In this edition...

Front Page
- Nokia Harmattan device getting closer to release?
Applications
- Running gPodder on MeeGo N900 Developer Edition
Development
- Update/RFC on MeeGo Compliance Specification
- Overview of MeeGo ARM driver support situation
Community
- Second call for papers for MeeGo Conference open for last minute additions
Announcements
- Twitter: Rewritten Khweeteur UI now in Maemo Extras-testing
- Inner-Spin puzzle game
- Oculo is now available in Extras

Front Page

Nokia Harmattan device getting closer to release?

The FCC approves all telecommunication devices in the US, and has recently approved RM-680 - the codename believed to match that of Nokia's Harmattan device, which has been developed to be MeeGo "compatible". It's unclear how much relation this device might have had to the now-no-longer-MeeGo-friendly N9, but it's likely this is a good candidate for the N950 Nokia CTO Rich Green mentioned during Nokia's Developer Day keynote in February (shortly after the start of the Elopocalypse). The device's radio testing reveals both 802.11n and hexaband cellular (for support for both AT&T and T-Mobile 3G in the US). With previous rumours circulating about the keyboarded version being cancelled, it's very much up in the air as to whether this is "the" Harmattan device intended for the mass-market (or whether that particular possitioning plan even still holds). The device's outline drawing in the FCC certainly bears a strong resemblence to the photos of the MacBook Pro-like aluminum device leaked from China last year (baring small differences attributable to continued prototype development). Nokia has requested a relatively short 45-day confidentiality period on the device photos and user manuals, putting the latest date for some sort of reveal around the middle of June. We'll find out next week whether the MeeGo Conference Spring 2011 in San Francisco will be the date (see you there!).

Applications

Development »« Front Page

Running gPodder on MeeGo N900 Developer Edition

To help spice up the experience for testers of the MeeGo N900 Developer Edition, Thomas Perl has released a guide for installing and running gPodder: If you want to try the MeeGo N900 Developer Edition for the N900 but think that clicking through the Widgets Gallery gets boring after 45 minutes, why not try out the QML UI of gPodder on it? It's pretty easy.

Development

Community »« Applications

Update/RFC on MeeGo Compliance Specification

Mats Wichmann is the pointman for the MeeGo Compliance Specification, which aims to define what devices vendors and applications developers need to do for MeeGo applications to run across the portfolio of devices, and avoid fragmentation: At this point, comments are welcome (well, of course they're welcome at any time). The spec is still in PDF format which I know is not the ideal review medium as it makes it hard to submit patches. Remember, for issues that should be tracked, bug/feature filings are good, it's easy to miss nuances that are just on the list, or on IRC, etc. At the same time, there are now three work-in-progress Profile specs, which are directly on the Wiki. I don't know yet which ones of these will end up in the 1.2 specification - that's up to the workgroups to push - but if you have insights into filling these in, please share.

Overview of MeeGo ARM driver support situation

Martin Brook and Carsten Munk have been discussing the support of MeeGo's "hardfp" ABI on the support of various ARM system-on-a-chip (SoC)s: My first port was to GMA500 on the intel SW15 platform which was supported but for older kernels and other distributions. This target has now been sorted out by intel to the point that the EMGD driver is part of MeeGo now and is keeping step with MeeGo releases. Well done Intel.

Now on the ARM side there are a number of SOC vendors producing hardware which would be great targets for MeeGo if we had the right driver support.

Community

Announcements »« Development

Second call for papers for MeeGo Conference open for last minute additions

Just another reminder (we covered this one last week) that the Call for Papers is still open until the beginning of the conference. So if you have something particularly interesting or compelling, be sure to submit it: While we will keep this CfP open all the way to the conference, we will not be able to list talks submitted after May 13 in the printed program - these slots will be listed as LBN with a suggestion to check online or on site for the latest updates. Based on this we plan to publish an updated program (with the accepted sessions so far) on May 16 - submissions after that date will still be accepted (if sufficiently interesting and relevant) but will only be added to the online program and receive ad-hoc signage on site.

Announcements

« Community

Twitter: Rewritten Khweeteur UI now in Maemo Extras-testing

Benoît HERVIER has released a newly rewritten update for Kweeteur: I've just push the version 0.5.17 of Khweeteur to Maemo Extras Testing repository. For those using previous version (<0.5.0). It's a major change, as I've rewrite it from scratch. For those who don't know what is Khweeteur, it s a small twitter client for Maemo and MeeGo [...] The update is currently working its way through Extras-testing. Those of you interested (and prepared) for QA should check it out, the rest will likely want to wait until it hits Extras.

Inner-Spin puzzle game

Tony Day has released a new game for Maemo 5, Inner-Spin: Inner-Spin is a simple (but hopefully adictive) game, where an outer pattern has to be matched by rotating 3 inner sections, it starts slow but soon speeds up, to argggh levels of difficulty. It is written in python (with pygame), and introduces the considerable vocal talents of Max Day to the world of Mobile gaming (as well as the less considerable musical talents of Tony Day). The lastest release is currently working its way through Extras-testing, so those of you with QA aspirations should be sure to check it out.

Oculo is now available in Extras

The Oculo homescreen widget from Alberto Mardegan, which allows you to display websites as widgets on your Maemo home screen, has passed QA and is now in Extras: Known issues with the CSSU have now been resolved, and the update interval is now configurable. As it's in Extras, we don't really need to provide any warnings about device-eating potential. So have fun.

Maemo Weekly News