Introduction

It would be nice to organize a weekend like the Barcelona Long Weekend we (the Maemo Community) organized on October 2009. These two days should be completly organized by the community and for the community. No formal conferences or talks, but interactive activities and hacking sessions where you, the participant, are the main actor.

What about the content of these two days? We could have (for example) programming tutorials, Qt tutorials, hacking sessions on a specific task, round tables where a developer explains his difficoulties implementing a feature and the others help him, ecc...

The first thing to do is spreading this and asking people (users, developers ecc...) what they would like to find during these two days. Once we've gathered some nice ideas we can organize them better.

When and Where

The basic idea is to organize these two days on November 13th, 14th. About the location that will host us we still have no idea. Probably it will be possible to use the same hotel used for the MeeGo Conference, but this must be confirmed yet.

Ideas for the program structure

• Active participation in the event - less talk, more code. No powerpoints - just you, the editor and the compiler. Be productive!
• A two-day Hackathon: Start putting your ideas into fresh code, or finish a project that has been on the back burner for some time
• Participants are encouraged to share their progress at the end of each day - what they accomplished, where they need further help, etc.
• A short but intensive indroduction to Qt/C++ (something like 3-4 hours course, offered by some expert developer)
• Round tables to discuss about UI improvements or features implementation: a developer could have found some difficoult implementing the UI for his application or to provide a particular feature. Other expert developers could try to help him with his problem.
• A workshop for x86 developers on getting started with MeeGo development for ARM - end goal: By the end of the session, everyone has a sample application running in an emulator on their laptop
• Developer tools training - a half day on using git, valgrind, oprofile

Discussion resources

The official place where I would like to take this discussion forward is the MeeGo Forum. The official thread is available here: http://forum.meego.com/showthread.php?t=1342
We also have started a discussion on Maemo Forum and you can find it here: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=61708

The official page with all informations available is on MeeGo Wiki: http://wiki.meego.com/MeeGo_Conference_2010/Early_Bird_Events

I've decided to candidate myself again (yes, I wasn't elected last time) for the Maemo Council elections. During these months I've tried to help more the Maemo Community and I've started working to two Qt/C++ projects. Here you can find something more about me.

Name: Andrea Grandi
maemo.org profile: Andy80 - http://maemo.org/profile/view/andy80/
Corporate affiliation: none

Introduction: My name is Andrea Grandi, I live in Italy and I'm a Computer Science student. I've worked for some years as a software developer, then I started university. I'm part of the Maemo Community since 2007. Since then I like to help new users, organizing events, developing applications for Maemo. During this year I've started developing applications using Qt/C++ for N900, to be ready when MeeGo for handled devices will be out. I really like to collaborate with other community members to build together the best product ever.

My life in the Community:

- May 2008: PyMaemo: Python for Nokia Internet Tablet @ PyCon Italia 2 - http://www.pycon.it/conference/talks/pymaemo-python-i-nokia-internet-tablet

- September 2008: ESBox and Pluthon Eclipse plugins: how to use Eclipse to develop Maemo applications @ Maemo Summit 2008 - http://wiki.maemo.org/Maemo_Summit_2008

- Summer 2009: I worked to python-mafw bindings, during a stage in Igalia.

- October 2009: python-mafw: MAFW framework for Python developers @ Maemo Summit 2009 - http://wiki.maemo.org/Maemo_Summit_2009

- May 2010: PySide: Python Bindings for the Qt Framework @ PyCon Italia 4 - http://www.pycon.it/conference/talks/qt-mobile-pyside-bindings

Current Activities: I'm currently working to two Maemo/MeeGo projects. The first one is mSoma, a Soma.Fm client that I'm developing with Lorenzo Bettini. The other one is LastGo, a Last.fm client. Both applications are written in Qt/C++ and are using QtMobility as multimedia libraries.

mSoma: http://gitorious.org/msoma - http://maemo.org/packages/view/msoma
LastGo: http://gitorious.org/lastgo - http://maemo.org/packages/view/lastgo

Motivations: I really would like to be able to do more for the community and one of the best way could be to be part of the council, to help both users/developers to explain their requests to Nokia and Nokia to understand the requests from the community. There are a lot of fantastic ideas coming from the community that could improve what we are doing: the key is to organize them and giving them more attention. This is what I've always looked for: working together to build something great! This will be probably the last Maemo Council, since now we (Maemo) and them (Moblin) are all part of the same community: MeeGo, and I'd like to help Maemo people to feel the most comfortable possible in our new Community.

What is Maemo Coding Competition?

This competition has been organized by Maemo Community for the Maemo Community. Developer can work to an application and submit it for one of the six categories available: Desktop, System & Utilities, Games, Graphics & Multimedia, Location & Navigation, Other. Another category is available too, and it's for beginner developers. The competition entry has now ended, but voting is open. You can find more information about the competition, in the official wiki page: http://wiki.maemo.org/Maemo_Coding_Competition_1

How can I vote?

Voting is available using a forum's poll for each category. Every t.m.o. user can give one vote for each category. Here's the complete list of polls:

• Desktop: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=760304
• System & Utilities: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=764039
• Games: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=58990
• Graphics & Multimedia: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=763679
• Location & Navigation: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=58964
• Other: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=59038
• Beginners: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=59074

p.s: I partecipate in the Graphics & Multimedia category with two applications: LastGo and mSoma. Please at least test them and let me know what do you think about!

While I'm still working to mSoma with Lorenzo Bettini, I decided to start writing another application. I needed to write something from scratch to learn better how to use C++ and Qt libraries, so I decided to write a client for Last.fm service. The application is still in full development, but you can already taste it if you have extras-devel repository enabled on your N900. At the moment it only supports basic radio features: tuning user's radio, playing a song, skipping a song and displaying song informations.

Other basic Last.fm features like scrobbling, marking a song as loved or banned ecc.. are not supported yet, but of course they're planned for the stable release. Please not that the application is still a bit unstable even if it works for normal tasks.

If you are a Last.fm subscriber and you want to test it, please install it from extras-devel repository and send me your feedback.

Note: since it's not allowed to use Last.fm API from a mobile phone (due to API license restrictions) I cannot distribute a valid api key with the application. I'm writing this software mainly to learn C++ and Qt and for the future tablets and netbooks that will be based on MeeGo. If you feel to assume the responsability, you can download the api key file and import it using "Import Api Key" that you can find in the application menu.

SomaFM is a streaming radio with near 16 different channels, available for free. Even if it's possible to copy-paste their streaming URLs to N900 Media Player, we (me and Lorenzo Bettini) decided to create a custom application, to make channels switching easier for the end user and to be able to add more features. We decided to take advantage of the new Nokia SDK and write the application in Qt/C++. Source code is available on Gitorious and it's always updated with latest version we're working on. If someone want to test the application, it's available in extras-devel repository  ("msoma" under Multimedia section) of N900.

mSoma

The UI is still in development as you can see. The application is already usable, but of course we have to work hard on the user interface. Feel free to test/use it and send us any feedback. If you want to contribute to our project (coders are welcome) please send us a patch with your code or ask us to be added to mSoma development team in Gitorious.

Introduction

My name's Andrea Grandi, I'm italian and I'm a Maemo user/lover/contributor since the Nokia 770. I love Python as development language and few months ago I also gave some contributions to the PyMaemo project.

In these days I had the idea to start writing a Twitter client for Maemo with a precise direction in my mind. I'll try to explain all my reasons here. First of all I've to thank the author of Mauku client. I use it since its first version and I'm quite happy with it. Then, why do I want to write another one?

1. Maemo (MeeGo) is moving to Qt and for this reason I'm going to use Qt, while Mauku uses Gtk.
2. I'm learning Qt and what is better than writing a complete (but not too complex) application to learn better?
3. Mauku is not free as lot of people could think. Reading the source codeyou find this "You are NOT allowed to modify or redistribute the source code.", while I want to write a client and release it under GPL2 or GPL3 license.
4. Mauku is not updated since some months and we have no news about it.
5. I love Python and I like to write free software in this language.
6. I want to give to Maemo a stronger contribute.

My request for help

Before lot of people start writing their own client resulting in 4-5 twitter clients for Maemo, why don't we join our strength and work to a common project? I'm not a Python expert nor a Qt one, but I've some experience as project/team leader and since this is not a complex project, I would be glad to lead it. So, I'm looking for Python developers, Qt developers, UI designers and whoever want to contribute to this project. I still have to find a good name and logo for this application.

Who want to help me?

Few days ago I published some notes about my personal experience with PR 1.1.1 firmware upgrade in Nokia N900. In particular my device got an infinite reboot loop after upgrading the firmware and I had to flash the firmware image from scratch to fix the problem. Today I was kindly contacted by Max Waterman (I suppose he works for Nokia) and he explained me what was the problem. It was caused by a little bug in Harmattan UI demo and they fixed it (the fix is already available in extras-devel).

No surprise for me: extras-devel contains unstable packages and if user enables it, he does at his own risk. The most important thing is the fact that the official firmware without any unstable application doesn't suffer of this problem at all. The thing that really impressed me so much (in a positive sense) it's that I was contacted privately by a Nokia developer apologizing for the bug (no problem man, it's part of the game if someone want to test extras-devel software) and explaining that they already fixed it.

This is what I like of Maemo (or should I already call it MeeGo?), I really feel to be a part of it!

I don't know if it's just a case or if I'm the only one who had these problems, but I'll report them anyway, maybe somebody had my same problem and we could try to prepare a proper bug report to make the Maemo team fix them.

Infinite boot loop after upgrade

First of all I have to say that before upgrading to PR 1.1.1 I checked if I had enough space on the rootfs. I only had 27 Mb and so I decided to remove some unused applications, deleted some *.deb in /var/cache/apt/archives and disabled extras repositories. Of course I also did a backup of all my configuration. After the cleaning operation I had near 60 Mb free on rootfs, enough to install the upgrade.

I closed all running applications, started the application manager and began the upgrade. After the upgrade was completed, the device did a reboot... then another one, then again, again.... until I had to remove the battery to stop it.

Conclusion: I had to re-flash the device with the latest image to make it work again.

mafw-dbus-wrapper taking all the CPU

I was watching a video (using subtitles) and after some minutes the whole UI became unresponsive. Strange because I already did this before without having any problem. I tried to check the problem using "top" utility from terminal and I saw that there was a mafw process (mafw-dbus-wrapper) that was taking 80-90% of CPU. My fault is that normally there are at least 3-4 , mafw-dbus-wrapper processes and I didn't check which one was causing the problem. Anyway I made a screenshot, just in case it can help.

I hope this short report can be useful to help Maemo team to fix or at least investigate what happened. Just leave a comment or contact me if you need more informations.

Nokia has published a demo application for N900, available in extras-devel repository, that shows a preview of Maemo 6 (Harmattan) user interface. Here there are some screenshots of the demo:

Demo application main window

Question dialog

Text entry dialog

Progress indicator

Information banner

Event banner

You can find more pictures in my Flickr album. Please note that installing this demo will also install Qt 4.6.2 on the N900 and about 52 Mb are required.

Being one of the developers who received the discount to buy a N900, during these days I contacted the DDP customer care to have more informations and details. I'll publish here both my original question and the official reply.

1) The price of N900 is 250€ and I've read of people who paid it this price. Anyway here you say that the VAT is not included:
https://pro.forum.nokia.com/site/global/tech_resources/discounted_devices/l_ddp.jsp
so it should costs 300€ not 250€, right?

The VAT applies only for Finnish developers, for the others the price is the price they see in the eStore, no VAT is added to that.

So, all non-finnish european people, will pay 250€ for the N900.

2) How much time can I wait before ordering it? In this moment I'm in Valencia (Spain) and I won't come back to Italy before Christmas. I'd like the order to be shipped to my home in Italy (I registered as italian user and I want italian keyboard layout), but I'd like to wait to order it, because since there's no warranty and I need to tell you about any problem within a week, if I order it now I will be able to check it only at the end of december when I'll come back to Italy.

I guess this should not be a problem.

This part is not confirmed yet, since Quim told us to hurry up to buy it.

3) How many devices can I buy at that price? Here you say I can buy two:
https://pro.forum.nokia.com/site/global/tech_resources/discounted_devices/l_ddp.jsp
but here you say I can buy one: https://pro.forum.nokia.com/showProduct.do?product_id=5096

I don't want two devices, but another friend of mine, who help me in a project for the Maemo Community, would like to be able to buy one for the same price (he wasn't able to get the discount because his karma is still low).

As far as I know, you can only purchase 1x device per person, regarding MAEMO N900.

4) Where can we find the new firmware? In the FAQ you say: DDP does not flash devices. It's ok, I can do it, but there's no public firmware for N900 at the moment.

To update N900, can possibly be using NSU. Nokia software updater.

5) Is it possible to have a device with localized keyboard (for example italian one) ?

All N900 will have EURO variant, Italian language is one option.

Note: even these replies come from the official customer care, I don't assume any responsability if they shouldn't be all exact. If you have any doubt, please contact them directly at DDP.program@nokia.com