I have some computer smarts, but sometimes I’m baffled by the Nokia Internet Tablet.
There are some things I just don’t understand about the tablets (or their OS or the pre-installed apps):
Why I can’t construct a playlist in the Media player?
You’d think this would be a no-brainer. I just want to grab 5 or 6 of the 80 songs on my N810 and play them together, even though they’re by different artists on different albums.
Why isn’t connecting to my PC via Bluetooth really easy?
Sometimes I’m at my office, where WiFi is verboten. I want the tablet to use my PC’s direct connection to the internet — I’ve done it plenty of times laptop-to-laptop in meetings where only one person was plugged into the wired network. Why isn’t this a snap with the NIT?
Why is Linux made so hard?
OK, it’s clear that Nokia doesn’t want to support unsophisticated users with all the things that can trip them up in Linux.
But why doesn’t File Manager have a simple switch (Show hidden) that lets me see the whole contents of my drive? Even with the trick of adding a symbolic link to root (or any directory), I still can’t see hidden directories (eg, whose name begins with a dot).
Which leads me to my next question:
Why can’t I easily add fonts to my tablet and use them in the browser?
Right. I had to make a /home/user/.fonts/ directory and mail myself a font and then jump through command-line hoops to put a simple font on my tablet. And go through contortions to tell the browser to use it. (Except I haven’t succeeded in that yet. Emoticon with amazed look of disbelief here.)
Might as well ask the real puzzler here:
Why can’t OS2008 et al just let you be root when you need to?
If us unsophisticates need so much protection against our careless actions, shouldn’t we be wearing goalie gloves when we handle scissors? Why isn’t there just a switch that says, “It’s OK. I’ll take the consequences. Just please let me make a directory or use apt-get without having to acquire developer-class knowledge.”
Heck. That’s the deep side. But what about the glam cam that arrived with the N800?
Why isn’t there a face-to-face cam call capability yet?
It’s only the most amazing possible use of this walkaround-web device — unlimited cam calling via WiFi without having to sit in front of an anchored webcam.
It’s visual IM — just leave the call connected and talk when you want to talk. It’s IM taken to the next dimension.
Btw, don’t tell me this is here. My wife has the N810 and I have an N800 loaner from Nokia, and we can’t manage it. It needs to be click-simple and using Skype.
Why does upgrading the OS obliterate every manually installed app I’ve put on my tablet?
I know, if I go from Windows XP to Vista (and I haven’t), I’d have to re-install my apps. But every upgrade and patch in WinXP is managed without that requirement. Shouldn’t it be possible in this marvelous Linux world?
Why can’t the application memory be extended to one of the memory cards?
Is swap the extent of this? You know, I’m willing to risk the possibility that my flash card will get the same spot written to 100,000 times and fail.
Yeah, there are more things I don’t understand about my tablet’s design. Just getting the answers to Why not a model with a keyboard? and How can you call it an internet tablet without handling Flash and YouTube? have really lowered my orneriness. I won’t pick and pick and pick.
On the other hand, it’s your turn. What behavior or aspect of the Internet Tablet makes no sense at all to you?
Added later:
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* Tablet-to-tablet cam calls via Gizmo apparently arrived during my recent period of submersion. I’m happy, even if it isn’t Skype. (I mean: even if the five friends I know with VOIP all use Skype instead of Gizmo.) Me-to-wife cam-IM is plenty great
Best news for me over the last ten days is the new MicroB Gecko-based browser for the Nokia internet tablets.
As it happens, I’m just finishing writing my first Firefox extension.* I’m no magician, but I can manage a satisfactory amount of prestidigitation in Javascript. Having an appropriately scaled venue at last for my talent and ambition (an extension, get it? not a whole app) gratifies me immensely.
And hopefully the overhead of implementing XUL (”zool,” rhymes with “tool”), the Mozilla-created XML UI language, will drop in future and I can use that familiarity on the tablet, too.
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* I’ll let people know when it’s officially out. It’s a dictionary extension — highlight a word and choose “look up [that word]” in the context menu. Unlike other extensions, this one returns the results in a side or bottom panel. And, um, at the moment it works only with the Khmer, Thai, Lao and Burmese dictionaries at SEAlang.net . . .
I haven’t held a Nokia N810 Internet Tablet in my hands, but it seems to me it represents some very astute decisions on the part of the Nokia team.
The 770 and N800 tablets have the largest, highest-resolution screens of any device in the pocket-carryaround category. That comes from an awareness of the high frustration that accompanies surfing the web on a too-narrow screen.
From day one, we’ve been asking how can Nokia take advantage of their units’ display advantage?
Well, having used a Nokia-loaner GPS unit for several months, I can testify that one thing that benefits greatly from a larger, higher-resolution screen is looking at a map, especially traveling at 65 mph when you can’t spend more than a moment or two glancing at it.
So building in GPS has a surface logic anyone can appreciate. But that’s not what I think is astute.
A new Mozilla-based browser (developer version) is now available for the Nokia N800. The new features are as follows:
1. Mozilla Engine - provides support for the latest web standards and is flexible and extensible, and is based on mozilla.org’s current Gecko layout engine which will be version 1.9 when it is released with Firefox 3.0
2. AJAX Support - allows rendering of modern sites that use AJAX (e.g. Google Maps, Google Docs, Meebo, etc.)
3. RSS Previews - takes advantage of native support for XML to render RSS feeds
4. Add-ons - support for a number of Firefox and Mozilla add-ons allows you to enhance and personalize your browsing experience
5. Certificate Details - view certificate details for secure connections by pressing the lock button
To install, click on this link from your Nokia N800.
Visit Maemo’s Mozilla browser Offical Page.
Ephraim Schwartz (whom I first wrote for 25 years ago) has a post at Reality Check, his Infoworld blog, about Opera’s work to replace Flash by incorporating native video capability in its browser.
I hope not only that this capability arrives soon, but that it migrates to our tablets soon after that.
I asked Dr. Ari Jaaksi, head of Open Source Development at Nokia and of internet tablet development, “If you were outside Nokia developing an app for the internet tablet, you — who knows the device’s capabilities better than anyone else — what would you be working on?”
And he said, “I don’t know about the application. But aspects I’d like to see in it . . . an app or service (it doesn’t have to be inside the device, it could be on the network) that demands online, constant access.”
This underscored something he had said a few minutes earlier when he had described the experience of building a device from the ground up that wasn’t a laptop, wasn’t a cellphone, wasn’t a PDA, but fit in the space between these devices, more portable, better-screened and so on. The internet tablet he described needed to be “really good for the internet experience … [because it is for the person with a] strong and active online life, [who] wants that internet experience wherever you go.” The 770 and the N800, he pointed out, put that first, as those other devices do not.
I’m always thinking about the Nokia 770 or N800 as computers, as e-readers, as entertainment devices. The way Ari Jaaksi puts the emphasis on the internet experience makes me trust his declaration that the Flash and browser issues will be resolved. It’s the space where these devices has to shine.
Here’s my review of the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet, the gosh-darned most revolutionary device around, smaller, lighter, better-screened, less-expensive and capable of see-me phone calls at voip prices — what do you think, will I like it?
But first, let’s get the formalities out of the way. I’m a fanboy of anyone who shows egregious genius. The makers/builders of the internet tablet twins qualify on several counts. My attitude shows in everything I write about the 770 and the N800. Secondly, speaking my opinion and wanting to further the development of the scene has qualified me to purchase both a 770 and an N800 at steep discount — 58 and 68 percent, respectively, as one of 500 participants in both the 770 and the N800 developer-device programs. (Of course, I know people who got them free!)
So, here’s my review:
The Nokia N800 Internet Tablet came as a shock to observers of the web tablet scene. No one expected Nokia to expand its line and push the tablet envelope so soon and so far, considering that widespread distribution in the U.S. occurred only 12 months ago.
But the strength of the 770’s appeal apparently persuaded Nokia to capitalize on its first-to-market advantage and hug the internet tablet to its N-series, smart-phone bosom. (Hence the “N” prefixing the name.)
Anyone who uses one of these tablets soon experiences a glowing recognition that, holy cow!, the internet doesn’t have to be confined to a desk or laptop-friendly chair. Now you can surf standing up, walking around, riding the train and so on, just as you can use a phone untethered from a phone jack.
This comparison to the cellphone’s liberation of movement comes from Ari Jaaksi, the head of Nokia’s open-source software group and the internet tablet team specifically. And it’s critical to understanding why the N800 and the 770 don’t fit into any neat categories that other reviewers seem to want to force them into.
Springer, a major publisher of “high-quality STM journals, book series, books [and] reference works,” has just introduced its own portal for its collection of scientific, technical and medical works. Already there are about 11,000 titles available, including journal articles, book chapters, monographs and atlases. About 3,000 titles are expected to be added annually.
The big news here is that Springer is not requiring subscribers to submit to some system of digital restrictions management. The works are available in html and pdf form, libraries own ebooks they purchase in perpetuity, and everything is readable on the Nokia 770 Tnternet Tablet. Yes, you can use FBReader to read these works.
Smart move for Springer. Good news for Nokia 770 owners.
But as you can see the problem still exists, so maybe it wasn’t fixed after all. Is there a way to make our Opera more-standard so this problem doesn’t occur?
A new Mozilla-based browser (developer version) is now available for the Nokia N800. The new features are as follows:
