Planet maemo: category "feed:6f8015c0c6c3f487047a2ede545652f0"

If you have a table, this keyboard is really fine. But without a table…

I’m still looking for the perfect calendar solution for our company, open source preferred.

We tried Webcalendar, but it was disappointing and clunky. My colleagues quickly returned to Google Calendar, which is the best so far and a joy to use. But, well, it’s not open source and it’s almighty Google, I somehow prefer to have my business data on a server I own. I tested Zimbra a year ago and again today, it’s a hefty 200 megabytes download and tries to be everything including a mail server and client, but we already have a mail server and clients, thank you very much.

All we want to do is share some appointments, that’s all. All I want is a good shared calendar.

Here’s the basic wishlist:

• usable with a clean, straightforward web interface
• allows my colleagues to see my appointments
• allows my colleagues to invite me to their appointments

These things would be nice, but are not required:

• allows synching with desktop calendar software (such as Evolution, iCal, Outlook etc.)
• allows synching with mobile clients (such as PDAs, my N800 or cell phones)
• web interface works with my N800

Strange that there isn’t something like that out there. Every web calendar / calendar server solution I found so far is either clunky and incomplete or somehow mutated into a big mess of everything and a kitchen sink.

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

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

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

• 673 Maemo browser crashes when getting results from IMDB.com search
• 1052 The image viewer should cache the previous and the next image
• 1129 Media player doesn’t save the timeposition on close
• 1210 video playback on Media Player gets jerky or freezes
• 1228 Media player does not offer practical ffwd & rewind buttons

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

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

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

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

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

Never thought of that situation before.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I saw the N800 and fell in love.. but then i saw the Sony UMPC… and wanted marriage… but saw the price tag and decided I was too young for marriage…” (from IRC)

Click to read 1060 more words

After using the N800 for a few weeks now, here are some follow-ups to my initial review.

Visiting CeBIT, I had the chance to meet Steven from UMPCPortal. He owns an N800, too, and we were both intrigued by Beijing Peace East Technology Development Co. Ltd’s claim of an UMPC based on Linux, so we arranged to visit their both together.

Visiting CeBIT this Saturday, I’m sure not to miss the booth of Beijing Peace East Technology Development Co. Ltd. Chippy from UMPC Portal was there, already, but didn’t gather much new information.

The ARM-based device comes with any feature you could wish for, including a harddisk, GPS receiver, WLAN, Bluetooth, USB, PCMCIA, SD and a kitchensink. Looking at the device’s screenshots, it appears to be running Maemo, yet the company or its Chinese developers haven’t appeared publicly on the Maemo mailing lists. The software package announced for it is also unheard of on maemo.org.

Quite a mystery device. Do you know more? Do you have suggestions what I should ask them at CeBIT? Do you have information about it? Let me know!

Update: I’ve seen the device at CeBIT. It’s running Linux, it’s not Maemo but obviously inspired by it, it’s a lot bigger than I expected, it’s quite fascinating, it’s not a real competitor to the Nokia devices. The full report with pictures will follow tomorrow.