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In this edition...

  1. Front Page
    • Ex-Nokians found Jolla Mobile to "continue Nokia's excellent work on MeeGo-based smartphones"
    • Final(?) Nokia N9 update (PR1.3) now rolling out in waves
  2. Applications
    • Battery drain on N9 caused by Battery Icon
    • Tip if Twitter on N9 is acting slow or not responding
  3. Development
    • Summer Contest by Nokia and Openmobility - develop Qt apps to win N9 or N950
    • Compatibility layer under development to let Harmattan run (all four) Tizen apps
  4. Community
    • "My Nokia Memo Story" -- Randall Arnold
    • "The Dreams of the MeeGo Diaspora" -- Henri Bergius
  5. Devices
    • Inception updated to bypass "hole" fixed in Harmattan PR1.3
  6. In the Wild
    • Coverage of Sotiris Makrygiannis et al leaving Nokia

Front Page

Applications »

Ex-Nokians found Jolla Mobile to "continue Nokia's excellent work on MeeGo-based smartphones"

Via: @timsamoff, @Jaffa

Editor: Ryan Abel

The spirits of the downtrodden stalwarts of the Maemo and MeeGo communities were uplifted Saturday by the surprising announcement of Jolla Ltd., a new mobile smartphone company formed, in part, by former Nokia employees, with the stated goal of bringing new life to MeeGo and continuing the "excellent work that Nokia started." According to the press release they've been "developing a new smartphone product and the OS since the end of 2011" and a "new smartphone using this MeeGo based OS will be revealed later this year." No detailed specifics about the stack have been announced beyond it being based on the Mer Core and Qt, with Jolla providing their own UI on top.

This is exciting news for enthusiasts of Free and Open Source mobile devices, as with Nokia's exit from that market (some would argue, even beginning with the trending towards closedness we saw in Harmattan), the continued and escalating escape of talented individuals from Nokia's MeeGo division, Apple's closed ecosystem, and Google's lipservice to open source the future was beginning to look dim. Jolla offers us a ray of hope in the darkness and a possible path into a mobile future that isn't focused on operators and app stores. Although they may lack the firepower of the bigger players, real disruption requires agility, and Jolla is in a position to disrupt the mobile market in ways Nokia has invested significant effort into avoiding since 2005.

Although the limited information available right now probably calls for cautious optimism, especially considering the effects of our Glorious Leader's insidious Necrotic Touch, reading the announcement yesterday kindled something in your editor that's been dead for a while: that quiet, powerful spark of excited giddiness that ignites for something new, innovative, and truly special. That, my friends, is no small feat. So here's to a free and open mobile future.

For more Jolla news and discussion, follow @JollaMobile on Twitter or join #jollamobile on Freenode.

Read more (theverge.com)

Read more (twitter.com)

Read more (talk.maemo.org)

Read more (nokiainnovation.com)

Read more (post404.com)

Final(?) Nokia N9 update (PR1.3) now rolling out in waves

Via: @Jaffa

Editor: Ryan Abel

A lot of teasing of the PR1.3 update for the Nokia N9 has gone on over the past few weeks, but some users actually started receiving the update last week, and it is now officially being rolled out in waves: As you might have noted already, we have now started rolling out a new update for N9 to 40.2012.21-3. This software release brings you over 1000 quality improvements, including Mail, Facebook, and Twitter, as well as several small network and connectivity improvements. The announcement is thin on details and lacks a proper changelog, but information on the changes is being compiled on Talk. Check the link for details.

Read more (discussions.nokia.com)

Read more (talk.maemo.org)
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Applications

Development »« Front Page

Battery drain on N9 caused by Battery Icon

Editor: Andrew Flegg

Philip Van Hoof was suffering unexplained battery drain on his N9, and dug out some of his special skills to identify it: Because of Battery-Icon, which people are probably installing to monitor their battery, tracker-miner-fs wakes up to update the metadata. That in turn wakes up tracker-store to store the metadata. That in turn wakes up smartsearch which will fetch from Tracker some textual data. All three will consume power periodically because of this .desktop file write trigger. I’m guessing the power consumption is triggering Battery-Icon to update the .desktop file. And circular power consumption was born.

There is then an interesting discussion of Harmattan power management, tracker, fixes to core software and the tools Philip used in the comments.

Read more (pvanhoof.be)

Tip if Twitter on N9 is acting slow or not responding

Via: @setelani

Editor: Andrew Flegg

A tip from Twitter, for Twitter: if twitter acts slow and not responding, rm /home/user/.cache/data/twitter/twcache* This should be safe, but it's easy to cause problems removing system files (especially with a wildcard), so take care when transcribing the command to ensure you're deleting the correct ones.

Read more (twitter.com)
Development »« Front Page
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Development

Community »« Applications

Summer Contest by Nokia and Openmobility - develop Qt apps to win N9 or N950

Via: @Jaffa

Editor: Andrew Olmsted

Developers looking for a chance to flex their Qt muscles and win an N9 or one of two N950 devices may wish to check out Openmobility's Summer Contest. There are some guidelines and fairly specific suggestions for the applications in the contest guidelines. Openmobility in cooperation with Nokia proudly announces this summer’s developers contest for applications in Qt. The Qt framework is currently running on devices using the operating systems MeeGo Harmattan and Symbian^3. To participate, create an application for devices using Qt and QML. A new Nokia N9 Smartphone running on MeeGo Harmattan awaits the lucky winner and there are also two Nokia N950 developer devices ready to meet their new owners. Entries are due by September 30, 2012.

Read more (openmobility.cz)

Compatibility layer under development to let Harmattan run (all four) Tizen apps

Via: @mikesheldon

Editor: Andrew Flegg

Michael Sheldon has posted a preview of a Tizen compatibility layer for Harmattan to YouTube: Tizmee is a new project I've just started hacking together that allows applications using the Tizen web API to run under MeeGo Harmattan. If Tizen takes off (which, unfortunately in your editor's opinion is a big "if"), this could provide a convenient mechanism to get news apps on to the N9, in the same way that preenv allowed Palm Pre games to run on the N900.

Read more (twitter.com)
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Community

Devices »« Development

"My Nokia Memo Story" -- Randall Arnold

Following the coverage of Sotiris Makrygiannis's departure from Nokia, and the tweets he posted summarising the teams' achievements, Randall Arnold posted his own take on his Maemo/MeeGo journey:

I didn’t know what to say the day that former Nokia colleague John Wigginton laid a small black device on my desk. He grinned as I gasped. I had no prior knowledge of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet then; its existence had been kept a guarded secret for some time. But I was familiar with similar devices since I had been putting together a plan for mobile auditing of our cell phone production. John knew of this, and was leaving our group to take another position. I had the pleasure of being selected as the next factory QA shepherd of this little black marvel.

I had almost given up on my mobile auditing quest, haven run into too many cost and technical roadblocks. But here in my hand was an internet tablet, fueled by open Linux, and I didn’t have to purchase it. Solved?

These posts have had something of an "end of an era" feel to them, which is perhaps why the subsequent news about Jolla was greeted with such enthusiasm.

Read more (post404.com)

"The Dreams of the MeeGo Diaspora" -- Henri Bergius

Henri Bergius has posted his own thoughts, with the advantage of coming after the Jolla announcement: Much has been written about the emerging Post-PC era, about the new possibilities it brings, and the limitations it imposes on developer creativity. [...] For starters it ought to be said that I'm not a newcomer to the mobile Internet. Back in 1998 I was already blogging on an Internet-connected Psion PDA, and by early 2000s we were routinely publishing our travel journals this way. But even after the Psion experiences, Maemo was something special.

Read more (bergie.iki.fi)
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Devices

In the Wild »« Community

Inception updated to bypass "hole" fixed in Harmattan PR1.3

Editor: Andrew Flegg

Ready for the launch of PR1.3, Cyber Punk released Inception 0.2: The Nokia N9 is a sleek phone with a sleek OS. However, advanced users have often been frustrated by its limiting Aegis security scheme. Aegis, like many other systems, blocks many legitimate tasks beyond truly dangerous activity, and makes it difficult to customize your N9 to run on your terms.

Release 0.2 is 100% compatible with the new PR1.3 firmware update, and is expected to work with all other firmware versions (since PR1.0) as well. All users are encouraged to upgrade, as the new version provides new features and tweaks to keep you in control and malicious apps out.

It seems unlikely that Nokia will be releasing any future updates to plug the security hole that this version of Inception exploits, and it can provide a more convenient mechanism for truly getting to the lower levels of the system without having to install an "open mode" kernel.

Read more (talk.maemo.org)
In the Wild »« Community
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In the Wild

« Devices

Coverage of Sotiris Makrygiannis et al leaving Nokia

Editor: Ryan Abel

Much has been made of Sotiris Makrygiannis, known on Twitter as "melsop74", leaving Nokia. Sotiris Makrygiannis, who has held a variety of positions inside Nokia, most recently as director of applications for MeeGo, has left the company this week. CEO Stephen Elop has made it clear on a number of occasions since announcing the company's Windows Phone strategy last year that MeeGo (and specifically the Harmattan flavor employed by Nokia on the N9) had been relegated to sideshow status, and the departure of Makrygiannis &emdash; long a staunch, vocal supporter of MeeGo in the community &emdash; would seem to suggest that the bottom has fallen out of whatever remaining support his team had been getting internally. Likely this, and the continuing stream of talent leaving Nokia, garners little surprise from readers of this website, as the final end for MeeGo at Nokia has long been in the making, and this is simply another (non-trivial) step down that path. It is unfortunate to be reminded of the casualties of the decisions made at Nokia over the past year, and we wish all those displaced by the Elopocalypse luck and happiness in their new endeavors.

Read more (theverge.com)

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Read more (talk.maemo.org)
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