Maemo-Guru.com

Nokia Uses N900s For Pole-Dancing Robots

TheGuru — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 00:54:29 +0000

Tonight, Nokia hosted the PUSH N900 event in London, showing off various interesting uses for the Nokia N900, including a trick-tracking skateboard, N900 kite, and more. However, the stars of the show were easily the pole-dancing robots, apparently controlled by none other than the Nokia N900!

My friend Ilicco was kind enough to snap some photos of these sexy bits of machinery, as well as a video for your viewing pleasure. If you don’t watch another video all weekend, watch this one.

I’ll have to confess, I would likely rip off my own arm to have one of these in my office, just cause.

PUSH The N900 In The U.S.A. For $10,000

TheGuru — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 20:48:35 +0000

Nokia launched a PUSH campaign for the Nokia N900 globally a while back, but recently they launched a new contest specifically for folks in the U.S. of A. The U.S. PUSH contest is the same – submit your idea for something outlandish and creative that you’d like to do with the Nokia N900 that’s completely new. Results from the international contest include a trick-tracking skateboard, N900 kite, and others.

The contest closes on February 15, so you have until then to put your thinking cap on and come up with something cool to do with the N900 that’s not currently being done. There’s a grand prize of $10,000 waiting for the winner, and remember you need to live in the U.S. to be eligible for this contest. Finalists will be flown to Las Vegas, Nevada for CTIA to demo their PUSH modification, so there’s quite a bit at stake here.

What’s your idea? You can submit directly to the PUSH N900 IN THE USA site here, and best of luck!

Nokia N900 Firmware Update Brings Portrait Web Browsing And Exchange 2003 Support

TheGuru — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 15:11:46 +0000

The long-awaited firmware is now available for the Nokia N900 after a smaller preview one was released yesterday. This new firmware, v2.2009.51-1 is now available through the device’s onboard update process, and brings a massive changelog of updates, both large and small.

The biggest things you’ll notice in this new update, though, are support for portrait-mode web browsing and updated support for Microsoft Exchange 2003. The portrait web-browsing is not enabled by default – you’ll need to press Ctrl + Shift + O in the browser to activate it, but aside from that, it seems to work well. Text is properly reformatted to fit the taller display orientation and overall it’s quite nice. Unfortunately, text input hasn’t caught up, so you’ll still need to rotate back to landscape and use both hands to enter any information in a web form. This is going to get really old, really fast, so hopefully Nokia is working on a portrait-mode QWERTY keyboard option soon.

The new Exchange support should make syncing with various accounts a much smoother process, and the email client has also been updated to hopefully provide a smoother experience for users who have overly large inboxes. Supposedly, Ovi Maps was also updated significantly, though I haven’t had a chance to check that out just yet. You can view the full changelog here.

If you get an error that you don’t have enough space, try deactivating a catalog or two, and then trying again – this worked for me.

How To: Really Stream Last.FM With Vagalume On N900

TheGuru — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 15:02:50 +0000

When Vagalume was announced for the Nokia N900 a few weeks ago, it was able to scrobble to Last.FM, but not stream music, unfortunately. The application easily connects to Libre.FM, but due to restrictions with on mobile phones, is unable to stream music from Last.FM. However, thanks to our friend Gerrymoth, it’s possible to stream Last.FM through Vagalume on the N900 after a small tweak.

Here are the steps to get Last.fm working in Vagalume on the N900:

1. Goto Last.fm to request an API Account http://last.fm/api and take note of your API Key and API Secret Key.

2. Download the LastFM.zip file from nokiAAddict downloads HERE

3. Unzip the LastFM.zip

4. Edit the LastFM.xml and replace the ADDKEYHERE and ADDSECRETKEYHERE with your API Key and API Secret Key.

5. Transfer the edited LastFM.xml file to your N900. (It doesn’t matter where you store it)

6. Open Vagalume and select Last.fm/Import servers file… and browse to the LastFM.xml file you just transfered.

7. In Vagalume select Last.fm/Preferences and set Service to LastFM.

That’s it! Now you can choose Play Radio and create a station and stream that wonderful Last.FM music straight onto your Nokia N900. Brilliant.

NOTE: You may need to restart Vagalume?

Sending The Nokia N900 Home

TheGuru — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 14:53:18 +0000

I got an email from Nokia today, reminding me that the Nokia N900 I received a few months ago was only a review unit and that I need to return shortly. At first, I was rather sad – sending a device back is almost always a sad affair, for obvious reasons. However, the more I’ve thought about it, the less upset I am, mainly because I haven’t really been using it much. I used the Nokia N900 as my primary device for a full 3 weeks when I first got it, and spent another full week with it a few weeks ago, to see how the experience had changed since its launch. Unfortunately, not much had changed.

The N900, in its current state, simply isn’t a solution for my personal usage. For some, it’s phenomenal, but it simply doesn’t properly do the things that I require my phones to do:

1. You can’t use the N900 with one hand. Part of this is due to the lack of portrait mode, part of it is due to the overall size of the phone and the positioning of buttons such as the slide-lock switch. I’m on the go quite often, and I need to be able to use my phone without devoting my entire attention to it.

2. There’s no portrait mode. This is annoying for one-handed use, mentioned above, but would also make a huge difference in various apps, including the browser. I realize this is coming in a future update, but it’s not there now, so it’s still an issue until it gets fixed.

3. You can’t send/receive MMS. I was surprised at how often I wanted to send a photo to someone, honestly. Sure, I could email it or post it to Facebook/Twitter and then send them a link, but there’s not a phone on the market that doesn’t do MMS now, other than the N900, and that’s just silly. Again, I realize this is planned to be available in a future update, but it’s not there now. There are also a few wonky apps and hacks to get it to work, but MMS is something that should be pretty simple for a $500+ phone to do.

4. Twitter. I have 4 twitter accounts that I manage, and I need to manage them on my phone. Mauku was a terrible experience, especially with multiple accounts. Witter is miles ahead, but it still slows down often, and there’s not, as of this writing, support for multiple accounts. The Twitter experience is simply lacking for a power user, and that’s an issue that does not currently plague either my Symbian-powered Nokia N97 or my Android-powered HTC Eris.

5. Installing apps is unbelievably frustrating. You would think anything would be an improvement over the Symbian method of installing apps, but Maemo is not, currently. For one, you can’t install more than one app at a time. On my Android-powered Eris (with Android v1.5), when I click to install an app, it does so in the background, so I can keep browsing. On the N900, not only does it require the full attention of the device, but after the install finishes, it dumps me back at the top of the list, so I have to flick my way all the way back to where I was. There’s also no way to browse the App…market? by recently added apps. This means, on the device, I have no way of knowing what has been added since I last went app shopping. It’s just really frustrating. Update: the newest firmware update saves your place in the App list, so you don’t have to flick your way back down.

6. Voice-guided GPS isn’t there. I actually use Ovi Maps on my Nokia N97 quite often, and use Waze on both the N97 and the Eris almost daily. The Nokia N900 doesn’t have either voice-guided navigation OR Waze, which means its GPS is quite useless, aside from geotagging photos. Dang near any other phone you pick up these days has *some* sort of voice-guided navigation option, or at least support for Google Maps.

Those are just a few reasons that I’m not really too sad to not be able to keep the Nokia N900, and plenty of reasons for me not to drop $500+ of my own money on the thing (not to mention I’d be using it on AT&T, which means I’d be stuck on EDGE). I don’t mean to say that the N900 isn’t an awesome phone. For most of you, these things aren’t an issue, and are worth the sacrifice to have the awesome parts of the Nokia N900, such as the killer browser, open system, etc.

I’m a firm believer that technology should enrich and enable real life without getting in the way, and in my experiences with the current version of Maemo 5 on the Nokia N900, it doesn’t do that. Hopefully future updates will allow the device to be improved significantly.

I’m not shutting the site down again, though. I do, despite appearances, think that the Maemo platform has some serious potential, and will be keeping up with things here and there. Perhaps Maemo 6 will be significantly better, and will solve some of these issues for me.

Spotify Support Coming To The Nokia N900

TheGuru — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 16:46:50 +0000

While I still find the Nokia N900 a bit limited for my use, there’s no doubt that developers are quickly coming to the table with new applications all the time. Today’s little nugget of gold is a video from Qt Studios showing off a Qt 4.6 application that they have running on the Nokia N900. This little app ties into the despotify library to stream tracks from Spotify, and is definitely the closest thing to a native Spotify app for the Maemo platform that I’ve seen.

Unfortunately, as you can see in the video, the UI needs some help, as the person showing the application off is forced to use the stylus, which is just awful. However, using the Nokia N900’s 3G cellular connection, he’s able to easily (and nearly instantly) stream tracks, just like Spotify does on other mobile platforms such as Symbian. This does, however, require a premium Spotify account, though again, that’s the same as other mobile platforms, as well.

This application is not currently available through any of the repositories on Maemo just yet, though you can get more information about it from the Trolltech blog.

New Twitter Plugin Integrates With The N900 Phonebook

TheGuru — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 15:00:32 +0000

One of the cool things about the way the phonebook and messaging is built on the Nokia N900 is that it’s easily extended by 3rd party plugins. One such plugin that was recently made available is simply called the Twitter plugin. This plugin allows you to interact with multiple Twitter accounts on the Nokia N900 without having to run an additional application – it’s fully integrated into the phone!

After you install the Twitter plugin, you’ll find an option to login to your Twitter account right there in the ‘Add Services’ dialog box, where you would login to your IM accounts. This part of the setup is quite straightforward, though there are some advanced settings available, if you’re one to tinker.

Things do get a bit confusing after you’ve got it all setup, though. The Nokia N900’s messaging integration is setup for IM, which is more of a real-time communication interface than Twitter, which does not really require both parties to be online at all times. Thus, there are two additional settings in the Twitter plugin, to provide a better experience.

First, the ‘Retrieve Tweets History After Login’ setting will retrieve all of your latest replies and mentions whenever you login to the service on your device. This makes it easier to quickly catch up. Second, the ‘Add Url Link to Each Tweet’ option provides a link to the specific status on Twitter’s website, so you can access the various other options, such as ReTweet, which are not available through the messaging interface.

The current version of this plugin will also integrate with your contacts list – there is no option to select which contacts show up, you’ll simply get *all* of your followers. Apparently, a future update will allow you to manually choose which contacts get imported over. As a temporary workaround, simply logout of the Twitter account when you do not wish to see all these contacts in your phonebook. You can, however, merge these contacts with other contacts, which is one of my favorite features of the Nokia N900’s phonebook – this way, if you have a certain contact in multiple ‘buddy lists’, he or she only has one entry in your contact list. Brilliant.

The best part of this plugin is that it essentially turns Twitter into a time-delayed IM conversation – you can directly IM a contact to send an @reply to them on Twitter, and when they respond, it will show up in the IM window on your N900. There is no need to add the person’s username to the conversation – the plugin does so automatically for you.

There is also support for searching, and you can have different keyword searches going on at the same time – each will simply appear in its own chat window. This is exceptionally brilliant, especially if you use Twitter search quite a bit.

Of course, this Twitter plugin is still in its infancy – it is currently available in the Extras-Devel repository, which means that it is not ready for general use, and will likely have quite a few bugs, as it has only passed the automated quality checks. You can find out more about the Extras-Devel repository here, including instructions on how to activate it on your Nokia N900.

For now, Witter is still a superior way to access Twitter for the power user, though this Twitter plugin is definitely really a great way to use the integrated messaging on the Nokia N900. Which do you prefer, and what other features would you like to see on this new Twitter plugin?

[via Tan Miaoqing]

How To Be A Beta Tester With Maemo Extras-Testing

TheGuru — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 19:57:57 +0000

There are likely over a thousand Nokia N900 devices in the wild now, a number that is steadily increasing, judging by the readership of this site. Many of you are likely wondering just how you can help get more high-quality applications released on the Maemo platform, and that’s great. In fact, your help is greatly needed in testing applications, if you’re up for it.

How Does It Work?

Maemo uses a system of repositories to control the flow of applications and to ensure that the applications available to consumers are of an acceptable quality. When a developer has their application ready, they first submit their application to Extras-Devel repository, which could be considered an ‘Alpha Labs’ of sort. The applications that you find in Extras-Devel are not stable and are very much works-in-progress. If you’re not OK with your device possibly crashing, you should steer clear of the Extras-Devel repository.

Applications must go through an automated quality check before graduating to Extras-Testing. Applications in Extras-Testing are ‘beta’ applications that are ready for consumer-level testing, but still require human feedback on various aspects, including memory usage, battery usage, and other technical details. You can get the full rundown on what’s required of a tester here.

To get an idea of how badly your help is needed, check out the packages that are waiting in Extras-Testing right here. Some of these have been waiting since September, and really only need a few minutes to be tested for various aspects.

How Can I Help?

There are three main types of testers that are needed:

Movers - the ones that concentrate on the applications on top of the list (the apps that have been longest in the queue). Do this unless you have a better agenda. It is important to give feedback to developers soon. Either they get their software approved to Extras or they get bad reports so work on a new version in extras-devel.
Users - the ones that concentrate on the applications they regularly use. By following this path you become an expert in specific applications, able to evaluate new releases quickly and get involved in the project as a regular.
Experts - the ones that concentrate on a type of testing. Some prefer to check that the features work and there are no crashes. Others might prefer to look at performance or power management metrics. Testing is a complex activity and nobody is expected to be an expert in all fields.

Whether you’re a mover, a user, or an expert, your help is needed to help push applications into the Extras repository, where normal consumers can load up on them and really start to enjoy the Maemo platform. A great place to start is the ‘Help Testing Software‘ Wiki page, which is a beginner’s guide to testing software. If every N900 owner spent 1 hour a week testing applications, we would have a steady flow of new and powerful applications into the Extras repository, for everyone to enjoy.

Vagalume Update Brings Last.FM To The N900

TheGuru — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 15:29:54 +0000

One of the biggest things missing from the Nokia N900, in my opinion, was support for streaming Last.FM stations. I use Mobbler on my Symbian-powered smartphones to cover this, and it’s a really well written application. Unfortunately, none of the Last.FM applications from the Nokia N810 worked on the N900, until now.

Our pals on the Vagalume project have just announced the latest update, complete with full support for the Nokia N900 and Maemo 5! They’ve updated support to include the new Last.FM API, and have also added Libre.FM support, which should make plenty of folks very happy.

There is also a fancy new icon, so it’ll look pretty on your N900’s menu and homescreen, which is appreciated. Vagalume v0.8 should be available through the Extras catalog on your Nokia N900.

What do you think of the updated client? Are you a Last.FM user or have you switched over to Libre.FM?

Witter Brings More Twitter Features To Maemo 5

TheGuru — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 16:03:12 +0000

While Mauku used to be an awesome tool for Jaiku on Maemo, its usefulness as a Twitter client on Maemo 5 is pretty limited, mainly because it wasn’t really designed to be a powertool. Thankfully, there are some talented developers in the Maemo community, including Daniel Would, who has built Witter, a new Twitter client for your Nokia N900.

Witter is in extras-devel for the time being, which means it’s not quite ready for normal consumers, but if you’re up for being a tester, you can follow the instructions here to set it up on your N900.

One of the best parts of Witter that Mauku doesn’t currently have is a variety of special views, similar to what you would find on any other Twitter application. You can choose to browse your timeline, your mentions, direct messages, or your own tweets. You can also search with Witter, something that Mauku doesn’t currently support. Along the top of the main screen, you have a row of buttons offering quick access to the various views, along with a Tweet box and the Refresh button.

There is also a drop-down settings menu that lets you perform a number of tasks, including posting photos via Twitpic, changing your username/password, and activate a few other views.

If you’re a Twitter user with the Nokia N900, this is, by far, the best solution that I’ve seen yet. Unfortunately, there are some limitations to Witter that are not fixed just quite yet:

For starters, it doesn’t support multiple accounts. This is a necessity for me, though you can, quickly and easily, change your username and password, so that’s a small workaround.

Second, there’s no autorefresh. Of course, the refresh button is readily available, but I would still like to be able to have the application refresh itself every few minutes. Given that there is no autorefresh, there are also no notifications available, so you’ll need to check each view to find out if you have any updates there.

What other features would you like to see? You can chime in on the thread at Talk.Maemo.org here.

Maemo-Guru.com

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