Did you heart just skip a beat seeing the landscape menu on the N900? Mine did the very moment my eyes fell on this screenshot! As you must be knowing Nokia for reasons unknown decided to leave out the landscape mode for the default menu and the third party developers obliged by leaving out the same in their apps that found their way into the Application manager and the beleaguered Maemo Ovi store.

With over 6 months since it’s launch, Nokia seems to have forgotten about this much requested feature. Thankfully that won’t leave the N900ers like you and me brooding over the absence of such a feature. An enterprising developer going by the name of Robin Burchell has decided enough is enough with the Nokia’s Engineering team and went ahead to code this little daemon called Rotatedaemon, which as you would expect brings 360 degrees screen rotation to our N900s. Find out how to get this daemon working on your N900 and more, after the break. Read the rest of this entry »

Remember Hermes? That handy little application I reviewed way back in December last year? It turns out that the app has been just updated to v0.8.2. So what are the additions in the new version? Well, I let one out in the title of this post and am afraid you will have to hit the read button to find about the rest. Read the rest of this entry »

NRC, TUT, What the heck am I talking about? If that’s what you are wondering, let me first start by introducing these institutions to you. NRC is nothing but the Nokia Research Center based in Tampere, Finland which in collobaration with another local institute-Tampere University of Technology (TUT) demoed an interesting social networking concept where mobile devices create ad-hoc wireless networks, thereby allowing users to wirelessly browse the web.

While there are many social networking services out there, NRC is cashing-in on the reluctance of some users to connect to the web from their phone. Instead of relying on network operators to provide mobile internet, Nokia Instant community creates ad-hoc network using the device’s Wi-Fi radio. The network in absence of any mobile internet plan, nor does it need bluetooth or InfraRed port for interacting with other devices. How exactly does this work out? Let’s find out after the break. Read the rest of this entry »

After months of speculation and widespread rumors among N900ers and Linux enthusiasts, the Nokia-Intel initiative- MeeGo has finally been released for netbooks and N900s. Yeah our very own N900.

The release though is not a full release in the sense that it’s not ready for the end users. It’s more for the developers and hackers and the core version of the platform, which is available for our N900s doesn’t yet support the phone functions. Find out what goodies are actually included in the package, after the break. Read the rest of this entry »

The phrase: Third Time Lucky, couldn’t have been any more apt than it’s for the v1.2 N900 firmware saga. The blogosphere was strife with speculations way back in March, when an exhaustive changelog was posted over at the Maemo Arena.

Then the fire doused for a while, only to re-emerge in early May, with an unofficial release in torrents and other file sharing services. Nokia insisted it was an incomplete release and went on to warn the N900 community against installing this update. Finally laying to rest all the build-up to the v1.2 firmware, Nokia officially announced the availability of the firmware update over “Over The Air” channel, first in UK, followed by phased launches in other parts of the world. I know you have seen the changelog on more than one occasion of this firmware, but those were mostly unofficial compilations. Let’s see what Nokia has to say in their changelog, after the break though. Read the rest of this entry »

Soon it may start raining Windows applications on the N900! Yeah, the dearth of good apps/games on the platform has convinced a certain Damion Yates to get the Wine running on his N900. Windows applications and Wine! What’s the connection? Well, for the uninitiated, Wine is a program which brings Windows libraries to Linux and is widely a part of many a Linux distros doing the rounds on the desktop platform. Coming the mobile platform, where our Maemo and N900 stretch their wings, unfortunately Wine is not compatible wit ARM processors, which is at the core of our N900 hardware. Thanks to Damion though, who figured out a way around this limitation by using QEMU emulator. The project is still in its stages of infacy and the full tutorial is not out yet. Till then, lust on this video showing Notepad running on Wine, via a stastically compiled ARM QEMU binary, which you can catch after the break. Read the rest of this entry »

Looks like Eclairs is the flavour of the day! Yeah, am talking about the latest version of Android and before you think about HTC or any other android manufacturer, let me tell you that our very own Nokia N900 is man enough for this beast of an OS! Thanks to dj_steve of Maemo Talk, you can now get the season’s hot favorite Android 2.1 on your N900. I know you are getting restless to see this in action, and am I am not going to keep you from it for long. Hit the jump button and the demo video and hack details are all yours. Read the rest of this entry »

The original browser of the Maemo platform is back in its latest avatar. Yeah, Opera the team behind the browser on the first Maemo device Nokia N770 has now released a preview build of Opera Mobile 10 for the Maemo 5 platform. The Opera Mobile browser as you may know brings the legendary data compression technology of Opera Turbo, along with other Opera goodies like the Bookmark and Speed Dial Sync across Opera browsers on multiple platforms. Find out more about what goodies Opera have packed in their latest Maemo package, after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

Do you miss that trusty Paint Application on your desktop/notebook when on the move? Well, if you have a N900, then may be you have been trying your hands at the onboard drawing app, but as you may have realised by now it ain’t as powerful a paint client as the one you are used to on the bigger screen. So here comes MyPaint, an open source paint application for the Maemo platform which can put any paint client even on a desktop platform to shame. No kidding, this is one of the most powerful drawing clients that I have seen on the mobile platform. Don’t believe me? See for yourself in the demo video after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

Remember JoikuSpot, that I covered way back in January this year? Well, if you should know, the maemo version of Joikuspot has been in market since early February and if you haven’t already invested on a license of JoikuSpot, I found a free alternative with does just the same (well not the entire range of functions).

The app is called Mobile HotSpot, and its still in it’s stages of infancy and is presently available as a free download in Extras Devel repository. What features does it offer and how does it compare to JoikuSpot? Find out after the break. Read the rest of this entry »