIX and fill the gaps. He created “Evil”, a library to provide missing functions to Windows. Kakaroto then created “Escape” to do the same for PSL1GHT. Seems this approach works fine

Some of us like to think that systems and data and processes are the bones, brains and blood of any venture.  And for the most part that’s true.  But what body can thrive without a heart?

The following text is from the introduction of the HOWTO I've written explaining how to modify a program to use Woodchuck. The focus is on the Python interface, but it should be helpful to anyone who wants to modify an application to use Woodchuck. This document, unlike the detailed documentation, should be a bit easier to digest if you are just getting started with Woodchuck. If questions still remain, feel free to email me or ask for help on #woodchuck on irc.freenode.net.

Introduction

Woodchuck is a framework for scheduling the transmission of delay tolerant data, such as RSS feeds, email and software updates. Woodchuck aims to maximize data availability (the probability that the data the user wants is accessible) while minimizing the incurred costs (in particular, data transfer charges and battery energy consumed). By scheduling data transfers when conditions are good, Woodchuck ensures that data subscriptions are up to date while saving battery power, reducing the impact of data caps and hiding spotty network coverage.

At the core of Woodchuck is a daemon. This centralized service reduces redundant work and facilitates coordination of shared resources. Redundant work is reduced because only a single entity needs to monitor network connectivity and system activity. Further, because the daemon starts applications when they should perform a transfer, applications do not need to wait in the background to perform automatic updates thereby freeing system resources. With respect to the coordination of shared resources: the cellular data transmission budget and the space allocated for prefetched data need to be allocated among the various programs.

Applications need to be modified to benefit from Woodchuck. Woodchuck needs to know about the streams that the user has subscribed to and the objects which they contain as well as related information such as an object's publication time. Woodchuck also needs to be able to trigger data transfers. Finally, Woodchuck's scheduler benefits from knowing when the user accesses objects. In my experience, the changes required are relatively non-invasive and not difficult. This largely depends, however, on the structure of the application.

...

I designed Woodchuck's API to be easy to use. A major goal was to allow applications to progressively add support for Woodchuck: it should be possible to add minimal Woodchuck support and gain some benefit of the services that Woodchuck offers; more complete support results in higher-quality service.

To support Woodchuck, an application needs to do three things:

• register streams and objects;
• process upcalls: update a stream, transfer an object, and, optionally, delete an object's files; and,
• send feedback: report stream updates, object downloads and object use.

The rest of this document is written as a tutorial that assumes that you are using PyWoodchuck, the Python interface to Woodchuck. If you are using libgwoodchuck, a C interface, or the low-level DBus interface, this document is still a good starting point for understanding what your application needs to do.

Read the rest.

A Quick Look at Extras in Bugzilla
2011-09-12 through 2011-09-18

Front Page

Long time community member Gary Birkett (lcuk) dies, aged 36

The MWKN Staff is saddened to report on the passing of Gary Birkett (known to many as lcuk) earlier this week. Gary was a great friend to us and - as the outpouring of feelings and memories from the community attests - well known and well regarded within the community in general.

Gary was an enthusiastic developer who burst onto the Maemo scene around the time of the Amsterdam Summit; he made it his mission to create the fastest drawing on the N810 possible. Perhaps Gary's single biggest contribution to the community was onedotzero - a large-scale open collaboration/art project. Recently Gary was known for his MeeGo advocacy and MeeGo CE work. He is survived by his partner Tracy and three sons. Our thoughts are with them at this difficult time.

Read more (lists.maemo.org)
Read more (talk.maemo.org)
Read more (forum.meego.com)

In this edition (Download)...

1. Front Page
   • Long time community member Gary Birkett (lcuk) dies, aged 36
2. Applications
   • QtLockScreen Configuration utility
3. Development
   • Adapting an existing app to use Woodchuck
4. Community
   • Stephen Gadsby (sjgadsby) nominated for Maemo Community Council
   • Robert Bauer (SD69) running for Maemo Community Council again
   • Momcilo Majic running for Maemo Community Council
   • Maemo Community Council nomination period closes and only three candidates standing
   • Maemo community governance referendum
5. Devices
   • Qt Quick with a MetaWatch and an N950
   • CordiaTab facing difficulties in finding GPL compliant manufacturer
   • New ownership for MetaWatch
   • Using N9(50) LED for missed call and other notifications
   • N950 gets updated version of Harmattan
6. In the Wild
   • Intel blames Nokia for MeeGo's delay in entering phone market
   • Qt open governance work results in new project & new levels of transparency for Qt
7. Announcements
   • APT Woodchuck for smarter scheduling of Maemo update checking
   • GroundWork - a poor man's AirPlay/x11vnc for Harmattan

Last weekend I've been toying around with Open GL ES 2.0 on the N950 after finding a nice Xlib-based Python example on the web for the N900. I modified the code a bit, replaced the Xlib code with a QGLWidget from QtOpenGL (via PySide), which makes the setup a lot easier and (apart from API differences of GL ES 2.0 and Desktop GL) allows me to test the prototype on my normal computer as well.

After I got the hang of it, I decided to come up with some fancy 90s-style hover racing game (only texturing, no lighting), or at least parts of it - right now, the small hovercraft just runs around the track and you can shift it left and right via the touchscreen and switching between normal and bird's view by pressing any hardware key.

As for the GL ES bindings (this is the interesting/useful part to developers who want to access the GL ES 2.0 API from Python), I put together a naive header-to-ctypes binding generator for the GL ES 2.0 API which you can run on "gl2.h" from the Qt SDK's Madde sysroot (too lazy to search for a working binding generator that surely exists somewhere out there already) - or just grab the generated "gles2.py" from the SwipEout source tarball. The result? Video it yourself.


You can grab the source code and miscellaneous files from the SwipEout website. The code was tested on the N900 and N950, you only need Python, PIL (python-imaging), PySide and the Open GL ES 2.0 libraries (libGLESv2.so) installed. Removing the PIL dependency and replacing it with Qt-based texture loading is left as an exercise for the reader. Enjoy :)

Time for another social media client in the shape of 4squick. Focused on Foursquare, and making sure you can get into the app, check-in and get on with your life as quickly as possible, this Qt-based application has a small but growing cadre of supporters. Will AAS join the troops? Read on...

Here comes the Nokia Gift Machine! As part of Social Media Week, Nokia have installed a "Social Gift Machine" in Glasgow. Hooked up to the internet, with its own hash-tag on the side, all you need to do is check in via Foursquare to the vending machine and you'll be rewarded with a gift. Beyond "It's doesn't just hold candy" we've no idea what you might get, but we know of one Nokia N8 that has been given out!

As part of some Woodchuck-related work, I've done a fair amount of Python programming on Maemo. Python, being an interpreted language, runs the source code; there is no need to compile it to some binary representation as is the case with C. This is a great convenience when developing for a device such as the N900: there is no need to compile the code and copy the resulting binaries; I just edit the code on the device and run it. The trade-off is that I need to edit the files directly on the device: but, I want my Emacs (qemacs is not enough!), git and the regular GNU tools. It turns out that I was able to get pretty close.

One of the arguments for Woodchuck is that it can save energy. In this post, I want to examine that claim a bit more quantitatively.

You know, I'd almost forgotten I wear it. I so seldom wear a real clerical collar, and working in the NHS, far fewer people see me through the lens of “clergyperson” so I'd got used to being seen as 'Me'.

This week, I was brought down to the pulpit with a bump.

It started with an email. From a gentleman. From a very nice gentleman. It said:

“There is due to be a charity ball on 1st October at the Eden Project. I shall be attending. Would there be any chance you could come as well?”

I wasn't sure what to make of that, so I showed it to a few trusted friends. Two said “That's asking you for a date”. The third said “Ooo err!” because she was the only person to whom I showed the name of the sender, and she, like me, knows that he has a long term partner. So no, I knew it wasn't a date.

But I was left very, very unsure what I WAS being asked. My best guess was that I was wanted as escort: the gentleman's partner had a very nasty accident earlier this year, and is recovering, so it was possible he needed someone to take to the event.

Rather than risk putting my foot in it, I emailed back discretely asking what I was being invited to.

And it turns out that the Trust Chair is organising a party to attend this Ball, and deputed the gentleman to find people to make up a table. And I got the impression from his reply that he was rather alarmed at the realisation that I might have misunderstood his email.

I momentarily toyed with the idea that I had been deliberately made to look foolish. But The gent is actually too nice for that. (I think!)

Which leaves me facing the sad reality that it never occurred to him to look carefully at how he worded his invitation. It didn't occur to him that as a woman I might just misread his intentions. He wasn't sending it to a woman. Because, after all, I'm not a woman. I'm the chaplain. A member of that mysterious asexual group known as clergy. Many years ago, I found a cartoon (sadly not online) showing the doors for three public loos: left, the door with the symbol for the gents, right, the door for the ladies, and in between, a door with a little stylised figure in cassock and clerical collar. Neither male nor female...

And I just didn't need that reminder right now.

You know, I'd almost forgotten I wear it. I so seldom wear a real clerical collar, and working in the NHS, far fewer people see me through the lens of “clergyperson” so I'd got used to being seen as 'Me'.

This week, I was brought down to the pulpit with a bump.

It started with an email. From a gentleman. From a very nice gentleman. It said:

“There is due to be a charity ball on 1st October at the Eden Project. I shall be attending. Would there be any chance you could come as well?”

I wasn't sure what to make of that, so I showed it to a few trusted friends. Two said “That's asking you for a date”. The third said “Ooo err!” because she was the only person to whom I showed the name of the sender, and she, like me, knows that he has a long term partner. So no, I knew it wasn't a date.

But I was left very, very unsure what I WAS being asked. My best guess was that I was wanted as escort: the gentleman's partner had a very nasty accident earlier this year, and is recovering, so it was possible he needed someone to take to the event.

Rather than risk putting my foot in it, I emailed back discretely asking what I was being invited to.

And it turns out that the Trust Chair is organising a party to attend this Ball, and deputed the gentleman to find people to make up a table. And I got the impression from his reply that he was rather alarmed at the realisation that I might have misunderstood his email.

I momentarily toyed with the idea that I had been deliberately made to look foolish. But The gent is actually too nice for that. (I think!)

Which leaves me facing the sad reality that it never occurred to him to look carefully at how he worded his invitation. It didn't occur to him that as a woman I might just misread his intentions. He wasn't sending it to a woman. Because, after all, I'm not a woman. I'm the chaplain. A member of that mysterious asexual group known as clergy. Many years ago, I found a cartoon (sadly not online) showing the doors for three public loos: left, the door with the symbol for the gents, right, the door for the ladies, and in between, a door with a little stylised figure in cassock and clerical collar. Neither male nor female...

And I just didn't need that reminder right now.

A Quick Look at Extras in Bugzilla
2011-09-19 through 2011-09-25

Front Page

Nokia releases update for N950 devices

... Nokia released a "Beta 2" (build number 34-2) firmware update for the N950 last week. Highlight features include a new Twitter client, removal of the "Developer Edition" branding, Ovi Music client, Angry Birds, AccuWeather client, Wi-Fi hotspot, and an AP Mobile application besides a range of general bugfix improvements. Unfortunately this update doesn't bring GTalk support or a usable web browser. Less savory changes have also come to Aegis making it more restrictive and burdensome for developers and advanced users.

Read more (developer.nokia.com)
Read more (forum.meego.com)

Aegis, Nokia and You

The Beta 2 release of Harmattan for the N950 brought with it a number of negative changes to Aegis and its functionality, severely limiting the hackability of the base system. Although investigation by Javier S. Pedro reveals there are still ways around Aegis, they're falling more into the category of Black-Hat hacks than intended workarounds of a non-burdensome security framework. "Nokia has now greatly reduced the amount of privileges granted to develsh in beta2. Up to the point you now CANNOT even issue a deadly simple dmesg command to _read_ the kernel log. Is this a reaction from Nokia because the above method allowed you to disable Aegis? Is this the first move from Nokia in the cat and mouse game that is going to be played starting now -- the same game Apple likes to play with jailbreakers? I don't know. I would like a clear answer here." Unfortunately talk about an Open Mode dating from the initial announcement of the Harmattan security framework appears to be turning into just that—talk. Hopefully we'll hear good news soon, but without any communication from Nokia on the subject the community is just left to scratch its head and assume the worst.

Read more (forum.meego.com)

In this edition (Download)...

1. Front Page
   • Nokia releases update for N950 devices
   • Aegis, Nokia and You
2. Applications
   • Analysing power utilisation of N900
3. Development
   • N950 USB host progress
4. Announcements
   • SwipEout - retro racing for N950 and N900
   • MeeCast for Harmattan

Firefox for Mobile Fennec and Native Android UIs - http://dougt.org/wordpre... September 26, 2011 from dougt » mozilla - Comment - Like

Nokia today announced that it has started shipping the Nokia N9 to customers and stores. Nokia says the estimated retail cost of the N9 is €480 (16GB) / €560 (64GB) before taxes and subsidies. Pricing and availability will vary from region to region. In most countries it will be possible to buy the N9 SIM free, but it will only be ranged by operators in select countries. 

Nokia Conversations has just let word slip that the Nokia N9 is now well and truly on its way to consumers around the world at an unsubsidized price of EUR 480 for the 16GB and EUR 560 for the 64 GB variant. Sadly there are no specifics about which countries are getting the device, so you will still need to visit your local stores to find out.

The only thing that’s certain is that the N9 will soon start popping up in the wild and you will start seeing more and more unboxing videos. Nokia had opened pre-orders in certain countries a couple of weeks back and consumer demand seemed to have been huge, with the Finnish pre-orders threatening to exceed the supply.

In another post, Nokia while promising future software support for the device states that ‘The first updates will be based on feedback received from operators and consumers and they make the device even more intuitive than before. The availability and content of the updates will be communicated closer to the download start‘.

While it seems the N9 will not be coming to a lot of the major markets around the world,  you should be able to import the device from other markets very soon. With Nokia World and the first Nokia Windows Phones under a month away, are you considering getting the N9?

Similar Posts:

• Is The Nokia N9 Only Coming To 23 Countries? India, UK, USA To Be Left Bereft?
• The Future Of The Internet – The Mobility Context
• Poll: Will You Be Getting A N900?
• Nokia Gives Symbian A Continuous Evolution Model – Opens The Door To OS Updates
• Nokia To Support The N9 For Years, May Be Bringing It To Even More Countries

In some very big news coming on the sidelines of Intel’s AppUp Elements Conference, the LiMo Foundation and the Linux Foundation today announced a new open source project, Tizen, to develop a Linux-based device software platform. Tizen will be a standards-based, cross-architecture software platform which supports multiple device categories including smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, netbooks and in-vehicle infotainment systems.

Multiple sources have announced today that the Linux Foundation and LiMo Foundation have agreed to merge their respective mobile operating systems, MeeGo and LiMo. The resulting operating system, Tizen, will support HTML5 as its primary development environment. Like MeeGo, it will be designed to support a range of device classes like smartphones, tablets, Smart TVs, netbooks, and in-vehicle-infotainment systems. The Tizen project will be governed in much the same way as the MeeGo project. This includes a technical steering group of which Intel and Samsung are members. Read on for more details.

Back in August, Jarkko Mikael Palonkangas has been looking for Maemo 5 users without any experience in using gPodder. His Master's thesis is about the Thinking Aloud usability testing method on mobile devices, and he chose gPodder as the example application. The application used for managing the test cases has been written by Jarkko for Maemo 5 and is called Remota - it takes care of displaying the tasks to the users, recording screenshots and audio and retrieving the logging output from gPodder.

Remota log viewer with UI action log at the bottom
If you are interested in seeing how this looks, or if you would like to help to comment on the usability issues and find improvement ideas, please feel free to click through the videos below, which have now been uploaded:
User 1: Task 1, Task 2, Task 3, Task 4, Task 5, Task 6, Task 7, Task 8, Task 9, Task 10, Task 11User 2: Task 1, Task 2, Task 3, Task 4, Task 5, Task 6, Task 7, Task 8, Task 9, Task 10, Task 11User 3: Task 1, Task 2, Task 3, Task 4, Task 5, Task 6, Task 7, Task 8 (1st try), Task 8 (2nd try), Task 9, Task 10, Task 11User 4: Task 1, Task 2, Task 3, Task 4, Task 5, Task 6, Task 7 (1st try), Task 7 (2nd try), Task 8, Task 9, Task 10, Task 11
Unfortunately, user 4's logging output had problems, so you only have audio and video for these tasks - for users 1 through 3 we also have logging output about UI interactions, which was possible by patching the gPodder source to add additional handlers to buttons and other UI elements while the UI was created on application startup.
Please feel free to add comments to the videos - Jarkko is going to process them and include the finding in his final work, so that would be an easy way to contribute.

...is that it just doesn't die because somebody says so.

A lot of noise has been made about Intel closing up the MeeGo shop and heading for new waters, but predictably, a lot of people aren't very happy with this move, both individuals and companies who have products based around MeeGo.

I won't rehash the story any more than that, except to say this: MeeGo, or the ideals of it - an open mobile-oriented platform featuring Qt is still very much valid and needed, and it's not going away. There's some discussion already going on on the MeeGo lists about how best to continue, already.

Watch this space. MeeGo (in some form or other) is not dead, and neither is Qt.

The popular is video playback tool VLC is coming to the Nokia N9, and if you’re willing to use beta pre-release software, then its here already. The app is still in the early phase of development, but if you’re itching to play that seemingly unsupported codec on your shiny N9 or N950, then there’s hope.

However, there are a few known issues like the fact that the UI is isn’t optmised for the phone, so its tedious work. Hardware-accelerated video decoding is not supported (however, color space conversion and scaling are hardware-accelerated). So its best not to throw those HD videos at it yet.

If you’re feeling courageous, head over to this page and you’ll find all the instructions you need to download and install the app.

Hat tip to @nsuffys for the find.

Here’s some more good news for prospective N9 owners, the popular Sports Tracker app is also coming to MeeGo and the Nokia N9. While the app is expected to be released in November, the developers have already shared a few screenshots of what it looks like, and I have to say it’ll be one of the better looking apps on the N9.

The Sports Tracker app on the N9 will feature all the tracking capabilities you’ve come to expect from Sports Tracker and also support for the new Sports Tracker Heart Rate Monitor. It you’re keen on keep up with the developers, you can follow them on  Twitter and Facebook.