A new version of the Internet Tablet Video Converter has been released to fix bugs, add API support for Python, Perl, and Java, and now support for Mac OS X.
Victor Brilon, Sr. Product Manager, Home Networking Solutions, Convergence Products posted the following at the Nokia Beta Labs Blog:
Nokia Internet Tablet Video Converter has been updated and we’re thrilled to bring you this latest version. This latest release includes several major updates, including:
- A version for OS X that’ll run on Tiger and Leopard on Intel and PPC platforms. This is our first release for the OS X platform, so we are eager to hear your feedback on how it could be improved
- The codecs for the Windows version have been updated and hopefully we’ve fixed the bugs that the community has reported to us
- The Developer API has been updated based on user feedback. It now supports Python, Perl, and Java as programming languages to access the API. We’re very interested in seeing what the community can cook up using this feature.
Download here.
Thanks to our great Internet Tablet community, we’ve made some really good changes to this software and we hope you like it as much as we do. Please report any bugs you find at https://bugs.maemo.org.
Thanks,
Victor
You must have all seen the video that I made of the HAVA Player for the Internet Tablet in action. If this is an Internet Tablet feature that interests you, you can then participate on Monsoon Multimedia’s HAVA beta program to get an advance copy of the software as well as help better the software.
As a beta participant, you can avail of discounted HAVA hardware which you can purchase now. Monsoon is then releasing the first beta of the HAVA Player for the Internet Tablet to the beta participants on May 8.
See the full HAVA Beta Program details after the jump.
Continue reading ‘HAVA Player Beta Program’
My reminders look like this: Michael’s birthday in three days and Time to leave for dentist appt. They’re entered in a calendar app. They’re triggered when I arrive at a particular date or time.
But what about when I arrive at a particular place?
Since I have GPS in my Nokia N810 Internet Tablet, why can’t I get reminders that look like this? — About to pass Home Depot. Need to get electrical tape.*
Or: One block from dry cleaners. Pick up Jill’s sweater.
Come on now. We have a full-fledged computer system at our beck and call. Call Jim as soon as you get back from lunch should only activate when I return to work in the lunch timeframe and Pick up milk at grocery only when I’m passing the deli in the evening, on my way home.
You know, that GPS in the N810 has got to have way more use than we’re making of it.
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* This isn’t a new idea. More than two years ago, I wrote a post about Geominder, an app that runs on Series 60 phones.
Why web pads, internet tablets and ultra-mobiles aren’t the same thing
Ari Jaaksi famously announced the walkaround web in November 2005 when he pointed out that surfing wasn’t stationary any more than phone calls were. Cellphones had untethered calling, and a device like the first Nokia Internet Tablet meant the internet was available anywhere we were. We didn’t need to go to a computer in a specific location to get to the web any more than we needed to find a payphone to make a phone call.
Henceforth, we could carry our web-access with us, the same way we carry our phones. Ari said it all when he wrote: “I surf in trains, in cafeterias, at airports, even while driving. I can go online anytime and anywhere I want.” He called his observations “bold” but they were in fact revolutionary in understanding how this changes not computing, not using the web, but how we organize our lives.
Long before I heard of the Nokia 770, I used a small, keyboardless WiFi-enabled tablet to access the internet from Bryant Park in New York City. The notion of the web away from the desk antedated Nokia’s efforts by many years. By my count, it produced at least eight web pads (the contemporary term) prior to the 770, all of which failed to establish themselves.
My most complete experience was with the Screen Media FreePad, from a Norwegian outfit. The FreePad had a 10.4-inch screen, 800 x 600 resolution, built-in WiFi and “cordless telephone services”; and it ran an embedded Linux. No disk drive; if you wanted, you could attach a USB keyboard.
The rest of FreePad’s hardware was feeble by today’s standards but practical for 2000. Even back then the group I was working with expected to buy the FreePad for just $800 (in quantity).[1]
Eight years ago, and only $800. WiFi was in its nascent stages then, but if you were describing an organization-wide device (as we were) and not a personal weblet,[2] that probably wasn’t what kept the FreePad from succeeding.
What did?
Or maybe easier to answer now, from the perspective of time: What is a walkaround-web tablet? What does it look like, what can it do, what is required of it?
Continue reading ‘A manifesto for the walkaround-web tablet’
We all know how hard it is to get release dates out of Nokia — sort of an extreme version of “ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies.”
But it’s even harder to get word of a product’s demise. One day a product shortage is a sales-finished notice. That’s why this random encounter with an unavailable-in-your-area notice for the Nokia N800 makes me wonder what’s in store.
PS: Did I say the unavailable area is North America the U.S.? Seems like a pretty big market to run dry in.
Added later: Now someone’s posted the info that Dell has discontinued selling the N800.
You might regard the Sharp Willcom D4 UMPC (pictured above) as either a competitor to Nokia’s N810 Internet Tablet — or maybe as its next-generation successor.
The D4’s 5-inch screen has 1024×600 resolution: better than the NIT’s 800×480. It comes with 1GB of RAM and a 40GB drive. WiFi and Bluetooth, of course, slide-down keyboard and camera. (No GPS) Befitting a next-generation device, the D4 is the first web tablet utilizing the Atom CPU, Intel’s low-power chip for mobiles (maybe I should say “speedy chip” it runs at 1.33GHz).
Yup, the D4 has everything going for it. “Beating Nokia at its own game even,” you might say.
Except the design parameters for a weblet include more than “screen shows a full web page width.” Light weight — the D4 is twice as heavy as an N810. Fits in a pocket — the D4 is 1 inch wide and 7.4 inches long; but maybe Sharp’s customers have bigger pockets than I do.
Well, sure, they’ll need to. At $1525, the D4 obviously requires deep pockets.
Me, I’ll be buying weblets in $500 installments — is a D4 worth more than three N810s?
Not to me, anyway, with my small-in-every-way pockets.
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See follow-up comments here and here.
Every time I mention the Nokia Internet Tablets — on the web or in conversation — I always describe them as running “a full Debian Linux (modified to be aware of the hardware keys).” I used to say “virtual keyboard and hardware keys” but the N810 obviates that.
This passes the truth-in-advertising test, I think. But it’s not one-hundred percent true.
Sure you can take just about any Linux application and compile it so that you get something that runs on a NIT. This screenshot of the particularly idiosyncratic font-creation program Fontforge running on my N810 is proof enough for me.
Even if some apps are slow or not really suited to a tablet, I am generally tempted to say you can do anything on a NIT that you need to do on a computer.
Except you can’t print.
Can’t print out that email with the address and time of the meeting. Can’t print that web page with the neat info. Can’t print out the short notes entered on the train coming in to work. Can’t print out that sketch of the new design to hand to your wife.
Supporting every printer imaginable — OK, it’s not something I want to ask for. I think a “full” Linux ought to, but I’m pragmatic enough to know that’s a fool’s errand.
It would be nice if some apps could print to a generic inkjet or Postscript device.
See, sometimes I want to surf away from my desk, on the walkaround web.
And sometimes I want to walk around with a piece of paper in my hand.
Poking around the Nokia BetaLabs site recently, I learned about Nokia Audiobooks, which is pretty much just what you’d expect: Recorded books that you can listen to on your Nokia S60 phone.
The description points out that MP3 compression isn’t really suited for voice, and that using the AMR-WB codec* makes for way smaller files — 5 to 10 times smaller — that still have “excellent speech quality.”
So you take any audiobook, convert it to the speech-optimal format with Nokia’s free Audiobook Manager software, and listen to it with Nokia’s Audiobook Player on the S60.
Why bother? Well, why waste space? “A typical 400 page novel translates into 10-20 hour long audiobook, which would traditionally take more than dozen CDs or hundreds of megabytes of low-quality MP3 files.” Transfer times are faster and storage needs lower.
Maybe MP3 players will become MP3/AMR-WB players, handling this new format for on-the-go listening. But, honestly, I’d rather listen to an audiobook on my internet tablet than my phone.
Me, I don’t like headphones or earbuds, so I really like the NIT’s speakers. I wonder, Why doesn’t Nokia port the Audiobook Player to the tablet? Or adapt the built-in media player to handle AMR-WB?
It makes a lot of sense to me. And, well, that’s what I’d like to hear.
ADDED LATER:
Altruist** that he is, qwerty12 (aka fahim) has added the AMR codecs to mplayer. See this thread. Well, there are some hitches (can’t see your amr files in gmplayer to launch them). I’m actually listening to a podcast of Cory Doctorow reading the first installment of True Noise, which I converted from an 18.3 MB mp3 file. The amr file is but 6.7 MB.
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* “AMR-WB codec: Nokia Audiobooks uses standardized Adaptive Multi Rate-WideBand speech encoder (3GPP 26.190 / ITU-T G.722.2 See www.3GPP.org / www.itu.ch) for audio data compression in order to keep memory requirement for a book very small while maintaining excellent speech quality.”
** Doesn’t listen to audiobooks himself but added the codec just because we asked so plaintively!
Here’s an exclusive at Internet Tablet Talk. We were able to get permission from Nokia to play the Nokia N810 WiMAX Edition launch video here at itT. Enjoy!
Please do not embed, copy, or distribute this video without proper permission from Nokia.
If you haven’t seen the Nokia N810 WiMAX Edition in action and the side-by-side pics with the N810 Standard Edition, you can view them here.
[Thanks Satu & Tomas!]
I just read a post that I think others would be interested to see. In a thread about the MyPaint application, forum member MobileDivide wrote that “[MyPaint] and Numptyphysics have redefined my tablet use over the last few days.”
I can believe it.
MyPaint is a “small [Hildonized] pressure-sensitive painting application written in python and gtk” by Martin Renold and ported to Maemo by Anders Gudmundson.
Here are a couple example drawings done on an N810 in MyPaint by ArnimS:
Not the usual kind of thing we’ve seen so far.
Numpty Physics is Tim Edmond’s gravity-physics game using the same Box2D engine that Crayon Physics does.
MyPaint and Numpty Physics have one thing in common — they let us use the Internet Tablet as a tablet. Sketching can never be done gracefully with a mouse. Even graphics tablets — hand on the tablet, eye on the screen — have a disconnect. So sketching your idea right on the screen — or painting it — is, well, transformative.
Unlike other graphics programs the IT has seen so far, MyPaint focuses on brush controls, rather than image-editing, enabling the full range of styles a pressure-sensitive tablet can capture.
When we talk about the Internet Tablet as being revolutionary or transformative, it’s because everything in its conception — display, open platform, size and weight, price — serves to free us from the constraints our desk/laptops have imposed on us.
So, thanks are due to Martin and Anders and Tim and Erin Catto* for these specific versions of these great applications. And to the Nokia seers who conceived the Internet Tablet.
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* Box2D progenitor.
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