Need to take wide-angle photos and videos with the Nokia N900? All you need is an inexpensive fisheye lens and a rubber band (link).
Sample video:
Planet maemo: category "feed:994930aea431fd805006b92312248b2a"
If you are into hacking and modding, here’s the chance for you to start thinking on how you can connect the Nokia N900 to any device that you love, and possibly get your project funded by Nokia.
On the onedotzero_adventures in motion event in London, Nokia launched a PUSH project called Nokia PUSH N900 (@PUSHN900):
The brief is simple: tell us how you would hack and mod the N900 & Maemo to connect the N900 to something you love. An expert judging panel will be selecting winning submissions and the groups behind them will receive N900 devices, funding and support to develop their PUSH idea. And once they’re complete, we’ll share them with the rest of the world with a series of installations in Nokia Flagship Stores across the globe.
During the London event, sample projects were on display, connecting the Nokia N900 to the Arduino, Speak and Spell, Rolodex, Last.fm, and a View-Master. Checkout PSFK’s coverage.
Nokia is now accepting PUSH N900 submissions until October 5. An expert panel will judge the submissions, and the winners will be announced on October 25. Submit your idea now.
EDIT: Download the Hacker’s Guide.
Discuss this at talk.maemo.org.
*Photo courtesy of PSFK
U.S. folks, if you have been wanting to get some hands-on time with the Nokia N900 before you pre-order one, it looks like the Nokia flagship stores in New York and Chicago now have test drive units.
The New York Nokia store is located at 5E 5th Ave, while the Chicago Nokia store is at 543 N Michigan Ave.
If you happen to try out the Nokia N900, let us know what you think by adding your first impressions on this talk.maemo.org thread.
There has been a lot of buzz going around about Nokia, not planning to allow carrier customization for the Maemo phones (e.g. Nokia N900). Here’s a post at Nokia Conversations that clears things up (link).
Some quotes from the post:
“Many reports have erroneously suggested that Nokia will not support operator customization for Maemo devices – a fact that is simply incorrect.”
…
“While we have not announced immediate plans to offer an operator variant for the N900, there are many customization points for operators on the N900. It would be absolutely incorrect to assume that we will not offer operators the ability to tailor future Maemo devices to suit their needs.”
…
“…we wanted to clear up these few important details that appear to have been misunderstood.”
The British Film Institute (BFI) onedotzero_adventures in motion event kicked off at London last night and as earlier reported, the Nokia N900 made its appearance by wirelessly controlling the display, projected on to the 50m BFI Southbank’s facade.
From the looks of it, if you are at the event, you can look for the Nokia folks and play with the Nokia N900 that lets you spin, zoom, and pause what is displayed on the gigantic screen. Jussi Makinen, Nokia Maemo Devices Marketing Manager, tweeted that he was doing just that.
We have heard that some key people from Nokia will be at the event. Maemo Talk will be there this weekend to cover the Maemo specific events as it unfolds, so expect more pics and vids.
Here’s the latest video from onedotzero:
Discuss this at talk.maemo.org.
If you’ve been wondering what the ‘Experience Lounge’ looked like during the recently concluded Nokia World 2009 at Stuttgart, Germany, my good pal Rafe Blanford of All About Symbian has produced two short videos, as he goes around the show floor. You can expect to see all the newly announced Nokia products, plus a short clip of the Nokia N900’s Bounce Revolution game on part II at about the 1:55 mark.
Oh, here’s an interesting quote from Rafe regarding the Nokia N97 mini and the N900:
Here’s are some interesting and quite funny quotes from Rafe regarding the Nokia N97 mini: “Well it is a bit controvesial to say this, with so many geeks listening to this, this N97 mini will out sell the N900 because it’s a more accessible device. You’ve heard it here first.” and “This is the gonna be device to watch, not for all the geeks because they will be playing with their N900s…”“Well it is a bit controversial to say this, with so many geeks listening to this, this N97 mini will out sell the N900 because it’s a more accessible device. You’ve heard it here first.”
…
“This is gonna be the device to watch, not for all the geeks because they will be playing with their N900s…”
Part I:
Part II:
It must have been lost somewhere in the specs, but the Nokia N900 actually does have an Infrared (IR) port. A programmable remote control app is coming to the N900 called Irreco, which will take advantage of the N900’s IR.
From the looks of it, you can program your own remote, customize the buttons layout, and download pre-programmed remotes and themes. If the N900’s IR is strong enough, this can eventually replace the $250 Logitech Harmony Universal Remote.
Any chance of adding bluetooth remote support for the PS3?
Check out the video demo of Irreco:
Discuss this at talk.maemo.org.
You’ve seen Ari’s video, here is Peter Schneider’s demo / interview at Nokia World 2009. Peter is the Nokia Maemo Devices Marketing Head.
The videos are divided into several parts so you might want to skip some and watch those you might find more interesting. Thanks to MForum.ru for recording and compiling these vids.
Nokia N900 Demo:
Instant Messaging on the N900:
About APIs:
Nokia N900 Apps and Price Policy:
Who will create apps for the Nokia N900?
What would be Nokia’s next Maemo device?
Will we see more Maemo devices coming?
Discuss this at talk.maemo.org.
Quim Gil, Nokia Maemo Devices Open Source Advocate, has started a thread at talk.maemo.org to define the ways to contact, as well as influence the Nokia Maemo Devices Team.
He mentions several ways of doing it like actively reporting bugs (Bugzilla), proposing new ideas and solutions (Brainstorm), rate news and blog items (News and Planet), rate and provide feedback on apps (Downloads), contact developers directly (maemo-developers mailing list and Development forum), join the discussions (Community forum and Sprints), and nominate and vote for your Maemo Community Council candidates as they will have a direct line to Nokia.
Notice that all these channels point to maemo.org, the home of the open source Maemo community. If you are not yet a member, join now (here and here), and let your voice and ideas be heard.
Nokia Conversations recently ran a “What’s your favorite product from Nokia World?” poll. The results are in and the Nokia N900 wins it hands down receiving 68% of the 2670 votes. Honestly, I didn’t get to see the poll, but I guess you all know which device I will be voting for anyway.
I’ve also seen the same effect at talk.maemo.org where majority of the threads right now there are about the Nokia N900. Here’s an interesting stat: Since Sept 1 (until the time I’m writing this), 86% of the posts at talk.maemo.org are about the N900.
Did Nokia underestimate how good the Nokia N900 really is? Check out this article from Unwired View.
Thomas Thurman has posted short but excellent tutorials on how to develop apps for the Nokia N900.
On Part 1 of Thomas’ tutorial, he shows how to create a client for the social bookmarking site reddit. He provides the links to references and downloads, which are quite handy for first-time developers.
On Part 2, Thomas talks about packaging. He also adds an icon to his Raeddit app, and then shows a screencast on how it looks so far.
I hope he keeps creating tutorials as it looks like more and more newer developers would look at developing for the N900 and Maemo 5 soon.
EDIT: added Part 2.
Hey fellow Maemo Bloggers! For those of you who don’t know, aside from running Maemo Talk, which is by the way in no way connected to Nokia nor maemo.org, I’m actually the official administrator of the “Talk” section of maemo.org which is known as talk.maemo.org or tmo.
tmo is maemo.org’s official forum. It’s a place where Maemo enthusiasts, developers, and the curious, meet to talk about anything Maemo. Folks from the Nokia Maemo team also frequent the forums to answer questions and share information. It’s really a great forum.
As most of you might have noticed, the first tab at the right side of this blog displays the latest discussion threads at tmo. I’m doing this so visitors of this blog would hopefully notice it, click on a link, open tmo, and if they like what they see, join tmo.
Now, I’m posting this to hopefully convince some of you to do the same on your blog. I have created a feed to easily do this. All you have to do is code the following to your blog template, where you want the tmo active topics to appear (top, left or right sidebar, bottom, etc.):
<?php
$tmo = file_get_contents('http://talk.maemo.org/getLatest.php');
echo $tmo;
?>
That’s it! You can actually see how it will look by visiting the link directly.
I do believe that if more people talk about Maemo at tmo, the better the discussion will be, the better maemo.org will become, and Maemo devices will improve for the better.
If you are planning to use this code, post a quick reply so I can get an idea how many will be using it.
Thanks.
Reggie Suplido