It was over eight years ago when I wrote application last time. Since then I had my hands in countless programs, libraries etc. but never wrote something new from scratch. Until recently…

Some time ago Mickey Lauer presented his module player for iPhone. I like the idea and started thinking about creating such one for my devices. After some discussions about Modland music collection with him I started coding.

To make things as simple as possible I used Qt framework with Phonon for playing (GStreamer modplug plugin underneath). Current version maybe is not so beauty but it is usable and works fine. Application will be GPL — I used code from Qt demos, read random snippets of code from other programs etc.

Things already implemented:

• playing local modules
• fetching modules from modland archive
• author/song selection
• playing next song on song end (with looping on author)
• seeking
• volume change (will probably get removed from UI)

Things to do:

• error handling (especially fetching related)
• download progressbar
• playing counters
• favorites
• playlists
• small screen usability (stacked windows/tabs)
• and others…

For readers: what is a real name of Lord Performer? :D

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All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz I wrote module player in Qt was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

Related posts:

1. Released sources of my Protracker module player
2. Very small test of Maemo media players
3. BUG has arrived

Some time ago Nokia offered discounts for their newest tablet: N900 for about two hundred people which were active in Maemo community. For European ones the price is more or less 250€ which looks nice compared to original price which is ~600€.

But there is one nasty part in it — devices have just one week of warranty. What can be checked during that time? Dead pixels?

Situation got more strange when I looked at Maemo forum where people lists misc discounts which they found on the Internet… For example Dell had one for $442 which makes it just a bit more expensive then DDP ones but gives you normal warranty.

This is weird — developers and active people from community gets worse offer then normal users. And additionally all DDP orders are marked as “Critical” which probably is other way of saying “ignore as long as possible” because tomorrow there will be two weeks since I ordered N900 in DDP and all I got was locking of 250€ on my credit card and nothing more.

Previous developer programs were better at handling users (at least that is what I hear from people which were part of it).

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All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz DDP — does it has any sense? was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

Related posts:

1. Discounted Devices Program: N900
2. Nokia N900 discount
3. Things to check with Nokia N900

My Symbian based Nokia E66 phone has Ovi Maps installed so one day I decided to make use of routing function in it when I was driving to the town (on a road where I did not needed to be guided). BT headset on ear, paired with phone and let’s drive.

At start road was selected quite properly, the problems started later. Many times it was recalculating route (the funniest was when I stopped at traffic lights it recalculated route and then made it again after driving for 5 meters). Directions changes information were also distracting: “on 200m go left” then “go right” when I reached point. Or “go left,right” when it was straight road or when I had to turn right at crossing.

I have to admit that after two tries I totally gave up on driving with it and switched back to TomTom device. But there is one good thing in Ovi Maps — it works quite good for walk navigation. I used it in many cities abroad and it handled. I hope that Maemo5 version will work at least that good as Symbian one.

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All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz Driving with Ovi Maps was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

Related posts:

1. Online map services and routing
2. Car navigation with N810
3. Nokia N900 discount

Today I found some time and played with Maemo 5 SDK. As I am one of those who do not like Scratchbox I used official image for VirtualBox. After boot I landed in GNOME session of Ubuntu 8.10 and after few moments I got Maemo 5 started thanks to instructions from forum.

Ok, so let’s test it. As official release notes mentioned Polish translation I switched to it. What I saw was disaster… And the problem is that latest firmware has same version available. Examples:

Note: I did system update by using “apt-get update;apt-get upgrade” followed by “fakeroot dpkg --configure -a” (because sbox root ‘emulation’ was too weak for “libosso-abook”). As a result translation “6.0+r7250+0m5″ were installed (”calendar-l10n-plpl” package). Scary, isn’t it?

Next thing which I looked at was instant messaging — which I was not able to use since there was no Jabber support. It has ICQ, Gadu-Gadu, MSN, Sametime, Salut, QQ, Groupwise, Google Talk, AIM, Yahoo but no Jabber. I even installed “telepathy-extras” but that added me yet another MSN and still no Jabber… Probably other package needs to be installed but why it has to be? OK, maybe SDK image does not contain same packages as device one but why it supports such poor thing like Gadu-Gadu out-of-box?

Contacts app is improved when compared to Maemo4 one — finally something closer to application which I described some time ago in other post. Has some bugs (I can not enter “+48123456789″ as number because only digits are available (and ‘p’ for internal numbers).

Looks like there will be a long list of things to report as bugs when/if I will get my N900 (so far it is somewhere in deep nowhere). Why not reporting them now? Simple — I want to be able to check them on device itself.

Other things I will check next time. Now it is time to sleep.

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All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz Played a bit with Maemo 5 SDK was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

Related posts:

1. Nokia N800 emulation
2. Nokia N900 discount
3. Localizing Maemo

I just ordered N900 for 250€ directly from Nokia thanks to discount which I got recently.

Plan to write review after first days of use so stay tuned.

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All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz Discounted Devices Program: N900 was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

Related posts:

1. DDP — does it has any sense?
2. Nokia N900 discount
3. N900 arrived

On Friday evening I got email from Quim Gil (Nokia) with information that I was selected for [Nokia N900](http://europe.nokia.com/find-products/devices/nokia-n900) device discount. Yes, even I got it. Not decided yet will I apply for it or not (need to check cash state).

Some time ago Andrea Gallo from ST-Ericsson called me and proposed participation in their workshop during ELC Europe. It will be about NHK15 developer board which is based on STn8815 cpu (arm926 core + dsp). I will present Poky Linux and OpenEmbedded based environments on it.

Few days later board arrived at home in a big carton box filled with stuff.

As it is shown on picture above package contains everything needed to use board. From top-left:

• tv out cable
• board
• debug board (serial + ethernet)
• miniUSB cable
• speakers + battery cable + wifi antenna
• ribbon cables to connect debug board
• PSU (5V)
• UK/EU/US power plugs
• headset
• serial cable

By default board comes without operating system flashed. The only thing available is test picture which can be used to test does device works at all:

NHK15 offers many connectors:

• audio in/out
• SD/MMC slot
• battery connector (cable included, battery not)
• speakers (separated left/right — both are included)
• WiFi antenna (board uses same chip as Nokia tablets)
• FM antenna
• TV out (cable included)
• miniAB USB device/host port
• camera (daughterboard with image sensor included)
• debug board (which provides serial + Ethernet ports)
• ETM/Nexus ports
• SIM socket

There is 128MB of memory and 128MB NAND + 256MB OneNAND for storage. Connection with world can be done over serial, Ethernet, WiFi or Bluetooth. Screen has WVGA resolution and touchscreen attached.

Now I have Linux running on it but plan to switch to Poky Linux (supported) and OpenEmbedded based systems (Ångström for start) soon.

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All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz NHK15 arrived was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

Related posts:

1. ST-Ericsson Community Workshop 2009
2. Bug Labs and their BUG device
3. ELC Europe 2009

What defines good Contacts application? Some will say that it depends on device which runs it, but I think that it is not true.

I am using Nokia E66 phone. It is running Symbian S60 3rd Edition FP1 (what ever it means). As a phone it has phone book called “Contacts”. Simple application which allows to have unlimited amount of entries with quite big set of possible fields. But phone also has GPS unit and is able to connect to Internet via WiFi, Bluetooth and GSM. Why I mention it? Because default address book ignore those elements…

So what should good Contacts application do? Except standard fields like phone numbers, SIP “numbers”, email addresses, web addresses, home/work addresses, birthdays, anniversaries, pictures, notes… I think that things like GPS coordinates for each address would be nice — add “Drive/Walk to” functionality and you get phone which can really be named “Navigator” (IIRC there was PalmOS powered PDA with that function).

Next thing which would be nice (especially with flat rate for GPRS) would be integration of IM communicator. Why I have to launch separate application to check who from my friends is available on Jabber, Skype, ICQ, GaduGadu, AIM, MSN etc. Why not have device auto login into those networks to check who from entries in address book is available to chat/talk with. And then let me choose do I want to make GSM call or Skype, SIP or other VoIP call. This will also remove situation which is present in most multi-protocol communicators: few entries for one person just because it use 7 accounts on 5 protocols. And let integrate all chats in one application with SMS/MMS stuff — this is done on Palm Pre according to their promotion videos.

And all those things should sync with external servers of course. So if I have Facebook account then let it fetch my connections from there and merge into address book — this is done on Palm Pre already. But let it be also second way (if user choose to) — so phone will check who from my contacts have a Facebook account and send join request.

Next thing: groups… Symbian has groups support and this is working, user can even define conferences numbers for groups and few other things. Next step should be linking contacts — you know: wife, kids, secretary, co-worker who do your job when you are on vacations… PalmOS Agendus had something like that, Symbian has only imitation (it is possible to enter person name but thats all).

Will there be such application? Maybe one day…

Related posts:

1. Calling on Maemo?
2. Choosing next cellphone
3. Syncing mobile devices

I use Nokia E66 phone. It runs S60 3rd edition FP1 (aka Symbian 9.2). When I switched to it sending files over Bluetooth was easy: obexftp -b BD:AD:RR:EE:SS:00 -p FILE1 FILE2 and files landed as messages in phone Inbox. But for some time it is not working — all I got was “Sending FILE1…failed” like messages.

Hopefully obexftp tool has some options available so after some tests I got it working. And result is even better as files lands in file system instead of Inbox. The trick is to give path on phone to obexftp: obexftp -b BD:AD:RR:EE:SS:00 -c E:/folder/on/card -p FILE1 FILE2 and files will land there.

Simple, nice and the most important: working :D

Related posts:

1. New phone: Sony Ericsson K750i
2. Bluetooth + phone == remote control
3. Converting ringtones (WMA -> MP3)

There is a new set of rumours on websites about next Nokia tablet. Name it N900 (speculation name) or Rover (which is internal name) or famous N00 which probably is on prototypes (Nokia uses N00 on proto phones and tablets).

As Jamie Bennett wrote on his blog it will be hard to sell this tablet. He compares it to netbooks but I see other device to buy instead — Touchbook which has similar internals but higher resolution (1024×600 instead of 800×480) on bigger screen (8.9″ instead of 3.5″). OK, it will not have GSM like N900 but I do not care about it — my current phone is good enough.

And then goes other problem — Maemo. I used Maemo 2005/6/7/8 on Nokia 770 and N810 and ok, it is fine and working system but… It is niche system — small amount of applications available and no other environments then Hildon one (chroot with KDE which runs in window under Hildon does not count).

And question is how open will it be for other operating systems/distributions — I hope that Nokia will not follow 770/n8×0 way.

Related posts:

1. Nokia N900 discount
2. First days with Nokia N810
3. Feel the power of USB with Nokia tablet