CuteSoma (Soma.fm client for Nokia N9) has been available for 4 months now and it's the right time to publish some interesting statistics about downloads. First of all I didn't expect so much interest and I wasn't sure to have so many downloads, due to the fact that Nokia never advertised this device properly. But luckly lot of people don't care about advertising and buy a product anyway if they know it's one of the best available on the smartphone market.

I'm really happy to notice that the number of downloads is growing each month, this motivates me to continue with development (well... when my N950 comes back from Nokia, since I had to send it because it was broken).

I want to thank all the 3658 people that downloaded CuteSoma until now and all the people that are sending me their feedback, ideas and patches (yes Cornelius Hald, I'm talking about you ) you're giving me a big opportunity to learn C++/Qt/QML.

If you try to install Nokia QtSDK on Ubuntu using the Nokia installer (that provides a newer version than the one distributed in Ubuntu Software Center) you could get an error like this:

(Qt_SDK_Lin32_offline_v1_1_3_en.run:3126): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_widget_style_get: assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed

to fix it, you need to run the installer with a specific parameter:

andrea@centurion:~/Downloads/Qt$ ./Qt_SDK_Lin32_offline_v1_1_4_en.run -style cleanlooks

and everything should work!

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?

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.

Trolltech ha appena rilasciato la preview release di Qt Creator. Si tratta di un'IDE pensato appositamente per lo sviluppo di applicazioni multi piattaforma tramite Qt e C++.

Tra le funzionalità piu' importanti ci sono sicuramente un'avanzato completamento del codice digitato, l'integrazione con QtDesigner ed il debugger integrato.

Mancano ancora alcune feature che siamo abituati a trovare su altri IDE, come ad esempio l'integrazione con SVN/CVS, templates per il codice sorgente, opzioni di personalizzazione della formattazione ecc... tuttavia l'ambiente promette veramente bene, per essere una preview release. L'architettura a plugin che sta alla base dell'IDE, non esclude che funzionalità di questo tipo possano essere aggiunte in un secondo momento e rese disponibili anche da sviluppatori di terze parti.

Nonostante le librerie Qt stiano prendendo sempre piu' campo nei dispositivi portatili (palmari, cellulari ecc...), non è al momento supportato lo sviluppo di applicazioni per questo tipo di device. E' una funzionalità prevista per le future release, anche se al momento non sono noti i tempi esatti di rilascio.

Al momento è possibile scaricare l'IDE per tutte le principali piattaforme: Windows (Xp e Vista), Linux (32 e 64 bit), OSX. La disponibilità in futuro è però limitata soltanto dalle piattaforme per le quali esiste un porting delle librerie Qt.

La versione definitiva di Qt Creator dovrebbe essere rilasciata poco dopo il rilascio delle Qt 4.5, ovvero entro la prima metà del 2009. Così come le librerie Qt, sara' rilasciato con una licenza GPL compatibile che permettera' di sviluppare sia applicazioni commerciali che opensource.

ControlEee è una piccola applicazione che ho scritto utilizzando Python/Qt4 e che permette di abilitare/disabilitare i dispositivi del bluetooth, della webcam e della wlan su un Asus EeePC.

Installando una versione personalizzata di Linux sugli EeePC (come ad esempio la Ubuntu-eee), non si ha la possibilità di attivare/disattivare questi dispositivi in maniera semplice (è possibile farlo solo da riga di comando) e di conseguenza si rischia di tenere attivate queste periferiche anche se non le utilizziamo, con lo svantaggio di consumare inutilmente piu' batteria di quella di cui abbiamo bisogno.

Non trovando niente di semplice di già pronto in giro, mi sono deciso a scrivere questa utility. Al momento è in hosting presso Google Code e la potete trovare a questo indirizzo: http://code.google.com/p/controleee/

Al momento l'applicazione è stata testata soltanto su un Asus EeePC 901 con la distribuzione Ubuntu-eee 8.04.1, non è quindi garantito il funzionamento anche sugli altri modelli e/o utilizzando altre distribuzioni.

Da pochi giorni la Trolltech ha rilasciato la versione 4.4.0 delle proprie librerie multipiattaforma Qt. La versione corrente di Ubuntu (la 8.04) contiene al momento le librerie Qt nella versione 4.3.4.

Gli sviluppatori che utilizzano le Qt potrebbero voler installare l'ultima release delle librerie, per testare le nuove funzionalità o per verificare il funzionamento di una propria applicazione con questa particolare versione.

La buona notizia è che non c'è bisogno di scaricarsi i sorgenti delle Qt 4.4.0 e ricompilarli, perchè il team di Ubuntu ha già preparato i pacchetti per la Ubuntu Hardy.

Per installarli è necessario abilitare il repository chiamato 'hardy-backports' andando su 'System->Administration->Software Sources'. A questo punto la versione 4.4.0 dovrebbe essere disponibile tra gli aggiornamenti di sistema. Basterà quindi un apt-get upgrade per procedere all'aggiornamento.