The mini-computer: N900

Today I was thinking...that wow! the new N900 with the latest available firmware (1.2009.41-11) is simply amazing. My main concern with the N900 is that its battery life used to suck hard when using it as it should be (multitasking, always on-line, always on GPS and stuff like that).

Two days ago I've updated it to the official final firmware and I am happy to say that I am REALLY impressed by its battery life now.

Before upgrading, I used to disconnect my N900 from the charger in the morning, go on-line and come to work. This would take (from waking up to work) up to 2 hours (I know, I love to have a slow start).
I used to disconnect the N900 after the usual morning shower, so that it could keep me company for breakfast.
By the time I arrived to work, the battery sometimes was close to be half drained!
That is, by lunch time, I had to put it on charge otherwise it wouldn't make the bus trip back home.

Today, yeah I know.. it's Sunday, I woke up to go to work. Usual routine.
But on the way to work I changed my mind and decided to walk a bit around Richmond and Kew Gardens and explore the surroundings a bit. It is an amazingly sunny day.
The way I love it. Sunny, a breeze of wind, not cold at all and wet ground.
While waiting for my girlfriend to reach me from Twickenham to Richmond, I walked around Richmond Green and took several pictures.
She arrived and we decided to take the 391 bus to Kew Gardens.
We wanted to try the food of a shop that we always see from the bus (The Maids of Honour). It opens at 12am until 5pm on Sunday and we were there at 11:30am.
Thus we went for a walk around Kew as well (amazing houses and neighbourhood).
While strolling around Kew we noticed several amazing houses for rent and we checked the estate agents websites while walking.

We went back to the Maids of Honour sometime after 1pm.
Enjoyed our brunch/lunch and then took the bus to work while she went back home.

The result of this nice morning is this set of pictures: Twickenham, Richmond and Kew on an autumn sunny day.

And this was the N900 status after all of this:


while the battery is STILL at this level:


Pretty amazing stuff, isn't it?

Now that I think about it.. isn't this the time of the year for oranges?

Aniello

Extras-testing Marathon – Next Saturday (Oct 31)

Let's spread this piece of news:

Quim just sent this e-mail, please participate and test apps!
It'll be fun! :)

Forwarding this email from the maemo community council to Summit Participants with an N900. Please re-forward to anybody you know using the N900.

http://maemo.org/downloads/Maemo5
has currently 22 applications ready for end users.

http://maemo.org/packages/repository/qa/fremantle_extras-testing
contains 74 application waiting for the evaluation of betatesters -people just like you.

Imaging having 50 stable applications from the community by sales start: 75? 100?
You can help. Help pushing at least those apps you are using frequently.

Thank you!

********************

Extras-testing Marathon – Next Saturday (Oct 31)

Are you a lucky N900 owner? Want to help the Maemo Community?
This call is for you.

In the next Saturday (Oct 31) from 14:00 till 19:00 (UTC/GMT) we will host a testing marathon at #maemo-testing@Freenode, in order to make more awesome community applications available for end users.
This marathon will be also a test for our community Q&A process [1], we want to test it and improve it before the N900 hits the shelves.

If you’re a developer, make sure your applications are in good shape before the testing marathon.

More info: http://www.valeriovalerio.org/?p=289

Join the discussion here: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=33164

[1] - http://wiki.maemo.org/Extras-testing

Best regards,

-- Valério Valério Maemo Community Council Chair
http://www.valeriovalerio.org

N900 as modem for Ubuntu 9.10

Today I was thinking...that's been a while no post.
Thus here I am showing you how to use your Nokia N900 as a broadband modem with Ubuntu 9.10.
It's as easy as connect it via USB and choOse the "PC Suite mode".
A Wizard should appear on Ubuntu with few easy step to configure the modem with your provider (attached are the screenshots to document the process).
If the Wizard does not appear simply go to Edit Connections... and add a new mobile broadband connection.

Enjoy the screenshots!


Choose "PC Suite mode"


Choose your Nokia N900 as mobile broadband device.


Pick your country.


Choose your provider from the list of known ones.


Choose your plan among Contract, Prepaid and TopUp and Go available for the chosen provider.


You're done, click apply to save the profile.


Give it a name and save it.
That's it!

Xournal alpha for Fremantle

Today I was thinking...that well it's better to play for Maemo than working :)

So I went ahead and, after a whole day fighting with bugs and
packaging, I am proud to say that finally Xournal is available for
Fremantle!!

It's only an alpha version (as you can see from the screenshot above) and probably it won't even start on your SDK, but it's the very first step on the right path.

You can find it in Fremantle extras-devel (the build cauldron just sent me the OK message)

Stay tuned for the next updates.

PS: a note for Diablo users, I think I found a bug that was preventing
Diablo version from functioning. I will try to re-compile it again
sometime soon.

Xournal and Fremantle

Today I was thinking...that the community is amazing :)

In order to port Xournal to Fremantle I needed my old code. Unfortunately that was on my old desktop in Italy lying in the lab there. And that box was shut down (ready to be wiped out!).
I called my friends and told them to wait before wiping it out so that I could back up my stuff, but the machine is still off. I had to wait for people to come back from vacation before doing any serious work on the port.

Here comes the help from the community!
They read my comments on my previous post and managed to find someone who actually had a copy of the source code I uploaded to Diablo extras-devel!

That's great news, as now I can seriously start working on porting it to Fremantle :)

Thanks guys (qwerty12, X-Fade and stkeeps!)

Anidel

Xournal meets Fremantle

Today I was thinking...that it's time to start doing the port of Xournal for Fremantle.

As you can see from the screenshot I've almost started from scratch, but it shouldn't take long before I can release a working version of it.

Stay tuned.

Maemo 5 Beta SDK up & running

Today I was thinking...that it's finally time to start working on porting Xournal to Maemo 5 and start implementing a few new features I had in mind lately.

I've just installed it and t works OK on my system (Dell Mini 9), but it's kinda... slow :(

I'll have to check if a better driver for its graphic card exists.

I'll keep posting here updates about the development.