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.

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!

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.

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.

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!

Check out our new page Funny LOL Pictures (click here) - it brings you daily funny pictures that will make you LOL!
Are you in a liking of chess games? Playing with the AI doesn’t seem as good as playing with real players for you? Then you should totally check out Miniature, an FICS client for Maemo!

Miniature is currently only available at Extras-devel, which means you would want it enabled in your repo list. Don’t worry, that doesn’t mean the game is not good enough for everyday use, I myself have tested many releases and they work perfectly. In case if you need help enabling it, check out this wiki article. Make sure to disable it right after downloading the package though.
Now, Miniature enables you to play games hosted at FICS with thousands of players all across the world and even allows you to play P2P games with people nearby or with people in your contacts list. Registering at FICS is not required, but is recommended, if you want to keep easy track of your own games and stats. Host a game or join one of those already available and you’re ready to dive into a nice game of chess with anyone. And you even have easy to use text chat!

Miniature also holds quite some learning possibilities, as you can watch games already played, view chess lessons and participate in one of the tournaments FICS often holds! In case if you would want to play different kinds of chess, like antichess, Miniature allows that too.
 
A great client for every chess player, or just somebody who would want a nice game while waiting for the bus to arrive, Miniature is definitely worth checking out.

Check out our new page Funny LOL Pictures (click here) - it brings you daily funny pictures that will make you LOL!
Want to read some of your favorite articles on Wikipedia? But what if you don’t have any internet available for some reason? Or maybe you just want to save up money or battery charge for keeping internet connection.
Evopedia will allow you to download an archive of all Wikipedia articles and read them online, optimized for the N900 screen size.

Archives of Wikipedia for many different languages are available. A few Wiktionary archives can be downloaded as well.  A demo archive with 999 articles is available under the name “small”.
Note: Most archives take up more than 100 mB of space on your MyDocs, make sure you have space.
As soon as you download the archive(s), you can search for any article from the main screen. Since all archives are stored locally, the search is very fast. Pick any article and it will be opened in your Web application, and easy to read, thanks to optimized view.

One and only problem I had with Evopedia is that most archives are downloaded via BitTorrent, which takes up a lot of system resources and sometimes can be very unresponsive. Maemo’s watchdog reboots the phone in such occasions and this sometimes messes up the file system. In case if you get a problem with MyDocs mounted read-only, run this as root and reboot the phone (don’t worry, you won’t lose any files):
  fsck.vfat -a /dev/mmcblk0p1
Apart from that, Evopedia provides a nice and easy way to read Wikipedia articles without having any internet connection whatsoever.

Check out our new page Funny LOL Pictures (click here) - it brings you daily funny pictures that will make you LOL!
Note: The steps we go through this how-to include modifying low-level system files. Changing the loading bar is done at your risk, do not attempt if you think that you might mess something up or if you don’t understand some parts of this how-to.

Want to make your boot sequence more cooler? Maemo allows you to change the loading bar that appears at startup.
First, we want to go root:
sudo gainroot
Next, backup the files we want to change:
cd /usr/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/hildon
mkdir /home/user/MyDocs/Bar_Backup
cp indicator_update* /home/user/MyDocs/Bar_Backup
Now, for the fun part. Create your own loading bar images. You may use the originals as a base, you would want 8 PNG images with a size of 192×48, alpha-channel is optional. You can look at this custom loading bar set, for example. Name them all as indicator_update?.png, with ? going from 1 to 8, in the order you want the images to appear.
Drop all the images to /usr/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/hildon
cp -f [your images] /usr/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/hildon/
Once done, try rebooting your phone and checking out if all went smoothly.
Enjoy!

Check out our new page Funny LOL Pictures (click here) - it brings you daily funny pictures that will make you LOL!
Sometimes you just really need for a certain command to be executed every X minutes. Or maybe you could use something that will notify you to check your bags every hour. Not a problem, Alarmed will help you with that.
Alarmed is a little GUI app that allows you to schedule any sort of event to be done at a certain time, pretty much like cron, an utility well known to every *nix administrator.
Install alarmed:
sudo gainroot
apt-get install alarmed
Once launched, you’ll see a screen with all your currently scheduled events and buttons for creating new events, removing and editing current events.
Creating a new event is simple with a user-friendly interface of Alarmed: press a button, chose what exactly will be done at that event and schedule a time.
Easy and effective, now you don’t need to constantly remind yourself to walk the dog or switch your profile to silent when you’re at a conference.

Check out our new page Funny LOL Pictures (click here) - it brings you daily funny pictures that will make you LOL!
Do you like strategy games? Well, then you probably have heard of “The Battle for Wesnoth”, a popular free software turn based strategy game with a strong, Tolkienesque fantasy setting. But did you know that there is a complete port of this PC game for Maemo?

The game is currently available in Extras, you can find it in the Games category.
sudo gainroot
apt-get install wesnoth
Note that the game is pretty large and will consume about 240~ Mb of memory on your /opt Unpacking a large package can also take a lot of time, so make sure you have enough battery charge.
Optionally install the music files. (Not recommended as this will take up 100 Mb more of memory and will slow down the game a bit):
apt-get install wesnoth-music
Once installed, you can launch the game from your applications menu or with
wesnoth
Loading times can be a drag, but apart from that and a few resolution issues with menus, the game is completely playable. Add-ons, Multiplayer, Singleplayer campaigns are all functional. I was able to both finish one of the mainline campaigns and play co-op survival on the official server without any trouble, right with an N900 in my hand.

The Battle for Wesnoth is definitely a game every N900 gamer should take a look at. So install the package and dive into the world of dwarves, elves and orcs!

Are you in need of special symbols while in X Terminal? Don’t want to bring up the special characters menu all the time? Well, here’s an easy way to customize the special characters  line on the bottom of your X Terminal window.
 
Open up your XTerm and use those commands to modify the characters line:
Note: Run these commands as a regular user, not root.
Modify the key labels:
gconftool-2 -s /apps/osso/xterm/key_labels -t list –list-type=string “[keylabels]“
Replace keylabels with the set of labels you want to use, separated by colons without any whitespaces. You’re free to use any text, just don’t use labels too long. The maximum safe amount of labels you can use is 7, if you use more, they will all go to a side-menu.  For example, if we are to add pipe, input and tilde symbols you can use this:  Tab,Esc,PgUp,PgDn,|,>,~
Next, set the characters that those labels will correspond to:
gconftool-2 -s /apps/osso/xterm/keys -t list –list-type=string “[character values]“
Replace character values with the corresponding values. You can look up which values respond to which characters by looking at /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/nokia_vndr/rx-51 file (do it as a regular user, so you don’t modify it by accident)
If we follow the example for pipe, input and tilde characters, we shall use these values: Tab,Escape,Page_Up,Page_Down,bar,greater,asciitilde
Restart your X Terminal, so the fullscreen button goes where it should go and enjoy!

Quite often do we run into situations where certain calls are unwanted. Maybe you’re at work and you don’t want anybody outside of the working environment calling you, or maybe there’s just a certain annoying person who you don’t want to talk with. In any case, Callerx is a simple app that will help you solve these problems.
Once launched, you will be greeted with a screen that easily allows you to view all inbound calls and manage your lists with blocked/allowed phone numbers.

Adding new numbers or contacts to the list of blocked/allowed numbers can be done by pressing the ‘Manage Lists’ button, choosing a list of your choice and picking a menu option. It’s that simple.

Callerx also allows you to block any numbers that are not listed by enabling the whitelist mode and has an option to block all unknown numbers.
Being a daemon, it is configured to auto-start at each boot, and can be configured via a command line, by editing ‘blacklist.txt’ and ‘whitelist.txt’ files located under your MyDocs directory and calling
/etc/init.d/callerx loadblacklist for switching to blacklist mode or
/etc/init.d/callerx loadwhitelist for whitelist mode
Easy to use and effective, Callerx is all you need to stop any unwanted calls from ever bothering you.
 

Tweaks posted here are for advanced users. Any beginners can give it a go, and if any problems occurs feel free to discuss it in the forums.
1. Enabling Hardware Accelerator which would speed up the hildon-desktop ( currently unstable and requires disabling if not working. Might need to reflash in case of reboot loop ).
First using XTerm, run this command
sudo gainroot
leafpad /etc/powervr.d/hildon-desktop.ini
Then change
WSEGL_UseHWSync=0
to
WSEGL_UseHWSync=1
 2) Installing Swappolube
sudo gainroot
apt-get install swappolube
Then use proposed values and click store
3) Install tracker-cfg to allow tracker using less CPU power
sudo gainroot
apt-get install tracker-cfg
Launch it and set to lowmemorymode
Any other tips and tricks are welcome. Just leave a comment and we will post it in our upcoming posts
via : Talk Maemo
 

Besides overclocking, you can now install battery and speed patches to increase the performance on your N900. These guide will be broken down into 2 parts.
1. Speed Patch
First install it from Xterm using the following commands
sudo gainroot
apt-get install speedpatch
After installation, it might take from 2 to 4 reboots before the patch can be applied to the phone due to a bug. To check whether the speed patch has been applied, run the following command
ls  /dev/cgroup/cpu/user/
Then you should see some listing of files. Or when there is no error after installing for an instance.
If you are having the xterminal problem and it disappear after xterminal is loaded then do this to fix it
rm .cache/launch/com.nokia.xterm.pvr
If unexpected reboot occurs, the speed patch would be applied on the next proper reboot. To remove the speedpatch, just simply type this command:
apt-get purge speedpatch
2.Battery Patch
The patch works practically by going to an underclocked profile when keyboard and screen is closed. An overclocked profile is activated when screen is turned on. The patch can be temporarily disabled even with the screen off is by turning the screen off after opening the keyboard. This tip is especially useful when you are downloading some stuffs in the background and doesn’t want it to pause the process.
To install for kernel power users :
apt-get install batterypatch
To remove:
apt-get purge batterypatch
To install for non kernel power users:
apt-get install batterypatch-non-kp
To remove :
apt-get purge batterypatch-non-kp
To check whether battery patch is applied :
sudo gainroot
echo 1000 >> /proc/sys/vm/vfs_cache_pressure
Then lock the phone and unlock it then enter this command
cat /proc/sys/vm/vfs_cache_pressure
If it shows 100, then patch is applied.

A good GPS software for a phone includes many options such as maps download for offline usage, quick lock on, fast algorithms for recalculating and also reliability of the map of the software.
Today I’m going to review on the Modrana GPS app, a multi-functional app for the N900.
First of all, getting started on the GPS app takes a little bit of figuring out what is what unless you refer to the guide here. Even with that guide, I find it hard to start routing myself from my current location to the Point of Interest (POI) I wanted. A note for the POI, most of them requires you to download the data on to your device first before it can be used offline.
This would be a problem as it requires much planning and downloading before you can start your journey. From what I can conclude is that the POI is based on a certain database and not searching for it on the map itself.
Apart from all that, the accuracy of the locking on is quite good and it turns according to your direction at a very sensitive level.

The amount of details shown is quite detailed and good for those that tracks their journey from every single point of view.
The amount of options given are well versed but a bad side comes in. Too much for a beginner to use, and getting around for an advanced users might take some time to get used to it
Overall : 5/10