Have you ever seen meedieval castle with lots of potraits hanging around? Every single one reminds of great man, someone who did something really significant for country, region or family. Today let’s focus on some other portrait, the one related to our favourite phone, Nokia N900.
Portrait dashboard is something we could already see after previous CSSU update, so the only remaining thing was to propagate this feature to homescreen, which finally happened. Because everyday I see less and less news on N900 I feel obliged to mention it for the ones who haven’t yet updated.
I was a bit surprised that after update my N900 just switched to portrait mode after rotating it, but widgets, shortcuts and bookmarks were a bit messed up. It’s still not a problem, because portrait has its own setting for each homescreen, so you can easily rearrange all of your widgets on screen and make them look exactly as you want. Unfortunatelly some of really wide widgets (like 5 days weather forecast) just won’t fit in portrait, but I can live with that, can you?
Another tiny issue with portrait mode is loopable wallpaper, if you haveone that loops in landscape, it will probably make you feel uncomfortable, but for me it’s perfect situation for new inventions, wallpaper that will be loopable in potrait and landscape at the same time. I’ll surely share with you when I find some time to make one .
That’s enough for starters, our King is still alive, still breathing and has own portrait . Now that you know what comes with the latest update, just try it!
–
MJ

People say that Nokia N900 lacks portrait mode in homescreen and applications. Some time ago I’ve found desktop widget with pretty descriptive name (shown in my app manager) Application launcher widget with portrait mode a.k.a. DrLaunch.
There are some applications that already have portrait mode, like built-in phone that probably everyone uses, Brain Party or SPB Brain Evolution 2. Mostly I was placing application shortcuts for these to be reachable with my thumb when phone is rotated to portrait (but still icons were showing in landscape specific way). I was even thinking of creating alternative icons rotated to appear ‘portretized’.
One day i’ve discovered this strangely long name in application manager, and found it interesting. Auto rotating widget appeared on my homescreen with 4 application shortcuts. After digging in options I’ve found that grid may contain maximum 16 applications but if you have something on your wallpaper that you want to have visible you can leave some empty spaces. All of placed shortcuts are rotating along with the phone, so in portrait you have all of the grid rotated by 90 degrees. Another nice feature I like in this widget is that it doesn’t start application after shortest tap, you need to press for about half a second, so it prevents starting applications by accident when you have some turbulences in bus or tram and tap shortcut on the homescreen by accident.
I find this widget really useful and I think it’s small step ahead to have more interactive homescreen. More widgets should be auto-rotating, especially if they’re square-shaped, which should be fairly easy to do, no complex transformations or resizing. There is really big potential in this widget.
–
MJ

For those who already played with Maemo (or Linux in general) command line, the idea to put output from some commands should be already familiar. I was thinking of it also, trying few solutions and this is one of them.
Desktop Command Execution Widget is nice placeholder for shell scripts showing their output on homescreen, which may be useful if you want to have detailed info on N900 status on screen every time, without going to XTerminal and executing specified command. After you install the widget you will get several default scripts that can be placed on desktop and possibility to place more than one on homescreen, so you can get as many as you want! This can easily replace fixed widgets which show only one type of information if you know how to write appropriate script. Let’s start with something easy.
Example 1 – detailed uptime status
Linux users and network administrators may know significancy of big uptime, which means that hardware and software are working well and stable. Among the scripts you already have Uptime, Boot reason and Boot count, we can put all 3 of them on homescreen or modify to get all 3 in one by placing all commands (just copy using Ctrl+C and paste using Ctrl+V) one by one, separating with semicolon ( ; ) or double ampersand if you want to ensure the commands will execute properly in given order.
Example 2 – from the scripts wiki
Widget configuration gives option to see scripts wiki available on maemo.org, let’s take first one and see what it can do. This one uses AWK, powerfull tool for Linux users that will allow to freely manipulate command output and display in desired manner.
Example 3 – echo and favourite quote
You can place anything in this widget, like favourite quote using echo command, which will display the text you enter. So let’s say we want to have two lines with quote and author, we can use:
echo What quote says exactly && echo Author
More examples – try yourself
If you want to use something more try to look at ready commands and mix them in the …

As some of you may remember I wrote once that customization and personalization of my N900 is a kind of neverending story and I admit I still work on it to achieve perfection some day. On my quest I’ve found some things you may try and maybe some of them will become part of your favourite set.
This time let’s have a look on homescreen, or to be more accurate on wallpaper. If you have a feeling your wallpaper is static and boring you can try Live Wallpaper. After you install it your first homescreen will change to living picture of city with moving busses, changing sun position depending on time, just watch demo video. To be honest I haven’t found any additional configuration for this eye candy, so it doesn’t make good piece of software for me, but it’s only my opinion. Try it, you may be happy with that.
The second thing I can propose today is ProfilesX Extended Profiles Manager. It will install additional section in settings screen and will allow you to add new ringtones profiles and change between default two and additionally created profiles using statusbar menu (opened by tapping on clock/battery level area). This will allow you to add new profiles with completely new settings, so you can adjust it for every situation – silent profile for meetings, calm ringtone for day off, loud when you’re travelling or shopping and whatever you can think of.
This doesn’t make the end of ‘your way’ series. I’m sure there will be more and more ways to customize N900 and I will probably try most of them and maybe you’ll find something interesting here.
–
For more info on devel and testing catalogues visit Application catalogues tutorial
Please visit Nokia N900 Forum

My approach to homescreen is rather minimalistic, I use only what I really need. Among this elements there are some widgets that I find useful.

We all know that N900 is highly network-oriented, that’s why my first choices circled around network connections. Because I use wireless connections in many different places I like to know what network am I connected to, and because of my network administrator background the most interesting property is IP address. To check this I use Personal IP Address widget. It doesn’t take much space, shows network interface in use and has possibility to attach connections menu on click.

If it comes to the network there are times when I need to use GPRS or 3G connection. I like to keep track on how much data I’ve downloaded to fit in every month data pack provided by mobile operator and for this I have Personal Dataplan Monitor widget. It shows data counters since last reset in compact mode or with last reset date, the way you need. One tricky thing with this widget is where to find reset option, I was looking for quite some time and finally I’ve found it in Settings for Phone, under Data Counters you’ll find ‘Clear’ option.

This widgets are always present on my homescreen, maybe you will also find it useful.
–
For more info on devel and testing catalogues visit Application catalogues tutorial
Please visit Nokia N900 Forum