maemo

People Centric Phone UI
[13:02:55] matt [wronka.org]/Psi+ An article from 2013, suggesting people-centric phone UI:
http://tantek.com/2013/338/b1/people-focused-mobile-communication-experience

This seems so incredibly obvious, that only after seeing the iOS screenshots did I realize that Apple doesn't (hasn't?) had this feature. I've had groups or individuals on my S60 phone for years, and Maemo (~2011) had you select a person, and then a protocol for communication (POTS, SMS, XMPP, AIM, IRC, Skype,etc.). The Maemo implementation sounds exactly like what's suggested, where you can select the person, and for protocols with status (SIP, XMPP, etc.) see if the person is online, and send a message. Or send an eMail instead.

WebOS 3.0.4 Upgrade
[15:06:45] matt [wronka.org]/Psi.dementia WebOS 3.0.4 fixed a number of issues for sure, such as the fact that the web browser would crash Luna(?) on certain large pages. However, it also means a lot of patches that made the device usablish no longer worked, the bluetooth keyboard (which previously didn't have key repeat enabled by default) now drops more characters, and often gets stuck repeating in X. Tab doesn't work--it outputs '9', whereas shift-tab does produce a tab sometimes (also ctrl-shift-i). Escape is oddly ctrl-shift-[ now, which makes it seem like the ctrl key is by default broken, or something else, until it is shifted. I should probably xev that.

The tweaks to start X without the keyboard space reserved are gone--all of tweaks is currently broken. X also doesn't want to start vertically now, whether or not the keyboard is connected--this might actually have been an existing issue if there were any record of a keyboard connected. I hadn't spent much time with 3.0.2 with a keyboard stored in the bluetooth devices but not actively connected.

The default WebOS browser and mail client won't connect to my server, and die with unhelpful errors "Cannot load page" for the web browser, and "error code 990" being one of the errors for the mail client (the other being simply indicating a socket connection error). The mail client also doesn't indicate whether the problem is with the IMAP server or the SMTP server. The problem in all cases only happens with TLS or SSL; removing encryption works. I've installed the root certificate, but that hasn't seemed to fix the connection issues--my kingdom for useful error messages. Of course messaging doesn't work with Jabber, and athe existing (7 month old) messaging-plugins package doesn't seem to work with 3.0.4--I hadn't tried with 3.0.2 but it sounded as if it worked from the forums.

It's arguable if I feel like it make sense to look further into these issues. I'll admit a big part of my reluctance is no fault of HP, Palm, or the community but from the results I saw with Nokia where patches just sat stagnant on bugzilla until Maemo basically died. Unrelated to the software front, it's nice to see that HP offers 90 day service, but the actual page reminds me of why I stopped buying Palm which was because when I called them for support on a new device they basically tried as hard as possible to chargre me for the call. Later it turned out they knew there was a static electriciy discharge issue which would often cause the device to lose stored data. I should have gone with Handspring.

Maemo Developer List : "Why should I write apps for Maemo?" posted by Michael Cronenworth
[14:48:12] matt [wronka.org]/kerberos Mr. Michael Cronenworth recently posted a well-worded question directly to the Maemo development community (and Nokia indirectly) which echos much of the sentiment around Maemo and the N900 right now. Personally, I love the devices promise, I like the software, but I wish Nokia were a bit more open with the community (release early, release often being just the start).

His missive read:
«The continued delay of PR 1.2 has caused me to pose this question.

Without customized packaging, I cannot reliably publish applications to
the global maemo.org repositories at this time. Also having APIs in flux
without knowing when the new version is coming out makes me even less
interested. Sure, you can compile a new kernel or create a trivial
application all day long and ship it today, but I wish to write some
rather advanced applications that cover a broad range of APIs.

At most, the SDK should have been released two weeks ahead of the final
release. With a little over a month now on the clock, people can only
begin to speculate as to how poor Nokia's release management is working.
I, as a software developer, realize that unexpected issues can occur
causing unexpected delays, so this e-mail is not a "Nokia hurry up"
plea, but a concern that developing for Maemo requires a serious
commitment to add checks for multiple versions of APIs and packaging
requirements.

If I relied on the ability to publish commercial applications to the Ovi
Store, I'd be living in the street. It's been six months and the Ovi
Store for Maemo is still without a commercial solution and is extremely
limited in general.

In closing, I have a few questions to propose since communication from
Nokia in general is hit or miss (some are better than others, I realize):

-Why was the PR1.2 SDK released at the time it was released?
-If there will be any updates >PR1.2, have there been discussions on
changing the staged release of the SDK?
-Is PR1.2 still going to be released? (I am not looking for a release date)
-Where are those Ovi Store applications that we have been taunted with
videos of?
-Will there be a commercial solution with the Ovi Store or should I
expect to create my own retail store?

Michael »

The delay in the release of PR1.2 has caused problems (and for a long time completely prohibitted any) applications from being updated on the device since the build environment was using an incompatible API from the end-user devices.

Fancy Small Computers
[19:49:41] matt [wronka.org]/kerberos I remember a time, not so long ago, that it was difficult to find a small computer that was portable and had a long battery. The OQO looked intriguing, but it would continue to be vaporware for several years. The only thing I could find was the Fujitsu Lifebook P-series, which at the time was using the exciting new Transmeta Crusoe chips designed for energy efficiency. Unfortunately, even compared to the computers of the day, that laptop was slow.

These days "netbooks", much to the shagrin of Psion, are bountiful--often running on Intel's x86-compatible Atom processor, although increasingly running on ARM Snapdragons (supported by Maemo, Android, and Ubuntu Linux distributions among countless other variants). Jamie just got an Assus EeePC that's running Ubuntu; my mother has an Acer Aspire One running some MicroSoft version. I borrowed the EeePC and didn't want to give it back, it's really well done given a single-use mentality (the Netbook Remix variation of Ubuntu is very Mac-like).

The question I find myself pondering is what do I really want? I recently picked-up the Nokia N900 which runs at a decent clip, the Maemo 5 (Fremantle) interface is pretty snappy, and I've really gotten used to the touch interface for anything non-productive ("consumptive") tasks. It's actually a very amazing machine that in practice is very much like that P-2110 but smaller.

In the end there's a lot of small options, and they each have a different niche to fill--but I'm not sure how much overlap they all have. It could be that one covers too much of another's niche, making two distinct devices redundant. I can carry the N900 instead of the E61; but it doesn't replace the Neo when I need a small pocketable phone. I could carry the EeePC on trips where it would take-up less space than the MacBook, and still have a phenominal-for-a-laptop keyboard to compose messages or configure machines, or even do work albeit on a small screen. But what does that really get me? A slightly bigger screen (2") and a bigger keyboard, at the cost of another device--and one that doesn't have a ubiquitous Internet access at that.

If more areas had converted to municipal WiFi, it might be a different situation.