Received today from the Forum Nokia folks. Please forward to Maemo / Qt / N900 developers:

Nokia’s Calling All Innovators developer contest is coming to a close, and there is still time to submit an app. The contest features four categories where you can demonstrate your creativity and talent developing mobile apps for use on Nokia’s latest devices:

• Eco/Being Green
• Entertainment
• Productivity
• Life Improvement

The top three submissions in each of these application categories will receive cash prizes of up to $30,000 (USD), as well as Spotlight Placement in Nokia’s Ovi Store to promote your winning application to consumers using Nokia devices worldwide.

Additionally, regardless of category, all application submissions are eligible to win special prizes. For instance, the best application for the Nokia N900 and the best cross-platform application using Qt will both receive $50,000 (USD). Check out all the prizes on the contest website.

This year, there are more chances to win than ever before. Don’t miss this amazing opportunity – submit your application right away. The deadline for entries is 10 June 2010.

Don’t delay – submit your winning app now!

PS – Do you have the next big idea? It could be worth a $1 million investment from Nokia. Submit it to Nokia’s Growth Economy Venture Challenge.

Tagged: contest, development, Forum Nokia, maemo, N900, Qt

200 Mathilda Ave @ Sunnyvale

The Nokia N900 is landing in the hands of real users with the Maemo 5 final release that we have been polishing in the last weeks.

The fortunate users of a pre-production Nokia N900 are encouraged to flash completely their devices in order to have them as they come out of a sales box. The instructions to flash the internal memory and the eMMC can be found at http://wiki.maemo.org/Updating_the_firmware. Even if technically your backups and the current eMMC firmware should work, we recommend you to start completely from scratch. As if you would have got a new device today.

The Maemo 5 SDK is being updated accordingly (as we speak, so wait if you still don’t see it). It can be downloaded at http://forum.nokia.com/maemo. Now it comes with a GUI installer to ease the path to get you started. Current Maemo 5 final SDK users can simply update their sources in order to get the content matching the sales release.

Welcome the Maemo 5 final release! Welcome the Nokia N900!

MS windows users willing to update the [[N900]] can use the [http://europe.nokia.com/get-support-and-software/download-software/device-software-update Nokia Software Updater].

Just an extended microblog post to let you all know about something that is growing pretty fast: Maemo – Barcelona Long Weekend.

It all started with a UX Meets Code workshop for 50 invited Maemo developers but then we started getting questions in forums, emails and phone calls. Specially about local activities. This is something we wanted to start sometime, somewhere… So why not Barcelona next month! We are now proposing developer training en español, a localization workshop taking el català as test case, gatherings of local groups interested in Maemo and the N900…

GNOME, KDE, Debian, Softcatalà, Hispalinux & co: cuanto mejor sea la respuesta local más gorda la podremos liar.

Tagged: Barcelona, events, maemo

The Maemo 5 Final SDK has been released containing everything a developer needs to get their software ready for N900 users. Check the Maemo development landing page in Forum Nokia for the SDK download, the release notes and other technical details.

This SDK release delivers the latest, stable Maemo 5 code base, which is a reason good enough for any Maemo developer to install it an leave behind previous versions. But there is more:

• If you are new to this check the modest yet beautiful Discover Maemo 5 SDK wiki page.
• Windows / Mac / Eclipse users: you can start with the VMWare based Maemo Virtual SDK. The new release has the same content than the official Maemo 5 Final SDK. DIRECT LINK
• After clear and continuous developer feedback the SDK offers now the possibility to install Nokia applications needed for proper testing of add-ons, plugins and web services.
• A new Sharing Plug-in API has been released to help you integrate web services for sharing files. Users can install these plug-ins in one click and have new web services just as integrated as the ones that come out of the box.

Also don’t forget the Maemo 5 UI Guidelines published recently, specially the Hildon 2.2 UI Style Guide, the Maemo 5 Desktop Widget UI Guidelines and the document about Redesigning from Maemo 4 to Maemo 5.

You can check the maemo.org Development section for an exhaustive list of Maemo 5 developer resources including the community supported runtimes.

Last but not least: your questions about Qt development and the N900 developer device program will be answered this Friday in the Maemo Summit.

Tagged: Fremantle, GTK+, Hildon, maemo, N900, SDK, UI

Many of you already have heard the news: Maemo Harmattan will base its application framework in Qt while keeping most of the Fremantle middleware based on GNOME technologies. The goal is to offer an open, efficient and compelling Linux mobile stack with a cross-platform Qt API used also by Symbian and available in other mobile and traditional operating systems. Hopefully a successful step helping free software projects collaborating with each other and also helping free software developers reaching millions of potential users.

At a personal level it was a pleasure and a honor to explain these news to the GNOME and KDE communities in the same place and at the same time in the first day of the first joint Desktop Summit ever! Hopefully the work Nokia is putting in Harmattan will benefit KDE, GNOME and specially freedesktop.org, that common meeting point in need of so much love.

There is not much time (and even less bandwidth)  to blog extensively in the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit, but here you have the main sources I’m aware of:

• slides
• audio (25 mins, untested due to slow connection – hopefully works)
• talk.maemo.org discussion. I’m concentrating my comments on feedback there.
• Vincent blogging from a GNOME point of view
• Der Standard was the first media reporting
• Slashdot picked it up

Catch me up and let’s talk!

Tagged: development, freedesktop.org, gcds, GNOME, KDE, maemo, Nokia, Qt, Symbian

Three days to land in Copenhagen to enjoy a Danish Weekend. It looks like we are going to have around 100 developers coming literally from all directions to hack and take part in several activities. I wonder where all these people is sleeping though since we have (aparently) many beds available.

Let me insist again that you need to register in order to get your shirt and other goodies (free-as-in-literally-beer). Speaking of shirts, william [at] mozilla dot com can get one of your size from XXS to XXXL if you send him an email in advance NOW.

See you in Friday’s party!

Tagged: maemo, mozilla

Time to talk about The Mozilla/Maemo Danish Weekend! Just in case you missed the announcement:

Mozilla/Maemo Danish Weekend
May 30-31 + Friday night party (29th).
IT University of Copenhagen (see map & pictures & more pictures)

The Maemo and Mozilla projects are organizing a joint developer camp in Copenhagen the last weekend of May. If you are working on Fennec, Fennec add-ons or Maemo 5 applications this call is for you!

Let me repeat this: Maemo developers not related with Fennec/add-ons are welcome as well! (some people wondered). In fact we have already a good representation with Fremantle Stars, other remarkable projects with a foot in Maemo 5, GSoC projects and Mer.

The meeting is open and free, although registration is needed if you want us to have enough sandwiches, drinks and memorable shirts.

So if you’re in a hacking mood and want to participate, or if you know people who would love to participante, please help spread the word, blog about it, make some noise ! We definitely want a packed house and as much hacking as possible (c) William’s Blog

Register – Who is coming.

Once you have registered, go for the logistics:

Schedule: the weekend is for hacking but there is place for presentations, demos, workshops and other activities. Show your stuff and book a slot in the auditorium or one of the rooms.

Accommodation: there is a group reservation in the Hotel Cabinn Scandinavia for those looking for a place to stay.

Party: join us at the ITU student bar on Friday 29 May from 19:00 to 23:00.

Tshirt: specify your preferred size in the registration form (S, M, L, XL or XXL).

Vi ses i København!

Tagged: community, Copenhagen, development, fennec, Fremantle, hackfest, maemo, mozilla