Via: @anidel
Editor: Andrew Olmsted
With the release of PR 1.2 comes a very welcome software addition - Google Talk Video Calling. Simply download the application from the store and it integrates with your existing GTalk account. Initiating and receiving calls worked well in your editor's testing.
Via: @Jaffa2
Editor: Andrew Olmsted
Thomas Perl has started a visual update of gPodder for Harmattan. Screenshots of the progress can be found in his twitter post. The in-development restructuring of the gPodder main window on MeeGo Harmattan (Nokia N9). Please note the fixed-up layout (including section headers aligned to the cover art), the different "new episodes" highlight, the default icon for "All episodes" (which aligns it with the rest of the podcast titles) and the fallback icon for podcasts with broken or missing cover art (43 Folders).
Denis Mingulov has published a password generator in the Nokia Store. Its main features are Localised everywhere. It works in any language - current active for the device is used, more than 24 languages are supported now by N9. True secure random number generator is used. Hardware's one.
Denis Mingulov is also publishing a new application for Harmattan: Drop Cache for N9 - an utility to flush disk cache to prevent some data loss and to allow increase a free memory by dropping out an outdated low level cache (non-destructive). Free. Open source, GPLv3. It seems questionable to your editor whether "freeing" the cache will provide any tangible benefit. "Free" memory is wasted memory, and a lot of effort goes in to the Linux memory manager to make sure it frees cache memory for applications, as required.
Via: @timsamoff
Editor: Andrew Olmsted
There is now a wiki page for IVI (In-Vehicle Infotainment) on the Mer project. Hardware and UI information is a little light right now, but there is a OBS repository for the IVI builds, and it looks like it might start leveraging Raspberry Pi for development hardware.
Talk user "nieldk" has published Harmattan versions of nmap, THC Hydra, ettercap and screen: I hope we will end up with something like a Neo(aheem) what should we call the suite once its ready to be called 'complete' The tools are currently distributed as binaries on "4shared", with a fairly manual install procedure. Some caution is therefore advised. Hopefully they will be packaged (and QAed) on the Nokia Store or apps.formeego.org.
Via: @Jaffa2
Work to make Java work better on the N9 has taken a step-forward: Today JogAmp added a workaround to deal with GPU drivers that reports a bogus 0Hz screen refresh rate. With this fix in place hardware acceleration are working out of the box on Nokia N9 MeeGo phones in combination with the Nokia compiled Imaginative Technologies SGX 530 GPU drivers! Java is not something which ever took off on Maemo, due to the lack of integration options into the various UIs. Qt has now taken the place of "object oriented platform with rich APIs and decent IDE". Your editor is pleased to see that people are still working on it, though.
Via: @Jaffa2
Dawn Foster's slides from FOSDEM last month are available. The abstract said the presentation would provide a basic intro to Tizen and will talk about the community transition from MeeGo to Tizen. We'll do a quick recap from past year of the MeeGo community along with some things we learned along the way. The rest of the presentation will talk about what we are doing to form the Tizen community and how you can participate. Until there are interesting devices shipping, Tizen really holds little to no interest to your editor. Hopefully those involved will find it more rewarding than working in the big-reveal culture of the MeeGo community.
Editor: Andrew Flegg
Your editor has been having problems the last day or so installing apps from the Nokia Store; and it seems he wasn't alone: I have already updated the PR1.2 and it's fine. Only the problem when I go for new download message appears " Unable to Start Operation, Refreshing Cache, Please Wait" in the Screen. Removing a stray filemanager.list solved it here.