The maemo.org logo contest that is going on — like others, I received four email messages about it — got me thinking: How do you express the ideas of a community in a name and in a logo?
Actually, I mean both “the idea of a community” and “the ideas” of that community when I think about this.
It’s easier when the name helps bind you together — I belong to a group called FAMCAM - Families with Cambodian Children and you can tell immediately who wants to belong to this group and why.
Maemo is a made-up word and people encountering it form the meaning by what they learn from the encounter. Well, it’s good that a branding process is going on since what exactly Maemo represented hasn’t always been so clear — the OS on the Nokia Internet Tablets, the development kit enabling software for NITs to be developed on a desktop, a Linux distro that had a Hildon UI overlay to make things run smoothly on a NIT, the software side of the Nokia effort, the open-source side of the NITS, the collective effort spurred by Nokia but encompassing individual FOSS developers, something somewhere in this is what has been meant by “Maemo” over this time.
Now, “Maemo with a capital M” is being identified as an “open source software platform for mobile devices. Developed by Nokia in collaboration with the Maemo community and some of the best open source upstream projects.” The Maemo platform is distinguished from the Maemo SDK and is manifested in numbered Maemo releases. Maemo Software refers not to applications compatible with Maemo but instead to the team at Nokia that’s responsible for developing the platform, SDK and some of those apps.
And the other apps for Maemo? Well, they come from the Maemo community, of course. And if ever there are going to be any “devices running Maemo” other than those released by Nokia, then the line between Nokia’s supportive actions and the community will need to be clearly demarcated.
And that demarcation is in process now. The logo contest for maemo.org is one step in separating Nokia’s own use of Maemo from others’. Now maemo.org will be an expression of the community and not of the Nokia team. Or something like that.
Maemo.org isn’t a company and even the “dot org” is an honorific rather than recognition that a real organization has existed. But as a community, it represents the group of people who all contribute toward the same goal. So in my interpretation of the maemo.org logo, you don’t get machined results or perfect alignment. Yet it’s precisely this non-automaton, non-corporate approach that is the essence of Linux and the FOSS movement and which accounts for its vibrancy.
I’ve just had a crisis of convictions — returning my laptop to the publishing firm I’ve worked for since 2001 meant I needed to buy a computer quick.
And the deciding point came down to this: How much computing power did I need away from home?
You have to know that my friends expect me to separate from them when boarding the train to New York so I can sit in a laptop-friendly seat. They’ve also seen me skip a not-yet-full PATH (subway) train on the next leg into the city and wait five minutes for the next departure so I can open up the laptop for twelve more minutes of screen time.
Did I truly believe a weblet like the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet would suffice for my mobile computing?
Or has my fervent evangelism been tainted by way-cheap access to the Nokeys* I’ve used and by a top-of-the-line 17-inch laptop that my employer nefariously supplied me with, ensured its constant access by having me work at home two days a week?
Would I spend my suddenly scarce dollars for another laptop, intending to cart it most everywhere as I’ve been accustomed to for the last four years?
Or would I buy a sufficiently powerful desktop for less money and rely on my N810 for all my mobile computing?
This from someone who has written well over 90 percent of my ITT postings on a laptop. Who spends his free time looking at websites in Khmer (a script not supported by the Nokia weblets) and who works with multilingual texts every day. Whose eyes are aging and who consequently has a 14-point minimum font size set in his browser. Who installs on average one new program a week with a footprint of 30MB to 150MB.
Fabulous as the Nokia Internet Tablets are for spontaneous surfing, e-book reading, voip calls**, games, GPS geocaching, listening to music and watching video***, it’s not a full-service device. I can’t type 20 words per minutes on its keyboard, much less 100 wpm (as I do on a full keyboard). Can’t run any topic map software (needs Java). No great XML and XSLT editors. And so on. How much would this lack hurt me away from my desktop? Could I manage to do what I had to do on the run with one or another weblet?**** The walkaround web is wonderful but what about trips? Could I go days without a full-powered computer?
Ah, who am I fooling?
I bought the desktop, which was half the price of equivalently powered laptops. For any kind of on-the-go now, I’m a weblet guy, body and soul.
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* I’ve paid 99 Euros each for the 770, N800 and N810 as they appeared over these last three years (roughly $115 to $140) as part of Nokia’s seeding of the weblet development community. An N810 for $140 is a magnificent machine, there’s no doubt about it.
** I use Gizmo for my second line permanently now. When I’m on one- and two-hour conference calls, it’s really proved its usefulness by freeing up the main line for my wife’s calls.
*** TV mostly, via the HAVA player, Today in the kitchen and Charley Rose in bed.
**** OK, at the moment I have five NITs. But some of them I bought to give to family. Really! I just haven’t gotten around to it.
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.
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.
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!
I just read a post that I think others would be interested to see. In a thread about the MyPaint application, forum member MobileDividewrote that “[MyPaint] and Numptyphysics have redefined my tablet use over the last few days.”
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.
A couple weeks ago, the Good Morning Silicon Valley newsletter posted a link to a story on Slate (with a devastatingly effective demo on YouTube) of Crayon Physics Deluxe:
Petri Puro, the developer, put it together by himself (it bears similarities to some other gravity-based physics demos/games) and won the “Seamus McNally Grand Prize — the indie-game equivalent of the Academy Award for best picture”* — at the recent Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.
I downloaded the prototype game Puro wrote, Crayon Physics**, and was blown away by it. So was my son, and we ended up fighting over the mouse to solve the last two levels.
Wow! Crayon Physics is just too much fun to describe (stop now and watch that YouTube demo). OK, Slate comes close: “an ingenious game that looks like it was designed by a third-grader.” I immediately wrote Petri Puro and begged him to consider porting Crayon Physics Deluxe to the Nokia internet tablet.
My real thought was “Too bad that Tim Samoff already gave that gift N810 away!” I know that once Petri got an internet tablet in his hands he would realize that the tablet and his game are meant for each other.
Then a thread was started here in the ITT forums about the game — I want this game on my N800!. I’m not the only one who sees the need.
Maybe somebody in the Nokia food chain will realize the same thing when they see Crayon Physics Deluxe demoed and send Petri a tablet.
in the meantime, I’m going to suggest that everyone who thinks likewise write to Petri and to anyone they know at Nokia and tell them the same thing: Crayon Physics and internet tablets belong together.
Let’s send Petri a tablet!
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* To quote Chris Baker’s original Slate piece.
** Following the precepts of the Experimental Gameplay Project, namely that the game encompass a single theme (i.e., “gravity,” “vegetation,” “swarms,” etc), be written by a single person, and be completed within one week.
Added later:
Visitors to Petri Puho’s blog at Kloonigames can see his other games — he writes one a month and posts them there — and learn a little about this 24-year-old: “At the moment I’m a student at Helsinki Polytechnic, studying computer science. Game development has been a hobby of mine for at least ten years now. My gaming interests don’t just limit to video games, but also include pen & paper roleplaying games, strategy games, board games, card games, etc.”
Chris Baker, in his Slate piece, notes that “despite his obvious talent, Purho isn’t sure he wants to go into the industry after he gets his computer-science degree. ‘It’s more about writing documents than it is about designing games,’ he says. ‘And I really hate writing documents.’” And Baker adds that “Purho will probably have a better chance of moving the industry forward if he keeps flying solo.”
I think that’s probably true. Now why does that seem so obvious? You see, I’m not the only one who agrees. To further Petri’s opportunities, an anonymous benefactor has indicated his intention to donate a now-idle N800 (yes, made superfluous by his recently acquiring an N810) to Petri. Shipping to Finland to occur posthaste. Games, inspiration and possible port to NIT to follow.
