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In this edition...

  1. Front Page
    • PR1.3 almost ready and MeeGo calling on the N900
    • Ari Jaaksi hired by HP to work on WebOS
  2. Development
    • Bid for contract to port Gtk+ well to MeeGo
  3. Community
    • Introducing the new Maemo Community Council
    • Submit your MeeGo Conference lightning talk proposals now
  4. Announcements
    • TwimGo v2.0.10 alpha released
    • Communi: lightweight IRC client
    • Beat Maker: drum loop maker
    • Travelapp updates

Front Page

Development »

PR1.3 almost ready and MeeGo calling on the N900

In a post touching on a number of topics in the N900, Maemo and MeeGo arena; Harri Hakulinen summarises:

* The state of the MeeGo project on N900

* The improvements in dual boot support coming in PR 1.3 (shortly)

* The announcement of Carsten Munk's new role as maintainer for N900 adaptation

* An overview of MeeGo 1.2 plans

Some choice quotes: MeeGo is an open source project and if you choose to install the MeeGo image to your N900 device, you do it completely at your own risk. If you are not confident that you know what you are doing with it and why, please don't use it at all. Especially now, if you start playing with call software under development, you need to watch after your phone bill, as well. [...] On the Maemo side, there have been interesting, supporting developments going on, as well. The PR 1.3 update is quite close now, and with that you can easily dual boot between Maemo and Meego on your N900. There is also a possibility of developing applications supporting both operating systems, based on Qt and Qt Mobility APIs on the Maemo side. It means that you can develop once in PC with Qt Creator, and test your applications on both Maemo and MeeGo, directly on your N900 device! This blog post was greeted with hysterics from the "blogosphere" and sections of talk.maemo.org. It does NOT signify that Nokia have changed their mind about commercial support for MeeGo (or, more accurately, MeeGo-Harmattan) nor that MeeGo is finished, end-user ready or will ship with PR1.3. It means that developers will be able to reboot between MeeGo and Maemo, without having to have a PC nearby to temporarily flash the MeeGo kernel.

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Ari Jaaksi hired by HP to work on WebOS

Ari Jaaksi, former vice president of MeeGo Devices at Nokia, has - it seems - been hired by HP to work on WebOS. According to All Things Digital: Sources close to the company tell me that Jaaksi has been hired on as senior vice president of webOS at Hewlett-Packard’s Palm division. He’s to start in November, after relocating to the Bay Area, and when he does, he’ll lead Palm’s webOS engineering team. Hopefully there was nothing coming up in Nokia/MeeGo which pushed him out; his hiring adds further credibility to the platform that was recently acquired by HP to differentiate themselves from the other Android-toting manufacturers.

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Development

Community »« Front Page

Bid for contract to port Gtk+ well to MeeGo

Many of you may recall the funds Nokia pledged to help bring Hildon/Gtk+ support to MeeGo (as it's, officially, a Qt-only platform) to provide some level of backwards-compatibility for Maemo applications and give Maemo developers a familiar API to work with. It looks like movement is finally being made on putting those funds to good use, as the GNOME Foundation has just announced contract bidding for the project: The GNOME Foundation is looking for developers to enhance the developer experience of using GTK+ to port and create applications on MeeGo Handset devices. Knowledge of the MeeGo Handset development process, and GTK+ internals will be required to carry out the work. The tasks to be achieved are: Ensure that GTK+ applications display as expected on the MeeGo Handset platform, including checking that fixes to the compositor are made if necessary; Add to upstream GTK+ helper functionality to create stand-alone GTK+ applications to run on MeeGo; Merge Hildon widgets functionality into GTK+ upstream, where it makes sense to do so. Interested developers should get in touch with the GNOME Foundation.

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Community

Announcements »« Development

Introducing the new Maemo Community Council

Tim Samoff, the chair of the newly elected Council, introduces the new team. The blog post has been delayed, due to the Council getting thrown in at the deep end (with Flash 10.1 which we mentioned last week); he alludes to this at the start of the post: As we begin our new term, the Council has already come up against a few immediate concerns. Thankfully, those members of the Council who have expertise in these areas have been able to handle most of it from the Maemo perspective (which, of course, where the strength lies in the Council to begin with). Still, there will be times in which we do not have the collective knowledge or know-how to be able to tackle issues sufficiently. As always, we look to you, the Maemo Community, for help in this regard.

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Submit your MeeGo Conference lightning talk proposals now

We will be holding a series of lightning talks at the MeeGo Conference 2010 on Wednesday, November 17 (exact time TBD). Anyone can submit a proposal for a lightning talk - all submissions are due on November 3 at 23:59 Pacific Time. Each lightning talk is exactly 5 minutes. We will limit the time available for lightning talks to 1-2 hours (10-20 talks). If we get more submissions than this, then the selection committee will need to decide whether we allocate some extra time or go through an approval process for the talks. If you're interested in submitting a proposal, do so on the meego.com wiki page listed in Dawn's email. Remember: deadline is November 3rd!

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Announcements »« Development
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Announcements

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TwimGo v2.0.10 alpha released

TwimGo, the Qt Web Runtime-based Twitter client, has had another minor update, changes include: More secure – uses Twitter API over HTTPS; Simple desktop widget showing latest tweets; Clickable hashtags – Does a search when clicking hashtag. TwimGo will require Qt WRT to be installed before you can use it. As Qt WRT is still in Extras-devel, be sure to test with care.

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Communi: lightweight IRC client

Communi, a light-weight Qt-based IRC client oriented towards keeping the client simple and screen-space friendly, has been compiled for Maemo. The release is a simple recompile, so it's very much alpha quality and not entirely mobile-friendly yet, but may offer a viable alternative to XChat's complicatedness in the future. It's currently available from Extras-devel, so handle with the usual care.

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Beat Maker: drum loop maker

A new Qt-based drum loop maker has been released as a beta by Danilo Cesar Lemes de Paula Beat Maker is my “pet project” with Allyson Soares at INdT. It is, basically, a drum loop emulator to be used by musicians during practicing sessions. You just need to select the samples, define a BPM value and listen to the rhythm. If you can’t wait for the official release at Ovi Store, you can try the beta version for N900 devices. The beta release is currently available as a .deb from Danilo's blog. As random .debs from random sites on the internet present a rather significant security and system-wellness risk, be sure to consider carefully before installing.

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Travelapp updates

Travelapp, the London Underground route planner, has received another round of updates which bring it to version 0.1-10: Since the provider for routing data has made changes to their website you will find the via option has now been taken off since its not provided; A few more stations have been added to the list; Some of the other feedback have also been implemented; The routing data is more readable; The map window has +/- buttons to zoom in/out so you dont need to access the menu. The update is currently available from Extras-devel, usual warnings and disclaimers apply.

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