Saying goodbye to the old flame (a gone-to-seed Thinkpad):
I’m sorry, so sorry. I know I have spent many hours with you, spent hundreds of dollars treating you to all the best money could buy. I have made sure you had everything you have needed in the years we have been together. I even loved you enough to load Linux instead of Windows.
I’m sorry, so sorry I do not spend as much time with you as I once did but I must be honest. I have found a new love. My new love is thinner, prettier and more fun….
I’m sorry, so sorry. I’m not trying to rub it in but this Nokia N810 does nearly everything I once needed you to do.
I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m not actually developing anything for the Nokia Internet Tablets. I don’t know C or C++ or Python*. (Or Ruby either for that matter.**)
Still, I’m intrigued by a reference to PluThon, which lets you develop Python apps for maemo without requiring Scratchbox.
PluThon is an Eclipse plug-in that allows you to interact with your N800 or N810 and run/debug your Python app directly on the tablet. You work in Eclipse, get your usual language support, and SSH the app to the device from within Eclipse (er, PluThon). And skip the emulation stage entirely.
Right now, PluThon is Linux-only, but it seems like it could be made to work with a Windows setup too.†
Not that I can use it‡. But I can dream, can’t I?
__________
* Hey, lucky Java isn’t available on the Internet Tablets or I’d go 0 for 4 on the big ones, eh?
** I have at least made Ruby’s acquaintance. Just barely enough to nod in recognition when we pass in the hallway though.
† And if you want that, why don’t you send a note to eclipse-integration@maemo.org and ask for it. I have.
‡ Hey, what’s to stop an Eclipse-fond Rubyist from doing the same for that language?
I think maybe I mistitled the two posts I wrote recently about setting up a environment for internet tablet software development. No one read them. And maybe that’s because people don’t realize what they’re about.
The point of these posts and the thread started by BOFH and contributed to by OSEmuTech, Run Linux on top of Windows, without a virtual machine, is that you don’t have to have a Linux computer — or a dual-boot Linux, or Linux running on a virtual machine — in order to write and test applications for the Nokia Internet Tablets.
And that seems to me to be newsworthy.
So I’m repeating myself by posting again, but this time under a more appropriate heading.
Point: You can easily install andLinux on your Windows computer. Took me all of five minutes.
Point: What you don’t get with this (to quote the andLinux FAQ) is:
another desktop
the bench of applications that usually ship with Linux distributions (you have to fetch whatever you want)
a printer driver
trouble with further drivers
Point: You can run Linux apps side-by-side with your Windows apps, and use the Windows desktop for all the file-management stuff you already know how to do. And use your Windows printer drivers.
This is way cool, and I think we should make a big thing of it!
Since the internet tablets have an ARM processor (and not an x86-based cpu the way desktops and laptops do), you need to be able to write an app for the NIT, see how it looks while you’re on your own computer, and make a version that will run on a NIT.
So you install Scratchbox and Maemo 4.0.1 to do that. Pete Savage has written a full step-by-step how-to that tells you each thing you need to do. Even I, a perennial Linux tourist (and never a resident), managed it on my first try.
I’m going to repeat myself again: This is way cool! I definitely think we should make a big thing of it!
This screen capture shows the example application from Pete Savage’s how-to on getting Scratchbox working to compile and test software for the Nokia N800. A Maemo development environment, in other words.
Marcelo of iNdT gives us a preview of the upcoming YouTube Canloa2 plug-in. The plug-in lets you search videos, view by catergory, most viewed, and would even let you bookmark videos. It streams videos more fluidly compared with viewing YouTube on the browser. I hope it plays the lower or higher resolution version of the videos automatically based on your internet connection speed, just like how the iPhone does it.
This is definitely something every internet tablet user will be looking forward to. If this can be done via Canola2, it wouldn’t be that difficult to create plug-ins for Blip.tv, Qik, uStream, and videos from news sites like CNN, right?
Being one man’s continuing quest for happiness despite years of unfulfillment
I’ve been using computers a long time (don’t ask) and using microcomputers long before Microsoft even sold an OS. I was a DOS guy before I could afford a Macintosh, though I was using Macs at work starting back in 1985. And I happily benefitted from the Mac’s strength in desktop publishing software for more than a decade.
When I re-oriented my publishing career towards XML and e-books in 1999, I was forced to be a dual-platform guy. There just weren’t any XML tools on the Mac, so I bought a cheapo PC and moved back and forth between my two computers depending on the task.
As I used XML more and my Mac grew ever more gray-bearded, I started buying new programs for the PC instead of for the Mac. This was a huge emotional issue. Where the dollars go, there follows the heart (at least in electronics). Gradually I was transformed from a full-blown Mac enthusiast (and off-hours tech support for various family members long-distance) into a full-time WinXP user. It helped that my job now supplied me with a laptop that I carried from Manhattan office to home office (where I work two days a week) to out-of-state offices every week or three.
When the replacement for XP — then known as Longhorn, now as Vista — first raised its head, I found myself unable to accept the transition. Microsoft wanted me to pay more for the OS than I thought I should pay for the computer itself. And forget Apple. That was a company everyone agreed was the next Polaroid, Xerox and Kodak combined, destined never to regain financial security or market strength.*
I figured then that my next OS would be Linux.
I won’t go into my beliefs regarding open software, copyright and monopolies. Suffice to say that I’m an extremist. Probably many of you here at ITT have followed the same path towards the sanity of open software (maybe not as far as I). But that pushed me towards Linux, too, of course. Continue reading ‘Me and Linux, round 4 and a half’
If you previously installed Canola2, Beta5 should now show up if you ‘Check for Updates’ from the Application Manager. The new version basically improves handling of Podcasts, zoom photos, option to turn off the screen, improves searching of music files, and improves support for music files with asian fonts.
Marcelo of iNdT has provided the detailed change log below since Beta 3 (note that the new version contains two updates — Beta4 and Beta5).
Mac users, good news! Here’s your chance to vote for the platform of the upcoming Mac version of the Nokia Internet Tablet Video Converter. The following are the choices:
With a new device like a Nokia Internet Tablet, a hazy fog of “what do I do?” envelops the break-in period.
How do I connect to the router? How do I get the GPS going? How the heck do I build a playlist in this fershlugginer player?
Of course, dealing with these questions is one of the main purposes of this website.
But even before you have specific questions, the unfamiliar can boggle you. Even with my experiences breaking in the 770 and N800, I’ve been confounded now and then with my new N810.
I think the Nokiahowto.com pages on the N810 should be put on the device itself. They’re more helpful to a new user than the help files and the PDF user manual.
Why is that? They’re nothing exotic, merely short, simple animations. I guess it’s a case of show being more helpful than tell.
Engadget is running their annual Engadget awards and the Nokia N810 is nominated in the 2007 Handheld of the Year category. The Nokia N810 is currently trailing the Amazon Kindle by about 300 votes (as of writing).
You have until March 1st to vote for the N810 and your other favorite gadgets.
