At the Nokia USA website, the sole Maemo 5 phone from Nokia, the multitasking beast with killer web browser and customizability options is at a rock bottom price of $200 USD! Bargain! But it’s only for a limited time.
What’s the catch? Well you pay $480 up front first, and hand in your (or any most likely) old handset. Then you get $280 in cash back PLUS what ever value your old phone was.
Stumbled across this video on dailymobile showing an upgraded pixelpipe application with the ability to upload not just pictures and videos to a variety of online services such as picasa and facebook but also regular files such as PDF’s to dropbox accounts.
Give it a look!
P.S. No information on the size of the files that can be uploaded using pixel pipe.
Could one upload full HD videos to youtube this way?!
OOOHHHH !!!!! look at what we have very nice indeed. If this is real then OMG !!!!!:-)
Update possible ad showing the new Nokia Meego device
The reason why I am showing this is because it shows the same tool bar at the top that I saw in the video above and Symbian 4 screenshots, so these seem legit.
Flash 10.1 has been much awaited on the Nokia N900 and here it is – albeit with Android 2.2 and not Maemo 5 yet.
Officially, there isn’t support for flash 10.1 yet for N900 but in the next video from October last year by Adobe, you’ll see Flash player on Maemo 5 and suggestion of 2010 release. Perhaps when N900 gets MeeGo?
As much as El Jobsio fritters on about Flash, the full web really isn’t the full web unless you have flash (at this day and age any way).
In the mist if yesterdays disappointment we completely forgot to post some slightly newer images of the Meego interface. Now Eldar has already said that this is not the interface for their first Meego device by Nokia but I still think its important and significant, this could be the stock version like they have on the Android platform.
Main difference is that some more icons are added or applications in landscape mode well one
I know this is sorta a weird post but today I was watching quite a lot of videos on the Nokia N900 and the Maemo platform and thought to myself DAMM WHAT A PHONE !!! and became really excited for some odd reason if only Nokia supported it a little more. Eldar promised a leak would appear soon, but considering he is sorta in trouble with Russian authorities and Nokia he might have changed his mind. Anyway with Nokia World just over a month away I cannot wait . Then I saw this tweet and thought I had to post it .
(UPDATE) According to Twitter and some knowledgable people the first leak of Nokia’s first Meego handset should be coming in the NEXT HOUR!!!!! I am shaking writing this
Who is really excited about Nokia’s first Meego ?? device and who is going to buy one ???
What do you get when you combine a great game on the greatest gaming console ever created (IMO ) with the most underrated phone on the planet. Yep you guessed it some AMAZING gaming on the N900 I wonder how many phones can do this huh?
Symbian has been tarred in the past for the complexity of app development. The issue in the past was the difficulty in making Symbian apps in comparison to iPhone OS.
Although native Symbian is powerful and allows you to create deeply integrated apps, it’s difficult to use at the beginning.
Solution? Nokia Qt SDK, which (whilst also being a powerful cross platform tool that will make your apps go on MeeGo, Maemo and any Qt compatible device) is easy to use and accessible to everyone.
All the APIs and tools you’ll need is provided in one package.
Lucian notes however, that if you have bigger ambitions and want to create or extend OS functionality, creating deeply integrated apps, you might want to go native Symbian.
S^3 provides options to build with AVKON or Qt- building on the latter ensures the future of your application (going with S^4 and MeeGo/Maemo)
In the rest of the video, Lucian gives a tutorial of building a Qt App, first using one of the templates to learn from. I don’t know anything about coding or whatnot to understand what’s easy or what’s not, but it seemed understandable enough what Lucien was doing to quickly modify that calculator app. You can see your revisions quickly – edit/add feature, check it out with the emulator.
In the end, you’ll see the app ported from desktop to the Nokia N8.
Another Qt video shows porting Desktop apps to Maemo with Qt.
An important thing to note is that it will look like a native Maemo app, with Hildon (Maemo 5) style buttons, and not like a desktop app squished into a small screen. (BTW, with reddit, it does look that “ugly/plain” on the web version. The Maemo version looks kinda decent.)
Here, the app is demoed on N900 but as with the Symbian version, you can edit/add features and immediately check your changes on the emulator. It looked really simple just to add the code for auto orientation (though I’m guessing made easier being just text to shuffle around)
It will probably be the same when MeeGo comes out, but since there is no final MeeGo handset, we’re treated instead with demo of Maemo 5 on the N900.
Here’s a little GEM of an application that’s free on Ovi Store for your Nokia N900. This is by far the most promising user interface for a music player I’ve ever come across on a Nokia handset. It’s called “instinctiv”, download it from the Ovi Store on your N900. The player supports wma, flac, ogg, aac, mp3 and can be synced with the instinctiv desktop player (I think Mac only at the moment)
The first thing to note is that it’s entirely designed for portrait, which IMO is great on a music player. I’m often on the move when I’m listening to music and such only have one hand available to browse the music player. Portrait in this sense is a must. (Can’t do this by default with N900)
At start up, you’re presented with either LIBRARY or SHUFFLE view. (You might want to let the player load up the album art on initial use – it automatically fetches these so your albums can look great too)
In LIBRARY, you’re presented with SONGS, ARTIST and ALBUMS. At the top, you’ll have a really helpful breadcrumb trail that will help you quickly get to any point in the menu in one click. No more digging around or pressing back!
Notice also the nofication of number of tracks/albums/artists. I have only just got my N900 back so my music isn’t all on this yet (And some tracks came with it:p)
Notice there’s nothing at the bottom (for now). Note, when you select something, it’s highlighted in blue. It’s a little bit like the iPod player, but IMO, much better in terms of navigation. (Though the breadcrumb bits could do with possibly a little label)
Below is ALBUM view. Yes, it has kinetic scrolling (leave Instinctiv for a bit to compile its archives, once that’s done it’s quick and smooth)
Here’s within Album view.
The main player view is absolutely beautiful. The breadcrumb finishes with the title of the song, you have a HUGE album art to take advantage of the screen real estate and at the bottom you have your music controls. On top of this, you get Album, Artist and Song details (really helpful when in shuffle mode).
It would have been cool if Album/Artist was selectable (to quickly switch to their album/songs if you happen to like that song).
What’s really nice though is that the track time line is ALL of the bottom space underneath the line and above the player controls. (See first screenshot above – it even covers the music controls, very nice) you can tap in the space below the time line and you’ll jump to that section – much better than having a skinny line.
Another thing I’d have loved here is adding to playlist/rating function.
Notice that now, in any view you’ll have visible music controls. This makes it really easy to switch music tracks. The bottom right most button (triangle) brings you back to “Now Playing” view (like in the default N900 Media Player)
I’d really love a persistent music player buttons to be visible throughout the OS, like a swipe left (or some sort of gesture) to bring up music controls in any view – whether you’re in an app or browsing the web.
Below is all songs view.
Below is artist view. When there are multiple albums per artist, songs of each album are grouped next to each other.
Finally there’s shuffle mode. It’s not just plain random shuffle of all songs, there’s options for “INSTINCTIVE SHUFFLE” which supposedly is based on the tracks you skip as opposed to frequently played songs. That’s actually quite smart as there are some songs on certain albums I just always skip but just can’t be bothered to delete.
“PLAY SONGS SIMILAR TO” which I’m hoping might be like Sony’s “Artist Link” or Apple’s Genius Playlist to find songs that you like and go well together.
Looks great, clean but very visually appealing (huge album art, with song details)
Persistent music player buttons throughout music player with button to go back
Automatic album art – no fussing about.
Breadcrumb trail to bring you back to any point (without mindlessly having to keep clicking back)
Intelligent shuffle
Works in portrait (not in landscape yet though sometimes it switches to landscape and it still looks good – not a default feature though)
It’s FREE
CONS:
Does not yet work with bluetooth headset music buttons. (Though plays perfectly, including volume. Skip/back/pause/play not working)
No playlists
Initial startup is a little slow (10 seconds?)
It is a little slow at first but that’s only because it’s archiving. When that’s done it’s quite quick. I’ve put this note here to make it more noticable.
WISH LIST
PLAYLIST/RATING OPTION, with quick access at Now Playing view
Search function
Bluetooth controls
Perhaps labelling of the icons in the breadcrumb (I’m fine without, though it might help others)
Landscape view – though I wouldn’t mind completely portrait.
For this to be the default UI of Nokia Music player on touch phones.
I would have done a video for you guys for an app as nice as this but I my cam has gone walkabout -_-. There’s a video demo by ericube840218 though, even showing installation.
Announced on the Maemo Talk forums here, fans of Opera’s web browser can grab an updated version for Maemo from the extras-testing (or extras-devel for N8x0 users) repository as of today.
Here’s a copy and paste of the changes detailed in the forum post:
Geolocation support.
Javascript JIT support.
Fix garbage display after rotation due to incorrect stride.
Fix monospaced font in UI elements.
Fix display of Asian fonts in UI elements.
More efficient socket handling, decreases CPU usage slightly.
Suspend JavaScript, animations etc. when screen saver activates.
Reduced tearing while panning.
Fix proxy server mixup.
Fix crash when reading proxy settings.
Upgraded Opera Core, including many bugfixes
Many bugfixes to the UI
And the currently known issues:
Somewhat higher memory usage, especially on JavaScript intensive sites.
Due to timing issues with different geolocation information providers (WiFi, cell towers, GPS) first request may have poor precision.
Fast scrolling not optimized for page rendering.
Adobe Flash and other plugins are not supported.
Screen tearing may be visible when panning, especially in portrait mode.
The built-in on-screen keyboard is not supported. Use the physical keyboard or the on screen keyboard included with Opera Mobile.
The improved CPU handling is definitely a move in the right direction, though I’ve not tried it myself yet. I don’t think it’s going to replace the built-in MicroB for me yet, but it’s well on the way. I’m particularly impressed, however, at Opera’s support for a platform where Nokia abandoned them a few years ago (for better or worse).
If you're reading this, then this demonstrate the N900 can use the native wordpress.com site for blogging. No app download, just raw wordpress pretty much how it would appear on your desktop....albeit within the confines of a 800x480 pixel wide screen. Note screenshot below is zoomed.
Click to continue reading this post
At the Nokia USA website, the sole Maemo 5 phone from Nokia, the multitasking beast with killer web browser and customizability options is at a rock bottom price of $200 USD! Bargain! But it’s only for a limited time.
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