I’m sure a lot of you have been trying out the latest release of Fennec (Alpha 1) already on your Nokia Maemo devices. If you haven’t heard of Fennec, it’s the highly anticipated mobile browser from Mozilla, mobile version of Firefox as others would say,  that is currently on alpha stage, and primarily being tested on the Maemo platform.

Madhava Enros, Fennec’s User Experience Lead gives us a quick walktrhough:

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Fennec Alpha Walkthrough from Madhava Enros on Vimeo.

Fennec Alpha 1 will work on both Diablo and Chinook (install). If you don’t have a Maemo device, you can try Fennec on your desktop as well (Windows, Mac, Linux).

I like being able to use my Nokia Internet Tablet as a computer, so that in a pinch I can work in a spreadsheet or edit some word-processing file.

But I got over the notion that it would be a computer for me and not primarily a web and e-reading device a long time ago.

Yes, the NIT really brought the price of a carryaround Linux computer way down.

But today I see[1] that Target has an Asus 7-inch EEE, complete with wifi, keyboard, 800×480 screen and 3 USB ports, for $270. BestBuy has the Asus 8.9-inch EEE (1024×600) for $300. And soon BB will be selling the 10-inch MSI Wind (1024×600, 120GB drive, 1.6 GHz Atom processor and Windows XP Home) for $399.

These are computer-first, carryaround-second devices, with pricing that seems to have sped past Nokia’s. If computing were my primary portable need, I’d be looking at them instead of the 8-ounce pocket-sized NIT.

To stand out in the crowd, the Internet Tablet needs to be the best at what it does best. Versatility counts, but let’s keep in mind what our primary need is, what we want to see first when we turn the device on. And really shine at that.

So, yippee! that the N810 WiMAX Edition is out, and hurray! that HSPA is in the works. Getting the internet — even walking or driving around — that’s what it’s all about.
_____
[1] Via techbargains.com

Internet Tablet Talk member mafranklin has reported that he has received his Nokia N810 Internet Tablet WiMAX Edition, and has confirmed that it is connecting to XOHM WiMAX, which is surprisingly active already in Chicago. According to him:

The Nokia N810 WiMax did arrive today following shipment from Nokia yesterday. Once powered up it automatically detected the XOHM nextwork here in Chicago. My registration for XOHM services failed with my Chicago zip code so I registered with a friends zip code in Baltimore (went in later and changed my billing address), selected the device, service plan and connected to the XOHM network.

XOHM  is currently offering their WiMAX On-the-Go plan for $30/month for six months(for limited time) and $45/month thereafter.

mafranklin ordered his Nokia N810 Internet Tablet WiMAX Edition  directly from the Nokia USA Store for $443 after a $50 automatic promo discount. Buy.com also has the tablet for $404.99 but is currently out of stock.

I met Reggie in Berlin before the Maemo Summit, and he was working on his presentation, What Users Want (which will be posted soon, btw). I looked over the notes that Krisse Juorunen of Internet Tablet School had sent him and made some suggestions. I thought about how the tablet is being used today and how it might be used — which was exactly what Ari Jaaksi asked a group of Maemo users the next evening.

I ended up putting my thoughts down on paper (unable to use the hotel’s power converters with Nokia’s AC-4U battery charger!). I hadn’t put in for a speaking slot, so making notes was just a way to keep my head in the topic while Reggie was working on his slides. He didn’t finish till 4 a.m. on Thursday night, so I kept writing. Here is what I wrote up but didn’t say at the Maemo Summit:

What more do we want?
In Ari Jaaksi’s talk at OSiM World, he characterized the reception of the 770 Internet Tablet as people asking, “What is this PDA that doesn’t have PDA functions? What is this phone that isn’t a phone?”

No one had seen a mobile device like this, explicitly designed for internet use: a full computer without a keyboard, without a hard disk, which fit in your pocket and was light enough that it didn’t act like an anchor.[1]

A computer you could use standing up. This was cool, but what was truly revolutionary was that you could surf the internet while on the move.

A Seamless Software Upgrade (SSU) notification should prompt you of a v4.2008.36-5 firmware update once you go online with your Maemo 4.1 (Diablo) device. The update aims to improve email, web browsing, and connectivity.

Early reports from itT members are mixed. Some have updated with no problems and have reported faster browsing, while others are experiencing locks, boot menu problems, looping reboots, and package conflicts which seem to get fixed after a manual reflash.

If you have installed anything out of the ordinary, be sure to read through the comments before updating.

Good news to those in Baltimore — Sprint is finally launching XOHM WiMAX. With the Nokia N810 WiMAX Edition (WME) still marked as ‘coming soon,’ N810 WME users will be enable to enjoy unlimited downlink speeds of 2Mbps to 4 Mbps on a no commitment or contract plan of $30 a month for six months and $45/month thereafter.

WiMAX is expected to arrive at Chicago and Washington next and soon to Dallas, Fort Worth, Boston, Providence, and Philadelphia.

[Thanks SD69!]

As the Maemo Summit came to a close on Saturday afternoon, I was sitting down at the front of the rmeeting room, looking for an outlet to charge my Internet Tablet. An unexpected and oddly stirring session on where we were going had ended abruptly, and now the microphone had passed from the audience back to the stage. The last words of these eventful two days were being issued by the same keep-things-moving ringmaster who had enforced the five-minutes-and-not-one-second-more lightning talks, and in the same keep-things-moving tone.

And I found myself calling loudly for the microphone, interrupting things simply to prevent the benediction from being pronounced on our assembly.

Some three hundred people were about to leave the Maemo Summit, having experienced an extraordinary feeling of optimism and gratitude. Happiness, you might even say.

Achieving that result was no small accomplishment.

I didn’t particularly have anything to say. But if there was one thing I knew, it was that there was a more fitting tone to close on than merely reminding everyone of the last item on the day’s agenda.

So when the microphone was hurriedly passed to me — What? We’re ending now! — I just spoke about what I was feeling: gratitude. And that gratitude was most focused on the ringmaster standing in front of us then. Because of course the person most responsible for the Summit’s having taken place and had such remarkable results was Nokia’s Quim Gil.

I don’t know if I would say Quim has a thankless job, but surely in his role of interfacing with the Maemo Community and, as he says, “promoting intelligence at maemo.org,” he has to field more of our negativity and dissatisfaction than anyone else at Nokia.

Quim is forceful and optimistic and more tolerant of benighted foolishness than anyone has a right to expect. (Anyone expressing that foolishness, that is.) I know this from my own dealings with him, in which I have evinced rather more than usual of my benighted and dimwitted side.

From the initial notion of a Maemo conclave — which he suggested spontaneously if not off-handedly during a cab ride — to organizing the schedule and then orchestrating its execution, every part of the Summit bore his fingerprints.

In no small measure, the remarkable vibrations we experienced resulted from Quim’s efforts, his passion, his optimism and tolerance and forcefulness.

We have a lot to thank him for — and others too, but let’s focus on one thing at a time.

I hope that our thanks for all Quim did to bring this Summit into existence and make it so eventful will help balance against the manifestations he experiences of our less gracious side the rest of the time.

At least we can say that we — people here and everywhere who make up the Maemo Community — are consistent in our behavior: we are always going to hold someone responsible for something that just happened.

In this case, it’s you, Quim. This has been a great experience for all of us. Thank you.

Well, that’s what I was trying to say, when I said whatever it was I actually said. I kept it short and didn’t mention any of the traits of the magnificent I’ve identified here, but I figure Quim needs much more of our gratitude expressed than he usually hears, so I have permitted myself to add the unexpressed subtext of that verbal thanks here.

Plus I don’t work behind the scenes, so I don’t know who the unsung heroes of our Maemo Summit are. Our gratitude extends to them as well, of course, but for today, Quim will have to stand in for everyone’s contributions. He’ll need to apportion our thanks to the deserving others on his own.

Note: Part I: What I didn’t say and Part II: What someone else said are in progress.

Up until last week, getting Maemo developers, Nokians and what Reggie describes simply as “enthusiasts” all together in one location, a Maemo Summit, seemed to me to be a good idea. I was wrong, I realize now: not a good idea.

A brilliant idea.

We all know the next steps in the development of this “mobile internet device” niche are critical — critical for Nokia, for the market itself, for the users, especially those first adaptors (that would be us, the posters and readers of itT forums), the recently dubbed “Maemo Community.”

At several disparate points in the summit, speakers noted how putting, say, coders and UI designers on the same team made for faster progress, fewer missteps, information being communicated with less noise.

Having the Summit took this idea of integration a level higher: instead of all the misconceptions that occur from separated contributors, whose every written note can be misinterpreted and its tone wildly misconstrued, now three-dimensional humans exist in the spot where virtual constructs and avatars stood.

The takeaway
In four days in Berlin — two at OSiM World (Open Souce in Mobile) followed by two at the Maemo Summit — I learned about enough interesting developments and projects to occupy a mere 10 or 12 days a week to follow completely, and participate in some.

As a nonce word, the pronunciation of maemo isn’t something you can check in a dictionary. And given its provenance, I’d venture that most people first encountered this word in print, and not orally.

Should each vowel be pronounced, making this one really short three-syllable word? Could be.

Should the first syllable be pronounced the same as the month of May? Makes sense.

Or does a followed by e represent the ae diphthong, which if really stretched out would be “maaa-eee” but which English speakers consider a long i: “my”? Well, yes, why not?

I’ve heard all these pronunciations used at OSiMWorld the past couple days, plus the “two-and-a-half-syllable” variation (really short e) and the “silent a” (”me”-mo).

Now some might argue that, as a trademark, Maemo’s pronunciation is properly decided by Nokia. But I figure if Sony couldn’t dictate that its corporate name be pronounced “sunny” (intended as a slang-y spelling of “sonny”-boy), that argument doesn’t hold water.

Someone said this evening that “I expect it to be ‘may-mo’ but I think of it as ‘my-mo’.” Me, too.

The first Maemo Summit begins Friday in Berlin. Since this event is birthing the Maemo Community to formally represent all the non-Nokia participants involved in our pocket revolution — that would be us enthusiasts, the users and developers — I’d like to point out that one good reason for preferring “my-mo” is simply how it subliminally confers this new status. Maybe Nokia has the trademark, but it is sharing ownership with us. With me. And now it truly is my Maemo.

The OSiM Maemo Developer Session today has previewed interesting topics to be discussed in detail tomorrow at the Maemo Summit. Below are some updates and some of the new and updated technologies that we can expect in future Maemo devices:

Newly adapted technologies:

• Meta Tracker - content search and metadata tools
• Pulse Audio - sound server replacing ESD & ALSA
• OHM - Hardware management daemon
• gUPnP - seamless Connectivity between devices
• upstart - fast system boot & stop

Updated technologies:

• Gecko - now integrated with mozilla.org
• Bluez - now with A2DP
• gstreamer - now with openMAX
• GTK+ - pushing mobile optimization
• Telepathy - now with Farsight2

New contributions to the open source community:

• to kernel.org:
  • HSPA/3G enablers for OMAP3 -> kernel.org
• to garage.maemo.org:
  • stlc45xx.aka - the much awaited WLAN driver
  • DSME - hardware watchdog & thermal monitoring
  • MIDAS - media player application framework
  • Calendar engine - iCal RFC 2445 implementation

Maemo Fremantle:

• SDK to be released soon
• list of packages now available
• incremental weekly releases unitl final version

Dr. Ari Jaaksi has just finished his keynote speech over at OSiM, revealing a lot of juicy stuff on the future of Maemo. Check out the the upcoming Maemo 5 (5th generation) highlights:

• online anywhere with cellular connectivity over HSPA for broadband anywhere
• powerful computing with TI OMAP3 processor - for better performance and better graphics performance
• photo sharing with hi-def camera - imaging and photo-sharing
• Nokia is now Gold Sponsor of Linux Foundation, has contributed code today for 3G/HSPA cellular (data) connectivity for OMAP3 to Linux kernel

• no news yet on backward compatibility for older devices

Congratulations to the newly elected officers of the Maemo Community Council:

• Eduardo Lima (etrunko)
• Andrew Flegg (Jaffa)
• Ryan Abel (GeneralAntilles)
• Simon Pickering (lardman)
• Tim Samoff (timsamoff)

The voting results are as follows:

• Eduardo Lima (etrunko) (200 votes)
• Andrew Flegg (Jaffa) (195 votes)
• Ryan Abel (GeneralAntilles) (163 votes)
• Simon Pickering (lardman) (120 votes)
• Tim Samoff (timsamoff) (101 votes)
• Jamie Bennett (baloo) (67 votes)
• Ryan Pavlik (megabyte405) (59 votes)

Links:
maemo.org Announcement
Maemo Community Council

I’m sure a lot of you who are also members of maemo.org have received voting instructions already from Dave Neary. Just to remind everyone, voting for the maemo.org Community Council will only run from September 2 to 10.

The candidates are as follows (see full declarations):

• Ryan Abel (GeneralAntilles)
• Jamie Bennett (Baloo)
• Andrew Flegg (Jaffa)
• Eduardo Lima (Etrunko)
• Ryan Pavlik (megabyte405)
• Simon Pickering (lardman)
• Tim Samoff (timsamoff)

To vote, you need to go to http://maemo.org/vote and provide the vote token number you have received in the email. You can only vote for one candidate so vote wisely. The whole voting process will only take less than a minute, so there is really no excuse to not vote.

The council will serve to help distill and focus issues and ideas (from the maemo.org mailing lists, IRC, itT, Bugzilla, etc), bring them to Nokia’s attention, and seek to understand Nokia’s position on these issues and help to explain it to the rest of the community. The council will also serve to facilitate a dialog between Nokia and the community on these issues, holding monthly IRC meetings with Nokia representatives to discuss progress on existing issues and raise new issues.

I’m sure a lot of you who are also members of maemo.org have received voting instructions already from Dave Neary. Just to remind everyone, voting for the Maemo Community Council will only run from September 2 to 10.

The candidates are as follows (see full declarations):

• Ryan Abel (GeneralAntilles)
• Jamie Bennett (Baloo)
• Andrew Flegg (Jaffa)
• Eduardo Lima (Etrunko)
• Ryan Pavlik (megabyte405)
• Simon Pickering (lardman)
• Tim Samoff (timsamoff)

To vote, you need to go to http://maemo.org/vote and provide the vote token number you have received in the email. You can only vote for one candidate so vote wisely. The whole voting process will only take less than a minute, so there is really no excuse to not vote.

The council will serve to help distill and focus issues and ideas (from the maemo.org mailing lists, IRC, itT, Bugzilla, etc), bring them to Nokia’s attention, and seek to understand Nokia’s position on these issues and help to explain it to the rest of the community. The council will also serve to facilitate a dialog between Nokia and the community on these issues, holding monthly IRC meetings with Nokia representatives to discuss progress on existing issues and raise new issues.

Three years ago, the Nokia Internet Tablet was revolutionary: it had a screen wide enough to display a web page, it cost way less than you’d expect, it was meant for carrying around in a way that no laptop/notebook ever had been. WiFi was engendering the walkaround web.

Add a webcam, GPS, keyboard; make it faster, more reliable; keep churning away at the migration of free-libre-open-source software. Three years down the road and the tablet team has not stopped pushing the envelope.

But is Nokia’s tablet revolutionary anymore?

My son’s friend does as much or more with his iPod Touch (16GB model for $269.99) [1], — even though it is more restricted in what it can do.

Both Apple’s and Nokia’s tablets forgo disk drives, emphasizing the screen. But the the iPod touch and its progenitor, the iPhone, instantly persuade you that a keyboard is unneeded and unnecessary. The media aspects — video and YouTube video, music and accessing music via the web — push other considerations aside: the idea that the lame telco phones suffice for the walkaround web couldn’t be more effectively (or contemptuously) dismissed.

Contrary to the most optimistic predictions, ubiquitous and free WiFi hasn’t materialized yet. For now, the walkaround web depends on a tablet screen and a data-cellphone connection. That’s where the iPhone is situated, not the Internet Tablet, and by its sales figures you have to concede that bundling the connection with the screen appeals to more people than separating them.

I’m reminded of the quote from a French revolutionary leader [2], “There go the people. I must follow them. I am their leader.”

Um, the people are heading off in another direction.

Are we going with them? And if so, what is necessary for the Nokia Internet Tablet to remain in the forefront of the tablet revolution?

Dropping the price would keep it there. (For a while, anyway.) Some people have argued the interface ought to abandon the computer GUI heritage and adopt a big-graphic Apple-like approach. You know you’ll see phone companies offering some Apple-influenced devices soon.

And there’s the phone.

Some while back, I wished for an impossibility — a slot in the NIT for a SIM card, so it could connect via a telco data plan. Why not just make it a phone then, a la the iPhone? I don’t know. I guess I want it to be a tablet, not a phone, unless I’m using a voip connection.

Subconciously, I must have accepted the argument that Nokia is approaching the iPhone feature-set from two directions — smart phones that would become more and more computery, and the Internet Tablet, which would be always a complement to (and not a replacement for) a cellphone.

But without ubiquitous online access, the NIT just gives us the semi-revolutionary walk-around-the-office-or-home-only web. So, one way or another, that has to change. Maybe it means we’ll see a phone added to the NIT. Or phone/NIT bundles from the carriers. Or WiFi-hotspot/NIT bundles.

Unless it gives me the web everywhere, the NIT falls into the merely convenient and not revolutionary category.

Of course, there is one way we’re still participating in revolutionary activity. That’s via the FLOSS/Linux connection. The keyboard on the N810 may be a step backward from the perspective of the interface, but it greatly simplifies using a ported Linux-desktop app.

And that’s a big deal. Partly because it ensures an inexhaustible supply of software. And underlying the web and our incarnation of it, the walkaround web, is our understanding that it has flourished because of the open nature of that earlier revolution.

Whereas “open” is not a word that appears in frequent proximity of “Apple.” The iPhone is engendering what we might term a Disney revolution, one in which the benefits accrue mostly to one company (which provides more entertaining or novel experiences to us customers than we got before).

When you see Nokia giving its $800-million investment in Symbion to an open-source foundation, you know that it is acting in its own financial interests. Nothing else could explain such sums. The tablet/phone OS field is weighted in favor of Apple and Microsoft and Google, and so Nokia is looking around to see who its friends are.

That’s us.

We’re Nokia’s friends. Us, the Maemo community, the FLOSS community, the Linux believers.

The revolutionary mob, as it were.

I believe the Nokia tablet is going to thrive in direct proportion to our community’s success in promoting/extending/liberating Maemo. Because Nokia may not ever release a $100 NIT with a SIM-card slot, but some enterprising Asian manufacturer likely will. And running Maemo on all those Microsoft-spec’d UMPC’s is going to bring even more people into the fold who are interested in tablet-sized apps working better. Every improvement developed on the outside will benefit the Internet Tablets that Nokia makes, and a larger pool of tablet users (especially Maemo tablet users) means a larger potential audience for Nokia to sell to.

And maybe the N810’s built-in GPS and cam calling will finally get the attention it deserves.

So I’m looking forward to the meeting in Berlin next month. Will it be a revolutionary congress that dissolves into infighting and factions? Or one that presses forward to spread the revolution?

[1] 16GB refurbished at buy.com, shipping included.

[2] This was said by Alexandre Ledru-Rollin during the 1848 revolution, and not the 1789 revolution.

Internet Tablet Talk gets about 700 new members per month. Out of those 700 new members, only a small percentage actually post a question or join the discussion in the forums. We think that majority of the new members would search the forums for answers but then end up reading replies that are too technical that make them uncomfortable to post a follow-up question since they don’t know how to compose their replies.

We intend to reach out to the new Internet tablet users and thus, we are launching Tablet Scene.

What is Tablet Scene?

Tablet Scene is a new site for those who are really new to the Nokia Internet Tablet and the Maemo world. Tablet Scene aims to post guides and tips on how to use the Internet Tablet, as well as discuss and answer Internet Tablet topics and questions as non-technical as possible.

Tablet Scene is replacing Internet Tablet Talk’s ‘Tablet 101.’

Who will be running Tablet Scene?

Krisse of Internet Tablet School is joining Roger and me to run Tablet Scene. Krisse has done a marvelous job at Internet Tablet School so, a lot of the first articles in Tablet Scene will actually be pointing to articles at Internet Tablet School. It is a privilege that we will get to work with Krisse (who is also a contributor at All About Symbian and All About N-Gage).

We are also expecting that seasoned members from Internet Tablet Talk and folks from maemo.org would help contribute and provide non-technical guides and answers to new tablet users in the forums. If you want to help the site and become a regular contributing writer, let us know!

How is it related to Internet Tablet Talk?

Internet Tablet Talk and Tablet Scene are sister sites — the two sites actually share the same membership database! This means post counts are shared, avatars are shared, signatures are shared, and even private messages are shared. The only thing you need to do is login separately (yup, with the same password), and you can visit, search, post between sites freely.

We hope to see some of you at Tablet Scene! Note that it is still work-in-progress so as always, comments and suggestions are always welcome.

Oh, our next project is the software site. We already have plans on how it will work but we hope to polish the details with the maemo.org folks during Maemo Summit 2008 in September.

After a month and a half and hundreds of submissions from 62 members of the Maemo community, the new maemo.org logo has been chosen:

The  logo is from Glauber de Oliveira Costa (aka glaoliver) of the INdT team, who wins a trip to the Maemo Summit at Berlin and the new Nokia N810 Internet Tablet WiMAX Edition.

Glauber also provided some  ideas on how the log would appear on shirts and accessories, which we hope we’ll see at the summit:

Congrats Glauber!

Links:
Official Announcement
maemo.org Official Contest Page
All the entries

To commemorate Mauku’s first anniversary, head developer Henrik Hedberg has released a new version of Mauku, now adding Twitter support. Twitter tweets are displayed in green and Jaikus are in yellow.

You can get the pre-release version (v. 0.4.2.2) already at the unstable repository (change user to unstable in the repository setting after you install — thanks Jonathan!), or just wait for the stable release which should be up soon.

Follow the Jaiku discussion.

Developer Justin Dolske has compiled Thunderbird (aka Shredder) on Maemo and checkout the results:

How’s it run? Fairly well, from my brief testing. The UI isn’t optimized for small-screen mobile usage, but it seemed responsive enough that I’ll try using it in coming days.

I wish he would share his experiment.

Read his full blog entry.

Good news! The folks from fring just announced today that the first version of fring for the Internet Tablet is now available for download. For those who are not familiar with fring, it lets you make free calls and live chat with all your fring, Skype, MSN Messenger, Google Talk, ICQ, SIP, Twitter, Yahoo! and AIM friends.

fring is available in all sort of platforms — Symbian, Windows Mobile, iPhone, Java ME, and now Maemo. If you are connected to a high-speed connection, calls made to other mobiles running fring is free. Calls however to landlines and regular cellular contacts can be made via SkypeOut or via SIP.

Download and let’s strart fringing!

Screenshots:.

[thanks dik!]

Yay, Diablo has been released! Nokia has just released new firmware upgrades for the Nokia N810 and N800 Internet Tablets that adds a Seamless Software Upgrade Feature. Based on Maemo 4.1 (Diablo),  the new OS2008 feature upgrade lets you now perform future OS upgrades over-the-air (WLAN only).

A new automatic notification from the home screen will now notify you of new versions of the OS and system apps, including updates to third party applications. The new firmware also replaces the current email app with an open source version based on Modest and tinymail. Chinese fonts have also been added, reported openssl bugs have been fixed, and browsing panning experience has been improved.

Links: Nokia N800 Firmware, Nokia N810 Firmware, maemo.org announcement

Yay! Nokia has just released new firmware upgrades for the Nokia N810 and N800 Internet Tablets that adds a Seamless Software Upgrade Feature. Based on Maemo 4.1 (Diablo),  the new OS2008 feature upgrade lets you now perform future OS upgrades over-the-air (WLAN only).

A new automatic notification from the home screen will now notify you of new versions of the OS and system apps, including updates to third party applications. The new firmware also replaces the current email app with an open source one based on Modest and tinymail. Chinese fonts have also been added, reported openssl bugs have been fixed, and browsing panning experience has been improved.

Links: Nokia N800 Firmware, Nokia N810 Firmware, maemo.org announcement

Marcelo (aka handful) of INdT has announced that the new version of Carman is coming August. Carman is an on-baord diagnostic analyzer for the internet tablet that lets you monitor and detect problems on your automobile by accessing the data stored on your car’s on-board computer, the same data that service technicians use.

The new version gets a user interface overhaul and uses the same graphics library of Canola. A Trip Report feature has been added that lets you graph your trips so you can find the fastest and most econimical route, based on engine stress. It also adds simple navigation using maps from OpenStreetMaps.

Enjoy some screenshots below. You can find more at Marcelo’s blog.

The maemo.org logo contest that is going on — like others, I received four email messages about it — got me thinking: How do you express the ideas of a community in a name and in a logo?

Actually, I mean both “the idea of a community” and “the ideas” of that community when I think about this.

It’s easier when the name helps bind you together — I belong to a group called FAMCAM - Families with Cambodian Children and you can tell immediately who wants to belong to this group and why.

Maemo is a made-up word and people encountering it form the meaning by what they learn from the encounter. Well, it’s good that a branding process is going on since what exactly Maemo represented hasn’t always been so clear — the OS on the Nokia Internet Tablets, the development kit enabling software for NITs to be developed on a desktop, a Linux distro that had a Hildon UI overlay to make things run smoothly on a NIT, the software side of the Nokia effort, the open-source side of the NITS, the collective effort spurred by Nokia but encompassing individual FOSS developers, something somewhere in this is what has been meant by “Maemo” over this time.

Now, “Maemo with a capital M” is being identified as an “open source software platform for mobile devices. Developed by Nokia in collaboration with the Maemo community and some of the best open source upstream projects.” The Maemo platform is distinguished from the Maemo SDK and is manifested in numbered Maemo releases. Maemo Software refers not to applications compatible with Maemo but instead to the team at Nokia that’s responsible for developing the platform, SDK and some of those apps.

And the other apps for Maemo? Well, they come from the Maemo community, of course. And if ever there are going to be any “devices running Maemo” other than those released by Nokia, then the line between Nokia’s supportive actions and the community will need to be clearly demarcated.

And that demarcation is in process now. The logo contest for maemo.org is one step in separating Nokia’s own use of Maemo from others’. Now maemo.org will be an expression of the community and not of the Nokia team. Or something like that.

Hence my logo design:

Maemo.org isn’t a company and even the “dot org” is an honorific rather than recognition that a real organization has existed. But as a community, it represents the group of people who all contribute toward the same goal. So in my interpretation of the maemo.org logo, you don’t get machined results or perfect alignment. Yet it’s precisely this non-automaton, non-corporate approach that is the essence of Linux and the FOSS movement and which accounts for its vibrancy.

You can see other expressions of the maemo.org community as a logo at the contest submissions page at wiki.maemo.org.

Nokia is quite serious in redefining the Maemo brand and maemo.org, the community behind Maemo, is holding a maemo.org logo contest (pending proposal approval). If you happen have an eye on simplicity and comfortable in using fonts with open license, design and submit a new maemo.org logo before August July 27, 2008 and you can win yourself (again, pending proposal approval) an all expense paid trip to the Open Source in Mobile (OSiM) World and the very first Maemo Summit in Berlin, Germany on September, plus be among the first to own the new Nokia N810 WiMAX Edition.

Head on to the official maemo.org logo contest wiki page for the details of the contest proposal.

Update: Contest is now official.

Nokia is quite serious in redefining the Maemo brand and maemo.org, the community behind Maemo, is holding a maemo.org logo contest. If you happen have an eye on simplicity and comfortable in using fonts with open license, design and submit a new maemo.org logo before August and you might win yourself an all expense paid trip to the Open Source in Mobile (OSiM) World and the very first Maemo Summit in Berlin, Germany on September, plus be among the first to own the new Nokia N810 WiMAX Edition.

Head on to the official maemo.org logo contest wiki page for all the details.

In a few hours from now, Dr. Ari Jaaksi, Nokia Director of Open Source Operations is scheduled to present his 30-minute keynote over at Handsets World in Berlin Germany on “Nokia’s Vision for Wireless Handsets”. The schedule lists his talk as follows:

• What are the attributes of wireless handsets going forward?
• What do users want?
• How is Nokia meeting the needs of the market around the world?

It is also expected that he will touch on the maemo.org community brainstorming session that a lot in the Internet Tablet community have participated on.

Let’s hope someone records his speech and posts it online.

I’ve just had a crisis of convictions — returning my laptop to the publishing firm I’ve worked for since 2001 meant I needed to buy a computer quick.

And the deciding point came down to this: How much computing power did I need away from home?

You have to know that my friends expect me to separate from them when boarding the train to New York so I can sit in a laptop-friendly seat. They’ve also seen me skip a not-yet-full PATH (subway) train on the next leg into the city and wait five minutes for the next departure so I can open up the laptop for twelve more minutes of screen time.

Did I truly believe a weblet like the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet would suffice for my mobile computing?

Or has my fervent evangelism been tainted by way-cheap access to the Nokeys* I’ve used and by a top-of-the-line 17-inch laptop that my employer nefariously supplied me with, ensured its constant access by having me work at home two days a week?

Would I spend my suddenly scarce dollars for another laptop, intending to cart it most everywhere as I’ve been accustomed to for the last four years?

Or would I buy a sufficiently powerful desktop for less money and rely on my N810 for all my mobile computing?

This from someone who has written well over 90 percent of my ITT postings on a laptop. Who spends his free time looking at websites in Khmer (a script not supported by the Nokia weblets) and who works with multilingual texts every day. Whose eyes are aging and who consequently has a 14-point minimum font size set in his browser. Who installs on average one new program a week with a footprint of 30MB to 150MB.

Fabulous as the Nokia Internet Tablets are for spontaneous surfing, e-book reading, voip calls**, games, GPS geocaching, listening to music and watching video***, it’s not a full-service device. I can’t type 20 words per minutes on its keyboard, much less 100 wpm (as I do on a full keyboard). Can’t run any topic map software (needs Java). No great XML and XSLT editors. And so on. How much would this lack hurt me away from my desktop? Could I manage to do what I had to do on the run with one or another weblet?**** The walkaround web is wonderful but what about trips? Could I go days without a full-powered computer?

Ah, who am I fooling?

I bought the desktop, which was half the price of the laptops I wanted. I’m a weblet guy, body and soul.

__________
* I’ve paid 99 Euros each for the 770, N800 and N810 as they appeared over these last three years (roughly $115 to $140) as part of Nokia’s seeding of the weblet development community. An N810 for $140 is a magnificent machine, there’s no doubt about it.

** I use Gizmo for my second line permanently now. When I’m on one- and two-hour conference calls, it’s really proved its usefulness by freeing up the main line for my wife’s calls.

*** TV mostly, via the HAVA player, Today in the kitchen and Charley Rose in bed.

**** OK, at the moment I have five NITs. But some of them I bought to give to family. Really! I just haven’t gotten around to it.

Great news! Access just released Garnet VM Beta 2 adding fullscreen support as well as MathLib support. Please verify and report any other enhancements that you find!Anyone care to send a screenshot?

Since our launch in November 2007, the ACCESS Garnet VM Beta for Nokia Nseries can boast over 15,000 downloads! Like you, thousands of Garnet VM users around the world still enjoy using Garnet OS applications for their simplicity and their diversity. During the last six months, we have received a tremendous response about the Garnet VM launch. You have shared valuable comments about the features you want to see in the next version of Garnet VM and the improvements you want in the applications. We listened to our GVM community and thanks to your help made some changes. We have added the most requested feature—support for full screen rendering. We have also identified and made other improvements to Garnet VM including providing full support for MathLib that will enable many additional applications to run on Garnet VM.

Today, we are pleased to announce that the new ACCESS GVM Beta 2 for Nokia Nseries is available:

Download the ACCESS GVM Beta 2 from our web site: http://www.access-company.com<wbr></wbr>/products/gvm/

Regards,

The Garnet VM Team

Quim Gil has just posted his Maemo LinuxTag Update slides. I would have wanted to hear what he had to say about Diablo, Fremantle, and Harmattan but I guess this slide says a lot:

maemo.org is also hosting a brainstorming session for the next ten days to talk about the future of maemo.org. It aims to consolidate feedback from developers and end-users to draft its mid-term goals, and eventually become the community proposal of the maemo.org product strategty.

Two Wiki pages have been setup so everyone can add their ideas, suggest, and even complain. Head on to the wiki and let your voice be heard (note: deadline is in 10 days)!

• The Next 100 Days of maemo.org
• maemo.org in 2010