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 – The Future of Nokia N-Series Phones, IP for Libertarians, Animating the Death Star
Once again, Dorian has dropped off the side of the Internet to work on stuff. So instead of an update, Dorian sends some interesting bits of news he found on the Internet.
Maemo is the Future of the Nokia N-Series
Just when you thought Nokia planned on using Maemo only for their experimental line of phones… future N series phones will run Maemo! This is great news for all the Maemo fans out there. And it looks like this will be happen in 2012. So all you who follow the Mayan calendar, while be able to ring in the new Mayan calendar cycle with nice Maemo-powered phones. 
Intellectual Property from a Libertarian Perspective
This is not news so much as a well written article by Stephan Kinsella discussing Intellectual Property from a Libertarian perspective. So if you’ve been following the news concerning the mess that is intellectual property, this article premises that it doesn’t make sense to have it, makes sense. Patents cause the most amount of problems, being so broad in scope. But at the end of the day, it comes down to the question should or should not the owner of a physical property have exclusive rights to their property. The fact it cause loss for a content creator or it is not acceptable behaviour by “society” is a moot point.
Dorian’s thoughts: Thats why all that I publish is under the Creative Commons license. I’d rather just putting things in the public domain. Unfortunately there is a double standard of what an individual’s rights to that of a corporate entity’s, and thats why some restrictions to protect myself are needed. I’d hate to go to court over something I originally published, being picked up by a corporation and then being hunted down by their lawyers for some IP infringement.
Animating the Death Star in Star Wars
Think computer animation is hard nowadays? Then check this video of animating the attack on the Death Star in the old Star Wars. Amazing.
A Return to Mobility
As a happy owner of a Nokia 5800 smartphone, I quickly realized the potential of this gadget as a great pocket-sized mobile computer. Unfortunately, for the longest time I relied completely on wireless access points. With the lack of a physical slideout keyboard, this phone felt like a step down from the N810 Internet tablet. On top of that, while the Symbian platform is well supported. I really enjoyed both the UI and multitasking abilities of the N810. While the 5800 XM does allow for multitasking, it feels a bit uncomfortable to use. Now I won’t complain about Symbian because I understand that it is limited by its age and its original intended useage. I’m sure that Nokia and all the other Symbian players are working hard to keep the old workhorse going. But there really is a limit to what you can do with it. Hence my anticipation for the N900. Lets hope it’ll be available for Canadians soon.
Sticking to only wireless LANs has the downside of being offline most of the time. Plus it means using the office WLAN when at work. And I’d prefer not to for the obvious reason of wanting to maintain the separation of work and my personal life. So eventually, I bit the bullet and added a data plan from Fido. Everything seemed perfect, until I checked my phone bill. Apparently the data plan didn’t appear, and the bill was a lot larger than expected. Dismayed I contacted Fido, and stopped using data to avoid an even larger bill. You can imagine my elation, when a rep from Fido called me today, withdrew the charges and reinstated my data plan. Yes! So I’m back online in the mobile space, enjoying the Internet everywhere.
An Encore
I didn’t update my blog yesterday. Life turned out busier than I could imagine. I am still catching up on things. I took on so many tasks. I have a trip to plan. Writing and reading just piles up around me. I’m not sure in which direction I should concentrate my efforts. My efforts to catch up look comical at times. And my only wish is that I too like those Hindu gods, could possess extra sets of arms and infinitely divideable attention, so I could actually finish everything. Yet, with all the additional emotional chaos in my life, I still manage to move forward. In the past, I would of just curled up and moaned myself to sleep. Today I no longer have that luxury, I need to execute my plans and execute them well.
So a quick update is in order.
Writing
I’m still maintaining my daily blog entries. Not a simple task at times, I keep on scrunging around for topics to write about. I’m not sure how my PWC friend, Marika manages to update her blog twice a day and still find time to write books. I’m marking her as yet another example of the craziness, creativity and sheer amazing output that Finns are capable of. My own novel writing ground to a halt. Too many distractions and too many random tasks are to blame here. However, the novel is moving towards an iteration of an earlier novel idea and elements from other ideas. I plan on dredging up those previous stories, modifying them to fit the theme and context of this novel. It’ll probably end up looking like a post-apoc scifi “Jungle Book” of sorts. If you can get that around your head, great, now help me understand it!
Coding
I’m changing gears at work, so hobby programming is not on my list of high priorities at the moment. I plan on getting back to Qt as soon as the rest of my life falls into place. Also I’m holding back from contributing to the KDE and maemo projects for a bit. I do need a bit more motivation to get involved. Many using the platforms more often will make that happen. But still need a working IT before I can even think about developing for maemo.
Life
Learning to feel at home driving. Cellphone enroute. Things starting to fall into place. I just need more time, to get everything done. Working on bring some sanity and regularity into my life. This should help on the health side, cut down on giddiness, increase productivity and increase self-satisifaction. With the warmer weather coming, I plan on getting out there more often. So projects might need tabling until I have more time. And a big thing is a planned trip, which will resolve certain important and nagging questions in my mind.
Dinner at Prince
Tonight I met up with one of my friends from my professional writing course, Andrei. Since I could meet him in the early evening, that meant I could get some extra sleep and start work later. Extra sleep is always a welcome change in my schedule. Commuting to work by bus not so much. Work turned out busy as usual with training and work on particularly sticky issue (read issue as a bug, enhancement, change request or combination of the former).
Meeting up with Andrei is always a pleasure. We ate dinner at Prince, the Japanese eatry near work. I highly recommend that place if you are up for some Japanese food. We talked a lot about writing, university, the economy (everyone and his pet dog’s obsessively favourite topic it seems nowadays) and philosophy in general. I even got into a rant about why technologies such as Linux, KDE 4 and Maemo excite me. Hehehe… I had a lot of fun.
Interestingly it seems that nowadays my weeks are jam packed with meeting interesting people and having fun in general. I don’t know if it just a bit coincidental luck. Or is it because I’ve tried to take a more positive and active approach to life. Or is it a combination of both? I wonder…
Windows? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Windows!!!
I just read this article on Phoronix on the Phoenix HyperSpace quick boot Linux. So a quick boot Linux partition installed side-by-side with Windows is nothing new. It happened early last year.
Rather what this article shows is the increased awareness of Linux in the vendor space. It also shows that vendors will ditch their loyalty toward Microsoft and the Windows platform, if it suits the vendor. And Phoenix is not a sole rogue vendor. Nokia does it with Maemo on its internet tablets. Dell on select machines and its Mini 9 netbook. Asus and Acer, again two Linux netbook vendors. And a number of other vendors do the side-by-side install too.
Microsoft should be worried. The Vista debacle caused more than just users to get upset for a slow, bloated OS. Vendors got upset, when Microsoft promised a feature and then didn’t deliver half of what they promised. And vendors trying to stay ahead of the curve got burned when a vital feature didn’t appear. Don’t be surprised that vendors will happily pull a Julius Caesar on Microsoft.
Vendors and user both got tired of Microsoft telling them how they should do their computing. The basic beauty of computing is the flexibility and freedom of workflow that it allows for. Imposing limits of the technology for “historical” and business reason is folly in the long run. Also today’s state of the art technology is past the desktop. The desktop has to interact seamlessly mobile handhelds, web applications and cloud computing offerings. Making everything into a desktop paradigm as Microsoft sees things, doesn’t work. It doesn’t cut it anymore. And vendors know this.
Vendors now look to Linux and free/libre/open source software (FLOSS) as a way to simplify development, cut costs and ultimately as a way to go forward. That is the beauty of FLOSS, you have the freedom to take technology where you want it to go. The only constraints on computing technology should be the laws physical universe and your own imagination.
The Forecast for 2009
First of all: Happy New Year everyone! I hope everyone had a great time celebrating Christmas and ringing in the new year.
So it looks like the second day of the new year is slowly coming to a close. This year promises to be as exciting and interesting as last year. Maybe even more so.
This year I plan on finally achieving the goals I sat out last year. I have a lot of writing and coding ahead of me. Hopefully I will get involved with the KDE and Maemo projects early this year. Also the transition from student life to corporate IT worker should sink in soon. I am optimistic I will grow drastically in all aspects of my life this year: academic, professional, artistic and personal.
However some doubt, and grey clouds lie on the horizon this year. The situation on the economic front looks dire. I worry since the parallels of the great depression and hell that followed afterwards are there. Except that this time around ideals seem more distant, nations seem more violent and the machines of war are far more lethal and potent. And I don’t think literature or computing will cut it to get us out of the mess, we set upon ourselves so long ago.
Hopefully, my darkest nightmares will not realize themselves. They did not solidify last year. Instead many a happy accident happened. And this year looks like many more happy accidents will occur. But this I wouldn’t put up a todo list. It doesn’t seem practical, and doesn’t account for the unexpected.
BBLUG in Review
Ok, so I didn’t expect BBLUG to go off without a hitch. However it doesn’t seem like a Linux or BSD-only tech group is all that interesting. I’m still debating whether or not to continue this LUG experiment. Maybe we can start a computer group, but that is really not my interest nor do I have a ton of spare time for organizing a general group. I blame it partially on my lack of advertising. But also maybe the FOSS environment is not as exciting to others as I thought. KDE 4, Compiz, Maemo, Linux are all interesting technologies, and is interesting to see the how FOSS newcomers react to seeing alternative computing ecosystems. However computing is at the end of the day an enabling technology. The technology itself while interesting, doesn’t look as interesting as what you can do with it.
Still… thanks to Rudy and Ryan who came out yesterday. I’m glad I wasn’t the only person at the meeting. Next time, lets just go out somewhere to chill.
On Hacking with Maemo
Time is the ultimae in precious and scarce commodities. With work and travelling up North to kayak, I spend most of my spare time away from a workstation. Hence the convenience of owning a N810. I can code and write anywhere!
Ok so I haven’t tried putting gcc or other c development tools on this tablet. While with Jalimo I can run Java code… I’m not sure on the feasibility of running Tomcat. And there is no way Eclipse will fit. Actually Tomcat would need an SDK, so running a full Java web development platform is most likely a no go. Instead I could set up a hosted test server.
Still I can edit the code itself. Originally I installed Vim. Then I tried PyGTKEdior and it works for me. Additionally I installed subversion. So now I can work on justCheckers while on the go.
Maemo Hacking and Project Revivals
With such a cold wet summer, I thought I would spend more time hacking. Yet this year spare time is a scarce commodity and most of that time I find myself far from a proper development workstation. Fortunately with an Internet tablet in my pocket, I can at least start on learning about Maemo development.
For an embedded device, the maemo platform is neither the easiest nor the hardest device to start hacking. Setting up the SDK on Ubuntu takes only a few minutes. In fact I also managed to setup Eclipse to do maemo development too. But I didn’t try to compile any source code so far.
Developing on Maemo, requires knowledge in both Linux and C programming. The N810 itself uses a heavily modified version of the 2.6.27 Linux kernel, Gnome and GTK. GTK seems to handle the GUI side of things in much that the same that Java Swing does. And I like the fact that GObject brings some semblence of OO programming to C. I’d prefer to learn Qt instead of GTK, but I guess I have to start somewhere. Judging by blog posts from KDE developers that got N810s at Akademy 2008, the state of Qt and KDE on Maemo is in its infancy.
In a recent conversation with Dan D’Alimonte, he suggested that I should think about reviving the justCheckers project as a web application. Considering the state of the codebase I work on a daily basis, the justCheckers codebase is very much maintainable. As a web application, the releases can happen faster and casual users can play with the program. And I’d like to play around with some more advanced Java web technologies. Now whether or not I actually revive the project is another matter. It is a definite maybe for now.
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