fidzu : Maemo

Picked up from Internet Tablet Talk, there're a couple of videos showing how bad the OpenMoko UI is on basic usability challenges.

What's interesting is that the small comparison with the iPhone shows how poor hardware (pressure-based touchscreen, bezel around the screen) combines with poor software implementation (separate apps => slow start-up times, little thought to the size of a usable target area) to emphasise the poor user experience. And, frustratingly, how many of the issues raised cut quite close to the bone for Maemo devices too :-(

Hopefully the UI changes in Fremantle (for example, #2564) will be a big help; and a concentration on finger usage may allow a more sensitive, different, touchscreen technology to be used in the N900. Will be very interesting to see the UI talks at the summit - see you there!

4 0

23 Jul 2008 10:39am GMT

Can't really say anything on this one, I just plan on going College after finishing school.



Thanks for taking the time to participate in this session, qwerty12.

EIPI7 0

23 Jul 2008 10:21am GMT

Good news for me… after missing GUADEC and other interesting events it looks like I'll make it to the first Maemo Summit in Berlin. The list of participants is quite impressive - I guess this will be a really interesting event. Just join us there :-) I read a few lines about odeviced… anyone else who [...]3 0

22 Jul 2008 10:20pm GMT

That is the question…

I am honoured to have become the latest GNOME personality to catch the eye of Sam Varghese.

Sam feels I was unfair in my characterisation of him as a "shock jock". He may be right… he says himself that the definition of a shock jock is "a slang term used to describe a type of radio broadcaster (sometimes a disc jockey) who attracts attention using humor (sic) that a significant portion of the listening audience may find offensive." Clearly, since Sam's not funny, I was unfair. Sorry Sam.

I take issue with Sam's massive leap (which reminds me of when my maths professors used to say "obviously it follows…" at the end of complicated theorems) when he says that I "have to fight the perception that any of [our] major sponsors is making nice noises to the other camp".

First, as I have told Sam on numerous occasions when he contacts us for answers to leading questions, we do not think of KDE as "the other camp". Second, Mark Shuttleworth doesn't exactly avoid a perception that he's a fan of KDE. Later in the same article, he says that he thinks that KDE have got a nice rate of development going, and are driving innovation better than GNOME. He's the first top-paying member of KDE eV, which is roughly the same amount of money annually as Canonical gives to GNOME.

And Mark's not alone. Nokia are sponsors of both Akademy and GUADEC, as well as investing heavily in both GNOME (through Maemo) and QT (and paying the wages of some KDE developers).

What Sam has trouble understanding is that I have an issue with sloppy journalism. I like the KDE developers, we get on well, and I've done a lot of work bridging gaps between projects - whether it be through the organisation of Libre Graphics Meeting or FOSTEL, or my participation in the FLOSS Foundations group, or the numerous conversations I have with KDE board members about any number of subjects (including Akademy & GUADEC colocating).

So when Sam sets me up as a shill, or as someone who has a problem with KDE (or considers them competitors) he's ignoring a body of evidence that suggests otherwise. But then, with Sam, that's par for the course.

1 1

22 Jul 2008 7:39pm GMT

Matthew Miller of ZDNet Blogs responded to a popular article by TechCrunch outlining what they think is the ideal web tablet. Matthew says that it's already here in the form of the N800 and N810. Take a look at both articles and decide for yourself.

3 0

22 Jul 2008 9:45am GMT

Proposal: Desktop Search Hackfest. Calling to: Xesam, Beagle, Tracker projects and whoever else is involved. When: September 19 + the days the developers decide before & after. Where: Berlin. Why: The Board made a call to organize hackfest around events and the Maemo Summit has answered. Budget: Funded by Nokia within reasonable terms. But why? Ok, let me explain. We have some [...]6 0

22 Jul 2008 8:52am GMT

Mobile Tablets! is pleased to announce an exclusive Q&A session with Internet Tablet Talk member, qwerty12.

qwerty12 is one of the newest members of itT. In the short time that he has been involved with the tablets, he has made a real impact on the community.

Tune in to see what qwerty12 has to say!


0 1

22 Jul 2008 2:27am GMT

One of the main requests heard again and again about the Nokia tablets is that they should have a calendar. It's actually rather odd that the tablets don't have one, because almost all of Nokia's phones and smartphones do. Well, if you are looking for a calendar there's now an extremely easy way to add one to the tablets. In fact there are two methods, and they're both completely free. Method 0 0

22 Jul 2008 12:55am GMT

As I mentioned already in one of my previous posts, the N810 has a integrated built-in GPS receiver.

In order to use the GPS functionality with the 'voice guidance' feature, you need to buy an extra license code from 'Wayfinder', the Wayfinder Navigator Nokia N810 Edition. The price for the license depends on the region and duration (1 month (9.98 EUR), 1 year (89.00 EUR) of 3 years (98.99 EUR)).

During my holidays in May I have tested the Wayfinder Navigator during 7 days free of charge. Depending on my conclusions after this trial periode, I was going to buy or not to buy the Wayfinder license.

Find hereafter my conclusions.

Positive

• the voice quality is excellent
• the standard screen layout is good

Negative

• the gps fix time took often too long, in the order of many minutes. Remark, this is improved drastically with the release of the latest OS2008 firmware
• the maps aren't always up to date. I assume most of them are from late 2006
• the input of a location with the sliding keyboard in a car isn't that efficient
• the license price is high with respect to order navigation software

and last but not least

• the maps are divided into a lot of map regions, making it difficult to use with Belgium as the 'starting' location. Let me explain it in more detail. The map region BeNeLux (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg) is the active region in my situation (only one map region can be active at the same time), since I am living in this region. Suppose I wanna drive to a specific location in the city Paris (France). Since the country France isn't available in the active map region, it's impossible to define the route from my current location in Belgium towards the destination location in France, since the active map region doesn't know 'Paris'. In fact, you have first to figure out how to drive from the current location to France, and within France, you have to activate the correct map region (containing France), ... as you see, not that user friendly, isn't it !
  In other words, it's impossible to drive from a location in one map region towards a location in another map region! The fact that almost every country in Europe acts as it's own map region doens't make it userfriendly

Final conclusion:

GPS with voice guidance is definately a nice feature !

The Wayfinder solution isn't however the best solution available. The issues encountered with the map regions that have to be activated, the issues that it's not possible to drive from one country towards another (residing in another map region) without struggling with 'how to drive to country ...' have let me decide not to purchase the Wayfinder Navigator software for Nokia N810 Edition.

Alternative

You can still use the N810 GPS functionality with the same available maps without voice guidance ! However it doensn't provide you the luxury of a voice guidance GPS it can be handy in some cases ;-).

On the market a lot of solutions are available which have Europe as a whole fully active, in other words, in Wayfinder terminology, in those solutions Europe is one map region !

2 0

21 Jul 2008 7:50pm GMT

I'm taking several weeks off. Up here in the north, summer time is so valuable that I want to dedicate as much time as possible to my family and to myself.

So I've been sailing with my family and doing other relaxing stuff. (Lasse, thanks!)

You may know that up here in Scandinavia we have something we call "every man's rights". In essence, I can hike on any land, spend a night in any forest, or moor my boat to any island I please -- as long as I'm not in a close proximity of anybody's home or summer cottage. Open access to our beautiful country!

10 pm!

You need proper tools for docking in the wild!

So I'm getting ready for the fall. One important occasion will be the Maemo Summit right after the OSiM world in Berlin. I hope we can -- once again -- initiate some fruitful discussion around open source (I know we will ;-) ), do some real work, meet interesting people and have fun. See you there!1 1

21 Jul 2008 6:24pm GMT

As Nokia has a promised during the release of Diablo - OS2008, the automatic notifications feature in the home screen about the availability of OS updates or single applications, including those installed from third parties, is working fine !

This is really a quality improvement for the end user. With this feature the end user will be informed automatically when a new version of installed software is available, especially important for security updates.

The only thing that should be improved further in the future is the 'repository management'. Sometimes it's still required to tune the repositories manually in order to install some of the applications. Not really user friendly when becoming more and more a product for the mass.

2 0

21 Jul 2008 6:00pm GMT

- I got Mamona 0.1 and it boots up!!! But... How can access the terminal? - You can't, there is no terminal.. - Bad.. but why? - There is no virtual keyboard. - And how can I play with Mamona? - USB serial, USB net, ... Yeah, as you can see, we actually were providing a ...7 0

21 Jul 2008 3:30pm GMT

I've just got back from Istanbul and when I was about to release Vagalume 0.7 I saw that the Last.fm web page had been redesigned.

However I am missing a very important feature ! Where's the ability to listen to free records in the Last.fm client ?

When I went to pages like this one there used to be a "Play in Last.fm software" which pointed to this lastfm:// address so I could play the album in my Last.fm client. But I can't find that link anymore, it seems that the only choice now is to use the flash player.

Has this feature been removed ??

0 0

21 Jul 2008 2:17pm GMT

Nokia Chat is a new beta labs release from Nokia for their handsets, but because it's a jabber based chat system, you can easily take advantage of the basic features on your tablet as well. In my case, I'm extending my usage on the E71 through my desktop (Adium and Digsby) and also on the N810.

With your account created, you can simply add a new jabber IM account on the tablet using chat.ovi.com as the server and stay in touch just like any other IM account. Nokia chat offers some very cool location based stuff along with address book integration which unfortunately does not extend to the Tablet just yet. I have no idea if we'll get to see anything connect with the pretty limited contact list on the tablet, but certainly the location settings would be very cool to use. On the handset, you can use Landmarks saved from either Nokia Maps or Google Maps. I'd imagine we'll have to wait until the launch of Nokia Maps on the web which will hopefully also include Plazes integration.

I'm atmasphere [at] ovi.com if you'd like to connect.

4 0

21 Jul 2008 3:21am GMT

Tonight I decided to reflash my N810 … I don't normally decide to reflash a device too easily as the re-install process is always a pain. With the arrival of 2008, that process has gotten easier, but finally with Diablo dare I say it's almost friendly.

I had to reflash in order to get video playback working again. Apparently either the rotate or Android hacks I've installed (no idea which) caused a glitch that made clear video impossible. Since I use my tablet for movie viewing on planes, this was a non-starter.

My process tonight was to remove the things I did not want restored (5 min), run a backup (5 min) and then reflash (< 1min). After setting the date and time, I followed the prompts on startup to restore from backup and choose the one I'd just made. The restore process too somewhere between 5-7 minutes and I would have been quicker if I'd just clicked "yes to all," but I prefer to watch what's going on a bit during these times. From there the tablet prompted me to restore my applications. I chose update all and it then proceeded to download everything and install in sequence. I was very pleasantly surprised to see that my custom folders from my prior build were ready to receive my freshly installed apps. This used to just add even more time to the process of rebuilding ...

My wireless connection failed at one point during the restore process which stopped the installations. The fail was on my router not the tablet and when it was ready for connections again, I simply choose, Tools / Restore Applications and the installation process resumed.

I'm back up running without worrying about anything for my trip tomorrow. No time wasted getting things back in order, just a fresh tablet yet familiar with all my apps, settings and prefs restored! This is great work by the Maemo Team!!

BTW - If you've been waiting to get an Nokia N810 Internet Tablet, Amazon (and others) have them as low as $299 which is a great price!

1 0

21 Jul 2008 3:11am GMT

My experiment in the Rogers Portable Internet over the past several weeks has left me with mixed feelings.

On the positive side of things, it has enabled me to be connected while at work as I illustrated in Part 2. However, in its present modem form, it is bulky and fairly non-portable. It was neat to get a flavour of a WiMAX enabled N8X0 via my in-car experience of Part 5. I thought it was pretty slick to be downloading maps while I drove.

Positives:

1. Offers some mobility in Canada without using expensive data via cell phone. For a fixed second location such as what I required, it is adequare.

2. The price is fairly good - $20/month for 10 GB which is cheaper than any data plan I can get with tethering in Canada.

Negatives:

1. The Portable Internet Basic that I had was slow. 512 kbps is nothing to write home about in today's day and age. For mobile versions of popular sites, it was adequate.

2. Not really portable. My in-car setup showed that using this modem in a car is impractical due to its size.

3. Frequent loss of signal has meant that my connection hangs in sometimes critical points of surfing.

4. The flavour of WiMAX currently retailed by Rogers and Bell does not allow the modem to handoff to the next tower - a severe limitation for true portability.

5. VOIP - forget about it.

Discussion:

Primus Canada is trialing a newer version of WiMAX that runs on 3.5 GHz in Hamilton, Ontario. This may be the type of WiMAX that allows handoffs. However, that trial is limited to Hamilton, and there is no indication when a nation-wide rollout would occur.

If Rogers and Bell upgraded their networks to allow faster, more reliable connections with the ability to maintain connections while travelling - it would then come down to price. For instance, you can currently get a USB 3G modem from Rogers, which costs $50/month. It only gives you about 300 MB of data. The speeds are much higher, and it runs on cell technology, so coverage is excellent. Coupled with a Cradlepoint router, this would be a faster and more portable internet solution. Of course, tethering from a 3G cell phone would be better also, but recently, tethering in Canada has become expensive.

My conclusion:

I started off this experiment without a hypothesis really. I did not know what to expect. What I found is that given better hardware (faster and more portable), and a more advanced network, this would be a viable mobile solution. For instance, a pocket sized WiMAX modem could be coupled with a Cradlepoint router.

Alternatively, something like a N810WE with a more advanced network would probably be fine for me. I am however beginning to think that 3G makes more and more sense. For existing tablet users, something like a USB 3G modem. And for a future tablet, an integrated 3G radio.

If there is a network upgrade in Canada, and I can get my hands on some newer hardware, or a N810WE, I would love to redo this experiment. Until then, I think I will reconsider my WiMAX subscription.

3 0

21 Jul 2008 2:19am GMT