locationd - event-based notification of location proximity
Locationd is an application that generates alerts based on your current GPS location. I've been working on an application that can generate alerts based on your current location. In its current state, it will generate dbus signals when a user-defined point of interest is nearby. I'm now learning how to create a desktop widget that can watch the dbus notifications and do something useful with them, but even as it is, it can still find interesting use, perhaps with dbus-scripts. The .deb is available from the developer's own repository. As usual, care should be taken when installing and using packages from unvetted sources.
Linaro 10.11 released
Jamie Bennett has announced that Linaro 10.11 has been announced. Linaro "aims to provide stable, optimised and tested tools and code for multiple software distributions to use and hence reduce low level fragmentation and improve the optimisation of embedded Linux- software". This release includes a completely rebuilt archive using GCC 4.4.4 and the latest ARM optimised tool chain, the Linux kernel version 2.6.35, support for cross-compiling, a new hardware pack way of building images, 3D acceleration improvements, u-boot enhancements and initial device tree support, a new QA tracking structure, the list goes on.
Valgrind on ARM
Lucas Maneos has announced a working build of Valgrind for ARMv7. This requires a CPU capable of running the ARMv7-A instruction set (Cortex A5, A8 and A9). Valgrind provides fairly complete coverage of the user space instruction set, including ARM and Thumb integer code, VFPv3, NEON and V6 media instructions. The Memcheck, Cachegrind and Massif tools work properly; other tools work to varying degrees. He is currently looking for feedback from people who are using it.
How to make modern mobile applications with Qt Quick components
Kate Alhola discusses Qt Quick Commonents and why using them to create UIs is better than GTK/Hildon. What UI toolkit I should use for mobile application development has been a top issue since Maemo5/Fremantle SDK alpha release. There were two choices available, GTK+/Hindon and Qt. The amount of choices has been increased since then and caused a lot of confusion among developers.