The burning "platform"

When I first read Elop internal leaked memo, I thought the "plaftorm" that was burning was the whole Nokia as a company. And the way it was going ahead needed to change.
I thought it needed to act faster and be more flexible.

Instead he actually was referring to a platform the way we technical people use it: the Symbian Platform.

I didn't think about that. Symbian is Nokia as much Nokia is Symbian. I never would have thought they, too, would abandon it at one point.
I liked their idea of using Symbian on featurephones and smartphones while adopting a complete Linux stack (Maemo first on the N900 and MeeGo now) on their top-of-the-line devices (those they used to call "mini computers").
It made sense.

So I laughed at those who believed in rumors about Nokia embracing the WP7 platform. Because that, to me, meant dropping Symbian and MeeGo and I never believed it would happen.
Indeed, it didn't. But it's like it did.
They will continue to bring Symbian phones to the market.
They will continue to invest in MeeGo.

Issue is, as Elop said, these next two years are a transition period for Nokia.
What that means, to me, is that they haven't yet decided to took the plunge. They want to see how it goes.
Will Microsoft brand new platform really save Nokia's ass? True it's a compelling new platform with a sparkling shiny new UI paradigm (something even Apple's is missing), but it's still new.
Or will MeeGo really be the shiny true alternative to Android, iOS and WebOS (not to mention the RIM's one based on QNX) ?
Instead of focusing on one, they choose to pursue all of them and see which one will work best.
They sure have the money to do it and, with Microsoft's new platform ready to ship, also the time to do it.

I mean, I can understand that. Symbian was designed for a totally different hardware specs in mind and it shines in that (try to run a complete Linux stack, WebOS, Android or iOS on a featurephone), but it was NEVER designed to scale. It showed that and Nokia needed an alternative.
They tried Maemo.
That meant embracing the Open Source culture. And as we all know, that takes time. We are stubborn, they are as well.
True Maemo was mature enough, and by pushing it more it could have succeeded, but Nokia didn't believe in that. May be that was a misstep.
Maybe they had grander ideas in mind. Maemo as a scalable OS (from smartphones up to Netbooks, passing via the tablets...much like HP's trying to do now [brilliant]).
And that was probably what pushed them to merge Maemo in Moblin to make MeeGo.
But again, doing that properly, with a strong Open Source culture in it, takes a lot of time.
We all have seen it in Linux on the Desktop. We're slow. And that is not good for Nokia.
They needed something yesterday. And we were too slow.

That's why, I think, they went to Microsoft (or, maybe, the other way around, more in a minute).
They'll have a shiny platform (that is really promising, btw) right now (meaning we may see a Nokia WP7 mobile device by the end of the year?) and they can still continue experimenting with the open source community and MeeGo. At one point that platform may be powerful enough to drop WP7 again and embrace it fully.
But they clearly don't believe in that, yet.

There probably wasn't much choice either. WP7 still could allow them to differentiate from other hw vendors (everyone's selling an Android phone, few are selling WP7 phones).
And that maybe what pushed Microsoft to give Nokia more control on the hw than it gave the others.
Microsoft NEEDED a stronger ally after they've lost HP.
HTC seems to be mainly interested in Android and LG is too moody, perhaps.
Nokia's perfect for Microsoft. It's exactly what they needed. And they wanted it badly enough to give Nokia more control.

So, yeah, the big news is that they jumped from the burning (Symbian) "platform". But they didn't really made a big change yet. They are still waiting. Thus the "transition" period.

This is the way I see it.
So, what does this mean to us as MeeGo/Maemo Open Source community.
That's just guessing now. It may turn well if MeeGo proves itself. I mean IT IS a much nicer platform than Android or iOS. Slightly more flexible than webOS. But it needs much more than that to succeed in this world.
After all, Linux on the desktop IS far superior to anything else, but that's not enough and Canonical is understanding that.
The Open Source approach gives you freedom, but it slows you down. Democracy is such a bitch sometimes.

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.org Community Council members are going to be elected!

In few days (September, 10th) we will finally know who will be the members of the maemo.org community council.

Please note the ".org", the council will help us (the community) make our voice be heard at Nokia and, vice versa, will help Nokia in listening to the Maemo community.

This is going to be really helpful and the candidates seem to be really good.
This also marks the first of this kind of council established between a strong commercially closed company as Nokia (even if Nokia is struggling to become more open) and a strong open source community.

Let's keep an eye on this link and let's get the most out of it!

A-GPS support on the N8x0 is coming with Diablo

Looks like we will finally get really fast fix times, with our tablets, when Diablo will eventually come out.

ITT's forum user "qwerty12" noticed a nice "agps-ui" application to control AGPS on the tablet.
He went on and installed it and it works!

Other (lucky) Diablo (pre-release) users are reporting time to fix in the order of SECONDS!

Can't wait for the release of this new firmware.

Xournal is skyrocketing...

Wow!!
Since I have released Xournal few days ago, a lot of people downloaded it and now Xournal is among the first 4 (yes, four!) most downloaded applications !
Thank you guys and thanks to Denis Auroux, the real developer of Xournal.

And thanks also for the great votes Xournal has got so far.

We're climbing fast :)

I was really surprised to see how many people downloaded Xournal, but really surprised to see that it was downloaded more than Canola or Maemo Mapper!
I would have never thought this was possible.

:) it's awesome!

UPDATE: We're second only to Pidgin...I can't believe it.

Internet Tablet School made a tutorial for Xournal

Today I was thinking...that while waiting for me to finish the Xournal port, you guys should have something to do with the beta released so far :)
To help came the folks at Internet Tablet School who made a nice tutorial (Nokia N800 & N810: Take notes and doodle with Xournal) on some of the features you can find in Xournal (even though they missed the most important feature for me: Annotate PDF).

Simply jump here and take a look at it!

Mp3Tunes Locker for N810 coming

Today I was thinking...the mp3tunes applet on OS2007 was cool. So I went and installed it on my N810 with OS2008. It installed flawlessly, but it wouldn't show up when selected.
Looks like the applet is not compatible with the OS2008 new desktop.

So I looked around and my friend Google found this:

Auto-yncing with tunewath from Mp3Tunes

That's even better!
No need to be on-line to get your musinc with you.. just sync it (ahhh that magic word has never yet been used with an Internet Tablet) and off you go!

Can't wait for this app to be ready and usable on my Nokia N810.
This device gets everyday more interesting.

Farewell dear...

Today I was thinking...that I also should write something about what happened yesterday. So here it is.

You were my first and only Mac, dear.
You served me well for 6 years, dear.
You never missed a day, you never had a fault, dear.
You were always on and always available, dear.
You were the last, before you a DOS machine, a Win machine, a Windows machine, several Linux machines, dear.
You were the best of all, dear.
You were small and portable, dear.
You were light and strong, dear.
You followed me everywhere, on the plane, on the train, on the car, on foot, in the lab, in the office, on the sofa, in the bed, dear.
You were all of this and more, but one day.. it arrived.
But yet it was not the one.
It was willing to follow me everywhere, even in places were you could not, during those nights with my friends, in the kitchen with my girlfriend, in my pocket, at the vending machines...
It was lighter than you, but not stronger, but it became stronger later.
It was smaller than you and more portable.
It was not the best as it couldn't replace you in everything, but still could do almost everything you could have done.
It was the last, after you.
It was always on, like you, but even more available than you.
It is going to never miss a day, it will never have a fault.
It will serve me for the years to come.
It is my last Internet Tablet.
It can now even bring me where I need to go.
It is the Nokia N810 that replaced you my dear Apple Powerbook 12".
But I will never forget.

Farewell, dear.

Xournal port and the usual story

Today I was thinking...that damn!
Weeks have passed away and I still need to repackage Xournal to properly make use of existing libraries.
I gave it a shot last week and I can say I am half way to finishing the re-packaging.
Unfortunately (and that's the "usual story" part) I have things to get done before the end of this week.
If I am lucky with the current code (at work), I will finish and have spare time towards the end of the week.
If not.. most probably we will see the finished Xournal port (not anymore labeled "beta") by the end of the next week.

I plan to get integrated some usefult suggestions that I have got from the ITT forum.
Moreover I will try to upload the port onto the Maemo extras repository.

Thanks for your patience!

Internet tablet's family pictures...

Today I was thinking...that, well, I have the whole Internet Tablet's family with me for a while (until I sell my N800 and the 770 owner asks back for it)... so.. why not take pictures of all of them ?
So here they are:

Internet Tablets (2008) - 770, N800, N810

I hope you will enjoy them.