Highlighting great applications and services for the Maemo platform
I’m heading south to sunny Florida for vacation with the family today and will likely be blogging very lightly if at all. I’m leaving the laptop at home and only taking my N800 (though with Keyboard). I”ll probably do most of my reading on the smaller screen (which I do plenty of) though have not blogged much from the tablet. It’s all good.
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…though there’s a catch.
While the Feather service is truly free, it only applies if you live or are visiting a city in which Earthlink offers service and lasts through the end of this year. As you can see from the map below, the cities with coverage today are: Anaheim CA, Corpus Christi TX, Milipitas CA, New Orleans, LA and Philadelphia, PA.
I personally find the map to be a bit misleading as Earthlink has chosen to shade an entire state even if they have a single city covered… Typically cities set up their own rules for what’s free vs. pay (or even public) on MuniWireless networks so it’s possible it will continue to be free in some markets - though as someone living in a place without such a network, I can’t offer any firsthand experience. Please let me know if you have success with this or other muni-networks.
In order to use this service, you’ll need to set-up a free account and download a small piece of software which enables your connection. I found the link in the Tableteer homepage - on the Tablet. (I had actually seen it in my applications manager earlier today, but could not think of a reason why I’d want to install an earthlink app…) The application installs easily from the Feather site though I honestly can’t tell you more about it or the service since there’s no access point on the feather network in Westchester, NY!
Regardless this is still cool as the tablet makes a great MuniWireless communicator - you’ve got web, email, presence (IM) VOIP and of course now streaming music! My parting thought on this is that I’d really like to see Nokia do more deals!! T-Mobile (my preference given Starbucks coverage), Boingo, and Wayport all offer much more coverage and would open the possibilities for WiFi Roaming and make this even more compelling.
Quick update… about 2 minutes after I posted this Twitter informed me that the PSP now includes Free WiFi with T-Mobile.
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As noted earlier today, the Rhapsody application has been officially released. I’ve been using for much of the day and I’ve been very impressed with how it works so far.
Some background… Rhapsody is Real’s subscription music service. It allows you to have unlimited listening access to their library of 3 million songs with a low monthly fee ($9.95 - $14.95). While this has traditionally been a Windows only thing, you can do most of what you can do from Windows directly on your tablet which is quite handy. I believe this is actually the first portable version of the Rhapsody service which works this way.
Clicking on the artist name lets you view deeper info and explore on the web…
When you download the application, you’ll probably note similarities to the MediaStreamer application if you’ve used it. The main difference here, branding aside, is that you can connect directly to the Rhapsody service and listen online. Of course you need to setup an account, which is free for the first 30 days and you’ll be prompted to either sign-up or sign-in when you start up for the first time. If you decide to continue it will run $9.95/mo for the Rhapsody unlimited service. Windows users can also open the client on their desktops and actually download the tunes for offline access. Currently the N800 is not a supported portable player, though for some reason the Nokia 3300 “Taco” phone is…
Here’s a video run-through of what to expect:
I am very happy with this new application! While it’s nice to stream music from online radio stations, Rhapsody puts you in control of both freeform as well as programmed music — all in the palm of your hand! It’s easy to search for tracks or simply surf the library. I love that my playlists stay active between sessions and that adding tunes to MyLibrary is instantaneous, whether from the desktop or tablet.
The only real bug I can note for now is that you can’t actually login on the web via the Tablet’s browser as Rhapsody does not support this version of Opera. I have to think this was an oversight in the release process and hope it will get fixed quickly. It’s not critical to login to use things, but it would be nice to use your account outside of the player.
I do wish it was possible to sync/download tunes to your media cards, but there’s always the next release…
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According to the Press Release from CTIA, today is the day we’ll be able to download and enjoy the official Rhapsody client on our tablets. Unfortunately, neither the site referenced (http://www.nokiausa.com/n800) nor the the Tableteer page on the Tablet is updated yet, so we’ll just have to keep on standby until Nokia’s product team catches up with the PR. This happened previously with the eagerly awaited Smart2Go and took a while for the download to become available. I hope Nokia is more on the ball this time so they won’t feel compelled to apologize again.
While you wait, you might want to update the OS, which I am sure will be a requirement. Don’t forget to do a good backup.
When The release is official, Here’s the link to download… I’m on my way now!
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I just completed flashing my N800 and so far all is good. There are a few things to consider when doing an update as your tablet will be fresh (as in nothing but the defaults) when you bring it back online. You can backup your settings and prefs, though you will still have to reinstall applications. The good thing here is that your previous preferences are restored when the application comes back online. Nokia has stated that future software updates will likely be less “destructive,” though there has been no discussion on when we might see this…
If you are ready to do a software update — or just want to do a backup here’s what to do. First, we need to fire up the Backup/Restore Application:
Once, it’s open you can make a new backup (bottom left), restore, or delete backups if they start taking too much space up on your storage card.
Making a backup is as simple as naming it and choosing what options you’d like — though for this purpose I would suggest you do a full backup
After pressing OK, you should get a confirmation message a few minutes later and you are good to go. As you may have noticed from the series of screenshots, I do backups on occasion which is always a good idea with any computer.
At this point, you are ready to update the system to the latest release! As noted in the previous post, there are a few options for doing the update. Windows users can head right over to the official update page and follow the directions. Mac and Linux users need to be a bit more creative. I’ll cover the Mac update here, since my assumption is that Linux users are most likely to already know how to do this.
There is no official Mac Software Update tool, but Andrew Flegg has created a very handy tool called 770Flasher.app which you can download from his site. Don’t be put off by the name, it works great on the N800 and I’ve successfully updated my unit more than once. Once you’ve downloaded and installed the flasher app on your computer, you can proceed to download the binary file from Nokia here. MAKE SURE YOU DO NOT EXPAND THIS FILE! SAVE IT DIRECTLY AS A .bin.
While things are downloading, you should take this time to remove the memory card from your Tablet, if you have one in the bottom slot (seems to cause fewer problems) and power down your unit. You should have a good solid charge in the battery to avoid any critical issues as it is recommended that you be disconnected from your charger during the process.
If everything is on your Mac, you can now open the 770Flasher app, accept the warning (it’s fine) and begin the update process. Simply point the flasher to your .bin from Nokia and once it states it’s waiting, power-up. You should see a USB icon in the top right corner and then the Flasher will kick in and do the update. Mine took less than 2 minutes to process.
When you power back up, you will likely see a prompt to restore your settings. I chose this option and my preferences and some system settings (including my network connections) all came right back online. As I’ve been installing applications I’ve seen my apps prefs restore as well.
I hope this is helpful for you … Good Luck!
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Nokia N800 users… OS 2007 edition v. 3.2007.10-7 has been posted and includes improvements and fixes in:
If you use Windows, you can update the OS through Nokia’s application here. Mac and Linux users will need to head over here.
A full flash update is not an action to take lightly. Previous updates ERASE the full device. You can do a backup of settings and preferences which I will post on a bit later today once I have a chance to do the update myself…
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Om Malik has an interesting piece on the tablet up today following his meeting with Nokia at GigaOM HQ. From his post, it’s clear that the Rhapsody and Skype pending deals are just the beginning of the business development process. Nokia is interested in expanding the services offered from partners with mentions of additional music (Napster, Yahoo and MSN) as well as additional IM services beyond the installed Google Talk which I actually have really grown to like, is not where all my friends are.
I don’t agree with Om’s headline (Will Skype save Nokia Internet Tablets?) which implies that the table is in need of saving and that Skype will be the savior. Sure Skype is popular, but most people do it for free and would rather not buy a $400 device just to make calls. From my perspective, it will certainly add a great deal of utility for when I want to call another Skype user, but I am personally quite happy with the SIP-capable Gizmo and the video-enabled GoogleTalk which are already here.
Improved stability and feature enhancement (like flash performance…) are key and something I know are coming soon with the next update to the tablet OS. I hope Nokia takes proper care to enable future IM systems to embed in the OS rather than run as separate clients which will not only add additional resource needs, but will actually just be annoying as you’ll need to run multiple apps to simply stay connected. And yes I know and use GAIM which works pretty well actually… but will probably become a second choice to something provided by Nokia and partners. I have yet to see anyone embed with the system from a 3rd party perspective, but while those check books are out making deals, let’s do it right, ok?
Sales may be slow on the N800, but it’s only month 3 with this unit. The 770 was a sleeper that was positioned to geeks looking for a cheap linux system to hack. The real thing that the tablet platform needs is some marketing. It’s a new device in a new category and something that needs to be experienced and explained to be best understood.
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I’ve been using and enjoying a very limited (as in not for public) release of the MediaStreamer application which has some hooks into the Rhapsody music service for a few weeks now. It’s far from final and more a hack really compared to what I believe will be a new application designed for the service but I thought I’d share this anyway.
As this is MediaStreamer, you cannot sync and go with content from your Rhapsody subscription, but I am quite sure that is coming when the official release arrives. Until then, here’s what you (ok I) can do:
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As I showed you during the Installation Manager overview, most applications install into your Extras folder by default. You can leave this just as it is or if you are anything like me, you might want to start creating some new folders so you can keep things more organized and easier to find.
To start, open your Control Panel up…. and scroll down to the not so well named Navigation option.
As you can see, once this is open there’s an option to Organize Applications. Inside there, is a “file manager like” tool to create new folders, move them around and even delete them if you change your mind later.
On this initial screen, you can update what shows in your initial Applications Menu above the folders, which is called Favorites in Maemo nomenclature.
Here’s a quick glance at a folder I’ve created for my multimedia applications…
Another “hidden” preference from within the Navigation Control Panel is the ability to set which of your statusbar items are displayed or hidden. Simply tap the right tab on that initial Navigation panel when it opens up or when you are done with your Folder settings. There’s no way I know of to update the order in which they appear (thanks Darla!), but you can turn things on (like Bluetooth for example) to get a quick visual for whether it’s on or off when you need it.
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In the first part of this two part piece, I walked you through the Applications Manager and did a quick install from within the viewable apps on the N800. This part will cover the Downloads and Garage sites which are great resources for finding new applications to try.
Downloads
Both sites are hosted on the Maemo.org site which is definitely worth spending some time on if you are looking to learn more about the platform in general Downloads is a nicely structured directory, though it’s still a work in progress.
What’s really nice about Downloads is that the mission is to make it very simple to find and install applications. You can browse by subject on the left or try a search on the right. When you get to a detailed page, you’ll see something that looks like this:
The green arrows will enable a one-click install procedure, which means that if you do not already have the required repository on-board, the install process will make sure you do to prevent any glitches. It’s best to make sure the application is supported by your device (N800 vs. 770) though I’ve been finding that quite a few older applications run fine on the N800, though your mileage may vary.
Garage
Garage is a very different site. It’s more of a community in itself to help the open source development community track progress on development, interactions with users and also provides hosting for downloads, lists and a fair bit more.
Personally I really like Garage as it’s a great way to stay current on applications and updates as they happen. Much of what is here, is in early phases on life and may not be for every user, but it’s a lot of fun to be actively involved testing and providing feedback back into the system. A great application that is in active development is the g-Podder Podcast client. As you can see (or perhaps need to click through to the larger image) from this image, you need to install a few things in order to get going.
It takes a bit more time as you need to pay attention, but there’s nothing to shy away from if you really want to check things out. One great thing again about the Garage site is that there are forums in which both users and developers actively participate to provide help and feedback.
I’m not sure of the process or timing from when applications in Garage make it into Downloads, but it seems like that’s the plan as things get certified / approved for a broader audience. For now, you feel free to explore both…
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