Mattias Schlenker is working on Live CD for Maemo developers:
It is the first iteration of our Maemo-Scratchbox-Live-CD. The CD is based on Benix which is based on Kanotix which is based on Knoppix which is based on Debian. Since Benix just uses 200MB, our Live-CD currently is about 600MB, including Scratchbox for x86 and ARM.
This leaves about 100MB to be filled with additional maemo-apps as well as with tools for supporting the development (maybe an editor that is not “vi” would make sense…).
Thanks to Roger pointing to this article in InfoWorld where Tom Yager seems to be impressed with Nokia’s 770.
The Nokia 770 Internet Tablet is easy to describe: It’s a pocket computer with a huge (800 by 480 pixels) touch-sensitive LCD, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and Linux. Millions of open sourcers mourning the demise of Sharp’s Zaurus are considering removing their black armbands. The 770 has no hard drive, but there’s only one reason to have a hard drive on a mobile machine, and I don’t need an iPod that plays movies. The 770 displays PDF and Flash files directly, meaning everything I “save as” from my PowerBook is viewable on the 770.
The770 - another place to track 770-related news. The author is excited about the new product and says it “smells like a winner”.
Look at the picture from PhoneMag, who’s asking what could be the next device that requires a stylus and fits into the N series. The comment here says it’s just another concept phone.
Someone is certainly eager to get to the market fast. Australian online store Expansys already sells Nokia 770 for yet unannounced price, at which you can pre-order. It’s placed in GSM Mobile Phones category, so they might want to re-think that once the actual device comes out. An automatic “accessory finder” engine suggests a Bluetooth headset, a Bluetooth car kit and a Bluetooth keyboard to go with it. So that’s how I can launch AbiWord in a 770. A Froogle search for Nokia 770 as a phrase shows that Expansys is offering the device in other parts of the world, too.
J. Manrique Lopez de la Fuente posted some advice for GUI developers in maemo-developers regarding the perceived slowness of Nokia 770.
- Wherever possible, use multi-threading to push latency into the background.
- Latency can often be hidden from users through multi-tasking techniques, letting them continue with their work while transmission and computation take place in the background.
- Reduce the user’s experience of latency.
- Acknowledge all button clicks by visual or aural feedback within 50 milliseconds.
- Display an hourglass for any action that will take from 1/2 to 2 seconds.
- Animate the hourglass so they know the system hasn’t died.
- Display a message indicating the potential length of the wait for any action that will take longer than 2 seconds.
- Communicate the actual length through an animated progress indicator.
- Offer engaging text messages to users informed and entertained while they are waiting for long processes, such as server saves, to be completed.
- Make the client system beep and give a large visual indication upon return from lengthy (>10 seconds) processes, so that users know when to return to using the system.
- Trap multiple clicks of the same button or object. Because the Internet is slow, people tend to press the same button repeatedly, causing things to be even slower.
Seems that some people at Microsoft are taking offense at Nokia naming the 770 the Internet tablet. Since, unless you lived under the rock over the past few years, Microsoft advertised Tablet PCs (running Microsoft(r) Windows (r) XP (r) Tablet PC(r)), naturally, and now the term would seemingly get diluted. Seems like Microsoft would be all over this if (a) the term tablet hasn’t been used so widely throughout and (b) they only sold 600K of those Tablet PCs in 2004, so it’s below the radar of the legal department. Plus, the differentiation of Tablet PC (notice the PC in there) versus Internet tablet should more or less provide the buyer with the right expectations of what exactly they are getting.
Nancy Cohring, who writes for the TechWeb Technology Network, and allows herself more informal pieces in blog-like atmosphere of Wi-Fi Net News, reports on her helsinki trip:
I’m not totally sure (the PR person I asked couldn’t say for sure) but I think this is the first time that Nokia has offered a peak at the actual device. When it was launched, I think all the coverage came from paper. Anyway, I tried to be level in this review but generally I was pretty disappointed. Everything about it was agonizingly slow. I have no idea if that is because these are early versions or if this is how the final products will be.
And more formal review at Linux Pipeline (don’t miss the second page, where Nancy expands on applications):
I tried streaming Internet radio, listening through the built in speakers, and it worked without a glitch. Users will also be able to plug in head phones. The video I watched was a bit choppy but bearable. Some pre-loaded photographs looked fantastic on the 800 X 480 high-resolution display, which displays 65,536 colors.
A paragraph at MobileRead forum tells us that Plucker, a popular open source e-book reader, has been ported to Nokia 770, with a screenshot provided.
Plucker was originally started as a Palm OS application to enable the Palm owners to read the e-books and browse collections of HTML files offline, but currently you can find a Plucker viewer for pretty much any popular operating system out there. Sample readings in Plucker format can be downloaded on the official Web site, so one can now enjoy Definition & Reality in the General Theory of Political Economy by Thomas Colignatus in their pajamas, reading, supposedly, on Nokia 770. The e-book reader itself would be a useful addition to the 770 applications family, as, being open, it also provides for some DRM for authors and publishers willing to distribute their works in Plucker format.
Ruda Moura made an announcement on the development list about Python for Maemo release. See the alpha here.
This release has big performance problems and should be fixed soon (work in progress).