Against all odds

It's been almost two years since my last post on my blog. Coincidentally, or maybe not, my last post, announced that the Nokia N900 had started to ship. I come back to write now to celebrate the launch of the N9, the last product from the Maemo/MeeGo group in Nokia.

Phil Collins will forgive me if I borrow the title of his song for this post, but this is exactly the feeling I have in these days. The N9 had to survive the earthquake of the 11th of February, the tsunami that wiped out the MeeGo organization, outlived the plague of the many people who left the organization since that gloomy, fateful day, and yet it's (almost) there. Soon you'll be able to enjoy its inherent beauty, simplicity of use, experience a totally new user interaction model, and feel the pleasure to just hold it in your hands and look at it.

And like my colleague Urho, I feel immense sense of respect for all those people who contributed to make this happen. We have done nothing short of extraordinary under the circumstances, demonstrated a sense of commitment with no equals being able to pull this up till the end, and yet we built an amazing jewel.

I feel immense pride to be part of this group, a group that managed to hold on and build something that so many people have admired on its launch day, and hopefully even more will soon enjoy in their everyday use.

I want to thank all those who contributed to make this, nothing short of a dream, come true. Thank you also to those that have decided to leave Nokia but contributed to the N9 work: I'm nothing but sure that they all feel what I am feeling right now.

Enjoy, be proud and be focused for the last mile, and our celebration will be complete!

Test blog da MaemoWordPy

Ciao,

Sto scrivendo dal mio N810 sfruttando non l'interfaccia web, ma un apposito programmino in Python, il cui nome lo trovate nel titolo. Se funziona altri punti per l'N810!!!

New cool stuff for N800 - Novita' per l'N800

I'm spending this week in Birmingham, UK, where the Gnome Users and Developers European Conference (GUADEC) is being held. The conference is the occasion to meet many people that are behind the very same things I have been working with everyday, which is good.

The conference has been the occasion to introduce new things for the N800, which bring my (and that of my team's of course) direct contribution. We have in fact published the long awaited open source SIP connection manager!!! Now you can use N800 to call to other SIP numbers, and most importantly, PSTN numbers at cheap prices! And hold your breath, SIP also does video!!


In addition, you get other cool features like a refresh of UI, with updated features, like Gtalk avatars. Work on Gtalk has also been extended to support relay, so that the success rate of N800 - N800 calls can increase!

The release is "development version". It's still work in progress and you can try it taking this into account. At some point it will be included in Maemo 4.0 Chinook release. You can download the software and get other info from Garage. Many thanks to all those who made this possible with their bug efforts.

Additionally, a development version of Mozilla browser for N800 has been announced in GUADEC. Try it out as well, open source browser for an open source platform!

In questa settimana sono a Birmingham (ahime', piove sempre! Altro che Finlandia!) ad assistere al GUADEC, la Conferenza Europea per gli utenti e sviluppatori di Gnome. L'evento e' l'occasione di incontrare gente che conosci solo di nome e che hanno contribuito a sviluppare il software che viene utilizzato ogni giorno per migliorare gli Internet Tablets. Molto bello, tempo a parte.

Soprattutto, durante GUADEC sono state annunciate diverse novita' interessanti. Una che riguarda direttamente me e il mio team e' la pubblicazione on-line dell'Internet Communications Software Development version. La release contiene il tanto atteso open source SIP connection manager, che permette di effettuare chiamate ad altri utenti SIP ma soprattutto a numeri di rete telefonica a prezzi stracciati!!!

E udite udite, c'e' anche la possibilita' di video chiamate con SIP (testato solo fra due N800 per il momento), come la foto sopra mostra. Oltre a SIP, la release comprende migliorie alla UI, sia grafiche che in termini di caratteristiche, infatti ora avatars per GTalk sono supportati. Infine, supporto del relay per Gtalk e' stato aggiunto, cosi' che sara' piu' facile chiamare con GTalk fra due N800. Provatelo, divertitevi e date feedback!! Un grazie a tutti coloro che hanno contribuito.

Istruzioni e piu' dettagli su Garage. Il software, ancora in fase di sviluppo, e assolutamente non bug-free, sara' migliorato e fara' parte della release 4.0 Chinook di Maemo.

In aggiunta, e' stato anche annunciato il rilascio (sempre development version) del browser Mozilla per N800. Un browser open source per un device open source!!! Provatelo!