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Sick and tired of that old boring lockscreen?  The one that only has the time, date and a slider?  Well, here we have a little mod that changes all that called QtLockscreen, a highly configurable lockscreen replacement.
QtLockscreen out of the box works just fine, replacing the boring old default one in all instances of its appearance.  The new look is much sleeker, and comes with media player controls, but that’s not the best part.  As with anything N900, the best part is that you can mess around with this as much as you want!  A word of caution though, as it doesn’t yet have a GUI to play around with settings, so its all messing with file code.  Being in the extras-devel repository, no one but you takes responsibility if your device goes nova.
If you are comfortable tweaking with some files though, go for it.  Everything can be played around with, from background images, fonts, sizes and more.  QtLockscreen currently works with the default Media Player, Open Media Player and Mediabox.  It didn’t work with any of the other media players I have floating around.  Another issue I had with it was that occasionally the old lockscreen would show up, but then after going back into standby and hitting power again, QtLockscreen made a reappearance.
Not exactly a staple app, but a very nice way to add a bit of a personal touch to that lockscreen.  If you want to try it out, have a read here first.  Now back to tweaking my lockscreen some more.

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I can deal with Apple’s just fine, as long as I don’t have to touch one, I am completely fine.  The trouble I have with the iPhone is that it feels like every man and his dog ‘must’ have one, or you’re just not cool.  What’s worse is that everything is now optimised for that little piece of fruit.  So what has that got to do with me, and how can we take advantage of it?  Macuco of course!

What is Macuco?
Macuco is a web browser, which emulates the iPhone browsing experience.  This is useful as it taps into all the hard work those evil corporations did, making their webpage’s work perfectly for those oranges.  Now, true enough that this makes many pages dumbed down, and the Safari browser of the iCrack just doesn’t come close to that of MicroB.
With that in mind, Macuco is a ‘sometimes’ browser.  A browser for when you want to check your Google calendars, and haven’t got it synced yet, or when you want to check your Gmail, or G+ and not mess around.  Or even those times where you want to stalk those photos just uploaded to Facebook of that cute chick you saw on the weekend, and not mess around with the silly layer thing Facebook does.  Macuco even gives links upon opening to some of the sites you would most likely use, and has great portrait mode support too (you would hope so).

Beyond just a few sometimes situations though, I wouldn’t use Macuco much.  But for these situations, Macuco is perfect for cutting down the clutter of trying to view an entire epic webpage on a 3.5 inch screen; and since every business out there isn’t cool unless they have optimised for the iDoesn’t, it does make those sometimes situations just a little better, without the hassle of needing your daily dose of fruit.

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The talk of the interwebs at the moment appears to be centred on Google, and their yet another attempt at the social medium – Google+.  Luckily for Google, so far it’s generally positive, and from what I’ve experienced so far, it does indeed seem like third time’s a charm. Let’s see how it is Google+ on Nokia N900.

As stated by one of my favourite web comics, it’s Facebook, but not Facebook, which indeed is exactly what I want! Even though Google+ is still in closed beta, an app has already been written for Android, obviously being Google’s baby.   Being in closed beta though, not many people will be able to make much use of this app… yet.  Once Google+ opens up for one and all, they will be glad they got the kinks out of their app early and it’s even on its way for iOS.  But where does that leave us loyal Maemo fans?  Us fans who don’t even get a dedicated Google maps app from the mighty rulers of the internet.
Considering only recently a decent Facebook app was made (thank you Sociality), I think it may be some time, if ever an app is made for the N900.  But fear not!  If it was so easy to defeat out beloved barbecue hotplate, it wouldn’t have survived all this time.

One option is to boot NITdroid, and viola, you now have access to the app, but that kind of stunt is out of the question just to use an app right?  Well, unless your running Android on your N900 over Maemo the majority of the time, it’s not really worth it and what the heck are you doing anyway?  There is a better way!
 The simplest method once again is the best, and the infamous MicroB web browser has come to the rescue again. Just as it is my preferred medium to browse Facebook, it will become my preferred way of viewing Google+ and it does a brilliant job of it too.  It actually manages to render Google+ exactly as it does Facebook, probably even faster, but that may just be …

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When I was younger, I never quite understood the concept of open source.  Sure, it was great getting free games, but how does that make something better? It wasn’t until I experienced the Maemo open-source platform that I truly understood why open source was this amazing entity, rather then simply a concept.
Open source, it is the very thing that has let Maemo continue on, even after the maker abandoned it.  The very thing that lets my 19 month old device still be relevant and even desirable to me against new releases even today.  By why does simply being open, create so many more opportunities for a device?
To me, openness is the biggest appeal towards the N900, and the biggest disappointment towards Nokia apparently moving away from Meego. Openness, the very thing that has allowed my beloved device to do things Nokia didn’t intend (read: couldn’t be bothered doing).  Simple things like changing my operator name to amusing quotes, to the more complex like adding MMS, and even letting me use my N900 vertically for the first time.  Now that’s what I call freedom.

What open source now means to me is I can make my device do whatever I want it to do, and apparently the Maemo community agrees with me.
But where do we go from here?  There is only so long Maemo can really crawl through the desert.  When even the community moves on in time, where do those of us go who have come to cherish their little open source paper weights? In a market that moves toward closed source more and more, the choice is becoming something akin to the choice of punching oneself in the head, or in the guts.  Both options hurt, but which one is slightly less painful?
In relation to closed source, iOS undoubtedly gets top spot as Fort Knox, Windows Phone 7 being close behind, and even Android becoming more and more locked up with each release.  I always had high hopes for Maemo leading the charge into openness, and have the same hopes for the legacy it leaves to Meego.
I do of course …

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Hi guys, today I’m going to show you what widgets and shortcuts I have been using this whole long for my daily usage. Some of you might already been using it for ages but some may not discover it yet. So here it goes:
On my desktop you would see this

One of the few important widgets I would explain here are the Desktop Command Execution Widget and the Desktop FM Transmitter
1) Desktop Command Execution Widget
This widget would be the most powerful widgets I have used so far. You can add custom commands to your own liking. For the tutorial on writing the commands, it can be found here and also here itself on the nokia-n900.com where the link is here
The two commands which I deem useful are the Temperature and also the IP address command. One thing I like about the IP address is that it is useful when you want to SSH into your phone. Much easier without needing to search high and low
2) Desktop FM Transmitter Widget
Well it is just a simple ON OFF button but it could prove useful when you want to save lots of time. Coupled it with FM BOOST from the extras-devel repo and the stock Media Player and your car would be your own media theater. To change the frequency, simply click on the FM Widget Button and hold and click on the settings.
3) QuickLaunch for Status Menu Bar

Well do you see the four familiar buttons on the bottom left corner? Yeap. That’s the QuickLaunch menu in your status menu bar. It practically allows you to add shortcut to Applications you used frequently. Below is the settings screenshot

4) Camera Lens Launcher
For those using BlessN900 or FCAMera or maybe your the Nokia N900 stock camera might consider this shortcut. Basically get to choose applications of your likings when the camera lens is slide open. Like this:
 

Well there you have it. Just a few applications to save your precious time going through this device. All the applications above can be found in Extras-devel repo or Extras-testing repo. Till then.
P/S: Comments are welcomed to give in applications …

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Today I am just go do a brief review on the NAMCO recreation of Space-Invaders-Style game, GALAGA. Came across this game while I was browsing through the Ovi Store. It is available on the Ovi Store for free. Here it goes:

The Start Menu
I would like to comment on the gameplay. Playing on a resistive touch screen was never fun for me. But in this case, it is quite easy and relaxing I think. The whole process of picking up a game and start playing it was fun. One of the good ways to kill time when you’re bored. Due to the resistive touchscreen of the N900, it still lacks multi touch control such as shoot and move at the same time. But fortunately NAMCO has included a way to overcome this.

A little bit on how to play Galaga
See the red button with two arrows? Pressing it on the red left button would make your ship move to the left and shoot. The same goes for the right. The yellow button is to move left and right while the big red circular button is for you to fire.
The problem comes in here. Mistakenly pressing the RED LEFT or RIGHT button forces you to move when you don’t want to. This could be frustrating to some who has big thumbs to play with. And again, they added another feature. The slider.

Conclusion on Galaga Game
You practically need to slide using the green button and shoot by tapping on the playing screen itself. One disadvantage of this slider is that it tends to move when you let go your thumb to enable another thumb to shoot. So there you have it, the brief review on the game itself.
Graphics : 6
Sound: 5
Gameplay: 5
You should try the game and beat my highscore posted on the screenshot. Till then.
UPDATED:
The link to the game is here. Accessible from other countries are not guaranteed. Thanks

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Recently I’ve started (finally) realising my idea of creating application for Nokia N900. Since PR1.3 update is already available and Qt 4.7 is supported by N900 it’s easier to make new application. With Nokia Qt SDK it’s even easier, since it has possibility to test directly on your phone.
First of all you need to install Nokia Qt SDK on your computer. You have choice of full installer and online installer that will download needed parts of SDK during installation process. Second of all, to have possibility to debug and test your applications on the phone, you need to install Mad Developer application on your N900.

Now that we have everything installed let’s start with our application. Run Qt Creator and create new project, in popup window choose Mobile Qt Application. In the next steps you can choose name for your project, location on hard drive and which components to use for this application. I’ve chosen all of them, since it may become not-only N900 application. Next you can choose base widget for the application, I left the QMainWindow and everything by default. If you uncheck Generate form you will have plain code application, without main window editable via WYSIWYG widget designer. For the first application, let’s have this possibility so leave this checked. If you also want to use some kind of version control, there is also possibility to include it in the last step, but let’s leave it for now.

Now we have our project started and we can put some widgets on the screen and test it, let’s put a button on the window, get one from list on the left and place, resize as you want. On the right you can modify object’s properties, upper part lists objects, lower part lists properties, for example text placed on button, let’s change it for something else. In the same way let’s change windowTitle of our main window. Now that we have something visible, let’s moove to testing it on N900…

From menu choose Tools and Options, there in category Projects go to Maemo Device Configurations tab and here the magic begins. The …

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As the Nokia N900 and Maemo 5 project advances, users don’t sleep. Sometimes we should have a closer look on what more advanced users are wodking on, recently I ran into few interesting articles about customization and MeeGo running on N900.
User interface customization is what I really like, that’s why when I’ve found that someone tries to go a bit further than themes allows to I was pretty amused. THP worked a bit on task swither (a.k.a. dashboard) and managed to remodel it, make windows bigger, vertically aligned on scrollable area. I think it would be nice to have choice of dashboard look, I find this idea very amusing, just have a look at the video:

Apart from Maemo 5 on N900 I’ve found a video with MeeGo interface running on N900 with hardware acceleration. Article about that was written by the same guy, I think his ideas and experiments may amaze us few more times. I wish I had this much time and energy to experiment by myself. Maybe some day you will see some custom modifications from me

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MJ

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The S60 software platform is slowly ageing away with Maemo covering it up. So I have to say, that the S60 users have to now get used to Maemo. You’ll hear me say this a couple of times here at our Nokia N900 blog.
Maemo 5 is currently present on the Nokia N900.
The Maemo OS which is based on Debian Linux and the GUI which is derived from various frameworks and libraries. The software uses the window manager, and GTK-based Hildon as its GUI and application framework..
Maemo 5 actually has nice 3D games cooking up for us with a new Twitter app.
Here is something that you can expect for the Nokia N900 :

So you can see that Maemo is actually better than Symbian but only in a few ways. The best thing is that you have the terminal to fix problems and awesome games e.g the roller coaster game in the video is really testing our patience.
At work/home and your laptop or computer stops working? Then use your Nokia N900, it is a mini computer in your hands.
With (Maemo) Debian Linux based, Mozilla, the internet browser technology and the Nokia N900 deliver a extremely good mobile experience. The device shows where Nokia is going with software and Nokia should continue to work with the community to unlock the new software capabilities.
Maemo is something that is fuses the power of the computer, the internet and the mobile phone, which is great to see that it is evolving marvelously. If you have any different opinions, let us know at the Nokia N900 forum.

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Captain’s log – Maciej Jablonski, stardate… well, today.
Nokia N900 themes are developing quite fast recently. There is much commotion and progress with regular themes and highly customizable Black Plastic Theme Pack. Recently Okuda theme appeared with really nice futuristic look.
If you watch science-fiction movies you can spot huge black touch screens or holographic displays with bright-coloured round-cornered interface elements flying around. This is exactly what Okuda theme brings to almost every single part of N900 UI. Stylish wallpaper with blue border, fancy icons for status area, custom system icons, everything looks like it came straight from USS Enterprise.
The best part is that this theme doesn’t end on wallpaper and color set, if you open App manager or Media Player you can see that every single area is nicely covered and consistent. Look-and-feel changes everywhere if it’s only possible. Since Plastic this is the first time I’m really satisfied with what theme brings to the phone. Just have a look at screenshots!
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MJ
Win Solar Charger by posting on our Nokia N900 forum

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As you can see in article about auto-rotating homescreen widget, from few days ago, some developers are already thinking of automatic portrait mode for Nokia N900. It appears that system developers have also thought about it on wider scale than it is available right now.
Some time ago, when N900 firmware was in it’s early stage there was a bug that allowed to enable portrait mode. I’ve never tried it to be honest, quickly opening and closing application when sliding the keyboard at the time, I just thought it’s too tricky.
Now there is possibility to enable portrait mode and automatic rotation in most of the applications by pressing Ctrl+Shift+R. When you do this, you can see application rotation when you have keyboard closed and rotate the phone, but the effect is still not perfect, I’d even say it’s far far away from perfect. For example contact list looks pretty good, but when you open a contact card it goes back to landscape and you need to press key combination again. Some apps just doesn’t look good in portrait, like conversations are truncated, media player looks more like messed puzzles. Some of the applications may even become completely unusable, because touchscreen mapping will not work in new orientation.
So if it does not actually work why to even mention it? I think that leaving this kind o functionality inside Nokia N900 is like telling us ‘this is proof o portrait mode concept, it can be done and we’re working on it, but still need some time’. At least I hope it’s like that.

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MJ

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Some time ago I’ve mentioned new ways of interaction with Nokia N900 with camera and face tracking. This time we can check ourselves how to use N900 and augmented reality, really nice concept of interaction with virtual items visible on device’s screen.
Augmented reality is technique that allows to enrich real space around us with virtual objects, which are visible using camera and screen of some sort. Such technology gives lots of possibilities of creating applications, like games of interacting with virtual objects and characters, or more practical like viewing meal from menu in restaurant as virtual 3D object.

After I’ve found information that objects appear on top of real 2D tags that can be downloaded and printed I wanted to test it ASAP, so I’ve drawn one tag on piece of paper hoping it will work and my hopes were fulfilled, on N900 screen picture on small piece of paper grew to a house! Later I’ve also tried on laptop screen with both tags and it worked like a charm.
Right now, after such base application appeared there are many possibilities for developers limited only by imagination, mine already created chess set that fits small envelope in form of tags and thanks to similar application becomes a field with fancy figurines.
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MJ

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Another gadgets for N900 homescreen and another ways of customization. Let’s see what’s new in Lens Cover Reminder, how to bring snow to Nokia N900 and how to check WiFi signal strength.
Lens Cover Reminder is small gadget for those who often forget about closing lens after taking pictures. The time I’ve mentioned Lens Cover Reminder I must have used version with no settings , but now there is possibility to customize the way it works. You can make N900 lock when cover is closing, change vibration pattern and turn on LED notification using one of available patterns (more information on patterns can be found in article here).
I know it’s a bit too early for Christmas, but I was amused with small xsnow application that brings snow falling on your homescreen. PR1.2 update introduced live wallpaper feature, which is nicely used here. When you install and run this small application you will see snowflakes falling on your widgets and shortcuts and Santa moving around homescreen from time to time. It’s over 6 months until christmas but I’m well prepared now
Another nice thing is Wi-Fi Signal Applet that shows signal strength in simple 1-10 scale. I was missing that, since default indicator shows only 3 states: none when no connection, blinking when connecting and on when connected. This small applet helps me predict how far can I go not to loose signal completely.
That’s it for today, if I find some more interesting things I will certainly share with all of you.
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MJ

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After some time spend on N900 customization I’ve developed few ways of creating loopable wallpapers from materials I can find over the net. Let’s see what you can do to make your favourite thing visible on your N900 homescreen.
Method 1 – Similar images with similar background
First of all you can obviously mix few wallpapers to act as 4 parts of one big, loopable image. To do this you need to look for wallpapers with the same (or at least similar) background on left and right edge. If background is similar, you can put images together on big (3200×480 pixels) image and cut to smaller images. Example here shows 4 images from Bleach anime series, as you can see background on side edges is always black (I find it the easiest to use black). It’s just the matter of placing images on every 4 of homescreens (order is up to you).
Method 2 – Placing small items on prepared background
You can see my second example, 4 screens, each with different item, but you can also use family pictures (more than one per screen), symbols, place them on any loopable background (or single colour background) and upload to your N900. For me it was just the matter of placing 4 images from Fallout game series.
Method 3 – Long items
There is possibility to cut long item into 4 parts and make it appear as it is one on your wallpapers. You can use picture of your favourite snake, mage’s staff from fantasy series, favourite knight’s sword like Excalibur, long-barelled rifle or anything long enough to fit 4 desktops of N900. Because I like eastern culture I’ve taken katana sword and as you see background in both ends is the same colour so even switching between last and first part is quite smooth.
If you have any questions, suggestions, need for detailed tutorial to do something similar, feel free to ask, I’ll try to cover all of the questions.

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Trademarks mentioned in this article (Bleach and Fallout) are properties of their respective owners.
For more info on devel and testing catalogues visit Application catalogues tutorial
Please visit Nokia N900 …

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New things are coming to theming world. But first things first, if you have problem with changing themes (no theme list window), just read forward.
Recently, after PR1.2 update came to my N900 I was having quite annoying problem with themes. When I tried to change theme there wasn’t any popup, window or anything. I’ve found that themes were moved to other place to save place for installing applications, but everything seemed fine. After that I’ve tried to change the theme by changing symbolic links directly (current theme is pointed with link in device configuration) and it worked. A little bit of googling and finally I’ve found solution. Some time ago I was writing about Widgets Gallery and problem was located in this packages (package set for libdui library). If you have it installed and theme picker doesn’t pop up just uninstall it, it helped me, now works like a charm.
And what’s new in theming… well I was a bit surprised but positively. now there is possibility to create themes for instant messaging, unfortunately it doesn’t seem to work for my SMS conversations, but for all of IMs it changes appearance nicely. Initial theme is packed in Shaded chat theme (currently available in extras-devel and extras-testing) in application manager, so feel free to download and test it and if you want maybe you can make your own theme!
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For more info on devel and testing catalogues visit Application catalogues tutorial
Please visit Nokia N900 Forum

Shaded chat theme