Posted in Internet, Views at 2:27 pm by Jonathan Greene
Well - which are you?
When the 770 came out it closed connections when you slid it back in the case which was a nice feature since it automatically switched into a more power efficient mode. When the N800 arrived and now with the N810, we have the opportunity to leave our tablets on at all times.
Clearly this takes a toll on battery life over the course of a day, but in my usage it seems well worth it. I actually have had both my N800 and N810 set to auto-connect to both WiFi and cellular connections so when I walk out the door, my tablet switches over to my phone as the wifi drops.
This system worked incredibly well with the N73 as my phone since the battery in that phone was hard to kill even with a full day of tethering. The N95 has a considerably less powerful battery — even the newer N95-3 which I’ve been using for a month or so. I find I’ve got power in the car as well as a Proporta Mobile Power system that lets me recharge or maintain charge on the phone while the tablet enjoys a very long day of use. If needed I can top off the tablet with the Proporta of course as well.
Last night on the Podcast, I discovered I was the only one of the three of us keeping my tablet in always on mode. I’m curious how others use their devices… since the tablet is predominantly positioned as a second device (phone being the first) I would think most users are using it as aggressively as I am, though this is clearly a personal thing.
I tested the On Demand method today and found that while it saved a bit of battery life on both devices, I prefer to be able to look down and see live updates to my mail and rss feeds. The tablet is a direct extension of how I use the internet and just like my laptop it’s always connected and powered on.
Tonight I got together with Dan and Reggie to talk about the past two weeks with the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet. We ran through quite a few topics from the applications we like and want to see as well as the platform in general.
Dan is hosting the MP3 of tonight’s discussion, but you can do a save as right here. Enjoy and please let us know what you think!
Posted in Applications at 11:53 pm by Jonathan Greene
If you are using the MicroB browser (you are of course right?) then you might be very interested to learn about the release of Greasemonkey for MicroB! Yes it’s exactly what you think it is and works exactly like Greasemonkey does on Firefox.
Be sure to read the directions for getting going. There’s an odd bug that requires you restart the browser twice in order to get it working. I missed that myself the first time and could not figure out why others were reporting success… pilot error it seems.
I love this…. I know have Gmail Macros rocking on the N800 via bluetooth keyboard which gives me a great idea of how well it will work on the N810 when the next update comes … hopefully soon! There are a ton of scripts to try — hacker delight!
Luciano tipped my off to the release of Python for Chinook as well as the fact that the repositories for Chinook (OS2008) are open.
Yesterday PyMaemo was released for OS2007 (Bora) and OS2006 (Gregale). Today it’s time to enjoy PyMaemo for Chinook Beta. Just add the following lines to your /etc/apt/sources.list file (only chinook target inside scratchbox):
deb http://repository.maemo.org chinook free non-free
deb http://repository.maemo.org/extras chinook free non-free
Because I have a live OS2008 device rather than the scratchbox dev environment, I added the repositories directly into the Applications Manager… Not that I know the root password to get this going in the terminal anyway!
Python 2.5 is there as expected as well as he ipython shell and libmiaouw-example which is a representative piece of code to show the kinetic scrolling that’s seen in Mauku. The Plankton theme is also there, though it does not seem to be fully baked. I’m back to Glasser which uses the transparent black borders.
I hope we’ll soon see quite a few more applications load in …
Would you like to win a Nokia N810 Internet Tablet?
Thoughtfix has posted the following video explaining the general idea, but head over to the Tabletblog site to get the scoop with all the rules. I’m one of the judges and I look forward to seeing your entries! The deadline to submit your videos is November 16 so get going!
Posted in Applications at 9:09 pm by Jonathan Greene
While historically I’ve sorta ignored this one I tested a beta build of ScummVM tonight and am happy to report that it’s working just fine in OS2008 on the N810. Here’s a photo of Beneath the Steel Sky playing the intro movie…
My character was killed within a minute after getting started…
Exciting news for Internet Tablet users this am! The email client, widely regarded as the weakest link will soon get a complete overhaul and be replaced by the long awaited Modest project.
- Modest (open source and based on the Tinymail framework) is going to substitute the current email client that is still being shipped in OS2008. The sources are out there and being refreshed regularly but compile them is not easy at this point.
- We are going to make releases under development through one-click install for public testing and feedback, as we did with the Mozilla based browser and SIP features. The first release will come at the same time as Chinook final and the N810 hit the streets. There will be additional releases until we get the final one.
- About Modest: API for applications in place, IMAP no problem and good integration with popular web based services. Just to make things clear, the address book component is not part of the Modest project.
- Once we release the first version under development we will open the typical channels of communication: garage news, bugs in Bugzilla, developers available through planet blog and maemo-developers list.
The tablet works great when you leave your home or office connection and automatically switches over to your cellphone so you can stay connected. If you’ve set the connection preferences to auto-connect on any connection this “just happens…” though is not the default setting.
What I’d really like to see is a way for the cell connection to switch back to wifi when I walk into a known area so I maintain the best connection at all times. Ideally this would have preferences to let the user confirm they in fact wanted this to occur and even on which networks. This would let you stay on 3G if you wanted or prevent you from auto-switchng to open public networks (default, linksys, netgear etc) you might have added.
I know Devicescape and Boingo can help aggregate your wifi connections, but currently they do not work with your cell setup. The iPhone auto-switches back and forth between cell and wifi since it only supports EDGE and this gives the user a better sense of speed. Our Internet Tablets offer considerably more potential and should have this feature as well.
I’d love to have local copies of posts in wordpress on the tablet for offline composition and sync back to the cloud… I recall seeing both sqlite and Wordpress as possible downloads on the N800, but was never successful at getting things to install properly. Looks like this might not be so impossible after all.
