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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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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.
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Please visit the Nokia N900 forum.

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Personalization never ends for me. New ideas appear time to time, sometimes when I meet a problem, sometimes when I see new piece of interesting software under development. Thats why I customize my N900 more and more almost every day.
Another hardware keys customization may be found in Shortcutd. This is also set of configuration for camera button (half pressed as for focusing) and proximity sensor (hidden in the corner near Nokia logo). Variety of actions isn’t too big, but going to dashboard, launching phone or going back in browser without sliding the keyboard out is good enough for me and gives me possibility to use N900 with one hand in a tram or bus.
Another thing I wanted to do was to get rid of was Nokia hands animation when booting device. Some forums and Maemo Talk gave the solution already but there is simple solution called Powatool to turn off animation and also manage statusbar applets. It installs as an application with checklist where you check what you want and uncheck what you don’t.
I hope you can find something useful and learn something interesting from my experience. I don’t say it’s the only way, the best thing in N900 is that you can do whatever you want. Moreover (IMO this is the best thing) it’s said to be community device and you can be part of this community. Try now by sharing your opinion and ideas on Nokia N900 forum.

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After some time spent with new phone or any mobile device most of us come up with personal habits like naming contacts in favourite way, placing specific shortcuts on homescreen or adding some websites to bookmarks. I tend to do similar thing with every device I have. In case of computer I always change some of keyboard shortcuts to pause the music when it’s necessary, to switch windows easily, to simply make life easier and work more efficient. Now lets try to customize N900 in similar way.
I’ve had situations when I just arrived at the office listening to my favourite music, removed my headphones and unplugged them from N900. Then I realised that music I was listening is playing aloud. My normal reaction was ‘oh, I’m sorry guys, I’m turning it off’, but repeating the situation more frequently was a little awkward. Soon enough I’ve encountered and installed headphone daemon (download), small application that pauses playback every time you unplug the headphones and all of uneasy situation suddenly dissapeared.

When I clean up icons on my desktop or homescreen I like to have them aligned to some kind of grid, to keep clean and tidy look. Tweakr, first tool that gave me this functionality comes with few more interesting features. It installs additional element in settings menu, which apart from aligning homescreen elements to grid it gives you possiblility to change power key actions, disable unlocking device while opening camera lens and edit desktop bookmarks.
This made my phone more personal, more like me and I feel more comfortable using it this way. And it’s not over yet, there is more, lot more…

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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Little by little are emerging new applications for the Nokia N900. Today, I bring you a famous SNES game better known as Super Mario World! One of the most entertaining and fun game of the history of the video games running on a promising device.
As you will see on the video, the game runs very smoothly and to control the game he uses the QWERTY keyboard. Exactly the same as you were playing it on your home computer, using the arrows to move and another two buttons from the left part of the keyboard. Actually, the way to control video games is a separate issue due to the lack of Multi-touch on the Nokia devices, but I will write about this issue soon. Later on the video, he replaces the keyboard controls for a Wii control, just like the old days where we played with the Nintendo console on our homes. And on the last part, he uses the TV-out and we have like 10 seconds of this demonstration of the game being display on a TV, where I totally agree with him about the game working beautifully.
Here is the video, take a look!

As I said on the beginning there are for now just a few applications going around for the N900. Probably because it´s a new phone that it´s not available on the market yet and just a few fortunate people have the phone already. Also we have to take into account that it´s a new platform too and the developers have to interact a little bit with it. When the Nokia N900 comes out, everything would be different, we simply and unfortunately have to wait.

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Leaving aside for a while the comparison between the Nokia N900 and the Apple iPhone, we would check out an interesting and quiet particular application for the Nokia N900. Pyrecipe is the name of it and you can guess which is his particularity.
This application is a recipes manager, you can write your recipes adding convenient information such as preparation time, cooking time, quantity of servings, besides the essential ones like the instructions and  the ingredients. Also you can add some notes and an picture! But having your recipes only on your phone maybe it´s not a good idea, don’t worry because you are also able to export/import the recipes to and from many formats. As a manager, you can search in your recipes until find the one you need.
Another very cool feature is that it has a shopping list! So once you decide which recipe to cook, you have the option to add it to the shopping list, and all the ingredients needed for it are immediately included. But if there are some of those that you all ready have, you can simply cross it out. The app also comes with a timer option, where you set the time, hide it and when the time comes, it tells you. Simple but useful.
Here is the video

I have never imagined me going to the market with my phone on the hands as a guide for what I need to buy. But the idea is far from scaring me. I think it´s innovative. It gives to the phone another functionality and in my opinion, very useful one. If you want more information go to The official page by clicking here.
One last thing about the video and the app is that it´s not running on the phone yet as it looks like being run on a simulator for developers. But to see how it truly works we have to wait.

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Today I would like to talk with you about the integration of communication that the N900 makes possible. There is a lot of videos of the N900 going around the internet, and one called my attention. This is a review of the Communication Center of the N900. Very nice, but the bad news for us is that It is in Italian. Still I decided to go for it, and tried to understand it and write a post about this, because it´s a quite a particular information. So, before continuing I want to say that I´m sorry for my bad translation.
As you might know, the Nokia N900 should be only an internet tablet, but now it is also a phone. What does this means? It means that Nokia has added to it, one of most important communication and popular technologies, the cell phone. So you don’t only have the Internet connections like Skype, MSN, etc. but you also are able to make regular phone calls or SMS. But it doesn´t ends there! By adding the GSM chip, now you are able to use internet when Wi-Fi it´s not available by connecting by EDGE, HSPDA, 3G.
Let´s see the video first, and then we talk about it!

Video Review
In the first part of the video, it´s shown how you are able to be connected to most of the popular accounts like Gmail, Ovi, Skype, etc. all of them simultaneously. And how you can decide in each one which status you want to be. This way you are communicated with everyone by the internet, all your friends, your partners, your work colleagues.
Later on the video, when the guys activate the keyboard on the touch screen display, is showing how you are able to make a call. The first thing he does (when he touches the button at the top of the screen) it´s to select which account he would use to make the call. So those shown would be through Skype (regular Skype-to-Skype call or Skype-out), cell phone (GSM network), Google Talk.
And in the last part, back on the communication center, he tries to show …