An Eclipse plug-in for Scratchbox environment is being developed:
Our plan so far is to create a new eclipse plugin which uses Scratchbox. Communication between eclipse and scratchbox is mainly handled with shell-commands. This plugin makes it possible to use Scratchbox without familiarizing oneself with Scratchbox. The main idea is that user can cross-compile programs to ARM-binaries. User will be able to run and debug programs, which use X-window or X-window with Maemo environment. The programs will be inserted inside Scratchbox, so our plugin makes it possible to create, edit, run and debug your applications from Eclipse. This makes much easier to develop your own progams for e.g. Nokia 770 Internet tablet.
Eclipse development environment has both Linux and Windows downloads.
The latest episode of LugRadio features “An interview with Yannick and Carlos from Nokia about the Nokia Internet Tablet and the company’s approach to open-source software”. Get a bittorrent client and to download the episodes in MP3 or OGG formats.
I had the possibility to use an actual 770 device for around 45 minutes or so yesterday. Nokia’s David Weinehall was at Debconf with two 770s and he allowed me to test one. Thanks David. Here are some random thoughts.
The display is awesome. It is bright and extremely sharp. If you get the chance, try booting the device and look at the Nokia logo during startup. There are literally no jaggies between the letters and background.
The speaker has good audio quality. (note that I am not much of an audiophile)
The weight distribution is great. The mass is homogeneously distributed and the center of mass is very close to the center of the device. David also said that the internals of the device are quite packed. So not only is the 770 a nice SW platform, it is also a cool piece of electrical engineering.
The down side is that taking the machine apart and putting it back together will most likely be tricky. HW modders should exercise caution.
No part of the device felt cheap or plasticky. The flat stylus is a bit unconventional, but I had no problems with it.
Earlier reports about slow start up times and such are outdated. The programs started up quite fast. David told me that they are in bug fixing/optimization mode, and that the devices get faster every week.
The PDF reader is an XPDF derivative. (based on a quick rendering test)
If the 770 had one or two buttons on the right side, it would make a killer gaming device.
The device did not get hot, in fact it hardly even got warm.
I managed to crash the software maybe 4 times. But the bugs seemed to be known.
The X mouse pointer can be seen on the screen just like with the Maemo dev kit + xvnc. It may be a bit distracting.
My guess is that Nokia’s marketing people are at the very moment trying to pitch this as a product placement thing in Hollywood. (think The Matrix and Cellular)
The biggest question is, of course, when the device will ship. This has not been fully decided yet, because there are still various open questions. But then again Q3 ends in September, which is not that far off…
The conclusion: I like it. A lot. Can’t wait to get my own machine.
The address www.wiki770.org seems to work now and actually takes you here. It’s a documentation project for Nokia 770 Maemo development.
Florian Boor from KernelConcepts announced some updates to the OpenEmbedded build system for Maemo:
OpenEmbedded now includes support for the Nokia 770 hardware platform. This means that you can create filesystem images for this hardware platform featuring various pieces of software. The quality of these images depends on the hardware support for the Nokia 770 platform of the selected software package. Apart from Maemo images you can build build images with the GPE software environment which has basic support for the 770 (target: gpe-image). The Maemo image is intended to become a full-featured development image for the Nokia 770 Maemo environment. In theory you can build this image for other hardware platforms, but currently the 770 is the only supported one.
See Nokia 770 demoed, the photo belongs to MobileBurn, according to the caption.
Roger Spelberg from Teleread published a tutorial on making e-books for Nokia 770. His tutorial refers to the Maemo Live CD available from Mattias Schenkler.
SilentPenguin praises Nokia for good device at affordable price. You can definitely tell whether you’re reading a European or American blog when the issue of Wi-Fi penetration is raised. With 17.6 mln hotspots shipped in the US, in the high-density residential and business areas you’d have more problem finding Wi-Fi-free space, than you would finding Wi-Fi. Things are, apparently, a bit different across the pond.
However, the site praises the decision and offers some new usage scenarios.
Now Nokia, this is the right direction. But please, please make one the size of - oh - A4 that I can hang on the wall in the kitchen and use as the family messaging board and calendar. Please.
Karoliina Salminen, who works for Nokia, described her lifestyle experience with Nokia 770. Granted, she works for the company, but it’s still quite interesting to see real people actually using the prototype N770.
Yes, indeed, it is a quite cool device and I have to admit that it is wonderful thing to have it in the handbag everywhere.
I have the privilege to use a prototype and I am beginning to wonder how anyone could live without
. Actually I don’t need to use laptop for browsing some web page at home, just tap the 770 screen and the web page is there and when on outside the home, the device seamlessly connects through my GPRS phone (we of course have wlan at home - we have used it for years, even when it was not so cheap, but now anyone can buy a wlan base station since they have now became cheap mass market devices and the wlan is no longer fun of the early adopter persons anymore alone).
And because of the pretty impressive screen resolution (especially with considering the physical dimensions of the device), it is pretty well readable too and is not a reduced web-experience the devices with lower screen resolution tend to offer but fully usable for web browsing, etc. But this is just my humble opinion and I have nothing to do with any product marketing stuff etc.
I don’t have a dedicated mp3 player so far, so I like to use the N770 prototype as a mp3-player.
The playback time when the screen is off seems to be a lot longer than the browsing time before the battery runs out.