Just shelled a couple of grand (probably more and am talking about USD here) on that unibody Macbook or Macbook Pro? It does burn a hole in your pocket and it hurts especially when you haven’t got a deep one to start with. Anyways, lest you be thinking of getting that Apple remote which unfortunately isn’t part of the standard package, let me save you 20 bucks (that’s like 1/10th of the Macbook, but then still it’s money saved), by suggesting this amazing desktop widget going by the name of RaeMote, which lets you control your Macs (Mini, MacBook and MacBook Pro) via the N900’s CIR (consumer infrared) port. It’s available in the Maemo’s Extras repository and before you jump there, let me show you the widget in action, after the break though. Read the rest of this entry »

When Nokia and Intel announced their strategic partnership to forge their open source platforms: Maemo and Moblin into MeeGo, during the Mobile World Congress that concluded last month, I was excited and disappointed at the same time. Excited as it meant the availability of a wider range of applications but disappointed as I was afraid N900 would be left out of the domain of MeeGo devices.

Nokia PR didn’t help much over the next fortnight, refusing to divulge any details on the possibility of N900 getting MeeGo and I was losing hope over seeing some Moblin apps on N900 but then, the official MeeGo blog was put-up and Valtteri Halla of Nokia, made it clear that the MeeGo repository is infact headed to N900 and that too as soon as towards the end of this month! What does it mean to your N900s? Find out after the break. Read the rest of this entry »

There have been a lot of rants and raves about the navigation experience on N900 via the default Ovi Maps for the Maemo platform. One constant nagging issue has been the absence of offline maps, a feature which has been the USP of Ovi maps on symbian platform, so much as to push it to the top spot in the favoured navigation device in Europe.

However, the very feature which catapulted Ovi Maps to the top position has been missing from the maemo version of the application on N900. But all that is history, as Nokia have now updated the Ovi Maps loader with support for Maemo version of Ovi Maps, meaning you can now download and save maps on your N900 and be able to use the app in absence of data connection.  Catch more details on this after the break Read the rest of this entry »

Face Detection, Tracking! Looks straight out of that James Bond or Jason Bourne movie, ain’t it? But yeah these technologies are so cliche now that even our N900 can boast of one. Seriously no kidding, as demonstrated by German developer Johannes Kuhlmann, with his unique game based on face detection and tracking- Burger Face.

The concept of the game is pretty simple, your face is the controller and you have to dodge the knives and eat the burgers. While game may not be that impressive with graphics and the like, what really impresses me is the innovative control technology. Based on face detection and tracking, this is another contactless control technology successfully implemented on the N900. Catch the demo video and further details, after the break. Read the rest of this entry »

Missing that Rubic Cube of your childhood or whatever age you were in when you toyed with it? Now, thanks to Offscreen Technologies, one of the best known names in games and applications for the Symbian platform and now in the Maemo platform, for this amazing adaptation of the popular puzzle into the touch platform.

Rubic Cube as you may know is a 3D mechanical puzzle and is so popular that there are world championships held every year and world rankings are maintained by World Cube Association. There are all sorts of variations of Rubic cube with people playing blindfolded, feet etc and the cubes come in different grid sizes as well ranging from 2×2 to 7×7. Enough of introduction now, let’s now dive into Cube Touch on N900:

Screenshots-

Offscreen Technologies are sticking with the most popular 3×3 grid size for this version of Cube Touch and frankly speaking this is best suited for the screen size of n900. Since our N900 is no cube or not even square, anything more than 3×3 will be a difficult implementation. Not surprisingly, Offscreen have restricted this version at 3×3 and they have done a great job indeed. Sliding across the faces is intuitive and easy and so is sliding individual plates. The bottom line is this one addicting game and you are gonna spend hours on this one.

The world record for 3×3 Rubic cube is around 7 s. How close can you get to it? Better, if anyone can beat it!

The folks at Nokia Research Center (NRC) just can’t help making things easier for us. While there has been a lot of speculation about Symbian Foundation going open source and Symbian^3 demoed, even our Maemo brothers have got new company with MeeGo, the researchers at NRC thought it was time to flaunt some hardware technologies to the world. So here it comes in the name of Nokia’s Explore and Share technology which at this stage is still a concept but I see it coming on the mainstream N900 soon.

So what really is this Explore and Share Technology? It’s a new wireless data transfer concept which promises blazingly fast transfer speeds. How fast? Imagine transferring an entire Bruce Springstein album in less than 10 seconds, that fast! Seems out of bounds? Check out the demo video after the break. Read the rest of this entry »

First came Windows 98 and then the Android and even Mac Os X paid a visit to our N900, but now it’s the turn of none other Ubunto Mobile the popular Linux distribution for mobile devices, to boot on the N900.

First attempted by YouTuber lifenexus, this is one of the most complete attempts at loading a foreign operating system on the N900. It’s fully functional and more importantly there is no lag, even when the OS is booted from the memory card. Now that must have gotten some Linux geeks excited out there, so this one goes for you guys. Catch the demo video after the break.

Demo Video-

Doesn’t that look cool? I just love the LXDE desktop and the fact that there is no lag means you can as well use Ubuntu as the main OS. What a pity, that there isn’t room for phone functions in this OS, which otherwise looks very promising as a mobile OS. So Linux hackers: can any of you get some phone functions on to the Ubuntu Mobile? Not that we are complaining about Maemo 5 but having options is always better and plus it pushes the competition to come up with better solutions.

Have you ever found yourself in a foreign country with little to no knowledge of the local language? Sounds very familiar right? Most of you will definitely will relate to that lost feeling and guess what you don’t have to anymore. Thanks to Photo Translator- an amazing translator tool for our N900s.

You would have probably used the translator services of mighty Google, which I covered previously but that doesn’t really help when even the script is as alien to you as the language you are trying to decipher. That’s where Photo Translator pitches in with its OCR based translator engine. OC what? Find out after the break. Read the rest of this entry »

Our friends at Nokia have been keeping up with the good work as evident from the third firmware update for our dear N900s. The fact that the third update comes just a month after the second update goes on to show the commitment from our friends in Espoo in improving the already impressive feature set of the device.

While the official changelog is not out yet, it is highly recommended that you update the firmware as firmware updates generally contain bug fixes and optimizations necessary for functioning of device software. Find out how to update, after the break. Read the rest of this entry »

If you have been all excited about the Google Buzz announcement and release yesterday, I have another reason to cheer for you guys. The android  version of Google Buzz (which packs in more features) has now been hacked on to our mighty N900s. Thanks to Abhista for finding a way around it and that in less than a day since the service saw the ray of light! We are definitely impressed both by Abhista and our N900’s capabilities.

So what exactly is this hack all about? Well, to put it plain words, you are fooling the Google servers into believing the N900 browser to be the android browser. Simple and yet effective. Details and demo video after the break. Read the rest of this entry »