a multi-tasked stream of consciousness or perhaps just emails to myself
Once IM support gets back into Twitter that is…
In case you don’t know Fring can let you connect to GoogleTalk, MSN, Skype and now SIP accounts all in one. It does eat a fair bit of memory and works the battery over pretty well while it’s running, but overall it’s a really nice application. If you have 3G data or wifi on your device you can make VOIP calls which is always a good thing.
If you’d like to get an understanding of what the Applications Manager is and how it works on the Nokia Tablet, I’ve just posted an overview which will take you through installing a new app.
Technorati Tags: Maemo, maemoapps.com
This morning I’m announcing a new project I’ve just started — Featured Maemo Apps!
I read a bit today on how debian has a site focused on highlighting an application a day. It occurred to me immediately that the Nokia Tablet and Maemo platform also needed a resource to help users explore the growing list of applications and get a better understanding of the tablet’s capabilities. And so here we are… [Featured Maemo Apps]
I’m passionate about the Nokia Tablet and think there’s an opportunity for the platform to seriously expand grow as this new category becomes more well understood. This is my contribution back!
If you’ve been reading here and either have an application you’ve developed or have something you’d like to know more about as an end-user, please let me know and I’ll get things queued up!
Technorati Tags: Linux, Nokia, Open Source, N770, N800, Maemo, N-Series
Since updating the software on my N73, I’ve been unable to install Shozu which is probably one of the most used pieces of software I had. I just get an “unable to install” error after downloading and selecting the phone as the install location…
I’ve posted this on the Shozu forum for help, but have yet to see any response. Anyone else run into anything similar? I need my Shozu back!
Technorati Tags: Flickr, N-Series, N73, Nokia, Shozu, YouTube
For the heck of it I decided to install Firefox 3.0a3pre aka Minefield. Aside from the semi scary name and icon, it’s amazingly fast – seriously. I can see some odd text displaying on Google Reader – my subs are bold, but otherwise and so far it’s looking good.
Technorati Tags: Firefox
Just caught this from Chris… whoa is right.
Sorry, I… I gave Vista a real chance. I just can’t use it as my primary OS anymore. It’s NOT horrible at its core (by any stretch of the imagination). If all of your hardware and software are fully baked, you’re good to go – but that’s not the world I live in. I will continue to recommend Windows Vista for some users, mind you. I wish I could take the best parts of Vista and bring them back with me to XP. I’m still more than willing to help Microsoft improve Windows and get the message out to users, but I simply can’t sacrifice my own time and productivity without benefits in clear sight. I’m begging Microsoft and all of my hardware and software vendors to make Windows better for me. Until then…
The Whoa starts now. [Chris Pirillo]
Pirillo is a major windows advocate and has a very loyal following of listeners. This is not good for Redmond and while it’s not going to stop people from getting to Vista (particularly with a new PC) it’s likely to create pause.
Chris was quite vocal with bugs and issues he’d found and direct with fixes that needed to be addressed during the open beta. He’s far from satisfied with the progress that’s been made to date and going back to XP for now.
Technorati Tags: Chris Pirillo, XP, Vista, Windows
I am looking to find a GMail command and have yet to discover it within the land of Greasemonkey scripts…
I’d really like to be able to select and move either forward or backward in my list of messages. To do this today you have to hit X JO or X KO. Gmail then selects and closes the current message, moves to the list and goes up or down to then open the next or previous message. Ideally, I’d like to skip the message list part and just go to the next message in the direction of my choosing…
GMail Macros is an incredibly useful suite of tools for GMail, but does not include this one. Lazyweb might you have a solution?
Technorati Tags: GMail, GMail Macros, Greasemonkey, Lazyweb
Just in from the NYT… and in case you are wondering it requires Windows Media Player 11, which means yet again NO Mac Support.
On Monday, the company, whose technology unleashed a wave of illegal file-sharing on the Internet, plans to unveil the BitTorrent Entertainment Network on its Web site, BitTorrent.com. The digital media store will offer around 3,000 new and classic movies and thousands more television shows, as well as a thousand PC games and music videos each, all legally available for purchase.
The programming comes from studios, including Twentieth Century Fox, Paramount and Warner Brothers, that previously announced their intention to work with BitTorrent. There is also a new partner: the 83-year-old Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which will take part by making 100 films available on the site from its 4,000-movie library. “Somebody once said you have to embrace your enemy,†said Doug Lee, executive vice president of MGM’s new-media division. “We like the idea that they have millions of users worldwide. That is potentially fertile, legitimate ground for us.â€
The BitTorrent store will work slightly differently than rival digital media offerings like the iTunes Store of Apple and the Xbox Live service of Microsoft. BitTorrent will commingle free downloads of users’ own video uploads with sales of professional fare. And while it will sell digital copies of shows like “24†and “Bones†for $1.99 an episode, it will only rent movies. Once the films are on the PC, they expire within 30 days of their purchase or 24 hours after the buyer begins to watch them. [New York Times]
Technorati Tags: Bit Torrent, BitTorrent Entertainment Network, iTunes, Movie Downloads, Windowa Media Player
For some reason now for the past few nights I get a ton of email at around 11:30pm – now actually. Last night I received about 200 messages which I had been missing for the past few days – some on up to 3 day delay. I’ve emailed tech support at GMail, but I have a feeling that unless I pay the $50 premier price, I wont be hearing anything too quickly.
Update — I’ve just modified my DNS MX record to point mail back through Fastmail, who have never let me down. I can still pop into that system with Gmail and gain the same access and management I like, but this way if something starts to get wacky with Google, I can just go directly to my Fastmail account.
I got a message from Google Groups saying it was tough to reach me the past few days…. and I thought it was just a slow email day or two.
The disturbing part is that I actually have the mx record pointing through Google for the Google apps for your Domain service… so is this a DNS issue or some bump in the Google OS? I’ve been receiving batches of mail since last night around 10pm but only a few trickled through during the 24 hours prior.
This is giving me second thoughts on having Google manage things like this. If my domain pointed elsewhere I could still pull mail through Gmail with a forward, which might be safer…. a bit of redundancy never hurts.
Bandwagon which launches this week is going to enable simple point and click backup of your iTunes library to Amazon’s S3 storage cloud!! This is awesome! While I’ve got my library sitting on a local RAID, having an offsite location for over 200GB of data is a great feeling of security.
Seriously looking forward to trying this… If you have a blog and post about this page, you can get the first year free. Pricing looks like it will be about $99/year which is very reasonable in my opinion for this type of service.
Simply point your browser to http://openbossa.indt.org/canola/ and have fun. They are using the latest installer tech for Maemo, so by simply clicking the install link, you’ll have the application repository automatically added which makes everything quite nice…
Once the repository is on your tablet, you’ll be able to track updates within the application manager as well which is quite handy – especially as you install beta software.
Have fun!
Technorati Tags: Canola, Internet Tablet, Maemo, Multimedia, N770, N800, Nokia
Symbian-Guru notes Nokia’s press release today which apologizes for the delay in releasing the Nokia Maps app after their initial announcement and invitation for the trial. As you might recall I ranted a bit and did an initial review when it was eventually released days later.
I’ve continued to play with Nokia Maps and definitely like it. The main weakness turns out to be my older GPS which loses signal and makes it pretty hard to track my trips and find new places to go.
The application is still technically in beta and has had 30,000 downloads to date which is pretty impressive considering the requirements to get going… (bluetooth gps for starters) When the GPS-inside phones arrive like the N95, E90 and 6110, even more people will be able to navigate on the go and I bet we’ll be seeing some enhanced services as well.
I’m glad Nokia is listening to the community and speaking back both in private (comments and emails) as well as in the open for all to see. It’s good to be heard!
Carman for Maemo looks amazing
I discovered Carman on Maemo Garage last night…
I am pretty sure that most cars built in the US after 2000 have the required connector under the hood to send the data to your Nokia Tablet with an additional bluetooth device. I’m not that much of a car geek, but I could see myself becoming one very quickly with this…
Makes me want to revisit integrating GPS, Music and Phone (now telemetry) through a nice touch screen. Carputer here I come!
I honestly have no idea how much the OBD-II device costs, but I am off to investigate!
The PirateBay has made it easy for you to catch up. One thing about those guys, they are not subtle. 😉
Technorati Tags: Pirate Bay
I was very psyched to get an invitation to try the Canola beta for the Nokia N800. There is already a working version for the N770, but given the changes to Maemo and device architecture, extra time has been required to bring this fantastic application to the newer platform.
Essentially, Canola lets you consume multimedia content (pictures, video and music) you have either on your device in local storage or streaming on your network through UPnP (DAAP for iTunes is in progress) or the Internet. I’ve loaded up a few podcast and photocast subs as well as some internet radio stations to test… Here’s a video I shot last night to give you an idea of what you can expect and where the project stands.
Canola is one of the most exciting developments for the Maemo platform and something that really shows off quite a bit of the Nokia Tablet’s capabilities. I’m really looking forward to future betas — not too mention the eventual release!
Technorati Tags: Canola, Flickr, Internet Tablet, Maemo, Multimedia, N-Series, N770, N800, Podcasting, RSS
Symbian Watch notes the announcement and pending release of S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2.
Feature Pack 2 comes with improvements in usability and software architecture focusing primarily on the mid-range device category. Usability enhancements support the ease of use in for example messaging, multitasking and downloading. Feature Pack 2 also enables instant media playback during downloading and animated notification of inbound calls. Architectural improvements focus on ensuring excellent performance and flexibility of S60 in various hardware configurations, and include for example support for demand paging virtual memory technique.
S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 will be available for all S60 device manufacturers in Q2. It is fully compatible with S60 3rd Edition, and applications developed for 3rd Edition will run on all Feature Pack 2 devices. The new Feature Pack 2 will be demonstrated at the 3GSM World Congress 2007 in Barcelona in S60 stand in Hall 8. [Symbian Watch]
FP1 devices are just starting to roll out — like the N95 — and one of the big features of the release is the ability to handle firmware updates OTA. This will hopefully actually be implemented and allowed regardless of region for unlocked devices since updating the firmware can currently be a frustrating exercise. OTA is potentially a riskier adventure, but perhaps using a units WiFi connection will at least assure that your signal will not suddenly vaporize mid-stream.
Today the company will introduce a partnership with all of the six major Hollywood studios — Walt Disney, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Sony, 20th Century Fox and Universal — to sell digital movies and television shows on its Web site (www.walmart.com/videodownloads), becoming the first traditional retailer to do so. [New York Times]
While I am not surprised to see that Walmart is embracing Windows DRM (other than Apple’s FairPlay, it’s the only game in town), but check out this lovely view of their website on a Mac:
To me, this is a total F-U. It’s a complete lock-out. Walmart is saying, there’s only one platform that we recognize and that’s Windows through IE. I was able to get the page to load with Safari, but Firefox and Camino but displayed the loveliness above.
The only thing I can give credit to Walmart for is that they have a single price for each film (prices actually vary by title) which will let you get both a download and a portable version for the same price – which is the default.
BTW — I just noticed that Apple has an ad on the NYT page promoting iPod and iTunes which not only competes with this service, but is completely incompatible.
Technorati Tags: Apple, digital distribution, DRM, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Movie Downloads, Safari, Walmart
In my initial post about ReaderMini, I only described the experience. Now you can see it in action and (hopefully) appreciate how good the experience really is on the Nokia Internet Tablet. Personally, I find it to be very close to the way I read feeds on desktop, which is amazing considering it’s happening on a pretty small handheld device.
Since the initial launch, ReaderMini has continued to actively evolve through user feedback for both bugs and improvements. The roadmap is looks strong and I believe this will continue to be a killer app for the Internet Tablet. If you use Google Reader on the desktop, you need to be using ReaderMini on the Nokia.
Technorati Tags: Google Reader, Internet Tablet, Maemo, Mobile, N-Series, N770, N800, Nokia, RSS, ReaderMini