FastSMSEvo: system-wide virtual portrait keyboard

Portrait support is one of Maemo's most requested features (particularly for users coming from traditional mobile device platforms), and one of the core software requirements for it is a portrait virtual keyboard. Initial support for SMS writing in the form of FastSMS from Davide Aimone last year, but was only useful when composing SMSes.

But the developer has now released an virtual input plugin based on FastSMS to allow system-wide virtual keyboard support: This plugin allows the use of FastSMS as virtual keyboard in all N900. This is a very experimental version so you can notice a lot of bugs and problems. [...] How use it? Simply click on text-field where you want write, like standard virtual keyboard. As the plugin is currently in Extras-devel, those interested in trying it out should temper their eagerness and procede with care.

Presence Notifier: notifications when contacts become available

Out-of-the-box, Maemo 5 provides no way to know when contacts become available. To rectify this, Nicolai Hess has developed "Presence Notifier", which sends a notification banner whenever the status of one of your contacts changes. It shows a notification for status changes of your online contacts. Ready for testing. Feedback is welcome. I hope the settings page in the control panel is intuitive. It is currently available from Extras-devel, so the standard warnings and disclaimers apply if you'd like to test it.

Pip-Boy theme in development

A Talk user "Tinukedaya" has started work on a new Pip-Boy theme for Maemo 5. For those of you unfamiliar with the Fallout series of video games, the Pip-Boy was a wrist-computer worn by vault dwellers. I'd like to get some feedback on a Theme I'm currently working on for my newly acquired N900. I saw there already are Fallout themes and I did try them both, but even as good as they are, it wasn't what I was looking for. So I started my own. Doing it using the Theme Maker under windows, which I lately heard isn't a good choise. But it works for me so far. The theme is still in development and has not yet been released.

Hungry Fish game

"raghu_mark" has developed a new game called Hungry Fish. Survival is contingent upon feeding bubbles to fish within an alotted amount of time. The game was written in QML and requires PR 1.3 to be installed: The fish is hungry and it needs to feed on the bubbles to survive. This is a time bound game. Tap on the bubbles for the fish to eat them. If you tap anywhere else, your fish becomes smaller and hence loses its life. Unfortunately the application is installed through a random deb file. Assistance in packaging for the auto-builder has been requested; so if you fancy lending a hand to a new developer, please do so.