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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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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!
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.

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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!
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.

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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!
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.

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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.
 

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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

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As for some N900 users, full fledge browser would come in handy at some points but when it comes to rendering a web full of images and Javascript content may be stressful on the phone and crashing the web browser at some point.
Introducing Web App for the N900.
To make things simple, it is a native app on the N900 that renders the webpage into just the important contents for you to view, hence removing all the ads and Javascript contents that contain tons of animation.
To install, first you would have to install this dependency in XTerminal :
apt-get install qtwrt
Then click on the following links to install the Web App that you want. It would bring you to a 4shared site, and when prompted, click open with Widget Installer. After installation, you would see an icon in your menu.
These links best accessed through your N900:
Yahoo Mail
Wikipedia
Engadget

Talk Maemo

More Web apps available from this source

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Everyone wants a proper Youtube browser when it comes to viewing online videos on the N900. Viewing a full Youtube page on the browser may hog up alot of data and even your memory causing a slowdown in performance and even crash the Web App. Introducing the new NVideo, designed specifically to ease the usage of Youtube on the N900.
 
Here is the breakdown of the review.
Starting the app took quite a while roughly of 15-20 seconds before it could be totally functional but from there onwards the app runs smoothly and switches between tab nicely. Logging into the Youtube account here with your current Google account requires no hassle.

The page that you would be shown for videos recommendation that relates to what you have been watching recently.

The loading screen that you are presented with when the video loads. At the bottom bar, the image with 3 lines is the additional buttons option.

The sharing and like button you would see on every Youtube videos. It also has the download video feature
One of the hiccups I got was trying to add a comment into one of the videos. It wasn’t responsive and it blocked the video.. Trying to get back to the video took much hassle and once I got back to the video, it has finished. I guess a fix should come soon enough

Overall I would say it is a good Youtube browsing app but still slightly lacks behind what the CuteTube has to offer with better UI and better response.
6/10

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Well some of you who would like to record video in secret could now resort to this method to record the video while turning the screen off so that no one could see what you are doing.
NOTE : For personal uses only. Please respect privacy of others
Reference from here : Maemo Forum (1),(2)
First you would have to download files from the attachments. (Must downloaded directly using your N900 and save to Documents)
pycam.txt , pycam.desktop.txt pycam.sh
Once downloaded and saved onto the Documents folder in your File Manager, unzip the pycam.sh.zip file. (Best unzipped using the Unzip Add on for File manager)
After that install everything using this command in the terminal after gaining root
sh /home/user/MyDocs/.documents/pycam.sh
Then you should have the PyCam icon in your list of applications.
Recording would start once the program is launched and stopped when application is exited
Recorded video would be saved in the Videos folder

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Ever realised that it takes forever for you to lock on to your GPS even when you’re in the outdoors under the clear sky and with a strong internet connection? In this article I would teach you how to lock on your GPS location from minutes to just mere seconds
The reason behind this is that the server the phone trying to connect is supl.nokia.com which is the Nokia Maps server I would say. It is very slow in response and takes time to triangulate your current location. A faster server you say?
supl.google.com
It takes just mere seconds to lock on your GPS even when you’re in a building and indoors. To change it, first go to settings on your N900.

Then click on Location and scroll down. You should enable network positioning and by default, location server is supl.nokia.com. Now change it supl.google.com and reboot (optional). 

Now you should be able to lock on way faster than before. This is very useful for those who runs their Internet on 3G connection as it can help you save lots of data.

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Don’t have enough knowledge reading the Quran? Or don’t understand? Then Noor is the perfect application for you!! All you need is a Nokia N900, Noor and a chair to sit on It has a good appearance for the user and for easy reading, it has the Quran verses first followed by the English meaning directly beneath it.

Very useful if you’re in a journey to somewhere and don’t access to a Quran. Noor comes in 7 different languages namely : en English(default), ar Arabic, fa Farsi, ml Malayalam, ps Pushto, tr Turkish, nl Dutch.
Change the code : lang = (language of preference) in home/user/.noor and you can use leafpad, nano, vi or any other editor to do this. Not every device has the ability to support this application as only Python compatible devices are usable here. You need to have certain things before installing Noor :
noorgtk, noorhtmls, noorcgi and noortxt. All of this does come with the default Linux distributions like Ubuntu.
To install Noor, you input python setup.py install then after that, from any location noorgtk.pyw must be inputed. Stay tuned to this website for more.

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I don’t know about everyone else, but I love how all the chat features are integrated into the heart of Maemo, when I can just look into the contacts menu and see who is where.  But this approach isn’t everyone’s cup of billy tea, and has its own limitations.  This is where qutIM for Nokia N900 helps out all the tea drinkers out there.

qutIM takes the old style approach to instant messaging.  It feels reminiscent of ebuddy which I used to use on my old N95, which isn’t a bad thing, and it works rather well.  Functionally qutIM does the same thing as any of the other plug ins that can be used on the N900, but it differs as it uses its own UI.  The upside to this is that you can see you contacts statuses, display names and even set your own status far more specific then just busy or away.
The one thing I was afraid of with having a client like this for messaging is that when closing, would that kill everything too?  But with qutIm it doesn’t, it will continue to deliver updates and can be accessed again from status menu.  qutIM currently supports protocols for IRC, Pidgin, Jabber, ICQ and more, and has decent portrait support to boot.

While defiantly fun to play around with, and to experience something a bit different, I think I will continue to use messenger from my contacts, but since those protocols seem to mess themselves more often these days, perhaps we will all end up using qutIM one day.  As long as I can remain online but not talk to anyone, I will remain content.