A new version of the Bluetooth keyboard plugin is available here
New stuff: - You can search for keyboards and choose a specific one to connect to. - You can pair the keyboard to the 770. Once paired, powering on the keyboard will associate it with the 770 and you can simply start typing away. Convenient! - You can choose a keyboard layout, currently I have a Scandinavian and a German layout bundled. Send me your layout if you want it included (see the hacking section on the homepage). - Matthew’s screen blanking fix is integrated (thanks!), but it doesn’t seem to work all the time, needs some looking into.
A couple days ago, ThoughtFix wrote in his blog that “Many people are afraid of using their RS-MMC for swap.”
Is this a fear of over-using (-stressing?) the RS-MMC? Or the non-hacker user’s reluctance to attempt nontrivial modifications — cf The Synching Apple’s reformatting of his MMC card to a 24 megabyte swap partition — and inability to become root?
It seems so sensible to do this. Using the memory card for swap seems to make the 770 operate so much more satisfactorily — apparently, I should say. I can’t say for sure because I’m among those who have hesitated.
Who’s done this so far? What are the real dangers? And is it difficult for the Windows-based (eg., with no native flasher) to execute?
Maybe others who have taken this step will offer their feedback.
Lots of people have reported successful use of the Nokia Su-8W Bluetooth keyboard with their Nokia 770, and likewise with the Think Outside Stowaway Bluetooth keyboard. When I couldn’t find a good price for the former, I happened on a deal for the latter, $68 plus shipping from Amazon, and I was sold. It arrived today.
Connecting the keyboard and 770 isn’t complicated, as several people have reported, but I couldn’t find all the little pieces of information in one place. Because of that, even though I know others have done this, somewhere, I’m putting all the steps down here. In this case, information redundancy on the web can’t hurt. And just skip this if you’ve heard it before.
3) Install the plug-in. If you went to Tomas’ site with your 770, you can choose open when you click the link and that will bring up the application installer and you can install it directly from the website. Otherwise you can save to your mmc card, or to your PC and transfer, then install from your downloaded copy.
4) Restart your 770. Btw, that means turn it off, then turn it on, I suppose. Is there a one-step restart I don’t know about?
4a) (left this out when keying up this post, but encountered it right off the bat): If you’re Offline, go back to Normal mode. Offline turns off the Bluetooth radio. (Brand-new users: Press the on-off key to call up the Device Mode menu, which includes a toggle for changing between Offline and Normal modes. You have to be in Normal mode to use WiFi or Bluetooth.)
5) Click the new BT icon that shows up, and a one-line menu lets you connect your Bluetooth keyboard.
6) Somewhere in here you need to press three keys simultaneously on the Stowaway keyboard — <Ctl>–left <Fn>–right <Fn> — the Control key and both the green and blue function keys. I guess I do this shortly after step 5 while the plug-in is looking.
Presumably this works similarly on other Bluetooth keyboards, except for the keys you press.
After that, smooth sailing.
Except for the 770 not recognizing keyboarding as activity and dimming the screen after thirty seconds. Time to look for that hack that sends a signal every thirty seconds to defeat this. Can anyone point me in the right direction?
Edited to add: Oh, and be sure to click in the Notes window to get a cursor. No cursor, no place to insert text.
Thanks to the different posters who have discussed their BT keyboard experiences, and thanks especially to Tomas Junnonen!
Edited later to put the new URI for the updated ver 0.3.0.0 plugin. There are changes in how it behaves — more automated. I’ll revise the text to reflect these changes soon.
Kernel Concepts announced today updates to the GPE Personal Information Management (PIM) suite of applications.
From Kernel Concepts:
2006-01-11: Updated packages of the GPE PIM applications for the Nokia 770 are available for download. The new packages catch up with latest upstream development and fix a large number of errors of the previous release. The most important ones are:
Calendar user interface improvements and speedup.
Basic support for location information in events.
Support for importing multiple events and contacts from a single file.
Fix for compatibility issues making contacts categories and notes useless with latest 770 software releases.
Removed various memory leaks and sources of application crashes.
The open source GPE PIM Suite is composed of GPE-Calendar, GPE-To Do, and GPE-Contacts. Instructions on how to install these applications can be found here.
Last week, DejaDesktop announced its own suite of PIM apps called DejaPIM and a commercial application called DejaLink that lets you IP-sync to MS Outlook wirelessly.
Dr. Ari Jaaksi, Nokia’s Director for Open Source Operations - Multimedia has just posted an entry on his blog regarding Nokia 770 feedback that they have been getting from the early adopters. The gathered feedback have been devided into three categories: hardware, applications, and the system itself.
On the hardware aspect, he mentions that "the ideas of expandability make a lot of sense but they’d easily contradict with a durable and affordable device." Additional harware will make the cost of the device go higher. He points out that the Nokia 770 is correctly priced, given its size and it gorgeous screen.
As for applications, Dr. Jaaksi specifically mentions our very own Roger Sperberg, and his proposal to include an ebook reader by default to the Nokia 770, which is currently being evaluated. Voice over IP (VoIP) and Instant Messaging (IM) will be included on the next major release this year. He also adds that the 770 is not an average PDA and sort of leaves the developement of PDA applications to open source and commercial developers.
As for the core system, X is here to stay. Performace is currently being improved and the goal has been set to make the Nokia 770 a good ‘internet citizen.’ Applications the make it easy for users to use the 770 for internet related taks are the top priority.
Ari also gives his own feeback focusing on developers. We have summarized them as follows:
improve software and attract a bigger audience
challenge for applications: simplicity, usability, and end user appeal
keep working on your favorite applications, distribute them as open source or commercial applications, and let everyone know about them
don’t settle for application betas, release them as v1.0’s, test them fully and make it pass the ‘mom and dad’ usuability test
DejaDesktop, Inc. just announced DejaPIM and DejaLink. DejaPIM is a personal information management (PIM) suite of applications for the Nokia 770, composed of Contacts, Calendar, Notes, and Tasks. DejaLink on the other hand is probably the first commercial application for the Maemo platform that provides two-way IP based synchronization between Microsoft Outlook and DejaPIM. The service costs $9.95/month, with a 14-day free trial.
Future modifications for DejaPIM include:
Improve web connection states on both handheld and PC to quietly handle disconnect and partially connected states.
French, Spanish, German support throughout.
Add graphical day view and week view to calendar.
Add support for changing recurring patterns in calendar (they are currently displayed, but the edit screen does not show those fields to edit).
DejaDesktop, Inc. is a sister company of CompanionLink Software, Inc., who is known for providing connectivity and web-based synchronization solutions to Palm, Pocket PC, BlackBerry devices.
A similar suite of ported open source PIM applications (GPE-Calendar, GPE-ToDo, and GPE-Contacts) are also available from Kernel Concepts.
ElectricNews.net writes that “Nokia looks to have scored a major hit with a new wireless device that doesn’t have any phone functionality.”
What prompts this report is the news that:
The Finish firm announced on Wednesday that, against its expectations, it is to increase production of its 770 Internet Tablet handheld after achieving huge online sales since its launch in early November.
Well, we knew it, because we’ve seen the pre-release anticipation and post-release frustration-at-shipping-delays here in the itT forums and in other blogs. ENN says further “The product has no direct competitors in this new segment and analysts believe it could be successful as a niche product.”
It definitely has no competitors, and I guess you could call it a niche now. But this unexpected demand, I would argue, presages the emergence of a full-fledged category, one that won’t be a “niche” much longer.
Edited later to add:
I wonder how long there will be no “direct competitors”? This demand is bound to be noticed by others. Do you think some Asian firm will rush a small, Linux, under-$400 (and probably half-baked) device out before June? Other devices will mark another step on this road.
Thanks to Mike Cane for pointing us to this report and one at TMCnet, which attributes the original information to the Wall Street Journal.
We’re entering a new phase for the Nokia 770, the third for users.
Phase 1 was the five-month buildup of anticipation as we waited from the end of May for the 770 to be released.
Then the device was released. And in this phase, for users, it was a matter of acquiring a device (still to be achieved for some who had hoped to be well into this phase weeks ago) and seeing installer-ready applications from third parties appear. In this phase, to a certain extent we’ve had to discover how things work on our own. The many blogs by Nokiaemployees, by developers, by users, the forums here at itT and the FAQ, the Maemo wiki, not to mention Planet Maemo — a lot of sites have popped up to deal with the information exchange.
Despite the 770’s aspirations of being an internet appliance, we initial users have been something of pioneers, having to piece together what to do with many, many issues. And we began to feed our opinions back to Nokia from day one about what we expected from a consumer-ready product, something as easy to operate as a kitchen blender. This phase is still ongoing, of course.
But we saw something new on Friday when the latest firmware was released — unlike the two images released previously, this one was accompanied by instructions. A wizard now takes a user step by step through everything needed to Install the update onto the 770 (a Windows user, anyway).
“Nokia will fix things” and “later purchasers will have a smoother experience” have been the answers to carping in the forums for some while. But still, when someone points out that this thing doesn’t work as expected or that thing is too confusing, it’s hard to deny that more could be done. Now the evidence has come in that Nokia is indeed listening to us and our expectations. It may not be possible to move the scroll keys, say, or change the app list, at least till some time down the road. But making things clearer, explaining more, simplifying any steps an unsophisticated user must take — all these can be done now. It’s great to see Nokia gets this, too.
From Thomas Junnonen:
