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Have you lost a remote for an infrared device? As long as you have your N900 with Pierogi on it, it shouldn’t be a problem.

Pierogi is a really good (and tasty) infrared remote for your N900, and allows you to control tons of different devices that are already preconfigured into the app. While apps like Raemote and QtIrreco can do the same, Pierogi has a better design in both the UI and the way the app works.
Pieorgi has tons, tons, of keysets preconfigured for just many devices you’d need, even things like air conditioners and there’s no need to download them. All supported and tested devices can be found here, but there might be more. If you have a device not seen on the list, you can request it in this TM thread. The user interface is very nice and understandable, you don’t need to spend hours trying to figure it out. And there’s no need to launch the the LIRC (Linux Infrared Remote Control) daemon, the app speaks directly with the device.
Well, I found every single keyset for devices in my house working well and out of the box, I had much more problems trying to configure them all to work with QtIrecco. So, go on and fetch Pierogi off Extras, or even better, Extras-devel (as that version has more devices and some bugs fixed) and stop worrying about missing remotes!
 

Thanks to our reader, Salut Ct for suggesting the app. Have your own suggestions? Please leave them in the comments or on our forum!

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Learning Japanese, or wish to start? Maemo port of a libre desktop program Kanatest can help you learn both katakana and hiragana characters.

Kanatest will test your knowledge by showing you kana characters and having you type in their romaji equivalents. At the end, your statistics will be shown, and later you can compare your older results with your new ones.
What makes it a really-really good piece of learning software are tons of helpful functions and features, like translations of the program to other languages, definable lessons together with many predefined ones, a complete character chart, test on either kata, hira or both, the aforementioned statistics, which can be shown in a nice graph or table, minor things, like font customization.

Kanatest can be fetched from Extras, there are no differences with the Devel or Testing versions, find it under Education section in a graphical package manager or simply run:
sudo gainroot
apt-get install kanatest
So, if you’re into learning Japanese, go check the app out. It will be worth it.

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Doing some math that requires you to calculate derivatives? Rather than calculating them yourself, you might want to let a calculator do it for you. Derivative is rather good one.

Derivatives runs on SymPy, which is a powerful symbolic math library and allows Derivative have a couple of interesting features. Mainly, Derivative can count all types (ordinary, partial and multiple) of derivatives from 1 to 3 variables, calculates gradient, divergent, curl and laplacian, has support for many output formats (from simple and bidimensional to even LaTeX, C and Fortran), simplification methods for non-numerical calculations, support for variable names like alpha, lambda etc. and much more. Of course, it’s completely free software. Just fetch the app from Extras with
sudo gainroot
apt-get install derivative
and check all the features for yourself.

Have questions or suggestions? Maybe a problem? Drop us a comment or leave a post on our forum and we’ll look into it.

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Interested in listening to net radio, with recommendations and such, but don’t want to use paid services like Last.fm? Try Pandora Radio, it’s free and easy to use on your N900 or N9 with a good client that is PyRadio.

While available in the Extras, that version seems to have a serious issue with authenticating, so fetch one from Extras-Devel or Extras-Testing, which works like a charm. Just make sure to disable the repo after you fetched it, unless you actually want them enabled.
If you have a username at Pandora, just type it in with your password and you’re set. If not, create one. Now, you’re free to add stations, and listen to them on the go from your N900!
Liking tracks, adding/creating stations and other things are working on the client perfectly, and, unlike Last.fm it’s absolutely free to use, so why not?
 

Please note, that for quite a while Pandora has been off limits for non-US residents. While I seem to connect without a problem (and I don’t live in the US), you may experience problems. If you do (try checking by launching pyRadio from the command line), try using Tor.

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Whenever you’re surfing the net, you do want to be concerned about your online privacy. A lot of information can get to the wrong hands if you don’t. One of the good ways to protect your network privacy is an onion router: Tor.
Now if you don’t know what onion routing is, in short, using it will have your connections bounce through many various Tor servers before reaching their destination. Everything is encrypted, which will make tracking down your path difficult, thus keeping your identity safe. The picture below shows exactly how it works:

With Maemo being a complete GNU/Linux distribution, it shouldn’t be a surprise that you can use Tor there, very easily, and with a status applet for your convenience. If you want to use it, just fetch off a package from Extras:
sudo gainroot
apt-get install status-area-applet-tor
The package will pull down Tor as one of its dependencies, so yes, you can now use Tor to protect yourself, just open up your status area menu and you’ll see a button!

Click it, and you’ll be able to run Tor and have your network connection routed. Very easy.
 

When using Tor you should note two things:
1. Now your connections are bouncing through various servers, so the connection is slower than it usually is. You have to pay for your anonymity.
2. Even Tor has  it’s weaknesses, and besides that there are other ways to identify you, if somebody needs that, like flash cookies, fingerprinting, etc. so don’t rely on it strongly and don’t think you can do naughty stuff on the net without getting caught.

Have questions or suggestions? Maybe a problem? Drop us a comment or leave a post on our forum and we’ll look into it.

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Concerned about the health of your N900? Healthcheck can help you out not only to check your phone for hardware failures, but also to view your system information easily.

Get it off extras with
sudo gainroot
apt-get install healthcheck
Healthcheck will allow you to view various bits of info, as you can see on the screenshot above, from your IMEI to hardware status. As the app name suggests, this will help you determine whether there’s something wrong with your N900.
You can also check your total memory status in a nice table, GSM information, CPU frequencies, other things, but the best part of it all are various tests you can run to check for hardware issues. Such as the pointer test, to check whether there’s anything wrong with your display.

Having all that functionality, healthcheck is a really good app to keep your phone in a good condition.

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Find your mobile carrier’s SMS rates a bit too high? Well, there’s a solution: you can send SMS via internet easily using Web2SMS!

Web2SMS is available in the Extras repository, so just run
sudo gainroot
apt-get install web2sms
to install it.
Once launched, you can set yourself up an account. Web2SMS supports many providers, so pick one that suits you from the list. You will need to register on the provider’s website. Of course, the rates for SMS sending vary from provider to provider.
Then, just tap the created account name and send a message to anyone. Selecting a contact from your contact list works too. The time it takes to send a message depends on your provider, some may take longer than others.

So, if you don’t like the rates your mobile carrier sets, or if you just want to save up some money, use Web2SMS. Most of the time it will be cheaper than sending them like you would normally.

Please note: some mobile carriers in certain countries may not like you using such methods of sending. Please read their terms of service to see, whether they allow it or not.

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Everybody occasionally needs to make a sketch or write something. But oftentimes, there just might not be a piece of paper or anything to write with lying around. On such occasions, you might want a handy sketching tool around.
The N900 sure comes with a stock “Sketch” app, but you sure might notice it might be pretty slow and unresponsive. But hey, there’s a better one available! Try PenPen.

There’s a variety of reasons, why PenPen is a good sketching app. First of all, it’s fast and responsive, whatever you will be writing will appear on your virtual paper almost instantly. Next, it has some very good support for portrait mode. Finally, there’s multiple page support, which means you can easily separate different drawings.

PenPen is currently available at the Extras repository, so just get it with
sudo gainroot
apt-get install penpen
If your job or hobbies include a lot of sketching, like mine do, then PenPen is a good thing to have on your N900. If you’re in a worry of your screen getting damaged, or just want to get a better experience from your mobile sketching, you might also want to grab a good screen protector from our store.
 
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Have a suggestion? A problem? Post them on our forum or in the comments and we’ll look into it.

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With all the latest hype about QR-codes, you must certainly would want a QR scanner on your phone. Especially if you’re living in Japan, where QR-codes are most popular.
Well, the N900 sure has a QR-scanner, and a pretty good one! mBarCode, together with a QR plugin can read both barcode and QR information.

You can get both mBarCode and the QR-plugin from the Extras repo:
sudo gainroot
apt-get install mbarcode mbarcode-plugin-qrcode
Launch the application and now you have a very good scanner! Target your camera at a QR or a barcode and the information gets read almost instantly. Links and other “can-be-malicious” content is shown to you before getting opened with your tap. You can even check the shortlinks by copying them and visiting this site.
You can also store the scanned code into a file, or read the code from a file you stored. That way you can use the codes later, or scan the codes downloaded from a website.

With all that, mBarCode is a must-have if you’re used to dealing with QR and barcodes.
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In case if you’d want to test how it works and you don’t have any scannable codes around, you can use an online generator, like this one.

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If you happen to run a GNU/Linux machine and often play video games, then you might have heard of Teeworlds. If you didn’t hear about it yet, Teeworld is a retro-styled 2-D online side-scroller, which has pretty graphics, fast-paced gameplay with the well-known game mods: CTF, Deathmatch, etc. A lot of user-created content is available for the game, including extra modes, maps, and graphical sets.  Well, thanks to the Maemo being a complete GNU/Linux distribution, Teeworlds is surely available for playing on your N900!

The package for Teeworlds is available in Extras and you can install it with
sudo gainroot
apt-get install teeworlds
Once installed, you can launch it and see how actually well does the PC game run on your phone. Teeworlds starts up pretty smoothly, can access all the servers, settings and everything else. While you might think that the N900 keyboard might not be suitable for playing, the default key bindings prove otherwise, the game is played fairly well. If you don’t like the bindings, of course you can set your own.
Another point for Maemo’s power as a mobile platform, such a game is definitely worth trying, so check it out!

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Check out our new page Funny LOL Pictures (click here) - it brings you daily funny pictures that will make you LOL!
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Need to take a couple of notes? Simple calendar notes and/or text files not enough for you? Then check out Conboy, a clone of Tomboy, which is a very good note management program!

As soon as you get the package (which is available in the Extras repository) and run the app, powerful note managing capabilities will unfold on your screen. Conboy allows text formatting, text alignment, zoom and quite some extra stuff, all of which you can check by looking around the menus and the interface. And it’s all quite readable and manageable!

By pressing that little folder icon, you’ll get a list of all your notes, which can all be searched, sorted, deleted, edited… All management operations are handled quite well, which makes Conboy even better.
So, if you keep forgetting things, or if you’re used to taking a lot of notes, like I am, then Conboy is surely a must have on your Nokia N900.

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Check out our new page Funny LOL Pictures (click here) - it brings you daily funny pictures that will make you LOL!
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No doubt, your phone must be something very valuable for most of you. If so, you will want to keep it away from thieves. HandsOff is a handy app that will help you with that.

HandsOff is a simple alarm tool that will detect possible theft of your N900, using light and proximity sensors. Just type in a PIN-code and, well, press the big red button on top.
After armed, as soon as your N900 leaves the area where it’s supposed to be, a loud alarm will notify you about it right away, and might prevent a theft. Surely, the alarm won’t stop, unless a proper PIN-code is entered. You can also set your own alarm sound and sensitivity, so you can carry the phone in your pocket. You might want to tweak the settings a bit, until your desired settings are discovered.
Even something that relatively small can prevent a theft, so if you’re paranoid, or just want to keep your N900 safe, you should probably try HandsOff.

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Check out our new page Funny LOL Pictures (click here) - it brings you daily funny pictures that will make you LOL!
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Ever played Crayon Physics Deluxe? Well, I’m sure you’ll be happy to learn about it’s FOSS clone, Numpty Physics! And what’s more, it runs on your Maemo device perfectly!

In case if you never heard of the game, here’s a quick overview: you have a ball/box/something ‘A’ and you must get it to star/box/something ‘B’. How you do it is completely up to you, your stylus and your imagination. With such a simple premise, the game is very-very fun and has a huge replayablility factor, as every level can be passed with at least 10 ways.
Need to get a ball over a palm tree? Build a giant mallet to hit it! Or create a zipline than will take the ball over the tree. The possibilities are basically endless. In case if you get bored with 17 alread included levels, you can download more, or easily create your own levels!

A little and simple, but very addictive game that will make sure to hold your interest for long and kill the time whenever you want. So get the game and start creaating!

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Well as we know the N900 is pretty much a hacker’s phone I would. Well is those little little things of the N900 that makes us users looks cooler than others. Here are some of few examples.
1.The USB OTG CABLE

Well this is my cable which I use to connect Pendrives and HDD hard disk to my N900 to read files from it. You can try the h-e-n application from extras-devel repo. Or install hostmode-gui from -devel, kernel-power will be installed if no other compatible kernel is present. You can buy the USB OTG Cable here.
apt-get install hostmode-gui
2.TV OUT

Yes TV out for me is cool. Why? Cause you get an oversized Maemo running on your TV. On the downside, there seems to be a lot of static around the metal casing of the screen. Those using the TV OUT cable should take note of this. By the way, this cable is included in your N900 box just so you know. If you lost yours, you can buy it here.
3.PS3 SixAxis Controller

Yes a PS3 Controller. The N900 only works with the OLD SIXAXIS which the model between the Dualshock 2 and Dualshock 3. So whoever that wants to buy for the sake of having fun with it should take note you can only use SIXAXIS and not SIXAXIS DUALSHOCK 3. For the demo and installation guide, you can always check here
This is just a simple post to give some idea to those who are not in the know what their N900 could do. Cheers!

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It’s never a bad thing being spoiled for choice, and when it comes to web browsers we indeed have a few to choose from.  Opera browser is one such choice, and it has always had a fairly good reputation, and I do appreciate them making such good browsers for mobile devices.  I even recall using Opera on my N95 in lieu of the rather average built in browser.

Opera 11 boasts a very modern looking UI, features usually only seen on a PC, and runs at a decent speed too, unlike Firefox.  It’s good to see that even once the choice to run Opera is made, we are once again spoiled, with a slew of configurable options to choose from too.
The zooming options are rather well implemented, being buttons on the screen, leaving my volume button for volume which I love, and the Opera webpage boasts that it does not suffer from any checker boarding.  Checker boarding is something that I deal with often with MicroB, and its great that it isn’t present here, which current usage has shown to be true.

One point where I found MicroB still trumps Opera is that MicroB can still render many full sites better, and doesn’t jump into mobile sites.  Facebook for one is where MicroB does well, but Opera simply jumps to the silly mobile version.  If the mobile version is what you want though, it runs very well on Opera.
Opera 11 is a fantastic browser, and I would recommend it to anyone to give it a spin.  For me, it is my backup browser when MicroB decides to have its time of the month.  You can grab it from the Extras-testing repository and all warnings to anything you pickup from extras repositories.  So what are you waiting for?