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GUADEC 2008

Tickets bought, insurance bought, maps of Istanbul loaded into Maemo Mapper on N810 o I am nearly ready for GUADEC 2008. This year it will take place in Istanbul, Turkey but it is still European conference :)

Trip starts on Monday morning — bus from Szczecin to Berlin Texel, then flight (Turkish Airlines) to Istanbul. Short trip to hotel Senator and I will be ready to wait for rest of OH gang to arrive. I do not plan to get lost like I did year ago :)

List of talks to attend is generated and stored in GPE Calendar (when Maemo will get good PIM…) and this year I plan to attend most of this list. Too bad that Quim Gil talk is on Monday — I will not attend his talk. I hope that some familiar people from Maemo community will attend so we will be able to talk a bit.

But conference is not everything — I plan to take a walk though city to show something as I do not know when I will be there next time.

Ah — and I have to remember about N810 headset — GSM calls to/from Turkey are expensive so VoIP calls will be my only way to contact rather.

Tags: gpe guadec maemo n810 No Comments »

Choosing next cellphone

Nearly two years passed since I started to use my current cellphone: Sony Ericsson k750i. It is great device but I feel more and more limited during using it. For example PIM is very simple (no recurrent events, no attenders) and none of my PDA devices has something more extended.

PIM — Agendus

Few years ago when I had PalmOS powered Sony Clie SJ30 I used Agendus application for PIM. Recently I checked newest version in Garnet VM emulator on my Nokia N810 tablet. It is really great and complex application. There is a support for event attenders, contacts linking, contacts history (tasks, calls, meetings) and lot more. Interesting feature is support for “Trip” events — I tested it with my GUADEC 2008 trip. I was able to add timeline for whole conference, bus trips from Szczecin to Berlin Tegel airport (and back) + plane flights and all of that linked as one trip with all components available in calendar, agenda etc…

Yesterday I installed Windows Mobile emulator and checked Agendus for that platform. It lacks some features from PalmOS version (trips are one of them) but is much better then default WM PIM. I do not plan to check BlackBerry or Symbian versions because they are not on a list of systems which I want to use.

Which system to choose?

So the problem now is which cellphone system to choose… I do not want Symbian because most of devices lack touchscreen (iirc only UIQ ones have it), BlackBerry is totally unknown for me and I also do not want to use totally closed phones like I did in last few years. PalmOS is trying to not die but nothing new was done on this platform in last few years so it is also not for me. Looks like the only choice is going to Windows Mobile cellphones.

Possible devices

Which one to choose? Most of devices use QVGA screens which is a very limiting resolution. After searching on web and discussing with few friends I have a few devices to check — Toshiba G900 (WVGA, new ~480EUR, used ~300EUR, hardware keyboard, no gps) or something from ETEN Glofiish devices with VGA screen (X650, X800, M800, M810). HTC has only Touch Diamond with VGA screen but it is too expensive.

Why not Linux phone?

Because there is nothing interesting now :( Openmoko guys moved from GTK+ to mix of E17 and Qtopia and when I saw result during LinuxTag 2008 it was nothing impressive. To add more confusion there are at least 4 different environments for Openmoko in development (GTK+ based OM2007.2, Qtopia on framebuffer, E17 + Qtopia on X11 and something called “Openmoko underground”). Also formfactor of GTA01/02 is not something I would call “nice” — have a look at any device manufactured by HTC…

And I did not yet saw Linux mobile platform with good PIM… Maemo lack it totally — even GPE contacts/calendar are hard to use due to lack of alarms functionality, Openmoko does not decided yet which PIM they want to support (not that there is something on a horizon)… So sorry guys but I will not buy Linux phone soon.

Tags: guadec n810 nokia openmoko palmos phone sonyericsson windows mobile 19 Comments »

Feel the power of USB with Nokia tablet

Over year ago I wrote post about USB — connected most of my devices/gadgets into desktop USB ports and checked how system reacts to it. As Kees Jongenburger gave me USB AF/AF adapter during this year LinuxTag I decided to do the same with N810 tablet.

Required software

In theory nothing is needed as N8×0 tablets are equipped in USB On-The-Go port and proper support is enabled in kernel. To make things easier users can install USBControl (available in normal Maemo repositories).

But there is one problem — default kernel is compiled with OTG whitelist enabled. As a result some classes of devices are rejected — for example all my USB Hubs. After disabling of CONFIG_USB_OTG_WHITELIST (and recompilation of kernel) they got supported.

Attached hardware

I decided to not connect everything USB I have but most of it. Resulting list (names in brackets are added by hand):

Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000 (Nokia N810 internal USB Host)
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 058f:9254 Alcor Micro Corp. Hub
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 058f:6362 Alcor Micro Corp. 
Bus 001 Device 007: ID 0c76:0007 JMTek, LLC. 
Bus 001 Device 008: ID 0409:005a NEC Corp. 
Bus 001 Device 020: ID 1457:5122 (OpenMoko GTA01 phone)
Bus 001 Device 021: ID 046d:0b02 Logitech, Inc. 
Bus 001 Device 023: ID 046d:c70e Logitech, Inc. 
Bus 001 Device 024: ID 046d:c70a Logitech, Inc. 
Bus 001 Device 026: ID 0409:005a NEC Corp. 
Bus 001 Device 027: ID 0403:6001 Future Technology Devices International, Ltd 8-bit FIFO
Bus 001 Device 028: ID 0fce:d016 Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB 
Bus 001 Device 029: ID 05e3:0606 Genesys Logic, Inc. 
Bus 001 Device 030: ID 0a81:0205 Chesen Electronics Corp. PS/2 Keyboard+Mouse Adapter
Bus 001 Device 031: ID 1130:0202 Tenx Technology, Inc. 
Bus 001 Device 033: ID 0a46:9601 Davicom Semiconductor, Inc. 
Bus 001 Device 034: ID 13fe:1d00 (2GB pendrive from GUADEC 2007) 

In other words:

• 3 hubs (2 of them were powered, one had 7 ports)
• Ethernet card (dm9601 based)
• serial port
• PS/2 -> USB adapter for keyboard and mouse
• 2 pendrives
• Bluetooth adapter (those 3 Logitech entries)
• panic button
• Openmoko GTA01 pda/phone
• my cellphone
• multi slot card reader

Obligatory screen shot

Screenshot must be — especially when it shows that GUI was not ready for this amount of devices. But thats expected — in normal situations no one connects more then one device (especially when USB hubs are not supported).

Conclusion

USB Host ports are handy in devices like N810 tablet. Would be nice if there would be possibility to update firmware from thumb drive like it is one few other devices.

Tags: gadgets maemo n810 nokia openmoko 1 Comment »

Car navigation with N810

During last two weeks I did two 250km trips. First Poznań -> Szczecin, then return. Road into both directions is good and it is impossible to get lost but I took my N810 with me.

Before trip I started Maemo Mapper to generate route and fetch all needed maps (from Google Maps street view). This part was fast. I checked generated route does it have sense and stored on card as there is no offline route generation — you can do it only online by querying author’s website which send query to Google Maps, converts and returns XML.

Ok, time to go — I packed car with all our luggage and during that left N810 in car to get “gps fix” as internal GPS needs time for this operation. During trip we looked from time to time just to check are we on track. Few times tablet just rebooted which resulted in no GPS fix until next longer stop :( But it does not need to reboot to lose position — look at our return trip track (clean road, no tunnels etc):

I know that there are people who use Nokia tablets for car navigation. But how does it compare to TomTom Navigator which I had occasion to use one day…

Let’s see.

So it looks like I will not buy HH-12 car holder to use N810 for car navigation but rather TomTom device or some Windows CE/Mobile navigator with TomTom software to have something usable.

Tags: car google maemo n810 route No Comments »

Polish layout for N810 hardware keyboard

Thanks to work done by Jiri Benc in his “ukeyboard” alternative control panel for language and regional settings I am able to present Polish layout for N810 hardware keyboard.

Polish chars are on Chr+ (where is one of “acelnosxz”).

Also few other combinations are added:

Fn+Space = |
Chr+Space = Tab
Chr+j = [
Chr+k = ]

Original functions of “Chr” key were dropped — there is no small on screen keyboard after single press of “Chr” and no option to enter other national chars (like “öïüõôōő” etc).

Click here to simple install.

Tags: maemo n810 nokia pl 3 Comments »

Bought car

Today I bought my first car. It is Opel Astra combi from 1997 year.

It drives very nicely and have lot of space for all things which we will want to take with us (pram/pushchair for Mira and other luggage).

As N810 came with some kind of car holder I unpacked it today and looked at it. There is no way to mount it in the car… From fast googling it looks like provided holder require another Nokia accessory — HH-12 Easy Mount ;(

So using N810 for navigation has to wait a bit… I need to buy HH-12 to mount it (or use other holder), then buy car charger DC-4 (or rather 3rd party replacement) and then get better GPRS plan to be able to use Maemo Mapper on the road. Map application which comes with device has very poor maps of Poland and routing functionality require additional payment.

Tags: car n810 navigation nokia opel 5 Comments »