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Some time ago Sam posted loopable wallpaper tutorial, so now you know how to put your favourite pictures on your homescreen. In the end he got it to quite low-level file editing, which apparently can be done in a little simpler way using wallpapercreator application. Take Sam’s steps to the point when you have a 3200×480 picture, save it and upload to your phone. When you have it ready run WPcreator, select the image and when you press crop you can see how it will be divided into parts. Then just press Install, give it a propper name and you can select your new wallpaper when changing desktop background.

When I first made wallpaper this way I wanted it to be visible, not to cover all of it with icons, bookmarks, widgets etc. Also I like to keep some things categorized, I have IP and Dataplan widgets along with MaePad shortcut on one desktop, everyday application shortcuts on second, games and bookmarks on third and inbox widget on fourth, the rest of screen space is empty to show my wallpaper. Also I think some applications could be included in status menu (along with internet connection, sound profile etc.) like BlueMaemo to connect N900 as remote controller via bluetooth. Today I’ve found quick-launch, which allows to do such thing. When it’s installed it gives you additional options in settings menu, there you can choose any 4 of installed applications to be shown as shortcuts in statusbar menu.

Of course this is my point of view, I’m just showing some concept and it’s up to you weather you choose to use it or not. Your N900 should look and work as you want to, this is what I think in the first place.
–
Please visit Nokia N900 Forum

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Throughout generations, the knowledge was passed in books, manuscripts, scrolls and many other forms of writing. Civilization as we know now tailored idea of books to let it be helpful while broadening horizons, improving skills or just for fun. This is why I like reading, but living fast don’t leave much time to read. Some say that audiobooks are good solution for working people, because all you need is to play and listen. I still prefer paper books, but I still find idea of audiobooks very useful to learn and practice languages for example.
When I first saw Panucci in the app manager, with piece of pizza as and icon it reminded me of ‘Panucci’s pizza’, fictional restaurant from a great TV series – Futurama. I just had to try and it turned out that it’s pretty good audiobook player and something I just needed.
Latest version of Panucci allows you to enqueue few files, navigation buttos allow you to skip 10 seconds or 1 minute forward or barkwards, you can also use progress bar to navigate. You can also find nice feature of running in portrait mode. So what’s the advance from plain media player? When you want to have a break from ‘reading’ you can pause and close application, when you start it again you can continue from exactly the same point. You can also add bookmarks if you need to quickly jump to important parts.
Unfortunately ‘auto-play on headset’ feature works only with Nokia headset shipped with N900, or as some claims any headset with microphone, so since I use my old headphones, just because I got used to it, this option is useless for me. ‘Lock progress bar’ option, that I never use, blocks navigation using progress bar of current media not to jump to random place by accident.
In sum: Panucci is served under simple yet quite funcional UI and has the most important features of audiobook player. It already helps me with my japanese lessons, I hope it can be also useful for you.

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If you dont have discovered yet, your phone holds an extraordinary feature – the FM transmitter.  We have before rumored about this, if the Nokia N900 would transmit over FM, we also looked at the Maemo FM Radio Player, and now let’s look at the FM Transmitter working on the Nokia N900.

I remember always when I wanted to have a radio for my car with an USB or audio input, to play songs from my mp3 player or even from my mobile harddisk. Not long ago this has been such a hit. Or the homestereos with docks for several players, the best known surely is the iPod dock for example.
Now there is no need for such gimmicks anymore. This little feature on your N900 lets you hear your favorite music anywhere on any radio or stereoreceiver you want. Imagine an old tube radio from the earlier times, every car stereo in which car ever or just the little kitchenradio playing your music saved on your N900.

To activate the FM transmitter goto the Media Player and choose your songs, playlists or the internetradio. Tap on the menu in the upper middle of your screen and choose FM transmitter. A small setting window will appear from the bottom where you can activate the transmitting. Select a channel and set the same numbers to your receiver. Save settings and you will start to hear your music from the choosen device.
To get the best quality in transmitting, try to take a channel which is not reserved by another station.
Fact is, the FM transmitter makes wires and docking stations useless. An easy way to enjoy your music on every receiver.
- sam | visit our Nokia N900 forum -

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If this application makes any sense or not, you have to decide by yourself. It isn’t even a real application. By tapping on the shortcut of Fizwoz you start an adapted website for the N900 browser to log in. The whole idea of this app is to shot pics or videos and upload them to the Fizwoz site from your Nokia N900. There you can prize your media and wait for bidders hopefully to buy just your pic or video. I followed  Fizwoz some days, but there was not really happening much interesting. But you can check this application and see for your self what Fizwoz for Nokia N900 can make for you.
First you will need an account, which can be created on their website www.fizwoz.com or directly over your N900. Fill out some basics and off you go. Take snapshots and videos as much as possible and only from real celebrities, upload them right from the app, and then you may have a chance to earn a little dollar for being a hard paparazzi .

This application is downloadable right from the Ovi Store. I really wonder why Nokia took this one up. Maybe you may use it just for fun, but I can’t figure out another reason for. And you really don’t will make money out of it.  Believe me!
Fact is, I will deinstall this application immediatly!
- sam

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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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Recently I’ve met some comments under my posts asking where to find this or that. I understand not everyone may be such devotely commited to Maemo and N900. I was waiting for this phone for about half a year. After first information about GSM stack for Nokia Linux-based device, that came around Mobile World Congress last year I was anxiously digging web for any news about upcoming release. Finally when I got it from pre-order I started to install everything I could find, including stuff from extras-devel and extras-testing repositories, but slowly… one by one…
First thing you may need to know is that Nokia holds only well tested applications in their extras catalogue. That’s why it only counts 176 apps (when writing this post) and that’s not enough for me.
Apart from well tested, there is also catalogue like extras-testing, where you can find things that need some more attention from testers while waiting to be approved. When you download something from here you will find a notice that this software is not yet tested and may be harmful for your device. Frankly I don’t fully agree with that opinion, the N900Fly application in ‘proper’ hands is far more harmful than any one from testing and guess where you can find it. But still you can find errors, glitches, performance issues and something that is most painful for me, packages that are not optified (which technically may block system updates or even receiving messages, so really nasty ).
Another catalogue is extras-devel, here you can find everything what is still under development and may be considered unfinished and even more unstable. Some of applications may not even install because of missing dependencies or errors in installation scripts, some may leave garbage after uninstall and still they may be harmful.
So why do I install anything from devel or testing? First of all because there is lot of interesting stuff, some of it you can find here in my reviews. Second of all I know what I am doing and, more important, what to do when I break something in software. Did …

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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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With all the duties I have, world spinning so fast, taking more and more of my time I still like to have some time just to sit back and watch TV. Especially i like series, lot of them and staying with favourite characters for longer than two hours at cinema. The problem is that I rarely remember what I’ve already watched, doing quick leap few episodes too far may spoil the pleasure of watching.
Luckily there already is application to keep track of watched and unwatched episodes of favourite TV shows. Series Finale does most of work, only thing I need to remember is to tick next episode after watching. When you run the application you can add desired show by hand (never used it thou) or searching it using The TVDB database, which practically gave me complex info on every series I wanted, episode list divided into seasons, with description of whole series and each episode.
This application is also good example of progress made by developer. When I first time used it It showed me only titles in main menu. Next version, from few weeks ago, was enriched with counters of seasons and unwatched episodes for every title in main menu and each season for specific series. Today I’ve installed another update for this app which comes with airing dates for all episodes and some colour, if episode was already aired and is still not watched it will be highlighted in green.
This small piece of software lets me keep TV in my fun time, without need of memorizing everything or being frustrated when I miss some episodes because I just forgot.
–
Please visit the 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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Some time ago, I discovered Pixelpipe and installed the plugin on my N900. First you need an account on www.pixelpipe.com, but you can use your Ovi, or Twitter usernames and passwords to login, so you don’t have to create another “new” account.
Once you logged in, you have to create pipes. Just choose the services you want to connect and fill in your passwords. There is almoust a complete list of all services, that are popular and most used, and also the possibility to add blogs of your choice accessorily. At last you will be asked for authorization and the pipe is ready to go. Pretty simple.
Now setup the Pixelpipe phone plugin under the phone settings and you are ready to share. To share microblogs for example to Twitter, Facebook or MySpace, just type an instant message over your Ovi or Gmail chat account, and your post will be sent straight to all your social media services.
To send messages especially just to one place use i.e. @Evernote or @Facebook before you write the note, so the text will be posted just to the service you want. Pictures and videos are also shared easily over Pixelpipe to multiple services at once or to choosen upload destinations with the same routine.
I use Pixelpipe pretty often, for notetaking, uploading photos or postings on my wall.
Fact is, Pixelpipe is a fast and easy to use sharing tool for multiple uploads, what makes it a featured app, for me of course, but I think you might like it too.
- sam -