In this edition...

  1. Front Page
    • maemo.org and Nokia 770 turn seven
    • Results of Maemo Community Council election announced
  2. Development
    • Shared Harmattan space on github
    • Open source replacements of Fremantle's hald-addon-bme and libbmeipc
  3. Community
    • Launch of Maemo Community Awards - apply to receive a Nokia N9 or N950
    • Maemo & MeeGo community meet ups at BlackBerry BB10Jam events
  4. Announcements
    • MeeCoLay - run Harmattan apps on Fremantle
    • Wazapp - WhatsApp client for Harmattan - is open sourced
    • Eyrie - identify music you're listening to on Harmattan
    • Billboard now in Nokia Store for N9

Front Page

maemo.org and Nokia 770 turn seven

Via: @timsamoff

Editor: Andrew Flegg

On May 25, 2005, Nokia announced Maemo, the Nokia 770 and maemo.org went live. Ferenc Szekely highlighted the go-live of the community on the community's mailing list. At the time of the launch, GSMArena wrote: Today Nokia announced the new Linux based Internet Tablet product category, the first device in this category is Nokia 770. The tablet has no phone functions, but it's a very powerful accessory. It can connect to the internet via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth and it's optimized for internet browsing and email communication. The Nokia 770 features impressive wide touchscreen with resolution 800x480 pixels, the resolution is enough to see most of the web sites without a horizontal scroll bar. Additional application for Nokia 770 include Internet Radio, RSS News reader, Image viewer and Media players.

It's been a rollercoaster ride for the past seven years. As November 2005 approached, your editor was repeatedly hitting F5 on store.nokia.com to order the 770 as soon as it was available. Each device, from the 770 through the N800, N810, N900 and now N950 & N9 have offered something more than the previous one; though usually at the expense of another feature, which was bound to be a "deal-breaker" for someone.

Unfortunately, Nokia's change in direction has meant we're approaching the end of that journey. Rumours abound that Nokia will continue the Maemo spirit with Linux on a range of new low-end Qt-based phones. Nokia's brief encounter with Intel has re-energised Moblin as MeeGo and now Tizen. It would be easy to be maudlin looking back at the promise, and hope and the current situation. However, let's take time to look back on the successes of the last seven years, rather than bemoan the future in store.


Results of Maemo Community Council election announced

Via: @jaffa2

Editor: Andrew Flegg

Ivan Galvez Junquera (ivgalvez), Piotr Jawidzyk (Estel), Craig Woodward (woody14619), Niel Nielsen (NielDK) have been elected as new members of the council. They join RM Bauer (SD69) who was re-elected from the previous council. The new council have already sprung into action, launching the Community Awards (see later) and selecting Piotr as their chair.


Development

Shared Harmattan space on github

Via: @Jaffa2

Editor: Ryan Abel

Thomas Perl has formed a Harmattan organization on github to help collect the Harmattan-related projects on there in a single place. I've created a "harmattan" organization on github where I'll put all the open source apps that I write/wrote for Harmattan. I've invited other developers to do the same, so it's easier to find projects and collaborate. If you think that's a good idea, feel free to give me your github username, and I'll add you to the organization. I've already moved some of my apps there, and hope to see more stuff there soon It will hopefully increase visibility of source repositories for packages on apps.formeego.org (which currently doesn't have a feature to list and/or display the repository URL for packages uploaded there).

Open source replacements of Fremantle's hald-addon-bme and libbmeipc

Via: @Jaffa2

Ivaylo Dimitrov has pieced together information on two very low-level components on Fremantle: Based on the information [by Jonathan Wilson] and some additional information from Mer libbmeipc replacement I wrote a semi-working libbmeipc & hald-addon-bme. libbmeipc just needs to read temperature to be fully functional as replacement. hald-addon-bme is still missing charger support. Anyway, it could be easily added if the kernel provides it. [...] I hope there will be some interest for full implementation and improvements of BME replacement libraries/binaries.

Community

Launch of Maemo Community Awards - apply to receive a Nokia N9 or N950

Via: @Jaffa2

Editor: Ryan Abel

Discussion about how best to distribute the N9s and N950s Quim Gil managed to scrounge together has been ongoing on the Maemo-Community mailing list, though discussions concluded when Piotr Jawidzyk, on behalf of the Maemo Community Council, announced the method of distribution in an email to the same list: Hello Community! I'm glad to announce that - in line with declarations Your editor greatly encourages gentle prodding of your closest humble community contributor to file a submission.

Maemo & MeeGo community meet ups at BlackBerry BB10Jam events

Via: @QtHelex

Editor: Ryan Abel

RIM is holding a developer-outreach tour, BB10Jam, of day-long developer events for the BlackBerry 10 OS. A group of Maemo folks is attempting to organize Maemo-related meetups around the BB10Jam stops: Since BlackBerry will use Qt and qml as one of their main development frameworks for BB10 some maemo developers are perhaps interested in this events. A good chance for small maemo meet and greetings around the world! I created a wiki page to make a list which members are you able to meet there in real life. Please edit the wiki and add yourself to the list if you are attending a certain event.


Announcements

MeeCoLay - run Harmattan apps on Fremantle

Via: @Jaffa2

Marcin Mielniczuk has announced a pre-alpha of an execution environment for Harmattan (i.e. N9) applications on Fremantle (i.e. N900): I wanted to keep it silent 'til I finish coding the library download client, but it became impossible. Today some people discovered a package called meecolay-core: 'these are the scripts which make running MeeGo Harmattan apps on Maemo Fremantle possible. They are based on the preenv ones.' It's still very early days, and not for the faint-hearted, but it's an interesting development.

Wazapp - WhatsApp client for Harmattan - is open sourced

Via: @Jaffa2

Editor: Ryan Abel

Wazapp, the WhatsApp client for Harmattan we've covered here previously, has been open sourced. The code is available on github under the GPL v2.

Eyrie - identify music you're listening to on Harmattan

Via: @Jaffa2

Editor: Ryan Abel

Eyrie, a new application for Harmattan to identify music based on mic input (think Shazam), was announced last week by Michael Sheldon: Eyrie is an application for the Nokia N9 and N950 phones that can find out information about music that’s playing nearby. It does this by making use of the EchoPrint algorithm to extract musical features from whatever you’re currently hearing. This is then used to find out the name of the artist and track from The EchoNest. Currently the database of songs accessible via EchoPrint fingerprints is a bit small, but it has the advantage of being an open database that anyone can submit fingerprint information to [...] Eyrie is currently only available as a .deb from the developer's website.

Billboard now in Nokia Store for N9

Via: @Jaffa2

Editor: Ryan Abel

Last week we covered Thomas Perl's work from the Hack-A-N9 meetup which displayed the currently playing song on the N9's low-power standby scren. Thomas has now packaged it into a proper application and submitted it to the Nokia Store: Billboard is available from the Nokia Store for $0.99/€1.00.