Planet Maemo: category "feed:5ff6f3cc6ae5664178e23fc780c812d9"

Getting ready ...

Fri, 04 Feb 2011 08:20:00 +0000

2+ months @ HP. I’m enjoying the ride tremendously. And in my personal life, I'm loving the weather and living on Craigslist.

We are working hard to develop webOS and services further. We will show some new stuff next week, so stay tuned.

As a teaser, take a look at this.

And this, we are in the finals ;-)

And this, we are hiring!

7 2

Continue posting ...

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 21:39:00 +0000

I originally started this blog for one reason: I felt that I needed to communicate the strategies we were executing especially in the area of open source. I was responsible for the most part of it at Nokia, and I thought you wanna hear it from me. Thank you for all the feed back. All of it!

From the early days of Nokia 770 everything has changed. We did turn the company around and put both open source and MeeGo into the center of Nokia. We released Nokia's first Linux and open source based smartphone, the Nokia N900, and participated the creation of the Maemo community. We then joined forces with Intel and others and created MeeGo operations to continue that work we started. And my dear colleagues and community members continue doing that. It will be a great success!

But I moved on. I started at HP / Palm 3 days ago. I'm exited and thrilled about this opportunity. I've always been a great fan of webOS and I'm now proud to be a part of this great team. One of the first things I did even before joining was to install and try out the SDK. I was impressed to see how easily I got started with it!

I do not know yet what are my future needs for communicating through this channel. Palm seems to have good publicity actions going on, such as developer days and sites. But we will see .... talk to you soon!10 0

1.2 out tomorrow

Tue, 25 May 2010 09:48:00 +0000

1.2. You should have it tomorrow the latest.

In a nutshell,

- The world's first phone with Skype video calls
- Google and SIP video calls, too
- Other stuff like browser, exchange, browser etc improvements
- Qt 4.6 for developers ... this is very important. This now bridges us to the forthcoming MeeGo apps that will then run also on you N900.

So with all the above, with full Flash, Mozilla browser, and a lot of cool apps at Nokia OVI store and Maemo repositories, a very compelling little computer. And a phone, too.

More info here.45 4

Competition is good .. it makes things happen!

Sat, 01 May 2010 09:57:00 +0000

I've been working with software, computers, user interfaces and all that since late 80s. I've seen interesting development and several paradigm shifts happening. But I feel that we are in the middle of the most significant one!

It is happening now!
We are right in the middle of a very interesting era. Mobile phones are in the center of high tech innovation. The most of new interesting user interface paradigms originate from mobile space. Laptops and other are borrowing connectivity and other features from mobile phones. And, Moore's law has made it possible for mobile phones to run full operating systems without any limitations thus killing limited "mobile operating systems". If I ever had a doubt now I'm sure! Now we have full computers in our pockets. No wonder mobile phones and their software are in the center of innovation.

Competition
And competition is fierce. Competition is good because only through competition can we ensure continuous development and added value to consumers. PC operating systems have lost this competitiveness after somebody won. Now innovation has moved elsewhere -- increasingly to mobile space.

This is why I follow up and value highly our tough competitors. This is why I think about the industry as a whole. I want to learn from our competitors, copy them, collaborate with them, and try to be better than them. We can commonly do so much more than a single dominant player could do. Competition boosts innovation and makes things possible.

So what is happening right now. A lot!

Apple will come up with their new iPhone OS 4. It will be great, I believe. And even if it wasn't the will make it sound great!

I've been using Google Nexus One a lot lately. It is such a great device. The way they've integrated Google services sets the bar for all of us.

I used to use a Palm Pre a lot. What a great device. What an astounding software. I was so disappointed to see it not getting the traction it deserves. I really hope that now that it has found a new home @ HP it will rise again! And by the way, I have an extra sweet spot for Pre. It shares a lot of stuff with Maemo and N900.

Nokia just announced N8, the first device running Symbian^3. It is a great device with a very nice user interface. And together with the new Qt SDK, the application development environment for Nokia devices is one of the best in the industry!

And of course MeeGo and Maemo. A true computer software running in a mobile phone. Developed as an open source project with Intel, Nokia, and others.

My biased N900 view
As you know, we are selling the first Maemo phone, the N900. I'm biased, but I claim we have the best Flash implementation anybody has. We optimized full Flash to run with an open Mozilla browser. And it works very well!. (These are merely excuses, I think.)

We have the best browser based on the open Mozilla engine. We have the best multitasking implementation.

And --just try it -- we have a brilliant audio quality. Go ahead, plug the best possible studio headphones into you N900, and listen. To my ears, the best in the industry!

So competition is good. It is so exciting to see all this development.

P.S.

I'm running a 1.2 release candidate on this phone now. And this is the best phone ever to write blog posts!

13 0

Getting there -- and back! (A volcano post)

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 13:18:00 +0000

I finally got back home from the Linux Foundation summit where I gave a keynote. We are now building both the platform and devices, and we need to keep the following things clear on our mind:

Other parties are joining, too. This all is happening fast and I noticed a lot of support for MeeGo during the summit.

Thank you Linux Foundation for hosting both the summit and the MeeGo project!

-----------------

And then, everything started to go bad. Islanders broke their volcano and seriously complicated things. Those guys seem to screw up banks and mountains on a regular basis.

I had originally a flight back home from SFO, leaving Thursday evening a week ago. It was canceled, as we all know, and there was no idea when would British Airways start to operate again. Actually, BA never ever contacted me on anything during the trip.

I'm one of those guys who cannot relax if everything is not under my control. So no way could I have done what --looking back now ---would have been the right choice: stay put and wait for BA to take me home. No no. Instead, I started my own journey step by step getting closer to home.

So I booked a flight to New York City. It is closer to Finland than SFO, I figured. Then, in NYC I started to look for flights to Europe.
I managed to get myself on a Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt. But while the plane was already starting to board, I saw the pilots walking out of the tube. I thought: They either gonna ask me to drive or then they'll cancel the flight. Was not my day, so back to the hotel and a night in NYC.

Next day I desperately tried to book a flight to Europe. No airlines or travel agencies were of any help. My dear admin, Merja, did all she could back in Finland, but no flights whatsoever! The longest time I waited on a phone on a single call was 2 hours 20 minutes. A long distance call from NYC to Helsinki on my N900. I had the waiting tone playing in my ear plugs while doing shopping in NYC. I hate the music loop they've created.

But then, Sunday evening, an Alitalia / Delta flight from JFK to Milan. And I managed to get a ticket. So here we go.

In the latter part of the flight, I heard an announcement in Italian. I could not understand anything but I saw Italians making weight lifting moves (without weights) and saw the map on the screen drawing a dotted line to Rome. OK I thought. Rome is not Milan, but Rome is Europe. Getting closer now.

In Rome I saw all the flights north canceled. Nobody knew when they would start again. It is now Monday and I was already supposed to be home by Friday. I went to different car rental offices and tried to rent a car. No cars available anywhere. None. I tried to buy a car. Yes I did -- I've always thought I'd like to buy a 70's Alfa. It would have taken me 5 days to get an export license, they say. So no good.

Then I went downtown and checked into a hotel. I took a subway to the central railway station to get a train. No availability in any trains leaving North until Saturday. Buying a complete trip to, say, Stockholm --- no idea. There was a 500 m line queuing to the ticket office -- while there was a sign saying "No tickets available". Go and figure ... And it was raining!

I was also trying to call different places and become sort of an expert on waiting tones. If you ever make one don't you loop your waiting tone music so that when the loop stars again there is a click and noticeable loop break. It gets reaaaaalllly annoying after an hour listening.

Very tired now, I go to the hotel bar to get a beer before going to bed. It was around 11 pm and the previous night in Alitalia coach wasn't really cozy. Then I heard two persons talking Finnish and I ask if they were stranded, too. They said, yes, but we are leaving for Helsinki tomorrow, they continued. They were leaving the Rome Central railway station Tuesday morning 6 am. Holy shit, how?

They have found a group of people on Facebook going for a bus ride Rome - Tallinn organized by a local travel agency. And then a ferry to Helsinki. They gave me a phone number to call, but the bus was already full. Sorry.

I went back to my room and brushed my teeth. Then I -- packed up my things and set an alarm to wake me up 4.30. I thought eventually you also get lucky if you just keep on trying.

So, in the morning I checked out from the hotel (a sign of commitment ... no plans for the next night other than it won't be Rome) and went to the railway station with my new Finnish friends so see what's going on. All 49 showed up and they loaded the bus . I was silently hoping a now-show but I was not lucky. Or actually I was ... the bus company had told the travel agency that there are 49 seats available, but the bus had 50!! So I got in! Here we go from Rome to Tallinn.

I save you from the details of the bus trip. But I will never ever use a bus again. Some of the highlights were:

-We had three drivers who would take turns in driving and resting. They would change a driver without stopping the bus.
-We drove non-stop Rome - Tallinn. Only 20 min stops here and there every 4 hours or so.

-The bus had one broken TomTom navigator that didn't boot up, my N900 run out of battery already in Italy, and the drivers considered buying a map in Austria but decided not to. So the navigation was all f'd up. We got it wrong during the trip pretty often.
-The drivers were driving to Belarus before we as passengers realized that this is not the way to go! Its not on the way to Estonia and you need a visa to get in and .... really ... nobody is interested in going there at this point.
-There was no WC or fridge or anything in the bus. Just 50 hard seats.
-It took us 46 hours with a few 20 minutes breaks to drive from Rome to Tallinn.
-The roads in Poland and Lithuania are not for motor vehicles -- or for human beings.
-If you give a Finn too much alcohol he may get aggressive. In a bus that is not good. (I'm not talking about myself ....)
-Women pee more often than men.

So the, 5.30 am Thursday we got to Tallinn. I check into a hotel just to get a shower. The I take a ferry to Helsinki and a train to Tampere.

I get to bed early. It is now Thursday evening -- last time I was in bed more than 4 hours was Saturday in NYC.

This is all Jim's fault! But now hard feelings -- I'm home. And the Summit was superb.11 1

MeeGo is now opened

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 11:42:00 +0000

MeeGo project is making progress. We opened the MeeGo distribution infrastructure and the operating system base. It is not on official or tested release, but the opening of the public development of the MeeGo OS layer. So, it is an invitation for hackers who want to participate in MeeGo development, not for end users ;-)

If you consider yourself a developer, go and check it out. You can run it on an Nokia N900, and on an Intel Atom based laptop or handset.

If you study the code closer you can also see how we are merging Moblin and Maemo projects. Moblin contributed things such as the entire OpenSuse based build infrastructure, geoCLue location framework, PcakageKit, Connman etc. Maemo contributed things such as Telepathy for Internet communication, Tracker for user and metadata management, Maemo multimedia application framework, Qt toolkit etc. And, as we know, a big part of Moblin and Maemo were already the same.

And, by the way, our team within Nokia was called Maemo Devices. We are now MeeGo Devices. Same guys. Bigger ambitions!

P.S.

As explained, N900 is used as one of the platforms for MeeGo development. I do not have any news about the actual Nokia products running MeeGo. We will tell about the products separately. 16 1

N900, MeeGo, and Barcelona

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 13:17:00 +0000

In-flight entertainment with N900

Flying to Barcelona over the Alps.
N900 takes the pictures and monitors the speed of the plane … keeping the pilot honest.

Open source and Business

So how was Barcelona? I met with many device manufacturers, software houses, and chipset and technology providers. It became clear that many of them will be looking into MeeGo as a viable target platform. The feedback was very positive.

We managed to get a very good traction with open source community on Maemo. MeeGo now expands that to next level -- and this is one of the biggest contributions Maemo will provide to MeeGo. I've been discussing with community members, seen the discussion and work taking off at the MeeGo discussion forums, and so forth ... the ball is rolling! Now it is the time for you to get on-board. Now!

But that's not all. With MeeGo we now get business interest like never before from the key players in the industry. As a truly open alternative, strong community support, with full blown standard Linux, powerful application environment, and the two biggest investors in mobile Linux backing it up it has all the potential. There was a huge need for something like MeeGo. Openly developed operating system backed up by enough money and a strong community.

I’m very encouraged!

Buzz!

Suits!

So what’s with today ….?

N900 is one of the most interesting products you can own at the moment. It is on open Linux based smartphone / mobile computer that offers, among other things, a superior browser that runs full Flash and renders pages better than any other mobile browser, good multimedia cababilitis (DivX and stuff ... even to your TV), a very deep social networking integration, a conversation view that allows you to maintain short message and IM conversations in order, capability to run many applications at the same time, OVI store for more apps, community repositories for really advanced stuff and apps, a Carl Zeiss camera, etc etc. (I indeed sound like a sales guy … but then again I and my daughter are using N900 as our primary device, of course)

And now, going forward it will only get better. We just released a new software release for you this Tuesday. Third over-the-air update this year pushed to your N900 by us. And we have new software updates in the pipeline for you, more applications coming, and we open new markets for sales.

But there is better to come. The announcement of MeeGo takes N900 even further. Now listen to this:

MeeGo has already gotten many more people interested in N900 than Maemo platform alone would have done. I already know many people now gearing up their Qt based application development on N900. Why now? Because now they know it will not be just a Nokia-only thing but will be much wider and thus worth investing in. This means that there will be more applications for N900 owners in the future than there would have been without MeeGo. This is for sure. This is the most important thing for the majority of N900 customers. With MeeGo, Maemo and N900 will only go stronger!11 0

This is the next step ... a step forward

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 22:26:00 +0000

Greetings from the Nokia party here in Barcelona. I'm blogging on my N900 which really makes me the geek of the party!

MeeGo is the next step fro Maemo. Natural evolution. Gets us much wider adoption. So it is not at all about forgetting Maemo. It is about merging most significant open source mobile projects together.

Nokia roadmap will be accelerated. Maemo6 plans have not changed. We are workingd days and nights to get it out.It will be Qt based and MeeGo compatible.

We will absolutely not forget N900 users and developers. If you are a developer, develop on N900 with Qt and your apps will run on MeeGo devices. If you are an N900 owner (or an owner wannabee) this is all good for you. All the MeeGo and Qt momentum will give you many more interesting applications to run on N900. Now and in the future.12 1

MeeGo time!

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 12:42:00 +0000

We’ve been busy with our friends @ Intel.

We decided to expand the relationship we started already last spring. We merge Maemo and Moblin projects into one single project called MeeGo. MeeGo is an open software platform – an operating system – for a wide range of devices. It’ll run on X86 and on Arm based hardware. It will be developed as an open project hosted by the Linux Foundation.

So what does it mean? Many things.

Joint development

We will merge Maemo and Moblin projects. Their architecture is already very similar. They share many components but sometimes use different versions. But they build and integrate releases independently. And while Maemo is for ARM, Moblin is for X86. Now we merge them to get the best of both. A good Moblin build and integration, Maemo’s mobile optimizations and ARM support, Qt etc. We can also now make the bright engineers of Intel and Nokia to work close together.

And even more. I invite all active Moblin and Maemo community members to now join the MeeGo project. It’ll give you all a much bigger pond to swim in. And it’ll get your work into much wider use than either of these projects separately.

Freedom

MeeGo is free. Code will be available for everybody under proper open source licenses. No strings attached other than making your contributions also free. The development and integration will be open, too. Everybody can invest in MeeGo and participate. It is a genuine open source project. Free for everybody to participate, contribute, and enjoy. Free. No papers to sign. Just show up!

Compatibility

MeeGo offers the broadest possible compatibility for application developers. It uses Qt as the framework and toolset for application developers. It means very good tools and possibility to run your apps in a wide range of devices. Code once – deploy everywhere.

MeeGo also means compatibility and full compliance with leading open source projects. We will not fork projects if we can possibly avoid it. We will work with leading open source projects using the open source best practices.

A perfect target

MeeGo will aim high. Nokia and Intel are the biggest investors in mobile Linux based technologies and now – together—even more significant. We will put all our force behind making MeeGo THE operating system.

So, for chip-set companies, hardware vendors, software companies, application developers, device manufactures, operators … this is the place to go. Make you stuff work under, inside, or on top of MeeGo and you get your stuff deployed all over the place. Nokia will ship tons of MeeGo devices, Intel, too. And others will use MeeGo in their devices. It is open, free, powerful and compatible.

Devices

So what’s with Maemo6? Maemo6 will be MeeGo compatible.....consider Maemo6 already a MeeGo instance.

So aim at MeeGo. We will!22 2

Applications on Maemo

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:20:00 +0000

Some people are questioning Maemo as an application development platform. I claim that it is one of Maemo's strong points going forward.

We have always had a strong and productive maemo.org community that builds very interesting stuff. Their work has been available for more advanced Maemo users already for some time. I claim that the depth and coolness of those apps and compos beats almost any other mobile platform. Maemo is open and as a true computer OS it allows developers to create really nice applications, widgets, and extensions. If you want to experience them just open disabled repositories or go directly to maemo.org.

And now, Ovi Store for Maemo applications has been open for a week or two. It is the official Nokia supported application store where developers can distribute their work. You should defenately check it out.

Angry Birds is one of the many applications you can install to your N900 from the Ovi Store. This is what the developers of that entertaining game say: " In the first week that Angry Birds has been on the Ovi Store, it has been downloaded almost as many times as the iPhone version in six weeks. Given that most N900 users have not even used Ovi Store yet, we are confident that there will be many more downloads in the months to come, and are sure that the N900 version will be very profitable."

I suggest you read the whole interview and go to the Ovi Store with your N900. Get your apps there, too. And have fun!22 1

Maemo is on the right tracks ... Friday afternoon!

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 15:57:00 +0000

When we started Maemo 5 we said: let's make the world's best pocketable computer, that is also a good phone! That is exactly what we've managed to do. And this is my vision of the future, too.

My impression is that if you read reviews and blogs, all of those that start with "Internet", "Computer", "Multimedia", "Networking" or any other such terms love N900. They think it's the best device out there. Those, who think it primarily just as a phone have more concerns.

Just as we planned! The best browser ever, the best conversation view, the best social network integration, very good camera & imaging capabilities, good multimedia support --- and a crips and well working mobile phone. And -- as a true computer- open and upgradeable by end users:

Two firmware updates within a week. Over the air. Some glitches, mostly going well!
Application store with good stuff in it
MMS implementation coming in as an open source project (Frals, cool!!!).
In addition to basic applications, a lot of other very integrated features, such as the Firefox browser, MSN and other IM plugins, codecs etc available as downloadables. Demonstrates the power of a true open Linux computer!
+ many so interesting apps ... hundreds already ....

Not bad, eh?

It's Friday afternoon and I'm still in a phone conference, as you can see in the picture below. I'm in a phone conf (on mute, of course) and on my Facebook at the same time -- and a card game going on ..... this late in Friday, I felt that I needed to post and brag a bit about it ;-)

36 3

A good start for 2010!

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 15:54:00 +0000

Happy new year!

We opened Ovi Store beta today for Maemo 5, i.e. for N900. Go and check it out! More here.

I made a trip during the new year. And I used my N900 to take a lot of pictures. There are at least two advantages in N900 over a conventional camera:

1) The sharp high resolution screen makes it possible to really edit pictures with the device. I think somebody should build or port a good image editing software for Maemo 5. The screen would make it really useful. But even with the in-build editing capabilities you can do nice stuff.

2) I can upload the images directly to my Flickr, Facebook, Ovi and other accounts. And make my friends jealous ... By the way, there is a nice N900 group @ Flickr.

..and now, back to work!

22 0

Houston, we have a take-off!

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:03:00 +0000

We gave a few hundred Nokia N900s out to the Maemo Summit participants. That happened about a month ago. You have now been using the devices and provided us with feedback. Thank you so much! That has been very helpful. You've helped us to focus our effort and work on the remaining issues. That's why I want YOU to be the first to know.

We have also been testing the software extensivly in our own labs. We will continue working on the software and will provide important software upgrades as we go forward. But we also wanted to have very good software release to start with.

Based on our testing and your feedback we decided to postpone the delivery start. We had oroiginally said October, but now we said November. Now I'm happy to tell that we ment only days, not weeks or months.

The shipments of the Nokia N900 have now started. The factories are now working full speed and the devices are on their way to distribution.

Houston, we have a take-off!55 0

My vision of Maemo ... at least a part of it

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 13:45:00 +0000

We say that the Nokia N900 running Maemo 5 is a computer. It is a computer in your pocket. What an earth do we mean? Let me try to explain what I think. This is my interpretation.

A computer of 2009 -- not 1999
When I talk about a computer, I talk about a computer people use today, especially young people. Think about the internet, messaging, sharing, openness, and think about browsers and players. Don't think about spreadsheets, word processors, file managers, or closed systems. That should put you in the right ballpark to start with.

Open and expandable
I want Maemo software to be expandable without limits. I want to encourage people to write apps that install themselves into the application grids and sit on top of the Maemo OS. But I also want to invite people to build services and apps that integrate within the Maemo software --- as an integral part of the end user experience. Not only apps but Maemo OS expansions. Maemo devices are open and true Linux computers so the sky is the limit.

Let me try to explain. An application that goes "on top of Maemo" is like the Nako game from Jakub. It sits on top of Maemo. The N900 will have many of these!

Figure: The Nako game -- an application

A MSN messaging I'm using is implemented with a piece of software called Butterfly developed as connection manager to the Telepathy communication framework. It is developed by the community (hackers, developers, 3rd party companies, ....) but it is tightly integrated into Maemo. Maemo allows such integration. For the end user MSN messaging becomes an integral part of Maemo as if it was originally developed by Nokia.

Figure: My accounts -- including MSN -- integrated within Maemo 5

Figure: Butterfly MSN discussion with my daughter

Figure: Similar discussion over SMS -- both look exactly the same. SMS is developed and integrated by Nokia and MSN/Butterfly by others

So Maemo is an open platform for all kinds of integration possibilities.

Addictive, active, and connected
My vision is to make Maemo really addictive. I want users to be constantly checking it out -- what's happening, who's online, who said what etc. Instead of a boring static menu grid, I want Maemo to open directly to the world around us. Maemo is active -- not passive. I want plug-ins, message bars, picture galleries, and status indicators constantly changing on the home screen. I want to see the latest from the world around me. I want to be connected all the time with a glance at the screen!

Figure: What's up RIGHT NOW?

Doing many things at the same time
We all multitask. I want Maemo to make multitasking simple and understandable. I want to be able to shift from one activity to another with one touch of a finger. I do not want to limit people to only one job at a time.

Figure: A whole lotta things goin' on ...

Cult
Maemo is rough on the edges. It is a bit dangerous. It is open to experiments. It is about community involvement. I want these to stay. I do not like boring cars, either.

Figure: Torrents ... like in any computer

Summary
These were some of my thoughts when I'm thinking about Maemo 5, pushing Maemo forward, and making computers. We are not making a new iPhone or Symbian here. They both exist already and are pretty good. So no need to replicate them.

With Maemo, I see computers that are always connected, fit into your pocket, are open, and addictive.32 0

About boring cars

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:40:00 +0000

Getting close now!!

It was cool to see the Maemo Summit participants playing with N900s. For those of you who still need to wait for a while (yes, my fault ...) check out the new videos from our UI team.

We are working like maniacs to get the N900 finalized. I'm so proud of the Nokia teams in India, US, and Finland working hard on Maemo 5 .... and already equally hard on Maemo 6. And I'm also very happy to see the Maemo community efforts getting cool stuff on and inside the Maemo platform.

People speculate now if N900 is a smartphone, or a computer, or a some kind of a killer of another phone --- you know. I understand that people want to compare N900 to other devices, but it's like comparing apples and oranges. Literally. N900 does many things better than any other device I know, some features could be improved, and some tricks it cannot do at all. So you better check it out and form your own opinion.

Those of you who know me know that I'm a bit of a petrol head. So for me my N900 is a bit like my Alfa Romeo. It can be almost anything -- but boring it ain't!

...and, life is simply too short to drive boring cars. But that's another story .....23 1

Sttgrt

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 13:52:00 +0000

We had a good few days @ Nokia world in Stuttgart. Nokians, journalist, analysts, partners, operators, Maemo.org dudes, etc. I received overwhelmingly positive feedback from people once they saw a N900 in action. But then again, I do not know what they talked behind my back.

Or actually I do. Very positive comments also in various blogs and articles. People understand what we are doing and they like the product.

It is all about
1) Internet (browsing, chatting, sharing, talking ....) first
2) Open source & collaborative development for consumers
3) True computer experience in a small package

Alan has a nice story @ maemo.org.14 0

How do we build Maemo devices?

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 12:17:00 +0000

Nice buzz ;-)

We have a tough last mile to finalize the N900 for the sales start. The Maemo team is working very hard and I'm so proud of it! Thus, I want to say a few words about how we build the Maemo devices. We do it as a part of the community in upstream projects, maemo.org projects, and internal hardware and software development, finalizing, and releasing.

Upstream projects
The most significant part of this joint development happens in upstream communities, such as kernel.org, Mozilla, and Gnome. Hundreds of individuals are participating the development and this is what creates the foundation of the Maemo platform.

Maemo is based on the world's most significant open source components. It is build with the community. I've said some time ago that our vision is to bring open source to consumers. That is what is happening right now.

Maemo.org
While working within these upstream projects, we have maemo.org as the Maemo community. It provides a means for developers to discuss, contribute, follow up, praise&complain, and be part of the Maemo evolution. The Maemo community has over 16.000 registered members that contribute to more than 700 development projects. Is it the largest community of mobile open source developers? We as Nokia sponsor it but it is governed by the community council.

Nokia Maemo team
The Nokia team runs device development programs, such as the N900 program, and software programs, such as the Fremantle software program as a part of the Maemo Devices. Software programs and the roadmap are communicated and discussed openly within the maemo.org. Device programs are Nokia secrets before days like this Thursday.

The Nokia programs utilize the work from upstream projects, maemo.org work and Nokia internal R&D. They finalize the software and hardware, and create an open source based user experience that -- I hope -- people will love the way I do.

Don't think that this is a simple engine to run! In addition of getting the most significant parts of the code from community projects, the Nokia Maemo team has a huge job to develop, finalize, optimize, fine tune, test, and integrae the devices into ready packages. The work varies from bootloaders to UI widgets, from power management to graphical elements.

In addition to the open source projects, the Maemo team works intimately with external companies providing components and technology to Maemo devices. Texas Instruments, Adobe, Ebay/Skype to name a few.

Summary

Great user experience through open source. Excitement in the air. The community development in the core.

This really made my day: A reason to get up in the morning by Philip.26 0

N900 announced

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 14:50:00 +0000

Ifeel good. It is now publicly announced. See www.maemo.nokia.com.
More to follow.

See you at Nokia World, Maemo Summit and OSIM.17 0

Collaboration, upstream, Intel, and others

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:14:00 +0000

We are living interesting times. The current economical situation has made things change faster. The whole mobile world is changing. New players are entering and old players are changing or disappearing.

There is now less time and energy for games, politics and religion in the tech world. For all of us who are in this for the long run -- we all need to get products and services out to consumers ASAP. For us, the key is collaboration.

As a part of our strategy in Maemo, we collaborate with many partners. We work closely with the Mozilla foundation and the Linux foundation. We work in several open source projects such as Gnome, Qt, X and so forth. In addition we work with several industry partners, such as Texas Instruments, who provide us with the underlying technology for the existing Maemo products.

And today we announced that we collaborate with Intel inside several new and established open source projects. This is the kind of upstream collaboration we've been talking about. We say: "Intel and Nokia are coordinating their Open Source technology selection and development investments for Maemo and Moblin. This means alignment behind a range of key Open Source technologies for Mobile Computing such as: oFono, ConnMan, Mozilla, X.Org, BlueZ, D-BUS, Tracker, GStreamer, PulseAudio. "

We both feel that it makes a lot of sense to collaborate and direct key investments to the same direction. It allows us both to contribute mature technology to same open source projects – and not fragment the industry.

All this is needed to create new interesting products and services.

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Spam on Qt, Maemo and Moblin

Wed, 13 May 2009 16:16:00 +0000

It's been a while.

One guy just told me he's reading my blog. I guess I better start writing ...

Let me spam this time with two topics only:

Look at Qt opened up. Pretty cool. You can see the work in progress.

Look at Maemo and Moblin work. oFono.org is a place to design an infrastructure for building mobile telephony (GSM/UMTS) applications.8 0