First and foremost, everything you love about TouchSearch v2.2 is the same in TouchSearch 3.1, and everything you didn’t like about 2.2 is better in 3.1. Well, maybe that is a little ambitious. However, 3.1 will open your eyes to all the things you never realized you wanted that were missing in 2.2.

Let’s start out with the changes:

A new search engine format

Okay, maybe not the flashiest new feature, but the most improved part of 3.1 is the stuff you don’t see (really?). Yes, really. The new search engine format is vastly superior to the one in 2.2. For starters, each search engine is self-contained, meaning that the format allows the addition of a whole ton of new functionality (like downloading additional search engines, I will be talking about this later). Additionally, search engines are installed to /opt/ now, so no room will be taken up on the rootfs (in fact almost all of TouchSearch now installs to opt)). The new format now makes more advanced error handling possible as well… which brings me to my next improvement.

Better error handling

Version 2.2 of TouchSearch was pretty finicky, if I say so myself. If the wind blew the wrong way (meaning, maybe, you inputted a search engine incorrectly) it would crash. And crash badly. With big ugly black boxes — eek! Thankfully, those days are gone. TouchSearch v3 handles any problems with search engines gracefully — I haven’t found a way to crash it yet, but problems never do show up for me… anyway, it should be much smoother sailing for all of you.

Support searching different language versions of websites

This is probably the biggest improvement over TouchSearch v2.2 for non-US English speaking people: the ability to choose whether to search Google.com or Google.de, en.wikipedia.org or ca.wikipedia.org, amazon.com or amazon.fr, or any number of other countries/languages. This was another major reason for updating the search engine format.

Support for downloading additional search engines as Addons

TouchSearch v3 supports the installation of search engines as addons via this page at touchsearch.org. This gives you the ability to easily add any engines available there, and I add new ones all the time!

Enhanced search interface

I’ve been trying to make searching the web really easy. At first, you needed to switch search engines via a desktop button (the “plus” button). I thought that maybe people needed an easier way, so I made the QuickBar. Now I’ve one-upped myself and introduce the new “Enhanced” mode for the search dialog. Now you can select a few of your favorite websites and have them always appear in the search dialog. See below:

If you are lazy like me, you are going to love this. Trust me.

Improved “Add search engine” interface

The old interface was confusing. It confused me and I made it (I’m guessing most people’s reaction was something like… what the heck is “Query?!?”). Thankfully, the interface is much simplified and, hopefully, much improved. I did have to indulge myself and add one feature to it, though. Now you can have TouchSearch automatically create an icon for the new search engine based on the name. I got tired of having to create icons for my custom search engines, and thought maybe you did to.

All the other things I won’t mention

Of course, there were a boatload of little bugs that were fixed and minor improvements that were made, but I won’t mention them here. I’ll leave it up to you to try to find them (or you can read the update changelog, one or the other…).

Now you are probably wondering, “How can I install this update?”. Well, I just uploaded it to extras-devel and even more recently promoted it to extras-testing. The testing page is here.

Meaning, if you want to get your hands dirty and jump right in and test this new version, it’s ready to install from -testing. If you’d rather wait for a stable version to hit you local Extras repository, that’s cool too (it’ll be a little while, though; testing is 10 days at the minimum).

If you do test it out, please vote and leave feedback for it on its testing page. Thanks.

Here are some useful links for TouchSearch 3:

• Homepage: http://www.touchsearch.org/
• Testing page: http://maemo.org/packages/package_instance/view/fremantle_extras-testing_free_armel/touchsearch/3.1-1/
• Screenshots of new version: http://www.touchsearch.org/screenshots/
• Addons page: http://www.touchsearch.org/addons/
• Help/FAQ: http://www.touchsearch.org/help/
• Donate page: http://www.touchsearch.org/donate/
• Help on adding search engines: http://www.touchsearch.org/help/adding-custom-search-engines/

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Either way, I remember that the main attraction was just being able to boot into Android and have a working touchscreen. More of a proof-of-concept than anything else.

Then along came solca and his termed “NITdroid“. And with him came the hope of a fully-functioning and daily-usable version of Android for our old Internet Tablets. Over time solca and company got more and more things to work, like WiFi, application installation, battery monitoring and charging, and general stability. I remember enthusiastically installing the latest and greatest version of NITdroid whenever there was a new release, and helping out with debugging whenever I could.

Slowly, my own enthusiasm waned, and, apparently, so did everyone else’s. Though I wasn’t following the project when it got abandoned by solca, from what I hear there were some components he could never get working (sound, Bluetooth, etc) and at some point stopped trying.

After this, there was a long period of silence on the Android front. It never seemed that the hardware on the N810, and especially the N800, was good enough to run Android well. Additionally, newer versions of Android become more and more robust, leading to a need for newer hardware. This need was satisfied with the release of the N900, which lead to new-fangled interest in getting Android to run on a Maemo-based device.

In November of ’09, bri3d on talk.maemo.org got version 2.0 of Android (Eclair) working on the N900. His work was built on top of solca and company, but was very rough with most services unusable. Moreover, he didn’t have much time to spend on the project, so it quickly needed a new maintainer. The reins of NITdroid were then briefly taken by bdogg64 with him trying to work out issues with the kernel and display. Eventually he got the touchscreen, keyboard, and WiFi networking working. Things were moving in the right direction!

Soon after that dj_steve at talk.maemo.org starting working on the project. This is were things really started to get interesting. With the help of e-yes and Jay-C, dj_steve made many “breakthroughs”. Some of these include:

• Android 2.2 (Froyo) as base system
• Working bootmenu with dynamic kernel loading
• Touchscreen working and calibrated correctly
• Keyboard working and correctly mapped
• WiFi
• Bluetooth
• Charging and battery reporting (WIP)
• Accelerometer (WIP)
• Sound via speakers and headset
• Microphone

And development has been fast and steady, as this 277-page (and counting) and 2767-post (and counting) thread can attest to. In fact, this post and these numbers are probably already outdated.

Now, I will again take the plunge and try to install Android on my beloved Maemo-based device (last time the N800, this time the N900).

I will, however, be saving that for part 2 of this article since I haven’t yet received a MicroSD card I ordered the other day, and that is item 1 on the “list of things you need before installing Android on your N900″.

Stay tuned!

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This week we will be taking a look at SPB Brain Evolution by SPB Software.

Brain Evolution bills itself as:

…an intellectual software game that helps to train the brain and improve memory, logic, arithmetic, and puzzle-solving skills. The application is a suit of 12 games, which have to be played in sequence: only good results in a game, unlock the next one.

Sounds more like a mental marathon than a game, but let’s see how it plays.

After launching the game you are presented with this menacing screen:

Clicking “Next” will ask for your game-name (this is what will appear in high-score lists and such). Continuing on, your current “Brain Status” will be determined by playing five simple games. It appears that doing this allows you to know where you are before doing any training. I was at the “Schoolboy” level.

Once you are finished with brain marking, you can go on to brain training. Brain training allows you to have some fun playing (and getting better at) the games themselves, which will unlock other games.

At first you are allowed to play four games: Arithmetic, Quadronica, Sudoku, and Memorics; while the other 8 are locked away, only to be rewarded after brain progress has been made! Starting off, brain training consists of playing two different games, but this number goes up as you unlock more. When brain training is complete, you are presented with an interesting fact, while the difficulty of an unlocked game or the unlocking of a new game may also happen (depending on how well you have done).

A Look at the Games Themselves:

The first game in the list is called “Arithmetic” and, as the name suggests, tests your ability to do simple computational mathematics.

The game itself is timed — the faster you are and fewer wrong answers entered, the higher the score achieved. Like all the games, Arithmetic has levels of difficulty. You start out at “easy” which tests only addition and subtraction, and can work your way up until multiplication and division are introduced.

The second game, titled Quadronica, is also very simple, but so far my favorite (however, I still haven’t unlocked them all yet). It is based on the simple principle of finding same-colored blocks which form a rectangle. The larger the area the rectangle forms, the more points awarded.

The amount of time given is limited, so it a race to find the most and largest quads formed. Advancing in difficulty adds more block colors.

The ultra-popular puzzle game, Sudoku, is third on the list, and as always, provides some entertaining gameplay. This version of Sudoku is fairly bare-bones, but fortunately does provide pencilmarks.

The score you receive is based on how fast you can finish. Advancing in difficulty reduces the amount of given numbers and makes the placements more difficult.

The fourth and final base-unlocked game is Memorics. This game will put your short-term memory to the test by having you remember a field, then asking you a feature of that field.

You only have a fixed amount of time to memorize the field, and higher scores are achieved with more accurate answers.  As it advances in difficulty, more shapes, colors, states and objects are added to the field. This is another extremely fun game that can provide quite a challenge to the player.

Games that are locked at first are: Pairs, Numbers, Balltracker, Guess Who, Minesweeper, Geometry, Encyclopedia, and Matches. I will leave it up to your hard work to find out about these games.

The game also features online high score lists that you can publish-to and read-from. I found myself repeatedly trying to outdo myself and others on the high score lists.

This really adds a fun factor to the game. Another cool feature that you may have noticed from the screenshots is that the game runs entirely in portrait mode.

Summary:

All-in-all, I really enjoyed Brain Evolution by SPB Software. It packs a whole ton of fun games into a small package, and that is very welcome for a platform that is starving for some quality gameplay.

Pricing and Availability:

SPB Brain Evolution is available from the OVI Store for Free, so there is nothing stopping you from giving this a go on your N900. And who knows, after playing, you might just get a little smarter as well — or at least use that as a great excuse.

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One of my users gave me the idea (thanks, evad!) and here is how it works: it allows you to search any of your other search engines by adding a certain prefix to your query. For example, let’s say you find it a bit too time consuming to change search engines every time you want to search a different site. This gives you the ability to use a single search engine, and “change” them by adding a letter at the beginning of your search query. Here are a couple screen shots to demonstrate;

I have selected the QuickBar as my current search engine:

Let’s say I want to search Ebay for, I don’t know, shoes. What I would do is enter “e shoes” as my query.

The “e” tells TouchSearch I want search ebay.com and will automatically by stripped from my query. Shoes, obviously, is what I actually want to search for. When you hit return, TouchSearch magically directs you to ebay’s results page for “shoes”.

And this works for all your search engines. “a” for Amazon, “w” for Wikipedia, “gm” for Google Maps, and so on and so forth. If you enter no prefix or “g”, Google is queried. Additionally, you can change which prefixes are used and add your own to your custom search engines.

How do you get this feature? First, install TouchSearch 2.2. Like I mentioned, it should be available in the next 24 hours or so. Secondly, if this is the first time you’ve installed TouchSearch, you should see the QuickBar available right after installation. If you are upgrading from an older version of TouchSearch, you may need import this search engine into your current database. Do this by:

• Going into Desktop Edit mode (tap the desktop, then tap the little gear)
• Tap on the wrench next to TouchSearch > Configure > Merge > Yes.

That should import all new search engines (including the QuickBar) into your current database.

Have fun (and leave feedback)!

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This week we will be taking a look at Angry Birds by Rovio Mobile ltd.

Angry Birds is a physics-based strategy game that offers a unique description:

The survival of the Angry Birds is at stake. Dish out revenge on the green pigs who stole the Birds ’ eggs. Use the unique destructive powers of the Angry Birds to lay waste to the pigs’ fortified castles. Angry Birds features hours of gameplay, challenging physics-based castle demolition, and lots of replay value. Each of the 21 levels requires logic, skill, and brute force to crush the enemy. Protect wildlife, or play Angry Birds!

With such a colorful and interesting description, how will the game itself stack up?

When you first launch the game and select “Play” you are presented with a short cut-scene depicting the birds sitting around their empty nest wondering where their eggs have gone.

The next shot shows the perpetrators of this horrible theft: the pigs!

This is the basis of the whole game and provides the games goal — destroy the pigs and anything that stands in your way!

You accomplish this by slinging the birds at the pigs and their accompanying fortress with an over-sized slingshot.

That may sound simple enough, but it isn’t. The game features awesome real world physics that you need to take into effect while playing. You can adjust the angle at which you sling the birds, you can choose to bounce the birds off something first (like the back of a rock) or specifically target a weak point in the pigs’ fortress so that it’ll collapse.

There are many different materials that the pigs will build their fortresses out of, including stone, wood, and ice, and each has a different strength and weakness.

Fortunately, the game provides you with different types of birds that attack each differently. The blue “ice bird” will easily destroy ice fortresses but will barely touch a wooden one while the yellow “wood bird” will chew through wood but struggle breaking down ice, and so on and so forth. This must be strongly considered when trying to break down a fortress that is comprised of many different materials and you are provided different types of birds. This, in addition to the very real-world physics can make some levels very challenging which just adds to the fun.

Even after you finish a level by destroying all the pigs, you can try for another goal: getting three stars on every level.

The game keeps track of your high scores for each level, 5000 points for each pig destroyed, 10000 for each “unused” bird and various additional points for destroying the pigs’ fortresses.

So even after you complete all the levels, you still have the goal of getting 3 stars on each one. Since there are 21 strategically-designed levels in the base game, this leaves literally hours of gameplay.

If you are like me, though, this still won’t be enough — once you are hooked on this game you won’t be able to put it down. And even when it is finished you’ll want to install more levels. Fortunately, Rovio has created an official levelpack that can be purchased. The levelpack adds two additional “worlds” (21 levels in each) for a total of 42 levels.

The level pack adds lot of cool things to the game; you now have two additional type of birds at your disposal: a black bird that will explode after a second or two on the ground (this is my personal favorite) and a bird that drops egg bombs.

In addition to that, the levelpack adds some new items to the game, for example, crates of TNT. I’ll leave it up to your imagination what happens when you hit one of those.

(OK, I lied)

In short, if you liked the levels in the base game, you’ll love the expansion pack levels.

Summary:

Overall I really liked the game. The graphics are terrific, the real-world physics are absolutely awesome, and the storyline is fun. I have to say, it is usually a good sign when a professional blogger goes to review a game, and in the process, totally gets hooked playing it.

Pricing and Availability:

The base game is free (along with the first 21 levels) and the levelpack won’t exactly blow the budget either, at only $3.

Unfortunately, due to some issues with Nokia’s OVI Store, the levelpack is unavailable for purchase. Hopefully, these issues will be ironed out shortly so you can enjoy a great game and support a high-quality game developer for Maemo 5.

Update: it appears that the issues with the OVI Store have been sorted out and that the levelpack is now available for purchase. Happy gaming!

Disclaimer: All images and materials used with permission of Rovio Mobile Ltd.

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The post on the Mozilla blog summarizes some of the features and plans they have for Firefox Mobile and mobile browsing in general:

Bringing Firefox to mobile devices is the next step toward fulfilling Mozilla’s mission of providing one Web that everyone can access, regardless of device or location. Secure, powerful, and customizable, Firefox is the most modern mobile Web browser available and is optimized for a mobile experience. Key design principles are at the heart of the mobile browsing experience including minimal typing, seamless synchronization with desktop Firefox and the ability to take your Firefox with you, to name a few.

Firefox for mobile is packed with your favorite features, including:

• Awesome Bar – Go to your favorite sites in just a couple of keystrokes with intelligent and personalized searching
• Weave Sync – Sync your Firefox tabs, history, bookmarks and passwords between your desktop and mobile device for a seamless browsing experience
• Add-ons – Customize your Firefox by adding small pieces of functionality, like games and news readers, that help make the mobile Web browser your own
• Location-Aware Browsing – Get maps and information relevant to your location
• Tabbed browsing – View open tabs as thumbnails to easily identify and select the Web page you’d like to go to next
• Safe Browsing – Get an Instant Web Site ID and easily access and edit security settings
• Available in more than 30 languages and counting

For those eager to try out Firefox Mobile, go to http://www.firefox.com/m on your N900 and you should be presented with the download page. The download is about 13 MB and will take a couple minutes.

I plan to do a full review of Firefox Mobile soon with full comparisons to your N900′s pre-installed browser. Until then, here are a few screenshots of Firefox Mobile in action:

(Displaying the classic Google homepage)

(maemo.org frontpage)

(This blog’s frontpage)

(Preferences screen)

(Add-ons screen)

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Also new in this version is the Configure Search Engines interface. This is available from the Widget Options and allows you to create, edit, delete and sort your search engines. Beware though, that the Add Search Engine option is still a bit untested and you may run into a few hiccups while trying to add search engines. Here is the full changelog for those wondering:

• User can now Add, Edit, Delete and Sort search engines
• Widget now features a background with rounded corners and user-selectable opacity
• New integrated help system
• Added WebMD to search engines list
• Numerous bug-fixes and optimizations.

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Of course as long as everything remains the same, C will be the de facto programming language for Maemo devices. As a Python programmer, I had to fight through unstable API’s, lean documentation, and several bugs to be one of the first developers to program a Python application on Maemo 5.

But it was all worth it because I was using a high-level programming language that I could use to quickly create a feature rich application. For developers wanting to program Python for the device now, all those issues are resolved.

The only advantage C has now is: the Python libraries need to be installed as dependencies by the programmer since they do not come preinstalled on the device. This may not seem like a huge issue, but it can be:

Think about it from the user’s perspective: they see two applications in the App. Manager. Both are, let’s say, desktop widgets that show you how much free space you have on your SD card. One is written in C and is 35 KB’s. The other is written in Python and is 5 MB’s. The Python one has to pull in all the Python dependencies (python, python-hildon, python-hildondesktop, python-osso, etc.) because they aren’t preinstalled on the device. Of course, most of that stuff is Optified  so it doesn’t take up any additional space on the Root FS, but it doesn’t matter. A user will install the C application because it is so much smaller.

Although that’s an issue, it’s not the biggest one. The biggest one is how does one upload an Python-based application to the OVI Store? Are those dependencies going to be available from OVI?

Right now it is fairly simple to create and upload a Python-based application to maemo.org’s software repository, because the Python libraries are uploaded there. But how about when Python developers want to upload to the premier source for Maemo 5 applications? Will there be any support for them?

It would be great if there was Python support in the OVI Store. Even better would be to push all the common Python libraries in the next SSU, leveling the playing field completely.

What are your thoughts?

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The plan for this website is to have it be a central hub for news, hardware and software reviews, tips and tricks on how to use your device better, interviews with both community and commercial developers and/or contributors, and just general Maemo-related content.

I hope you enjoy your stay!

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