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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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Internet is the best place for searching informations, where we have Google – probably the best general search engine (in my opinion), and many specialized sites for movies (like IMDB) or Wikipedia for encyclopedic information. Right now you can search any of them using Ask Ziggy application on Nokia N900.
When you run the application you have a list of available search engines, every one has it’s own options, like language for IMDB and Wikipedia, or ‘from’ and ‘to’ languages for translator. Everything is easy to use, touchscreen friendly and quite fast, in my opinion faster than opening the page and using search in there. Search results are shown as buttons, so if you find what you need you can easily go straight to exact address for desired information.
As for me it looks really nice, quite simple application with really wide coverage of information space around the network. Not only google or wiki pages, but also weather or delicio.us bookmarks, not necessarily serious, also for fun. Everything in one place, I think it’s worth to try.
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MJ

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When talking about web browsers it’s fair to mention Google’s product called Chrome. It has open source version called Chromium that is available also for N900.
I’ve never had more in common with Chrome than watching my collegues using it. Mobile version looks very similar, with tabs and toolbar on top. What’s not so nice it looks almost exactly the same, without any modifications for mobile device or touchscreen to improve usability. Same thing goes context menus and option screens, I find it hard to use them without stylus. Browsing is quite similar to other browsers, but gives another reason not to like UI because of the scrollbars working the same way as on desktop computers. It would be really nice if someone work a bit more on UI modifications for touchscreen devices.
Pages generation looks pretty good and fast, nevertheless I’ve encountered error screen numerous times, also while I was trying to test the browser using Browser Benchmark. The most funny thing is that Google browser has problems with Google main page, maybe because today’s PacMan’s 30th birthday, so Google has it’s new and fancy holiday look.
Since Chromium appeared not to be comfortable or stable enough I wasn’t playing with it for long. For today I find it still incomplete and not so well tested, Chromium may become as good as it’s desktop version if  some more work was put in it.
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For more info on devel and testing catalogues visit Application catalogues tutorial
Please visit Nokia N900 Forum

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New technologies and platforms on mobile market is something normal nowdays, and some of this inventions use Linux as a base. Maemo 5 and the newest Android 2.1 are both based on Linux in a slightly different way.
In case of Maemo users get almost the same system as on desktop, with typical kernel and most of tools and utilities or at least their substitutes. This allows writing applications in similar way as for desktop, using C, C++, python etc. Android was in fact modified in almost every single detail, beginning from kernel to the desktop and applications, which for android are writen in language similar to Java with API and libraries specific only to this platform.

Maemo 5 is recently waiting for PR1.2 update, described by me already. What comes to Android 2.0/2.1 codenamed Eclair? Among changes we can find Microsoft Exchage support or live wallpapers (what Maemo 5 already has available by installed applications) and many other UI changes what happens on every platform from time to time. Moreover  from the very beginning Android is pretty tightly attached to google services, so you get full set of synchronization tools out of the box, what comes to N900 with a bit more configuration. One big advantage of Google’s system is the fact it’s already available on number of phones, while Maemo 5 resides only on N900 and it’s earlier versions only on internet tablets from nokia.
So what’s better? From my point of view N900 and Maemo with it’s flexibility and nice progress in application development. Android is more closed and restricted, which is not my favourite.
An upgrade to Android is actually coming, which we will compare when it’s out. If you’re interested, head over to PhoneReport to read about Android 2.5.
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Please visit Nokia N900 Forum

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I have been asked to do a new comparison between our Nokia N900 and the new Motorola Droid phone which Google is showing the power of their OS, Android. As usual I’m not going to talk about every spec from both phones, what I would do is to point out the differences and the some other important thins related to them.

First of all we got to highlight the OS. On the Nokia N900 we have the Maemo 5 which is a new OS that it’s really promising and most of the developers are getting familiar with but most of them have expressed their happiness and conform about it. On the Motorola Droid phone we got Android 2.0 OS which is in the same situation that the Maemo 5 OS, is basically a new OS, Open source and it’s promising too. If you want to know which one is the best, you would have to wait some time (like a year) to see how the people respond about them. Probably the developer community already has a winner.
Memory – On this category the Nokia N900 leads with the 32gb internal memory plus the possibility of taking it up to 48gb with a 16gb microSD card while the Motorola Droid comes with a 256mb internal memory and the possibility of adding a 32gb microSD card.
Display & Dimensions – There is a little difference on the Display where the Nokia N900 has a 3.5” display, the Motorola Droid has a 3.7” display, not too much. And the Nokia N900 dimensions are 110.9 x 59.8 x 18mm where on the Motorola Droid are 115,8 x 60 x 13,7mm, again not too much.
Then we got basically the same features such as 5 mp camera (on the Nokia N900 you have the plus that it is a Carl Zeiss), Music and Video Player with wide range of formats, GPS, SMS, Email, Bluetooth and Wi Fi summarizing.
A big difference for some unknown time is the web browsing. The Nokia N900 comes with Full internet meaning the capability of opening any web page due to the Flash Player 9.4 …

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I don’t know if some of you are familiar to this new technology that Google is introducing to us these days. So if you aren’t aware of this, please read first the title at the end of this post about Google Wave.
For all we that are expecting to have access to use this gorgeous tendency, I’m sure that this news makes you desire even more a Nokia N900. A few days ago, I saw a video about Google Wave running on the Nokia N900, but the quality wasn´t too good and it didn´t actually show it running. So I wasn’t too confidence about it, that´s why I decided to wait. Finally, someone uploaded a new video about the same news, but showing it running. It was worth to wait for. I don’t want to bore you no more with too many words, just look!

Google Wave
They introduce this as the revolution of the email, and a quick definition would be the one on the official web page: “Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more”. If you have some time (like an hour), you can go to the official Google Wave web page and see the long video where they explain it and show the function of this new technology. The main idea is that most of the communication technologies have evolved such as SMS, Twitter, Face book, etc. but the email hasn’t. So Google Wave is the solution. I highly recommend seeing what it is all about because in my opinion they are making history and I don´t think I am overreacting.