appdownloader: next steps
daniel wilms, an engineer at Nokia and responsible for some of the tools developers rely on, has given an update on "appdownloader" - a project he was undertaking in his spare time. During the recent maemo.org planning meeting, Daniel was tasked with posting an update on where it had got to, and where it could go: Besides the bugfixes and small enhancements, like saving the user-credentials, some bigger improvement-ideas came up during the summer. Most of it is in proto-type stage, but once implemented properly it might add some value to the application itself and the process of downloading and installing applications on Fremantle. [...] Attila Csipa, with KISStester, has taken another approach - by focusing on the issue of rating and testing apps; something usable has been reached more quickly; without having to replicate Application Manager (something that FApMan is still working on).
Flash 10.1 working (unaccelerated) on Maemo & N900
As most of you are likely aware, Flash 10.1 was demoed in the end of 2009 running with hardware acceleration on several Cortex-A8 based Linux devices (the first of which was the N900). Unfortunately, Flash 10.1, while available for nearly all of Nokia's competitors, has managed to skip the N900 for reasons which are unclear. It looks like TI has begun licensing a version of Flash 10.1 for developers running Linux on OMAP3 devices (which includes the N900). This drop of Adobe® Flash® 10.1 plugin is provided to demonstrate F10.1 running on Linux on ARM® Cortex(TM)-A8-based TI platforms. This drop allows customers to evaluate Flash 10.1 on the supported TI platforms running X11 and Mozilla browsers. If you're interested in testing the new Flash plugin, you'll need to fill out a questionnaire from TI in order to download a copy (and it's no guarantee).
Due to the licensing, the lack of acceleration and its generally beta state, this release is clearly not intended for just anybody. It would be interesting to see what TI said if someone said they wanted to license, and release it, as an end-user installable package for Maemo.