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In this edition...

  1. Front Page
    • Nokia releases update for N950 devices
    • Aegis, Nokia and You
  2. Applications
    • Analysing power utilisation of N900
  3. Development
    • N950 USB host progress
  4. Announcements
    • SwipEout - retro racing for N950 and N900
    • MeeCast for Harmattan

Front Page

Applications »

Nokia releases update for N950 devices

Via: @GeneralAntilles

Editor: Ryan Abel

... Nokia released a "Beta 2" (build number 34-2) firmware update for the N950 last week. Highlight features include a new Twitter client, removal of the "Developer Edition" branding, Ovi Music client, Angry Birds, AccuWeather client, Wi-Fi hotspot, and an AP Mobile application besides a range of general bugfix improvements. Unfortunately this update doesn't bring GTalk support or a usable web browser. Less savory changes have also come to Aegis making it more restrictive and burdensome for developers and advanced users.

Read more (developer.nokia.com)

Read more (forum.meego.com)

Aegis, Nokia and You

Via: @GeneralAntilles

Editor: Ryan Abel

The Beta 2 release of Harmattan for the N950 brought with it a number of negative changes to Aegis and its functionality, severely limiting the hackability of the base system. Although investigation by Javier S. Pedro reveals there are still ways around Aegis, they're falling more into the category of Black-Hat hacks than intended workarounds of a non-burdensome security framework. Nokia has now greatly reduced the amount of privileges granted to develsh in beta2. Up to the point you now CANNOT even issue a deadly simple dmesg command to _read_ the kernel log. Is this a reaction from Nokia because the above method allowed you to disable Aegis? Is this the first move from Nokia in the cat and mouse game that is going to be played starting now -- the same game Apple likes to play with jailbreakers? I don't know. I would like a clear answer here. Unfortunately talk about an Open Mode dating from the initial announcement of the Harmattan security framework appears to be turning into just that—talk. Hopefully we'll hear good news soon, but without any communication from Nokia on the subject the community is just left to scratch its head and assume the worst.

Read more (forum.meego.com)
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Development »« Front Page

Analysing power utilisation of N900

Via: @Jaffa2

Editor: Andrew Flegg

Neal Walfield, author of Woodchuck, analyses one of his claims that wifi network access allows better battery life than 3G: To determine whether or not Woodchuck can save energy, we first need to know approximately how much energy the activities we are interested in consume. To measure this, I charged my N900 until the battery was full, then I started some activity and let it run until the device turned off. Every five minutes, I queried the battery's state (voltage, mAh and whether the device was being charged) and wrote it to an SQLite database. The activities that I measured were: streaming or playing an mp3 file at various encodings, downloading over WiFi at different speeds, having the LCD on, and idling.

Read more (hssl.cs.jhu.edu)
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Development

Announcements »« Applications

N950 USB host progress

Via: @GeneralAntilles

Editor: Ryan Abel

After some extended hacking banging around with i2c buses, Joerg Reisenweber has managed to get stable VBUS 5V (i.e., provide power to connected client devices) working on the N950. I succeeded in a first step towards USB host mode: finding out about charger chip and operating it in boost mode -> stable 5V supply to USB receptacle. It's well understood that there are still massive obstacles regarding loading of kernel modules and also regarding aegis introduced restrictions at large. Still, this is an important step in getting USB host-mode working on the N950.

Read more (talk.maemo.org)
Announcements »« Applications
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Announcements

« Development

SwipEout - retro racing for N950 and N900

Via: @Jaffa2

Editor: Andrew Olmsted

Thomas Perl has been experimenting with OpenGL ES and python and came up with 3D hovercraft racing game called "SwipEout" As for the GL ES bindings (this is the interesting/useful part to developers who want to access the GL ES 2.0 API from Python), I put together a naive header-to-ctypes binding generator for the GL ES 2.0 API which you can run on "gl2.h" from the Qt SDK's Madde sysroot (too lazy to search for a working binding generator that surely exists somewhere out there already) - or just grab the generated "gles2.py" from the SwipEout source tarball. The result? Video it yourself. The game itself is simple, but the more exciting part is having people work on nice 3D games that will work in Harmattan.

Read more (thpmaemo.blogspot.com)

MeeCast for Harmattan

Via: @fiferboy

Editor: Andrew Olmsted

Andrew Zhilin announces MeeCast - a weather forecast program by the OMWeather team of Maemo fame. We (Tanya Makava, Vlad Vasilieu and me) have decided to finally release our application into open water, so please welcome: MeeCast for Harmattan Vlad Vasiliev lists the public repository in the thread for people wanting to install and keep MeeCast up-to-date. The team is actively working on improving the application, and the user interface is already beautiful and easy-to-use.

Read more (forum.meego.com)

Read more (tabletui.wordpress.com)
« Development