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In this edition...

  1. Front Page
    • PR1.2 SDK and the Extras autobuilder
    • MeeGo forum is now live
  2. Applications
    • Using desktop Linux keyboard & mouse with Maemo and x2x
    • Chromium (aka Google Chrome) ported to Maemo 5
    • Forthcoming improvements in fMMS powered by PR1.2
    • ...and 6 more
  3. Development
    • Moises Martinez porting Maemo 5's hildon-desktop to Ubuntu
    • Should daemon applications (such as SSH & ntpd) require the "CLI" icon?
    • Google Summer of Code ideas going for voting soon
  4. Community
    • What is a community space? MeeGo debates
    • 2010 Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit in San Francisco this week
    • April maemo.org sprint meeting
    • MeeGo's Community Working Group tries to define a work queue system
  5. Devices
    • Why the first MeeGo device launch needs to be big
    • How to take N8x0 MeeGo layer forward?
    • Returning Amsterdam loaned devices
    • Diablo community SSU finds "interesting" behaviour with build flags
    • O2 Joggler for \xA349: runs Mer and Ubuntu, with promise of full MeeGo
  6. Announcements
    • Firefox mobile 1.1 is coming soon
    • Advanced Geocaching Tool
    • uktrainplanner to give live departure & platform information for UK's National Rail

Front Page

Applications »

PR1.2 SDK and the Extras autobuilder

Niels Breet has, in this month's maemo.org sprint, picked up a task to sort out the issues caused by the deployment of the PR1.2 SDK to the Extras autobuilder. This has resulted in new uploads from developers often getting dependencies more severe than they actually require, and users who are testing in Extras-devel and Extras-testing getting confused. Andrew Flegg, the Maemo Community Council chair, introduced a discussion on maemo-developers, saying, After the PR1.2 SDK was released, Niels deployed it to the autobuilder; enacting a plan which was discussed on this list. This has caused problems with libhildon dependencies, but the problems aren't just limited to that library. Both Niels and the Council believe we should do something to assist. Although "real" end-users (who use Extras) are unaffected, anyone with an idea on how to meet the requirements now - and the next time this situation could occur - is welcome to contribute. The current leading option is one based on a deploying a newer debhelper and dpkg-shlibdeps to the autobuilder. This would mean that every package would have its minimal dependencies necessary for it to work.

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MeeGo forum is now live

Reggie Suplido, the founder and administrator of Internet Tablet Talk (now talk.maemo.org), has put together a new vBulletin forum install on meego.com. Let me thank everyone who helped test the single sign-on (SSO) functionality, the MeeGo forum themes and browser compatibility, and those who contributed their ideas on the forum structure. A special thanks to folks from MeeGo, Nokia, Intel, and The Linux Foundation for making the forum possible. As with any new system, please pardon the bugs that we might have overlooked or features that we might have missed to implement. I would ask however to report the bugs you might find at Bugzilla and suggest additional features in the Community Working Group forum. The forum's low traffic reminds your editor of the days before, and just after, the launch of the Nokia 770 back in mid-2005; if for no other reason than it's possible to read every post! The MeeGo community is still very young, so this is a chance for all mobile device enthusiasts - especially those interested in Maemo - to get involved at the very earliest stages.

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Applications

Development »« Front Page

Using desktop Linux keyboard & mouse with Maemo and x2x

Maemo 5's switch to Xorg from Xomap (based on KDrive) used in earlier versions means much better compatibility with many standard Linux desktop tools. In this case, x2x, a small program that allows a keyboard and mouse to be shared between multiple X displays. Catch the YouTube video after the link for a guide to installing and using it on Maemo 5.

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Chromium (aka Google Chrome) ported to Maemo 5

A community developer, jacekowski, has been working on getting Google's Chromium browser running on Maemo 5. Chromium, as opposed to Nokia's Gecko-based MicroB which is included with Maemo 5, is a WebKit based browser that's designed to increase browser stability and speed by pushing separate tabs and plugin processes to new threads. This release is based on the Debian package and is currently available only from the porter's website and will need to be installed using XTerminal.

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Forthcoming improvements in fMMS powered by PR1.2

Nick Leppänen Larsson is pushing improvements to fMMS, the community's answer to the lack of MMS on Maemo 5 out-of-the-box, for version 0.6.2 which brings improvements dependent on the PR1.2 release of Maemo 5. Basically I'm waiting for PR1.2 to hit as this adds MMS settings to /etc/operator_settings file, which will result in a redesign of the configuration dialog (again, heh) and hopefully make it a lot easier for everyone to get it working.Another feature which is holding me back from promoting to -testing is the lack of proper address book-integration, this could be solved in two ways (three, but a full rewrite in C/C++ isn't something I'm looking forward to atm): Someone releases a set of python bindings for libosso-abook OR bug #9865 gets fixed. The latest version is currently available from Extras-devel (standard warnings and disclaimers apply), but users will need to wait for PR1.2 to be released before upgrading.

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Flash-based "Maemo" environment under development

Talk user "devu" is working on a reimplementation of the Maemo desktop in Flash. The demo features a, Maemo-like desktop - the implemented multi-desktop solution reflects the navigation of Maemo OS; Screen modes - the choice of vertical or horizontal layout adjusts the graphics accordingly in a most visually efficient way; Pop-ups - additional elements as the part of interface for better communication with the user; Device Manager - a class to recognize your OS settings to fit your applications in the best way possible; Blog Widget - small Blog aggregate; YouTube widget - small widget to play external YouTube videos The testing environment is currently accessible through flaemo.com.

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FaceBrick is first proper Facebook application for Maemo 5

Robin Burchell has released the first proper Facebook client for Maemo, Facebrick. I was going to get it into extras-devel, but it's proving a bit tricky, so prebuilt binaries for now. I will do this in the near future. The deb is currently available on his website, testers and contributors welcome.

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Retro Conversations allows importing SMSes from other phones

tgalal has released a new application, Retro Conversations, to help import SMS histories from other devices. Retro Conversations can be used to import and read SMS from other phones. Options like forward, find, filter and sort. An interface that mimics original Nokia Conversation look and feel and another one similar to SMS interface on previous nokia phones. Since importing SMS from old Nokia phones are not supported (yet), I wrote this as my first app. It's in Python and Qt. Retro Conversations is currently available in Extras-devel (standard warnings and disclaimers apply), testers and contributors are welcome.

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Plans for a new Qt-based Flickr client

Marko Mattila is working on a new Qt-based Flickr client using QML. Some time ago I wrote how you can build and run QML applications on N900, but since that I haven't done anything related to QML, until now. I'm not the only one at the moment who is trying to study how QML works and how you can deploy it in your application. I have always learned by doing, so therefore I decided to write a small application with QML.

I like to photograph and I have missed a good Flickr client for N900, so it was a natural choice to write a small Flickr client. I call it QuickFlickr, naturally. :) No code is yet available, but a YouTube preview of the application is available on the blog.

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"Make apps prettier" user experience weeks

Thomas Perl has proposed the creation of a series of "UX weeks", focusing on user experience in key areas. What about joining forces and picking a new app/widget every week (that gets proposed by someone in this thread here) and then we all work together and post mock-ups, issues, etc.. and come up with some improvement suggestions that we then communicate to the developer (of course, if possible we should involve the developer during the week too)? The proposal is currently taking shape on Talk, if you'd like to get involved, go dive into the thread.

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Shapeshifter working on mpd widgets for Maemo 5 desktop

mpd is a distributed music system for your home entertainment. Carol Alexandru has posted a screenshot of some Maemo 5 widgets for controlling mpd from a desktop.

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Community »« Applications

Moises Martinez porting Maemo 5's hildon-desktop to Ubuntu

A Nokia engineer, Moises Martinez, is currently working on getting Maemo 5's hildon-desktop desktop environment running in Ubuntu. This is the same version of Hildon Desktop for Ubuntu but running on Lenovo s10-3t. The touchscreen driver is not very reliable and it's not very precise but it is good enough to enjoy a browser experience on the couch or for watching movies. Code is in gitorious but it is still work in progress (porting to clutter-1.0 gradually taking most of my time).

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Should daemon applications (such as SSH & ntpd) require the "CLI" icon?

A discussion about the exact requirements for the "CLI" icon for use by packages appearing in the Application Managers has popped up in the community forum on Talk. The discussion centers around whether the icon is necessary for daemon packages which do not offer a GUI front-end, but do not require interaction with XTerminal to use them. Interested community members should get involved in the discussion as soon as possible.

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Google Summer of Code ideas going for voting soon

Voting on the project ideas for Maemo for the 2010 Google Summer of Code will start soon. The Maemo Community has received 84 GSoC students applications (plus 7 ineligible), almost the double of last year. Thanks to all the students that applied for us and to everybody that helped on the GSoC initiative.

Now is time to review the proposals. :)

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Community

Devices »« Development

What is a community space? MeeGo debates

One of the first topics in the new MeeGo webforum centers around the issue of what the community space on forum.meego.com should be called and what, exactly, it will cover. A point about specificity was made earlier, and that's exactly where I'm coming from. True, a Beginner subforum is even more specific for some parts of my proposal but subforums named Chat or General are far from it. Maybe a Beginner subforum is something to consider but without one in place I will focus on what is.

There is a mix of good and not-so-good in the current tmo structure and I would like to think we bring over what works and retool what doesn't. We've seen that General becomes a first-stop dumping ground that keeps moderators busy moving threads to better locations. This alone suggests that having it at the top of the forum is not the best place. Take that with Quim's valid point about landing spots and entry areas and the most logical top subforum should be Community, because that is the focus. And underneath that subforum you include topics that provide 1) an introduction to the purpose of the forum vis-a-vis MeeGo and 2) resources supporting community-oriented activity. The discussion is still ongoing, although nearing consensus, community members interested in shaping the direction of the community space on the MeeGo forums should join in.

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2010 Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit in San Francisco this week

The Linux Foundation will be holding a Collaboration Summit in San Francisco this week (April 14th-16th). The Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit is an exclusive, invitation-only summit gathering core kernel developers, distribution maintainers, ISVs, end users, system vendors and other community organizations for plenary sessions and workgroup meetings to meet face-to-face to tackle and solve the most pressing issues facing Linux today. The Summit includes a MeeGo track which both myself (GeneralAntilles) and Randall Arnold will be attending as Maemo Community representatives.

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April maemo.org sprint meeting

The April maemo.org sprint IRC meeting was forgone in favor of discussion and reporting on the mailing list and wiki. The IRC meeting became a checklist and a time sink and we have (seemingly) large number of tasks being carried over and not completed. I'm trying to increase the accountability and visibility of the process, and reduce the burden on volunteers. Indeed, I'm awaiting thoughts from Niels and Tero as to further changes in the ownership and the running of the sprint process. Discussion about changes to the sprint process and committed tasks for this month is still underway on the maemo-community mailing list.

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MeeGo's Community Working Group tries to define a work queue system

Quim Gil is outlining some of the sprint procedures for the MeeGo Community Working Group. This is a proposal to get our Community WG work documented and prioritized.

Contributors interested in helping to define the working structure for the MeeGo Community Working Group should join the MeeGo Community mailing list and get involved.

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Devices

Announcements »« Community

Why the first MeeGo device launch needs to be big

Randall Arnold, a Maemo Community Council member, outlines his reasoning on why the first MeeGo device launch needs to be big. With each major variant in the Maemo Device line, Nokia enjoyed incrementally increasing success. Its conservative "test the waters cautiously with a toe tip" approach cultivated a small but determined community eager to demonstrate that mobility and open source were a match made in electronic heaven. This is okay for skunkworks and limited release projects. Not so much for paradigm-shattering advents. Nokia largely sacrificed its early lead in the market segment to competitors like Apple, Google and Palm with its inability to get behind the Maemo platform early on. Continued hedging on Linux-based platforms like Maemo in favor of a continued push behind Symbian, which the top of the market is swiftly losing interest in for more modern and glamorous platform, has left it behind in the market and will leave Nokia and Intel facing an intense uphill battle to regain the ground they've been steadily losing since 2005. MeeGo will need to be big indeed to get enough inertia to win past its competitors.

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How to take N8x0 MeeGo layer forward?

Carsten Munk discusses the steps required to move forward with MeeGo on the N8x0 tablets. As we now have some kernels to play with on recent versions for N8x0, I suggest we start the real work. He outlines some of the tasks required to get moving with the effort, including adapting the MeeGo kernel to work for N8x0, packaging Xomap for MeeGo, and lots of testers to help spot bugs. ;)

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Returning Amsterdam loaned devices

The loan period for the 300 N900s handed out at the Maemo Summit in Amsterdam last October is at an end. Holders of loaned devices can return them to Nokia at the address listed in the agreement. Anyone with a reason for extending the loan period can contact Quim Gil to discuss it. Otherwise returned devices will be redistributed to developers in the Fremantle Developer Device Queue, so those of you not relying on your loaned devices to be productive, be sure to return them as soon as possible so other developers can get in on the fun.

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Diablo community SSU finds "interesting" behaviour with build flags

Lucas Maneos (one of the leaders of the Diablo Community SSU project) has discovered some interesting behaviors with the compiler flags for Diablo packages from Nokia. However it's becoming apparent that the Nokia build machine applies different compiler flags on different packages (outside of what is defined in the packages themselves).

For example, xorg-server needs DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=vfp to even compile, and an SDK osso-pdf-viewer build of the original unmodified package (without -mthumb) produces a binary that is significantly smaller than the Nokia package: 938972 vs 1162620 bytes. I suspect this case may be some vfp optimisation, but really don't feel like spending any more time tracking down this sort of thing - these discrepancies have come to light after touching just 8 source packages, and there's a lot more to go. Also, size differences in executables are relatively harmless, but there may be more tricky issues with libraries and such. Hopefully Nokia will be able to shine some light on the issue and help the community move forward with shipping an SSU update for Diablo.

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O2 Joggler for £49 runs Mer and Ubuntu, with promise of full MeeGo

UK-based geeks have been salivating over the price reduction of O2's rebranded "OpenPeak" device, also known as the "Joggler". This x86-running, 800x480-capacitive touchscreened device can already run Mer 0.15, Ubuntu Netbook Remix and - if nothing else - is a pretty good digital photo frame and digital radio (get BBC 6music, whilst you can!). Carsten Munk and David Greaves are both working on porting MeeGo to give a full, touchscreen-oriented environment in future. The new site, jogglerwiki.info, links to tutorials for enabling telnet, SSH, BBC TV channels, installing Android, Mer and so on. It introduces itself, This wiki is designed to be a great source of information and tutorials across the internet for the O2 Joggler, we will always give credit for any tutorials we include. Here are just a few suggestions for uses: leave original system on it; small MythTV frontend in kitchen, with mythRecipies, mythMusic; bedside radio/alarm clock; system monitor; ... It's a well made little bit of kit, in your editor's opinion!

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Announcements

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Firefox mobile 1.1 is coming soon

Firefox Mobile 1.1 (Fennec) is coming soon, Mark Finkle, of Mozilla, says, For the 1.1 release, we are focusing on some UI features we didn't have time to put in the initial release. Some of the bigger features that have already landed include: Form assistant improvements, including autocomplete; Start page redesign; Auto update add-ons; Portrait support on N900; Use volume keys to zoom on N900; Save page to PDF. When released, 1.1 should be available both from Mozilla's own repo and the Ovi Store, although, unfortunately, not through Extras.

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Advanced Geocaching Tool

Talk user webhamster has releasd a new geocaching tool, allowing users to participate in GPS-based treasure hunts. He says, AGTL makes geocaching paperless! It downloads cache locations in the area visible in the map, including their decription, hints, level of difficulty and images. Searching for caches in your local db is a matter of seconds. The package is not yet in Extras, so standard disclaimers apply.

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uktrainplanner to give live departure & platform information for UK's National Rail

Stewart Holmes has released the first version of a trip planner for the UK National Rail, uktrainplanner. I'm working on some software to use National Rail Enquiries' online live departures information. Most of the basic functionality is in place, so it should all be functional if not yet beautifully pretty. Due to issues with PR1.2 and the autobuilder, it is currently only available as a deb, but testers and contributors are welcome.

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