Nokia N900 – The Penguin Has Landed
You may have noticed that I’ve dropped off the side of the Internet somewhat. Life can get busy at times, especially for someone who sometimes gets muddled up with time management and priorities. Another compelling reason for this is that I recently bought a Nokia N900. And I’m still getting used to incorporating it into my day to day activities.
Getting It Home
Unfortunately, Nokia does not sell the N900 in Canada. In theory it might eventually. But I wasn’t going until the Canadian duopoly of Rogers and Bell along with the CRTC got around to doing so. So much for Canada being a leader in telecommunications technology. Instead I bought my N900 through Amazon and used Shipito to forward my parcel. Later I found out that buying from Dell may have been a cheaper and faster alternative. It took about three weeks but I eventually got my toy.
Hardware
I must congratulate the engineers at Nokia for coming up with solid feel to the N900. I would of preferred a metal body like my old N810. But the N900 is definitely not as flimsy and plasticky like my Nokia 5800 XpressMusic phone. The touchscreen is quite sensitive and responsive much like the iPhone’s. The sliding keyboard also feels great. Each key nicely rounded, depresses in a solid quiet manner and gets illuminated in low light conditions. The 5 Megapixel Carl Zeiss camera takes great pictures with good resolution and great colour balance. My 5800 in comparison took decent photos but everything was a shade of grainy grey. The auto-focus on the camera leaves much to desire. But it might be a case of my not knowing how to use the software. The N900 takes MicroSD cards, which helped with migration away from my old phone. The internal memory is a massive 32 GB. Sound quality of the speakers is excellent. Great feeling stylus as well.
I loved the large full kickstand on my N810. Apparently the preproduction units of the N900 also had this design. However the production N900s have a small kickstand built into the lower frame of the camera. It took my quite some time to find it. And since the kickstand is off-center the whole device wobbles on its kickstand. Not cool. The real scary thing is the micro-USB connector. The power adapter for the N900 recharges the device using the micro-USB. And the port itself is surface mounted to the circuitry. I’ve read quite a few horror stories involved where the port detached from the device! So I’m paranoid, and extra careful with plugging in the micro-USB cables to the N900.
Software
The UI on the N900 screams wow. The Compiz-like 3D views and effects win everyone who sees the device in action. A phone should not be able to look and act so sexy. The UI is intuitive and very finger friendly. Web browsing is where the N900 excels. The swirl zoom in and zoom out, smooth scrolling and fast rendering makes web browsing fun. The browser fully supports Javascript and Flash, so the experience is comparable to using a full desktop browser like Mozilla Firefox. The N900 also has a great PIM/contact management. Combine it with the Hermes app from Maemo extras, and you have an awesome contact management that integrates your contacts on various messaging, microblogging and social network services. Amazing. There are a few nice apps available through the repos and the Ovi store. Including the fun games of Bounce Evolution and Angry Birds.
It is not all roses in the software realm. The N900 while a mobile computer and all that jazz is still a mobile device. Space and energy constraints plague every mobile device out there. So there is a limit to how much multi-tasking one can do. Fair enough. But sometimes the device grinds to a slow halt with just a few apps on. Why? I get it why it happened when I copied my 6GB music collection off my MicroSD onto main memory. Maybe I need to restart the device once in a while? But why two browser windows, two instant messaging apps and a music player can stall the device… Also the Maemo5 platform used on the N900 is new, so there will not be the number of apps that Symbian S60, Apple’s iPhone and the Android app stores enjoy. Nokia has Ovi working for the N900, except payments are still missing. Hence my hesitation to say the N900 will work well for non-enthusiasts. It looks like Nokia also has similar feelings. Then again Nokia has said that Maemo6 will be the mainstream platform, with multi-touch support, app stores and all that jazz.
Thoughts, Ideas and Dreams
This review is reaching epic proportions now. In short, I love my little N900 mobile computer/Internet tablet/cellphone. It is definitely something I looked forward too. And I’ve owned a number of mobile computing devices already: Palm Tungsten E, Nokia N810 & Nokia 5800 XM. A great thing is that the device and platform has the potential of getting way better with time.
Related Links
- Aaron Seigo’s (Plasma KDE lead developer) thoughts on the N900.
- Yes, the N900 CAN control pole dancing exotic robots.
News – Google Chrome for Linux, Thunderbird 3.0 & Malware for Ubuntu
Dorian is currently concentrating on writing and getting things ready for Christmas. So in the meantime, here are some new stories to tide you over:
- Google releases Google Chrome for Linux.
- The fine folks at Mozilla release Thunderbird 3.0
- The first major malware attack against Ubuntu users has happened. I guess that confirms that Ubuntu has now hit the mainstream. :S
Tech News – Canonical Bringing Music to Ubuntu, LH Strikes Again & Affero GPL Can’t Fix the Cloud
Canonical Launching a Music Store?
Rumours on the world wild web point to the possibility of Canonical building an iTunes-like music store. Works for U thinks such a move would add another viable revenue stream for Canonical, even if it seems to stretch the resources of the firm. If this music store comes to Ubuntu, I’m sure many users will enjoy using it. And it will help Canonical start a community of artists, musicians and software firms to using Canonical and Ubuntu as a platform for selling content and applications.
The Linux Hater Tries Karmic Koala
No one knows who hides behind the LH mask. Is he an enlightened but disgruntle Linux programmer? Or is the king of all trolls? Who cares! Read up his (or her) review of the “fail” that is Ubuntu’s Karmic Koala. You’ll get a kick out of it.
Kubuntu Needs Documentation Help
nixternal (Richard Johnson) calls for help to improve the sad state of the Kubuntu documentation. If you are a tech writer and enjoy using Kubuntu, please help out. UPDATE: You should know how to use DocBook to help.
Affero GPL Can’t Fix the Cloud
One of the great opportunities and threats for commercial open source is the emerging cloud computing landscape. However Matthew Asslett (451 Group) points out the Affero GPL doesn’t negate the threat of no monetary contributions from cloud providers to commercial open source vendors. Yes it doesn’t. But the licenses were designed to get source code contributions from developers. Business models need to focus on selling value (some scarce resource based on real scarcity not an artificial one) to clients, and some clients will not see the value. There will always be those that get away. The Affero GPL does help “guide” most cloud providers contribute back. If anything the GPL will give more freedom and opportunities for many more smaller players than a few large ones. And that solves many more economic and social problems than anything else.
News – Chromium OS is Here
Chromium OS is Here
Google just announced their Chromium OS project. This will act as the open source precursor to Chrome OS. And the folks at Canonical are helping Google build it. Exciting times ahead, especially for netbooks users and cloud computing advocates. Thanks to the 451 Group’s Matthew Aslett team for posting about this.
News Flash – Linux Desktop Suck, Android is Not Linux and the Nokia N900s Dropping Out of Orbit
These past few days have seen Dorian scrambling to catchup and not blogging. Dorian still feels the need to fight his e-mails, update his “other” sites and organize his cluttered life, rather than update his readers on exciting developments he has worked on. Instead Dorian will continue writing in the third person, and highlight the latest and niftiest in Linux tech news… and hopefully he will get his act together soon. So lets look at whats buzzing in the blogsphere.
The Linux Desktop Sucks
First the Linux hater, and now some developers and power users state what they REALLY feel about Linux on the desktop. vanRijn experienced the beauty of sweet candy land that is the Mac OSX world and laments why we can’t see the same in Linux-o-landia. dkite proofs more an optimist, saying yes its broken and but will get better… someday. Also some finger-pointing to the manufacturers for not getting their act together, and states some heroic community coding is needed. Funny how Dell engineers are helping to make Dell machines running Linux able to recover themselves, just like under the most common desktop OS.
Dorian’s thoughts: The Linux desktop worked for me, on a laptop in 2002, so stop your bitching guys. I’ll agree the legendary saga that is fixing X and sound, etc. is reaching epic proportions. And yes devs from vendors are leading the way in many cases. But in some cases it seems easier to start from scratch as with Wayfarer or Moblin or PulseAudio. Still building a solid and expandable underlying architecture is hard, so everyone does so in a piecemeal fashion. And in traditional UNIX fashion, we argue and argue over what we want to build and how to do it. Instead of wringing hands, help fix the problem.
Android is Not Linux
Sounds like another bad recursive hacker pun, no? Looks like the guys at Google, took a Linux, through out the parts that worked-yes, shocking some parts of Linux actually work quite well thank you very much-and replaced them with their own jerry-rigged replacements.
Dorian’s thoughts: Why guys, why? Just learn to use the tools, and I’m sure the standard Linux stuff works pretty darn well on a mobile device. At least one real handset maker seems able to use the existing Linux stack, and run with it. Sure the UI needed a replacement and some optimizations are required, but rip and replace with crappier renditions? Not cool guys. Google needs to learn to work with the FOSS community, and not around it.
Nokia N900s Dropping Out of Orbit
So the N900 already launched… but Nokia started pumping out, shipping out their amazing N900s and stocking retailers with these pieces of mobile computing paradise. And unlike Google, Nokia knows how to build on top of existing Linux stacks and without stomping on existing FOSS communities. Not like a giant robot ravaging a city… Google.
Dorian’s thoughts: Remember about us Canadians! We’re that country above the US, and we’d like some N900s too, pretty please.
In Other News:
- A documentary on LugRadio? Kewl!
- The Khronos guys who brought you OpenGL, OpenCL and OpenSL E, want to bring you a standard windowing framework for Linux mobile devices: OpenWF.
- Big multinationals and big government want to fix copyright to work for YOU. YOU being a big multinational or a big government, of course. Cause another global over-arching treaties is a good idea. <smirk /> And this treaty will solve one of the world’s problems: the publishing industry’s losing their profit margin, which was the highest of any industry to being with. <smirk /> World hunger and peace can wait until next week’s meeting of “elites”.
OK, Dorian must end his newcast here and scurry back to his other work.
Review of Ontario Linux Fest 2009
Two weekends ago I went to Ontario Linux Fest 2009, held here in chilly Toronto for the third year in a row. And for such a young conference, it was quite good. In fact good enough, that longer review of the event is in order:
Morning Keynote - Changes to the GPL
The day started with me rushing out the door in the morning, to catch a morning bus. I made a bit later, missing the first part of Bradley Kuhn’s keynote. I rushed in, grabbed my conference package, put on my name-tag and rushed to hear the second part of the keynote. Brad discussed the changes between versions 2 and 3 of the GPL (GNU General Public License). As someone who followed the licenses and uses the GPL in my current project (justCheckers), it was pretty interesting to hear about why behind the changes. The original GPL2 was quite brief for a software license, but not quite as understandable as the GPL 3. The GPL 3 helped simplify the license, made it international and got rid of some icky loopholes. After the keynote, I did a quick swag run even buying a fleece from the Eclipse guys from Redhat. (And no Nick, I wasn’t there just for the swag I just haven’t gotten around to contributing to Eclipse just yet.) I then quickly popped quickly back in for the first track of sessions.
Session 1 – Enterprise Content Management (ECM)
Cheryl McKinnon from Nuxeo did a talk on ECM. I can definitely relate to having to hunt down information in the mess of Office documents and e-mails at the office. I can just imagine what happens at larger organizations that have less rigorous guidelines to handling documentation. So I definitely see the need software that handles such data, especially in terms of productivity and maintaining documents for regulatory purposes. I can’t understand why every organization doesn’t have at least a wiki. Interesting note that the concepts I learned in a university course on information science, really applies here. Managing the capture, collaboration, review, publish, archiving and search-ability of information is really a science on to itself. No wonder open source vendors like Nuxeo, Alfresco and MindTouch that provide ECM solutions in a flexible and low-cost way are such a big hit for enterprises. There also was a neat discussion on how Nuxeo can do both centralization (bring documents into itself) and management of meta-data (like the locations and “tags” related to scattered documentation). Really neat.
Session 2 – Ubuntu Moblin & Netbook Remixes
Jorge Castro from Canonical of Ubuntu community fame presented the Ubuntu Moblin and Netbook Remixes. As with any live demo, the demo technology co-operated with Jorge like any demoed technology or self-conscious prima donna. Still the Ubuntu Moblin Remix looks gorgeous. It sports a nice, simple, elegant and understandable user interface. However this remix qualifies as a tech preview more than something to hit the mass consumer. Still I think people will be impressed when they change over from Windows to something like Moblin. It looks a far bit of effort was put into making refactoring the UIs to fit a smaller, wider screen. The Netbook Remix looks great too, and if you are reading this and running Ubuntu 9.10… switch over to the Netbook UI, you’ll love it even on your main system.
Lunch Chat 1 – Free Software and Its Impact on the Future of the Software Industry
I skipped out on the last session of the morning to pester Brad Kuhn with a few questions. It started with an innocent question about his opinion about certain companies planning on moving from the GPL to the Apache licenses. Brad figured out that I had read one of Matt Asay’s blogs on the topic, and went on a mini-rant. Apparently Matt is one of Brad’s “nemesis” (not that they don’t get along rather their views on software freedom are quite different). Brad envisions a future where software stops being a “big box” industry of packaged software products to more of a lawyery/consultancy profession. I have to agree with him on that, and I don’t mind such a future being a consultant by trade. However I did point out the difficulty one runs into with consumer-level products or projects. Basically how does one sufficiently fund a project like Inkscape? One way would be to sell a proprietary product, which defeats the purpose of going open source. Another way would be to offer a service. The heart of the problem is how to finance a regular development and enhancements (like usability) on a regular basis… and still get someone to pay for it willingly. It isn’t an easy problem to solve… A problem that I plan on working on in my semi-stealth project… But Brad tried to convince it wasn’t as big of a deal as I think it is.
Lunch Chat 2 – Decoupling User Interfaces from the Application Backends
Feeling now famished for lack of a breakfast, I went out with Scott from the GTALug for pizza. Scott is into user interface design both on a hardware and software level. We both agreed that user interfaces should be loosely coupled to their backends. In enterprise web application design the concept of different views for different users and environments comes to mind. Scott introduced me to the concept of a framework that allows for completely decoupling the user interface with the underlying application, called Metisse. It allows for building UIs at runtime using a widget palette or toolkit… brilliant! That would let developers concentrate on what they are good at: application development and design. And HCI/usability/graphics designer concentrate on what they are good at: design kick-ass usable user interfaces.
Session 3 – Building Business Applications Using SugarCRM
Right after lunch, I went to a more practical session by John Mertic, a developer at SugarCRM. The session was naturally about developing applications using SugarCRM. It looks a very nice application, and CRMs apparently can solve a lot of problems centred around customers. Even just using SugarCRM to manage a client’s organizational contacts would save a lot of my time at work. However since I work in Java and not PHP, thats not really an option. But it looks like a neat application, the latest version SugarCRM 5 being all built in PHP and using the YUI (used to use ExtJS). There is a vibrant community forge and marketplace around the application. Neat. Also neat that John just published an Apress book called: The Definitive Guide to SugarCRM. See a pattern, yet? 
Session 4 – World Domination, Documentation and Ponies
OK, I admit it as a writer masquerading as a software developer, (Or is it the other way around?) I actually enjoy writing documentation. Some would even say, I enjoy writing documentation too much. So I jumped at the opportunity of hear Emma Jane Hogbin talk about world domination through good documentation. Actually I was disappointed by the lack of talk on world domination. But there was much talk of ponies… oh and documentation. I swear I’ve never heard anyone comparing documentation to wearing high heels. I guess the analogy of it being sexy and painful makes sense. But then again I’ve never (or do I ever plan to) worn high heels, so I’ll trust the ladies on this one. Still it was an awesome and enlightening talk. I’ve never consider all the various audiences (devs, users, marketing) and types of documentation. I must agree with Emma’s statement, that if you are doing a lot of work documenting how to use your program… maybe reconsidering how the UI is done is in order. The concept of automating documentation and using an XML source is new to me. But I will have to look into technologies like pywebdoc, Mallard and DocBook. Emma went through the Capture, Organize, Translate, Output, Review and Revise cycle, using the Status.net documentation efforts. (Emma’s project on writing open source documentation.)
Session 5 – The Look at Introducing FLOSS into Education
Karlie Robinson of On-Disk did a talk about her experiences with connecting the OLPC, Fedora and RIT together.
Afternoon Keynote – How Linux is Like Music
The conference wrapped up with Joe ‘Zonker’ Brockmeier’s afternoon keynote. Zonker is an incredible speaker, and he also threw plush penguins at the crowd which instantly made the keynote awesome. Alas I didn’t have any thing worthy to add to the conversation so I didn’t get another plush penguin. 
But I’m getting ahead of myself… Zonker talked about how we should move away from the tired analogy of choosing operating systems like cars. Rather he suggested how choice of OSes and Linuxes should be compared to bands and musicians:
- Fedora -> Frank Zappa
- SuSE -> The Who
- Ubuntu -> Duran Duran (Hurrah, I mean huh?!?)
- Gentoo -> Write your own sungs in your own built studio (Damn right! Sorry, ecstatic ex-Gentooer here.)
A bit zany, but with a nickname of Zonker… 
Ok, I’ll stop teasing. But he did go into the problem of widespread Linux adoption: better self-marketing, pre-installed PCs (we are getting there slowly), market shift to the cloud and mobile (at least we have that one covered to a degree) and the in-fighting that the F/OSS community seem to love (welcome to the new face of anarchy and things to come?).
The Pre-After Party
At this point most of the participants went out to either go home or wait out the time for the reception. Having come alone, I felt like I’d love to mingle at the afterparty but I needed to do something while I waited. Fortunately, the KDE 4 guys (Troy Unrau, Shawn Starr and Eugene Trounev) were quite welcoming and let me tag along with them. Troy was pulled into the speaker’s dinner so I didn’t get to talk to him much. But Shawn, Eugene and I chatted for a bit, grabbed a quick bite to eat at Burger King and came back to chill at the venue. Shawn works on developing plasma, while Eugene makes graphics for KDE Games. Actually if you count myself and Troy in, we each represent a different aspect of the KDE project: Shawn – developers, Eugene – artists, Troy – marketing and myself – the humble user/wannabe contributer.
When Eugene found out about my semi-stealth project, he suggested I should join the KDE Games and look into the Gluon project. I’m planning on getting involved, once I’ve hacked around with Qt, something I started on recently.
The After Party
The conference wrapped up with a reception sponsored by Google. Actually I got a good amount of useful swag from Google, and the free booze was much appreciated. At the reception I got to mingle with the presenters, organizers and participants of the conference. I got to discuss the finer points of revision control systems (CVS, Subversion and Bazaar) with a Bazaar/Launchpad developer, Aaron Bentley from Canonical. Also got to watch Brad Kuhn and Jorge Castro get into a heated but amicable debate about Mono, software patents and why Canonical should stop releasing and supporting proprietary software. And I got to chill and talk about Apache Qpid (a reliable message queueing system, think something like IBM’s MQ) with Redhat’s Rajith Attapattu.
I left the reception really, really late. And I got home around 2 in the morning, which just goes to show how awesome of a conference OLF2009 was. After the conference I felt a lot smarter, enlightened and inspired to contribute back to the Linux and libre software community. I’m almost sure I’ll be at OLF2010 whenever that comes around.
Links to what others had to say about OLF2009:
- Troy Unrau [http://troy-at-kde.livejournal.com/23041.html]
- Eugene Trounev [http://my.opera.com/it-s/blog/show.dml/4455292]
Ontario GNU Linux Fest 2009
Tomorrow I’ll be going to Ontario GNU Linux Fest 2009. It looks like this year it will be another year for this convention. Not sure why the insistence of adding the “GNU” to the name… Still I’ll be there, checking out as many of the presentations as humanly possible. And doing a thorough raid of possible swag, even if it means opening up my wallet to cover “extra” costs. Anyways if you are in the Toronto area and a Linux fan, you should definitely check this con out. See you there.
Looking Forward: Ubuntu’s App Store
Ubuntu developers will be releasing the beta of the next major version of Ubuntu Linux: 9.10 sometime in the next two weeks. Yours truly, plans on upgrading my main home system to help with the beta test. With every release I’m expecting a rather incremental improvement. However the real interest feature (which I doubt will show up in the Kubuntu side of things just yet), is the new Ubuntu App Centre. On the face of things, it will be an improvement over the “over-techy” Synaptic and friends, that most Ubuntu users are used to. Also it will look and feel more polished, so that will be a very welcome change.
The potential game changer comes into play with the possibility of buying software, for Ubuntu. This buying does not imply that a deluge of proprietary software will sweep into Ubuntu. But rather buying can also mean donating money to upstream projects, and that will help resolve the long standing issue of how to fund open source/libre software projects. An option to buy software, would also create incentives for the software industry to create professional software for Linux. What really excites me is this: I envision that the Ubuntu App Centre, doing for Linux gaming what Valve’s Steam has done for Windows gaming; providing a convenient platform for digital distribution and marketing which will be HUGE for independent gaming studios and small software houses.
Additional Sources: FLOSS Weekly episode on Ardour and the issues of funding FLOSS development
Fake Linus @ LinuxCON
And something for your weekend viewing pleasure: a parody for the “Fake Linus” that appeared on Twitter/identi.ca as part of the prelude to the Linux Foundation’s new convention in Portland, Oregon: LinuxCON
(And yes, I am thinking of updating this blog on a DAILY and not just weekday-ly basis. )
Red Hat is Community?
I don’t do this often, but I must say Red Hat’s new ad is pretty rad. Now Red Hat isn’t the only ones building community. But this one video explains Red Hat’s modus operandi. And it is quite catchy!
