Previously released on OS2007 as beta, Nokia just announced Video Center’s official release for OS2008. Video Center lets you subscribe, download, stream, and manage video from feeds and gives you the option to store them on your Internet Tablet for later viewing.
Video Center is currently configured to support video feeds from PodShow and Rocketboom with other official feeds to be added in the future. You can add your own video feeds however, as long as they are in RSS 2.0, XMLTV, or SPF format.
Here’s more proof of the upcoming WiMAX enabled Internet Tablet. It seems like Nokia is currently working with Alvartion Ltd., Cisco, and Mocano Telecom on establishing a Center of Excellence on WiMAX aiming to provide consumers VoIP, streaming video, and an always on-line experience. Alvarion is bringing in their 4Motion Open WiMAX solution, Cisco is providing seamless WiMAX mobile integration via their Broadband Wireless Gateway, Nokia is bringing in a WiMAX 2.5GHz compatible Internet Tablet, and Monaco Telecom is experimenting on the solution at Tunisia.
According to Ari Virtanen, Vice President, Convergence Products at Nokia:
Working with Alvarion, Cisco and Monaco Telecom is a great step towards making Mobile WiMAX available for consumers and fits perfectly with our strategy of offering a broad and innovative portfolio of devices.
ThoughtFix of TabletBlog has just posted his CES 2008 interview with Victor Brilon, Sr. Product Manager, Home Networking Solutions, Convergence Products (yup, you’ve heard of him before). Here’s an excerpt:
I think we’re doing a good job initially appealing to what I call in a very loving way the “Alpha Geek.” These are the people who understand gadgets and the needs they fill. They’re the people whose family calls them and asks which digital camera they should buy. I think we got a lot of those people excited about the Internet Tablet. I think we’re doing a good job of moving the Internet Tablet in the Consumer Space. I’m not going to lie to you and say the Internet Tablet is something my mother will buy, but the N810 is something my wife (who is not technology focused) will use.
The new version now provides support for Windows Vista as well as XP. In addition, we’ve made some serious upgrades to the codecs used so the video quality should be significantly enhanced. Many of the bugs reported have been fixed by this release…
The utility is currently Windows only but a Mac version of the converter is rumored to be coming.
3rd party developers interested on extending the utility can make use of the API which is publicly available at Maemo.org.
Ferenc Szekely of Maemo.org just sent out an email to the maemo-develpoers mailing list explaining why most of us experienced numerous problems downloading the OS2008 update, as well as the repository problems from our Internet Tablets:
The infrastructure is built so that the content from repository.maemo.org is served thru a huge caching network. We were supposed to use the same network for the firmware downloads as well, but due to a misconfiguration and _my negligence_ all the requests ended up at our origin server (stage.maemo.org).
Ferenc also thanks everyone who seeded the OS2008 updates via torrent.
I would like to take this opportunity too to thank all the members who took time to help other members by hosting the updates, writing how-to’s, and for tirelessly replying to other members to help with their Internet Tablet problems. That says a lot about our community!
Ok guys, here’s the latest scoop I got from CES 2008. From talking with some Internet Tablet Product Managers at the Nokia booth, there seem to be some clear indication that a WiMAX Internet Tablet is coming soon. How soon? How about the second quarter of this year? Woohoo!
It will be using Sprint’s WiMAX, now called XOHM WiMAX as announced at CES 2008. Here are some text from the XOHM - Nokia partner page:
In collaboration with Xohm, Nokia is developing WiMAX-enabled devices that will offer users on-the-go broadband access to the information and services important to them.
Note however that XOHM WiMAX is currently running only at Chicago, Baltimore, and Washington DC but its launch to major US cities will soon follow.
There is still no info about the device itself. The specs and how it looks are still very much confidential.
As for CES 2008, a last minute trip made me catch the last day of the event. I have posted pics of the Nokia booth over at the gallery.
Nokia has just announced the ‘Internet Communications Software development update 2‘ for OS2008. The new update features support for more Instant Messaging protocols (mostly all of what Pidgin supports but not all protocols are currently active), local network chat, a chat log history viewer, and SIP support.
This update is BETA. Note that you have to be in ‘red pill mode‘ in order to install the update. Some limitations still exist such as, no audio/video call support for the new protocols and local network chat, no avatar support for local chat, and no new contact authorization for the new protocols.
The new list of supported IM and SIP protocols are as follows:
IM: AIM, Google Talk, ICQ, IRC, Jabber, MSN, Yahoo
I haven’t installed this update yet on my Internet Tablet so if anyone would be kind enough to take a screenshot of the new protocols screen as well as the local network chat screen, that would be great!
The iNdT team must have been actually waiting for the OS2008 update before releasing Canola2 Beta. The Canola official site is now updated with lots of new information about Canola2 Beta, videos, feedback form, and of course the install page. Note however that Maemo.org’s server is being hammered right now and it might take a while for everyone to download and install Canola (9.32 MB).
Photography enthusiasts from the Maemo UI Team have posted some freely downloadable Internet Tablet wallpapers as their holiday gifts to the users. Check them out:
Ok guys, here’s the latest scoop I got from 
