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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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You got lots of videos, films or tv-shows stored on your Pc? Or your favorite music, cd collections and mp3 compilations?
I was pretty excited about the possibility to hear music or watch videos on my N900 over my network while cooking dinner, exercising on the home trainer (I do not really do that) or even sitting in the bathroom .
All you have to do is to setup an UPnP server. UPnP is short for Universal Plug and Play and runs over an IP network with standardized devices. On Windows you don’t even have to do that, because the Windows Media Player includes already the media server option. Just enable the sharing in the network settings and you’re ready to go. On the mac side you have to install some additional programs to be able to stream media. For example this link will help you setup the UPnP on a mac.

Since the N900 assists the UPnP standard out of the box, the only thing you have to do, is to activate WLAN on your phone to run in your very own network. Thats it. If you open the media player on your phone, you will see the station or the device which is sharing appear in the left bottom corner. Just tap on it, and there they are: your media folders with all your favorite films, videos, music, and what ever …

What if you want to watch your movies on your big flatscreen TV set? Just plugin the videocable, which came with the N900 and enjoy! No need for expensive extra equipments. (For longer events, use the power supply to avoid running out of battery).

Nevertheless some issues with a few media types are known. Goto maemo.org to read more about which codecs, files and videocontainers are assisted.
Fact is, media streaming with the N900 is an enrichment for my/your multimedia experience.
- sam -
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For quite some time I was digging application catalogues to find good replacement for my worn-out notebook. Finally extras-devel provided MaePad, fairly simple yet powerful tool.

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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 -

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After having received a firmware update weeks ago (read about it on our related post by clicking here) which it only fixed bugs problem, the Nokia N900 have finally received a new firmware update with major improvements. Under the code name 2.2009.51.1 or as we head up PR1.1, the update brings wide range of improvements as new features, bug fixes too and optimizes functionality and stability of the phone across many applications.
As it’s described on the Nokia Conversations Blog: “First up is support for the Swiss keymat variant with hardware and virtual keyboard layouts supporting the combination of German, Italian and English characters. We’ll also see full compatibility with certain SIM cards from network operator 3. Although only a small number of SIM cards were impacted at the time, this release means the N900 is now fully compatible with 3 SIM cards.”
In addition, Mail for Exchange and Ovi Maps also sees an update. The first one by allowing it to work with Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 giving the possibility of Exchange integration to a much broader group of users. And second one by improvement made to search performance and route calculation.
Among these major changes and much smaller usability improvements, there is a new hidden featured and it has been the most required one. As you might imagine, this new firmware update able the portrait mode! Pressing the key combination Ctrl + Shift + O activates the accelerometer giving the possibility to the device to distinguish between horizontal and vertical. However, it seems that it only works on the web browser and the virtual keyboard doesn’t show on vertical format. Here is a video about it!

For much more details about the improvements and advantages of this new firmware update, please click here.
As the earlier update (1.2009.44.1) main aim was to prepare the device’s application manager for over the air updates, any user who have installed it would received a notification about a new firmware update available. The update it also available through the Nokia Software Updater, if over the air is not an option for you and you would update from …

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As it has been expected, the new firmware update for the Nokia N900 is ready. Under the version code 1.2009.44.1, this new firmware update fixes a numbers of bugs that have been reported for the users and developers at Maemo.org, including just a bit more stability to the Maemo 5 OS.
Apart from the bug fixing, the Nokia Conversations Blog pointed out ““This software update prepares the Nokia N900 for opening the Ovi Store – watch out for a separate announcement for the store opening shortly.”
The firmware update file weighs around 18.5 MB and it’s already available through Over The Air (OTA) or through the Nokia Software Update via a desktop or laptop computer. A back up is recommended as installing it through the Nokia Software Update might erase all the data (mainly settings,apps).

Apparently as the upgrades are not too many and they aren’t the ones that everybody expected, this is a minor update in preparation to a future major update coming soon. Let’s expect this to be true!

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Having a Blog up-to-date is not easy for most of the people, including me. That’s why some developers have come up with the solution of creating apps for smartphone in order to able the bloggers to blog-as-you-go. However, none of this mobile blog tools was absolute complete because some were not compatible with most common blog software like WordPress, Blogger, etc. or didn’t have all the tools needed to post like Tags, or Image uploading, etc. That’s why it seems that the Nokia N900 is not only revolution the mobile word as MaStory app has understood all this known issues and the blogger’s needs.
MaStory is an application that allows you to blog from your Nokia N900. It’s compatible with WordPress, Blogger, Live Journal and Drupal and it seems to be the best of its kind according to most of the bloggers, including for the iPhone. MaStory app makes the difference because it packs a varied set of features on a mobile platform such as HTML tags, Image uploading or Flickr or Picasa images, external link addition, Categorising/Tagging, post-editing, posts management, Comments management among others.
Screenshoots

If you are a blogger and you have already a Nokia N900, I encourage you to try the application and share with us your experience.
For more information, you could go to the official web page by clicking here.
For downloading MaStory, please click here.
The guys a Conversations Nokia have made a quick video about it, check it out!

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The Nokia N900 is now capable of running an Palm OS emulator called Garnet VM as their last two version where capable of too. It is still officially unsupported although there is an installation possible with a little bit of hard work you could get it to work. If you don’t feel sure about this, you can wait because the next update will work officially on the Nokia N900.
I want to point out that the current version of the Garnet VM emulator is not built for the last version of Maemo OS, the Maemo 5 which is the one that runs on the Nokia N900. So if you go for the installation be awarded that it’s probably not going to work property well. Most user reports claim that it works fairly well, though being an emulator on unsupported hardware there may be additional incompatibilities and issues
In order to make the installation possible as the default install process doesn’t work, you can follow these relatively simple instructions from Nokia’s site talk.maemo.org where Bruce says:
I downloaded the latest OS2008 package then opened an xterminal (shell), changed to the folder where I downloaded the package, gained root access, then ran “dpkg -i garnet*.deb”. The package installed without complaint and the application ran. I was uncertain how to exit Garnet once starting it so I ended up powering off the phone to exit.
And then the helpful comment of sarahn came adding:
To quit:
Press power button and then “End current task”
To switch tasks:
Press ctrl + the ‘<-’ key (this is the standard shortcut that works everywhere.)
The Access Garnet VM emulator can be downloaded here.
Here is a video of the Garnet VM working on a N800

Source: Palm Infocenter

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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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Here is an interesting group of people whose mission is to show the User Interface of the Nokia N900.  They have been uploading short videos about all sorts of things, such as Calendar, Shortcuts, etc. This way we are going to get familiar with some aspects of the Maemo 5 software.
For example, on the Calendar video, they not only show you a little bit of the calendar, but also the possibility of using it during a incoming call. On the Shortcuts video, they explain how to add the bookmarks widgets to the desktop screen, or to copy text from some website.
I know that this may not seem impressive but its nice way to get closer to the Nokia N900 and its functionality. So I recommend you if you are interested to subscribe to this You Tube channel.
Here I embedded some of their videos, for more of them, please click here.

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This is how I decided to title this post, and why is that? Because I am going to show you a game that was presented on the Nokia World on the firsts days of September which was placed on Stuttgart, Germany.
The game it´s called Bounce and it´s based on the accelerometer. You have to move the phone in order to move the ball in the game, and moving it up&down you get to make the ball jump. Your objective it´s to guide the bouncy red ball trough different levels, avoiding  obstacles and collecting some kind of fruits. We can say that it´s a common game now-a-days with more and more phones having accelerometers but it´s still very fun to play tough.
On the video demo, the game is shown using the TV-Out feature. And that´s not a simple detail!  Because you can appreciate how awesome the graphics are, very vivid for a mobile device, making the experience of gaming pretty cool due to a new level of gameplay.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBzUNe5ov_o
I would like to stand out that this game was specially designed for the Nokia N900 using Maemo 5. So this shows the power of this new platform that Nokia is introducing. In my opinion, Nokia has already prove before that knows what they are doing, so the choice of this platform it is not a deliver idea or a simple way of dropping on the costs, it´s something more than that. We would talk about this platform sooner.

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The folks at Nokia Conversations uploaded a video to Youtube with the Maemo 5 software. It is a commercial video but will just make you say: wow. Nokia N900 will be for sure a big success from Nokia as it’s price is not too huge and the software is Maemo 5, an extremely user friendly software. I will make everything to buy the Nokia N900 for sure!
Check the video below:

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