This morning, Tomas Junnonen of Nokia sent a note to the developer list about connecting a Bluetooth keyboard to the Nokia 770. I quote this good news in full for those not subscribed to the list:
There has been some speculation in the past about whether you can
connect a Bluetooth keyboard to the 770. Officially this is not
supported. However, in practice the 770 now accepts keyboard input if
you manage to connect one.
As the 770 ships with no user interface for associating a BT keyboard
with the device, you will need to install a small plugin first,
available here:
The plugin source can also be viewed as an example of how to put your
own icons in the status bar of the Maemo desktop, another unsupported
feature likely to interest some of you.
Fantastic! It’s great that we’ll be able to use a keyboard when we really want to.
Earlier, itT reported that bluetooth keyboards can be used with the Nokia 770 using a statusbar plugin. Tomas Junnonen of Nokia just announced that the open source driver is now available that lets you install a small utility to the Nokia 770 that will add a bluetooth icon to the Maemo desktop status bar. This will let you easily pair the 770 with a bluetooth keyboard.
Tomas also mentions that while the Nokia 770 can detect USB keyboards via plug-and-play, the 770 is not capable of supplying power to USB devices unless the device is self-powered. Thus, the only way to use an external keyboard as of now, is via bluetooth.
The plugin source code shows how icons can be added to the status bar (an unsuported feature) that might interest some developers.
In a post to the Internet Tablet Talk forums, Mythic noted that:
According to the maemo SVN repository, “Internet Tablet 2005″ has been branched. It might not mean anything, it might mean a lot…
Prompted to explain what this might mean to those of us unfamiliar with software development, Mythic added:
In source code repositiories (as used by maemo.org), one can create independent source code branches. They are commonly used during software RELEASE, when a so called “stable” branch is created. On the stable branch one applies bugfixes but doesnt add new features…
It looks that this stable branch has been created so a release might be on the way. But I should point out that not whole maemo platform has been branched yet, but it was Friday late afternoon. Let’s see on Monday.
Well, we’ll be among those who hope that this means a lot, and not a little.
In the Styles tab, the Family popup menu shows all fonts installed in the system, letting you choose among them. (Although there’s no GUI installer for fonts on the Nokia 770, installing a font should involve nothing more complicated than copying to the right folder.)
In a post to the MobileRead forums, Mikhail promises more screenshots soon, displaying text rendered in different fonts.
As far as I can tell, FBReader is the only e-book reading software that lets you set the font, size, style (eg, bold, italic), alignment and color by tag (or style), the way you can with a web browser. It’s a great asset, one other e-book readers should add as well.
The Register has an article that makes it clear why a company like cellphone-centric Nokia would venture into the uncharted territory of the Internet Tablet.
“VoIP is going to be massive. The effects of internet telephony are touching technology, business, culture, geographic penetration and consumer expectations in a way that is certain to turn the telecoms industry on its head.”
Research from Heavy Reading reports that “the world’s largest telcos are increasingly hopping on the VoIP bandwagon. . . . More than 170 telcos including BT, AT&T and Verizon were quizzed as part of the research, which predicts a surge in VoIP traffic over the next two years.”
Lots of places reported Nokia’s announcement that it had sold its one billionth phone earlier this summer, to a customer in Nigeria. And that Nokia sold 207 million phones last year. And that 2 billion phones all told have been sold. (That corresponds to 1.6 billion customers, apparently, since some have more than one phone.)
I’ve seen only one report about Nokia predicting 3 billion mobile phone users by 2010. That’s a lot of phones. I wonder how many VoIP phones like the Internet Tablet there will be by then? Presumably, since you don’t need a mobile phone subscription with VoIP, they won’t be counted in the 3 billion figure.
770 blogged in Vietnamese?
Anyone speak Vietnamese? It looks like there is a report on the Nokia 770 and Nokia’s involvement with Eclipse at Step2, entitled “Nokia tham gia cá»™ng đồng mã nguồn mở Eclipse” and for want of better identification (where are you when I need you, Babelfish?), I think it’s in Vietnamese. That makes ten different languages I’ve seen the 770 described in so far.
My crazy co-worker Cidorvan ( alias go go go ) has just fixed some small bugs and made it work on scratchbox 0.9x. He is right now playing on his laptop against a 770 a few meters away. Pretty cool to see the multiplayer gaming again on the device ( first was battlegweled ).
This looks like it will be great gaming on the 770. We echo Marcelo Eduardo when he says, “Congrats, Cidoca!!!”
Rhythmbox is an integrated music-management application, originally inspired by Apple’s iTunes. It is free software, designed to work well under the GNOME Desktop, and based on the powerful GStreamer media framework.
Rhythmbox has a number of features, including:
* Easy to use music browser
* Searching and sorting
* Comprehensive audio format support through GStreamer
* Internet Radio support
* Playlists
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Nine days to the end of 3Q. Does that still mean the release of the Nokia 770? No one’s saying anything, at least officially. Hopefully, one way or the other, word will come out soon.
Roundup A lot of articles and forum posts about the Nokia 770 in the last few days — at least a dozen in four languages — and every one of them spurred by Howard Chui’s review last Friday. I’ll let Howard keep track of them and not list them here.
Howard Chui
Nokia 770 Internet Tablet http://www.howardchui.com/modules.php?name=Sections&op=viewarticle&artid=203 This was big news when it showed up, but now there’s some doubt as to whether Howard was reviewing the actual release version or a prototype. Long, but there didn’t seem to be anything new there, except his opinion that:
What good is an internet tablet when you could have a PDA or a Smartphone? It turns out it’s actually pretty useful for surfing the web. The display is wide and big enough to make it feel like you’re browsing the web on a computer. Plus the 770 is fast enough that if you’re connected via Wifi, webpages load in a snap. On top of that you can always use the 770 as a music or video player though the fact that it uses RS-MMC cards limits the amount of content you can fit.
In the end, if you’re the type of person who carries a Smartphone or PDA around to surf the web and listen to music you’ll want to give the 770 a look. It’s not a Smartphone or PDA but it sure is useful.
