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Push Email is a function, that allows you to get messages instantly to your device, without retrieving the mailbox over defined time-periods. Most of these services have to be purchased before you can use them, or as the built-in Nokia Messaging provider has an free testing period. I also searched, googled the net for free services, but I did not found something suitable. Maybe someone of my readers can suggest some “free” services for pushing emails to the N900, although I don´t think that there is one ready for our phone yet. Symbianusers have some choices for installable Push Email services, like emoze or Nuevasync (this one is also working with the N900, but only in the premium version). By the way, Nuevasync is a very interesting service also for syncing calendar and contacts between devices, and maybe I will test and review this in one of my further posts.
I always wanted to try the built-in Nokia Messaging service. First you have to create a new mailbox and to choose Nokia Messaging as Provider. Then you will be asked for your Email address and password. You will be guided through the install routine until the setup is done. Now you will see the installed mailboxes (in case you have installed more than one mailbox, as I did) in your Nokia Messaging account.

There are a few account settings, which allows you to adjust the sync settings and the installed mailboxes. And thats all. As easy as that. And it works. Tested with several emails sent between my mailboxes .

- sam | visit our Nokia N900 forum -

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“Unlock” your phone to a few new cool settings. Tweakr has to be standard in every N900, it should be integrated into the OS. But for now it can be downloaded in the Maemo testing section and it will install itself to your phone settings as a new menu called extras. Scroll down after opening the phone settings to setup tweakr.
First there is the wonderful and long waited setting option to “clean” and trim your desktop. Finally you can arrange your shortcuts and bookmarks on your desktops with “Snap icons to grid”. Gosh, I waited for this app! I always tried to get my icons in a line with the stylus, and I think you know what I am talking about. Choose the grid dimension from small to huge and your desktops will look totally classified.

“Edit desktop bookmarks” is another setting option, and as the name describes, it offers you to change the label of all desktop bookmarks in whatever you want.
The “Power key settings” enables functions to show the menu by short press, long press shuts down the phone and double locks the device. These are of course the default settings which you are able to change as you want.

At least you can set some “Profile presets”. Save the changes you made with tweakr, name it, and a new button will show up in the main menu (tap on the clock and battery icon).  Then you can choose your new profiles.

Fact is, tweakr really rocks, especially the grid function made this application a favorite.
- sam | visit our Nokia N900 forum -

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And here we go again. Have you already pimped up your phone? Have you found the right background, or have you even build one by yourself? A very popular site on wallpapers is N900Wallpapers.com. All kinds of backgrounds can be found there, sorted in many several categories. You may also upload your own creations and share them to others. All you have to do, is to create an account, choose your files and upload.
Another possibility is to create a panorama view of a landscape on your desktop. This video tutorial shows you how to do it. It is pretty similar to the instructions I posted some time ago on how to make a wallpaper by yourself. This is made with Adobe Photoshop, but you may use GIMP as well.
Panorama desktop for N900
Very nice, thanks to Mark Guims post on the The Nokia Blog.
Another nice wallpaper gallery can be found here. These are backgrounds with the dimensions 800 x 480 pixels, so they don’t fit for loop-able versions, but you will find a lot of pretty pictures inside the gallery.
So here is my this weeks favorite  loopable wallpaper background I found on a site I can’t remember (maybe it was the N900Wallpapers.com site, but anyway):

- sam | visit our Nokia N900 forum -

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There are not so many games available at the moment for the N900, and so I think it is really clear what the Top 3 games could be. Of course everybody has his own ambitions on games what is the best, but here are my Top three ones, although I don’t count me as an real game fanatic, I am more the just for fun and try kind of type.

On my personal third place I will place Bounce. This is really a quite cool realized 3D game which needs a littlebit skills to balance the ball through its way. What I like is that the accelerator of the N900 has really taken place in this one. I hope for more levels in the future, when I remember the version made for the Nokia 9210 which fortunately also ran on the Nokia 9300i.

My second choice is Backgammon, coequal with Chess. Both are wonderful timekillers and challenging games which also utilize a littlebit your brains. I am really a fan of these ones.

And as my favorite game I declare Angry Birds. Lots of fun and physics. Yes you “heard” right: physics is this games secret. You have really think about the angle and speed you are shooting the birds to their journey. There are 21 levels in the free version. You have to pass one after one to advance. Once finished all 21, there is an option to download more levels for a little fee.
So tell me, which games you like the most.
- sam | visit our Nokia N900 forum -

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If you search the internet for some special functions of your Phone, you will find a lot of things, useful and useless just in a subjective point of view, of what you can do with your N900. Of course you will find tips and tricks on several sites described and discussed, but I will try to gather them all step by step here in our tips and tricks blog, so all these informations can be found easily, all in one place. It also will help to keep them in mind refreshing your memory from time to time.
Today I will start with some keyboard shortcuts, which make specific actions really handy. If you are used to work with your keyboard on your PC, you might find quite much similar actions.
These are used in text applications, email, sms, etc.
. Ctrl + C: Copy text
. Ctrl + V: Paste text
. Ctrl + C: Copy text
. Ctrl + V: Paste text
. Ctrl + X: Cut text
. Ctrl + A: Select all
. Ctrl + O: Open
. Ctrl + N: Create a new item
. Ctrl + S: Save
. Ctrl + Z: Undo
. Ctrl + Y: Redo
. Ctrl + F: Open search bar
. Ctrl + Right arrow: Move the insertion point to the end of the word
. Ctrl + Left arrow: Move the insertion point to the beginning of the word
Have you also known, that opening the keyboard and simply starting to type a name, opens the contacts and filters them in alphabetic order. It’s called smart dialing.
So this is it as much for today. To be continued …
- sam | visit our Nokia N900 forum -

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I was very curious about the Theme Maker. The new version 1.2.9, which supports also the N900 has been out for a while and I wanted to try making a theme of my own to use it on my phone. After downloading Theme Maker from the Maemo Garage section, there was no installing necessary, just unzipping the folder to the desktop. First I didn’t know how it could work, and the instructions are a little bit exhausting to read. I am also more the learning by doing type.
After getting more and more into the material I asserted that this one isn’t as easy as I thought it would be. First of all you really need an image editing software. The package includes templates with all the buttons, backgrounds, icons, etc. which can be edited, but it’s kind of complicated, because all the drafts are in just one layer. So in principle you have to make new ones because just changing or replacing colors would not lead to satisfying results. Once you have done all the creative work, the compilation process is the easy part. This is actually the program. Starting Theme Maker and pointing to the paths of the created image files, clicking the “Build” button will do the rest.
A new theme is created which can be installed on the phone. I didn’t managed it yet. It is really a lot of work to make a fine theme to personalize your device.
Fact is, with Theme Maker you are of course able to build a theme, but you have to be a graphic designer with good tools to construct a real shiny one. It is really not comparable with carbide.ui.
- sam | visit our Nokia N900 forum -

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On one of my wanderings through the internet again, I found the BlueMaemo for Nokia N900 application. I read the short instruction, but didn’t really figured out, for what it’s good for. The instruction describes something like using your N900 as a wireless controller for the Playstation over the bluetooth connection. For I have no Playstation, I wondered, if I could connect to my Macbook through BlueMaemo.

I downloaded BlueMaemo from the Extras-Devel and installed it on my N900 through the application manager. Start the application, choose “Wait for connection” on the startscreen and go to the connection routine with your Mac, the same as I wrote about in my previous post, how to connect Nokia N900 to Macbook. But this time, choose “Every device” when it comes to this part. When the routine is finished, you should have an established connection to your Macbook, if not, just start the BlueMaemo application again, but this time tab on “Establish connection”. Choose your device from the list and confirm the connection. You are now connected!

BlueMaemo for Nokia N900 offers a lot of options to choose about. Try them out by yourself. Mouse or Keyboard, Gamepad or Presentation, all of them should work smoothly. Very impressive to remote the Mac with the N900, controlling the mousecursor, writing text with the keyboard, or do presentations. Control even your Media Center with the N900! It will work with your PC too, but I only have bluetooth on my Macbook. You will find further instructions here: also for connection with Windows and Linux.

Fact is, BlueMaemo can be a very useful app for business (f.e. presentations), homeuse (for Media Center as a remote-controller) and gamers. It really attracts interest, when it comes to a live show.

- sam | visit our Nokia N900 forum -

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This is something to personalize your N900 device. Of course you can find a lot of sites which offers free wallpapers ready to download, but this short tutorial shows you how to make own backgrounds, and if you want, loopable too. Put your own pictures of your family or your own created graphics as background as you like.
As first you have to know (I suppose almost every one, who ones the N900 knows), that your screenresolution is 800 x 480 pixels. Always use native resolutions for best quality results. Either you own a commercial graphic program, like Adobe Photoshop, Photoshop Elements or CorelDraw or you download Gimp (a very comprehensive free alternative). Create a new drawing with the dimensions of your display and copy the images you want as background to the drawing area. Edit your pictures as you like and save them as jpg or png. Assuming that you use four desktops, save four pictures, all with the same name and a number, like: pic1.jpg; pic2.jpg; pic3.jpg and pic4.jpg. For a loopable version create your drawing area 4 times 800 pixel width. The dimension should then be 3200 x 480 pixels. If you have created your wide wallpaper background, just crop it into 4 times 800 pixel wide seperate pics, beginning from the left. It is useful to set artificial lines at 800, 1600 and 2400 pixels, so the cropping will be exact. When saving, name them as I mentioned before.

for still pics

for widescreen (loopable) version
So now you have your four background pictures (loopable wide or seperate still pics), open an editor like notepad, or wordpad, whatever you like to use and type (or copy and paste) these lines into the editor:
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Background Image
Name= // put here a name how you want to appear the wallpaper in your list, something like: my background, for example //
Hidden=True
X-File1=/home/user/MyDocs/.images/pic1.jpg //here your pic name
X-File2=/home/user/MyDocs/.images/pic2.jpg //here your pic name
X-File3=/home/user/MyDocs/.images/pic3.jpg //here your pic name
X-File4=/home/user/MyDocs/.images/pic4.jpg //here your pic name
X-Order=01
Save it as “name-of-your-wallpaper.desktop”.
Connect your N900 with the usb-cable to your pc and copy the pics and the desktop file to your images folder. That’s it. To …

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As long as I breathe and have the N900 my quest to personalize it never stops, so lets take a look on some other useful things you can do with some more tweaking tools.
Last time I mentioned something about disabling Nokia hands startup video. I realize not all of you may want to get rid of it, or even more, someone may get the idea that this video can be changed. If you do, you’re right! If you search around the web carefully you probably can find way to do it by editing configuration files, creating symlinks but there is also a tool to do that. Simply download BootScreen application (available in extras-devel), which allows to add files you want and play multiple animations or one random from the list. But be careful if you already disabled hands video using Powatool! After first use of BootScreen video may dissapear completely and you will need to run it once again.
Another neat helper I’ve found is related to keyboard layout. If you frequently use more than one for any reason it’s nice to know which one you’re using at the moment. To keep track of layout you can use Keyboard Layout Status Icon (package kblayout-status in extras-devel), that shows small icon in statusbar. It may save your time and won’t take much of screen area, you can see it on screenshots with my PL layout.
What else can be changed? Most of things, really! If you have any idea of further changes let me know, I’ll try to find the way.
–
Please visit the Nokia N900 forum.

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Here is the promised “Part 2″ of the Home Media Streaming with the N900. In this short tutorial I will show, how to setup Windows Vista for the use as an UPnP server, so that you can stream all kind of media (with some exeptions – read more about in the maemo.org talk section, link in previous post) with your N900 over the air. In Windows 7 it will work similar. Unfortunately I cannot describe the setup for the use on Windows XP, but maybe a reader could add some lines in his comment about this.
First go to the Control Panel in the Windows system settings. Click on “Network and Sharing Center” to open your network connections setup. Make sure that the network is set to “Private network” otherwise it will not work. In case you find listed “Public network” you need to customize the network to private.

In the Sharing and Discovery section you will find sharing options for several services listed. Chose “Media Sharing” to open the tap, and click on “Change”. In the appearing window check “Share my media to” and goto settings. Just make sure that the media types you want to share are checked.

Confirm all windows with “OK” and your setup is done. Open your network environment and make sure that the Media Server icon appeared. Otherwise open the Windows Media Player to activate the server. You can close it after you checked the functionality of your Media Server. 
Fact is, by activating the UPnP Media Server on Windows you can stream to several devices in your home network, not just to the N900. Try it out. Have fun!
- sam -
Please visit our Nokia N900 forum.

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Do you hate to open your facebook site on your computer or even on the N900 just to chat with your friends, or just to see who is online? Sometimes I quickly want to chat or sent a message to a friend, who has f.e. no skype or other account but is registered in facebook as my friend.
Now I figured out, that means I found a possibility to connect to my facebook chat account with my N900 out of the box. And I love it. All my facebook contacts with their online status just like I am used to see the skype status.
And all you have to do, is just to create an Jabber account directly on your phone. No internetsite registration required. Nothing else.
Here is how to do it:

Goto your facebook site and sign in. Then open http://www.facebook.com/sitetour/chat.php and you will see several options for connecting to the facebook chat on the bottom of the site. Choose the other and a window will open, with your login data, shown as an email address.

Now goto the settings of your N900 and tap on the VOIP and Chat accounts. Select add new and choose Jabber from the list. Here you add the logins you’ve just got from your facebook site and confirm. That’s it!

You will now see all your facebook friends in your contacts even with their online modus. If there appears friends that you already have in your contact list, you can even merge them together.

Fact is, the implementation of the facebook chat straight in your contacts, is an enrichment of your social media connections. Just try it.
- sam -
Please visit our Nokia N900 forum.

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Today I found the application MaStory in the Maemo download section. The description sounded very interesting and so I thought I should give it a try and installed it directly to my N900 from the application manager.
Normaly when I write or edit my text I use my notebook, but this app is phenomenal. I am writing these lines straight from my N900 for the first time and I am really astonished. It does not need any explaination, everything is logical and on the right place.

Create an account with your logins in the settings. You can possibly create a lot of accounts but at this time MaStory supports WordPress, Livejournal, Blogger and Drupal. Then just start writing your blog. There are several settings which helps you to edit or configure your text. Choose your predefined categories. Also picupload is just a tap on the camera icon; choose your pic or screenshot right from your phone, and paste it into your story. Edit the size of the picture, crop, rotate or flip it, to fit it into your text. Flickr and picasa are supported too, as well as a straight upload function to the media gallerie of your blog. Edit earlier writings directly on your phone. All this is possible with MaStory.

Fact is, MaStory is a very powerful blogging tool. I started to like it right from the installation. I think I’m gonna write my blogs only with MaStory anymore.
- sam -
Please visit the Nokia N900 forum.

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Sometimes, when you on the “road” with your Macbook, you may want to connect to the internet, for instance to check your emails or just to surf some sites on a “normal” screen size, what ever. Or maybe your WLAN connection fails and you desperately want to make a money transfer. There are many reasons for the need to connect to the net with your N900.
First you have to download the Bluetooth Dial-Up Networking App from the appmanager on your phone. Follow the install routine.

The next step is to establish the bluetooth connection from your Macbook to your phone. Go to the systemsettings and open the bluetooth tab. Click on the “+” on the bottom of the window to activate the connection assistant. Hit next and select mobilphone. Now your Macbook will detect your N900 (please don’t forget to turn on the bluetooth on your phone first). Confirm your selection and enter the number shown on the screen into your phone. Tap OK and your connection is almost done. Confirm with next until you get to the end of the routine.

Now select your phone from the list, and go to the connection settings (its the gear-wheel on the bottom of the window). Choose edit connection and check the box: Show connection in the systemsettings “network” in the opening window (I use a german OSX so please forgive me, if its not exactly spelled in english as it shows up on your own Mac).

At last you have to go to the systemsettings network tab to fill in the essential fields your provider requires (mostly you will find the instrucitons on the website of your provider).
With these steps finished just hit connect, and you should get your bluetooth internet connection with your N900.

Fact is, connecting your N900 to your Macbook to use it as a modem offers you flexibility in many cases. It’s only a pity that the other services like iSync doesn’t work yet. There is indeed a iSync plugin, but it is not approved yet, so beware of installing it. (I didn’t!).
- sam -

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This fine small application allows you to take control over your pc in your network, from everywhere you want. Vnc viewers are generally used to support customers desktop computers, servers, workingstations, etc. for example in large companies, so the technician won’t have to be locally at the device itself. He is able to solve problems directly from his workstation, what is an efficient way to save costs (by the way).
Before you can start, you have to install a VNC server on your desktop computer, such as UltraVNC or TightVNC (Mac OSX has already vnc onboard, socalled “screen-sharing”, and also linux has comparable software installed) which are free, but also enough commercial versions are available. I’m not going into specifics of setting up a VNC server, you will find the instructions of each programm on their websites. I used the UltraVNC alternative, which is working very well. It is really easy to install, and guides you to the process.

Once you’ve setup your VNC server, install the VNC viewer from the appmanager to your N900. By starting the program, it will ask for a VNC server IP adress. If you are in your home network with WLAN connection, just type in the IP address of your computer you want to control and tap OK. This will help you find your home network IP address.
Next is the password, you’ve given to your server at the setup. That’s it. You will now see your desktop on the screen of your N900. Amazing!

My Linux desktop

My Windows desktop

Of course you are able to use the VNC viewer from outside your very own network via 3G or another WLAN network somewhere. You will find detailed instructions in the maemo.org’s talk section. In case you do not have a static IP address, just register yours free on DynDNS and create your own domain name. This allows you to connect your home network, even if your IP is constantly changing. Detect your IP address here.
Fact is, VNC viewer is a very useful app for those who need this for work, and for us (others) it is nice to play …

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Yesterday, as every day, I’ve launched app manager to check new updates and take a peek into new software. Suprisingly i’ve found Maemo 5 update available Over The Air. Small research around the web gave me idea what is it all about.
First system update I’ve noticed before was PR1.0.1, also available via app manager but it was rather small and its main purpose was to prepare device for bigger PR1.1 update. Situation looks similar this time, PR1.1.1 is fairly small, list of changes isn’t astonishing, stability fixes, more support for OpenGL, fix for battery life issue etc. These facts may lead to conclusion that soon we will get a bigger update, most probably in the next few days.
But for now lets get back to reality and what we already have. Update shows on the list as Maemo 5 and it says it’s 16.2 MB download. Nevertheless you will also need around 42 MB of free space on rootfs, if you have applications from testing and devel catalogues you may need to free some space. After preparations update takes around one minute, reboots and it’s done, you can check product info to be sure.
In short the current update isn’t major breakthrough. I think we can take it as announcment of upcoming Maemo 5/PR1.2 release.