Technos Unveiled

The Maemo community is demonstrating what it can, and has just developed and launched the first firmware update for our Nokia N900, even though it is testing.
Installation is very simple, although it is advisable to wait for the stable version. The installation steps are:

1. Make sure you’re running PR1.3, Nokia’s last official Maemo 5 update. To see if you have PR1.3, go into Settings > About product, you should see under Version it has the numbers beginning with 20.2010.36.
2. Click on the Install testing button above. (use http://bit.ly/communityssu or http://j.mp/communityssu as a quick link to this page from your Nokia N900)
3. Hildon Application Manager (HAM) will launch and appear to be doing nothing but after a second or three it will display the first installation, so be patient. In all, there are a series of installations for which HAM will prompt you with messages and warnings. Click “accept” and “done” for each and let HAM install all the community packages.
4. Once done (ie. no further install prompts appear after some while), close HAM and go into the applications menu. Look for Community SSU and launch it. This will then automatically run through a series of scripts to ensure HAM will now be using community repository for updates.
5. HAM will re-open and present a system upgrade called Maemo 5 Community SSU. Once installed, your device will reboot.

I don’t recommend installing this update yet, I have had some problems. It is advisable to wait for the stable version.

Changelog of the Community SSU source on http://gitorious.org/community-ssu in comparison to the PR1.3 release:

PR 1.3.3.7-1

hildon-desktop

• TODO

hildon-home

• Added ~/.local/share/applications/hildon to the searchpath for .desktop files
• Fixed a bug where Hildon-home is not responding if theme is changed when all shortcuts are added to home view$
• Tighter D-BUS message matching

hildon-status-menu

• Added portrait mode support

modest

• Modest upgraded from 3.4.8 to 3.90.7.
• Fixed Light pattern
• bug #3700 (Place signature below original text in replies, not above)
• bug #2563 (Replaced “– Original message –” with “On x, y wrote:”)

vte

• Bug #7164

  X Terminal was rendering the “bright black” color as black, which could make certain colored console applications hard to use. The fix makes the color rendered as “dark gray”, as done with other colors.

• Bug #6009

  The Enter key from keyboard presented incorrect behavior on X Terminal on certain applications, such as “less” or Vim running under “screen”. The fix makes sure the key works as expected under any X Terminal application.

Via | Maemo.org

MaeModder is a scripts collection written completely in shell inclusive of a simple Python GUI for our Nokia N900 that allows we to carry out the most important mods available in Maemo. Excellent application, but with some compatibility issues with Hildon-desktop.
Once downloaded the application from here, we enter xterm and type (before create maemodder directory):

root
cd /maemodder/
dpkg -i maemodder_0.7_all.deb
apt-get -f install

All the information you need to configure and optimize the parameters of this tool, you can find it here.

SPB TV 1.0 application, for our Nokia N900, already is not beta and is available on the Ovi Store. With SPB TV can watch TV with the best user experience and rich functionality, alongside with quick and easy access to more than 150 channels from over 20 countries, with such features as channel preview, picture-in-picture mode, watching TV with low speed mobile network connections, TV-guide with the option to set the reminder in the calendar and more.
SPB TV for Maemo Main Features: Read more

Vumeter v0.5.2 is an excellent application for our Nokia N900. It’s a VU Meter with which we can measure both linear noise, such as current noise, all in decibels by the use of microphone or other source.
Install | Vumeter

TwimGo application, possibly the best Twitter client for our Nokia N900, upgraded to version 2.0.15, with improvements over retweets, now includes new and old, and the original tweets, we can view original tweets when viewing reply details..
It runs on Qt Web Runtime so maybe we’ll see TwimGo running on other devices in the future.

Before installing this new version you have to take into account:

1. Uninstall old version before installing new version
2. Make sure that you have Qt Web Runtime on your Nokia N900 before downloading TwimGo. [Via Nokian900applications.com]

Download | TwimGo