Collin R. Mulliner

iPhone 3G vs N810

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 15:33:00 GMT

I recently acquired an 3G iPhone just to check it out and write some software. I must say I'm already totally addicted to it. I'm sorry to say that but the N810 is no real competition. Stuff that really get me excited: really mobile email, very fast GPS (and maps), excellent connectivity (WLAN + 3G). The N810 has all these features too but just not in the same quality. Maybe I would be less impressed if the N810 had GSM/UMTS connectivity. The I only have to carry one device and have connectivity in most places factor just kicks ass.

Some points where the N810 still is slightly ahead: web browsing (big screen, flash), the hardware keyboard (nothing beats this on a shell), and of course the open source platform.

I'm sure that I will continue using my N810 for specific tasks once in awhile.

Befreiphone

OLSRd 0.5.5 for Maemo

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 21:08:00 GMT

I just updated my Maemo port of OLSRd.

The package is in my Chinook repository, this is here.

Direct download is here

btw. this is due to some bugging by Gramels :-) Do you have free Internet again?

N810 on Vacation

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 12:03:00 GMT

I was on vacation traveling through Portugal for 10 days and I took my Nokia N810 with me to do email and to have something to browse the web (weather info etc). I must say it was super both the vacation and the N810 as a traveling device. Reading email or checking the web while having a coffee. We had free WiFi at all most every place we visited so I could use my N810 for Twitter (don't ask it is a private stream) to tell some stories directly from the vacation. One of the best things ever, we only needed one battery charger for three devices (we only had Nokia devices with us).

I already take the N810 every place I go while at home but now I'll take it on vacation too :-)

My N810 Review

Sun, 17 Feb 2008 23:52:00 GMT

I have a N810 since Wednesday so here is my micro review.

Good:

The Keyboard, I really love it. I noticed that I use it a lot (for everything possible).

Hardware buttons. Screen maximize/minimize moved to the left. New screen-lock button. This is really improves usability, excellent!

Look-and-feel, pretty awesome.

Speakers, they make NOISE!!1

Bad:

GPS fix time, almost unusable.

Mini SD slot. Is there really not enough space to put in a normal-sized SD/MMC slot?

Micro-USB, WTF?

The keyboard layout, missing symbols (pipe and tab). See solution below.

In order to make the device hacker compatible one needs to modify the keyboard layout and at least add a PIPE and a TAB key. This can be easily done by editing the X11 keyboard layout. Mike Rowehl: This is Mobility had some small discussion in his blog. For now I made TAB to be Fn-Space and PIPE to be Shift-Minus. This way I don't loose either Euro nor Sterling/Pound.

Some must haves:

Configuration:

update-rc.d -f metalayer-crawler0 remove

gconftool -s -t string /system/osso/connectivity/IAP/DEFAULT/type DUMMY

Software:

New stuff I've been thinking about: Location Home-applet, shows current position (maybe with street name lookup). Temperature Home-applet (see internal-temp app). New hardware-keyboard-based version of xkbd-bthid, also I need to support Windows and MacOSX (this will take some time).

Any comments or ideas for applications?

N810 got it!

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 23:39:00 GMT

Yea! I finally have a Nokia N810. I haven't done much yet since I was kind of busy the whole day. What I can say so far is: I like the keyboard.

More in the coming days.

Many thanks to my sponsor :-)

IpHome 0.5 for Maemo 4.x (Chinook)

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 23:24:00 GMT

other then I said before I'm now releasing my IpHome home/desktop plugin for Maemo 4.x (for the N8x0 devices) even I don't have a N810 yet.

In this release it now supports virtual interfaces in the style of wlan0:1 which was requested by some people.

Please report back any errors.

Left to do for Chinook is support for a transparent background - to get rid of the white ugly window.

Install IpHome

Stats for the MUlliNER.ORG Maemo Repository

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 12:29:00 GMT

In mid December I realized that it would be really helpful to know what exactly is going on with my Maemo repositories. So I decided to have a special webalizer only for the Maemo repository (I have a global webalizer for the whole domain). After looking at the stats I regret that I didn't do this right from the start.

Some interesting observations so far

I wouldn't have guessed that so many people already run Chinook in December (maybe only the super hard core early adapters use my stuff).

See the for yourself: MUlliNER.ORG Maemo Repository Stats

Btw: Many people ask me about ipHome applet (shows IP address on home screen). I'm going to release it as soon as I have my N810. I know this is not nice :-P

Playing with the N810 at 24C3

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 17:49:00 GMT

I had some time to play with the N810 while attending 24C3. The interesting part was that I saw quite a lot of people with a N810 in their hands - the ones I talked to had it imported from the U.S.

Since the N810 is mostly like the N800 (software wise) I only checkout the hardware. First impression was very good. The case looks very nice. I think it is a very clean design no bumps or strange edges. (Pictures don't tell you anything when it comes to hardware like this.) For me the most important thing to try was the keyboard since it is the novel part of the N-series. So I was very pleased to find it working just fine - much better then I expected (also I only had a couple of minutes). Sliding the keyboard up and down also seems to work nicely.

All in all it was a nice experience and I'm looking forward to get my own.

Update of my Chinook (Maemo 4) Repository

Sun, 16 Dec 2007 21:15:00 GMT

I finally updated my Chinook repository. Most of my Bora packages just work on Chinook. I only had to rebuild a few such as the Wireless Tools.

I'm about to rewrite IpHome (the IP address homepage applet) so it isn't in the repository yet. Also I managed to just rebuild it for Chinook but for some reason it makes the windows manager crash so I'm not putting it in the repository.

If you need more command line utilities for your OS2008 device feel free to leave a comment in my blog.

Add MUlliNER.ORG Chinook Repository

The N810 Internet Tablet is out!

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 18:41:00 GMT

New hardware features: GPS, sliding keyboard and a 400MHz CPU (specs. from Engadget). The device is a little smaller then the N800 (which I think is nice). The software is called OS2008 (who would have guessed?). They finally kicked out Opera and use a Gecko-based browser (see my older blog entry).

Another interesting thing for N800 owners is the fact the Nokia announced a OS2008 version for the N800. This means people who don't like to buy a new device will be able to get all the new eye candy for free. This basically is possible because the N800 and N810 hardware is very similar.

I'm really looking forward to the N810. For me as a Linux (shell) hacker a hardware keyboard will be extremely interesting. The N810 is supposed to by sold starting mid November.

Links

Nokia N810 specs.

N810 at LinuxDevices

N810 NSeries site

Nokia N810 -- announced!

Engadget - hands on N810

Xkbd-bthid 0.2 for Maemo 3.2 (fix for the Nokia N800)

Sat, 13 Oct 2007 23:12:00 GMT

here is a version of xkbd-bthid (my Bluetooth HID-Keyboard software) that works on the Nokia N800 (Maemo 3.2). I've finally found the time to fix it, also the number of users writing me emails to report that it doesn't work grew quite large in the last weeks.

xkbd-bthid still only supports the BOOT protocol which basically means no Windows and no MacOS X support. Linux is supported if you add -B to the hidd command line. Ubuntu users can do this in /etc/default/bluetooth.

Support for the REPORT protocol will defently come to xkbd-bthid.

Also please read the the package information before installing. Since you have to perform one small step manually before xkbd-bthid works. This is setting setuid to the wrapper executable. This is because dpkg on Maemo still doesn't do setuid.

Download/Install it using my Bora repository

RX-44 in my Weblog?

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 11:10:00 GMT

I have this nice script running every night to collect all unique User-Agent (aka. the name of the web browser) strings that contain interesting keywords one of them is arm. So today I checked the output of this script and I found the new Nokia tablet. The thing to look for is RX-44 since this is the new device code (see full analysis of ljprx 44).

So is this the new Nokia tablet?


Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux armv6l; en-US; rv:1.9a6pre) Gecko/20070926 Firefox/3.0a1 Tablet browser 0.1.22 RX-34+RX-44_OSSO1.1_0.2007.39-13

Also this seems to be some kind of transition firmware since it says RX-34 and R-X44. Also the OSSO part is newly added part of the User-Agent string. I have 3 different User-Agent strings containing OSSO.

Of course this could also be the new Maemo 4.0 build running on a N800.

Update:

Just right now I found this: RX-44_2008SE


Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux armv6l; en-GB; rv:1.9a6pre) Gecko/20071003 Firefox/3.0a1 Tablet browser 0.1.23 RX-34+RX-44_2008SE_1.2007.40-8

Aircrack-ng 0.9.1 for the N800

Mon, 30 Jul 2007 21:29:00 GMT

I finally had the time to build Aircrack-ng (0.9.1) for the N800. Many people were asking about it and I also wanted to play with some of the newer features. Some of the cooler features of aircrack-ng don't work on the N800: airreplay-ng requires a driver that is able to send raw frames as far as I know the N800's wifi driver doesn't support this (also airreplay-ng doesn't seem to compile out of the box); airtun-ng also didn't compile so I didn't include it in the package.

A few days ago I build a package for iodine (a IP-DNS tunnel). This little thing is really fun (best IP-DNS tunnel software I have seen so far).

Aircrack-ptw for the 770/N800

Sat, 07 Apr 2007 13:06:00 GMT

Since I compiled and tested Aircrack-ptw for my N800 for Erik as a benchmark anyway I now made a Maemo 770/N800 package for it.

Just add the right repository from my Maemo page and install it.

If you also want Aircrack-ng for your 770/N800 you can get it here: Aircrack-ng_0.5-1mad_armel.deb

The first N800 update

Sun, 25 Mar 2007 00:40:00 GMT

I just installed the first N800 update which was released on the 23rd. I tested to see if flash is faster but I can't see/feel it, the browser seems to be faster.

Two problems I really wanted to be fixed got fixed: the DUMMY IAP and the Metalayer-crawler problem (I had this fixed myself, but it is nice that it now just works).

I wonder if USB host mode is supported in this release. I need to find some time to check it out.

Using the N800 Video Phone

Sun, 11 Feb 2007 21:21:00 GMT

Today I tried out the video call feature of my N800 together with Martin (of trifinite) and I must say it works quite nice. Especially the use of jabber (XMPP) makes it really easy to use (both Martin and I already had and setup a gtalk account). The funny thing we found is that video seems to work better then audio. This means the video stream was nice and stable while the audio sometimes was jerky and totally un-usable. But all in all I think with the video phone feature Nokia did it again and made a real awesome Internet device.

IpHome 0.3

Sun, 04 Feb 2007 11:05:00 GMT

I just uploaded a new version of IpHome my network interface status home-applet. The update is really really small, I just added theming support. This means the applet now uses the theme color for it's border.

Yesterday I also added One Click Installation support for my bora/Mameo3.0 and my mistral/Maemo2.x repositories.

A few Words about the N800

Sun, 28 Jan 2007 22:04:00 GMT

No this is not another review if you have been looking for one go here. A few words...

Things I like: The overall look of the device, the faster CPU (ARMv6 320Mhz), more memory (128MB), more storage (250MB) and 2 SD card slots, bluetooth 2.0 EDR, the kick stand and last but not least the new pen/stylus.

Things I don't like: the missing display cover (this was really cool on the 770), the kick stand covers the USB port (which makes it hard to attach external USB hardware), the quality of camera seems to be pretty low (but who really cares?).

The software seems to be in something like a very late beta state (e.g. windows don't redraw nicely), but I guess the next update will fix a lot.

All in all I like the new device and I will give my best to come up with a nice hack specifically for the new hardware.

More N800 Software

Sun, 28 Jan 2007 21:42:00 GMT

while riding the train home after the weekend I rebuild my bluetooth software (btaudit, sobexsrv and xkbd-bthid) to turn on the N800. The packages are now available in my maemo repository. Also I found that the N800 now comes with it's very own obexserver so maybe sobexsrv is no longer needed.

Bora/Maemo 3.0 Repository

Sat, 27 Jan 2007 17:09:00 GMT

now that I know that many of my applications work on Bora aka. the distribution on the N800 I setup a bora repository. Over time I will fix the other applications to make them work on bora and put them in this repository.

maemo 3.0/bora repository settings

maemo 2.0/mistral repository settings

Got my N800

Thu, 25 Jan 2007 13:42:00 GMT

I just got my Developer Program Device, thanks Team@Maemo!

I tried my IpHome applet and it installs and works on my N800 just fine. In the coming days I will of course try my other applications and ports, and fix them accordingly.

For now everything looks cool and it seems to be a real nice second generation device!

More to come...

PS: Feel free to video call me on my N800: collin@jabber.org

The Nokia N800 Tablet is out!

Sat, 06 Jan 2007 12:48:00 GMT

See the pictures from unboxing the N800. The N800 looks like the device that was named the 870 by various sites.

Can't wait to hold it in my hands!

Update:

googeling

nokiausa.com/support/contact_us

Phone Product and Feature Information

A New Nokia Device in my www log... part 2

Sun, 17 Dec 2006 12:45:00 GMT

another software version (an older one) ...


Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; X11; Linux armv6l; U) Opera 8.5 [en_GB] Maemo browser 0.7.4 RX-34_2007SE_0.2006.47-17



This time from an IP from Finland :-)



see part 1



A New Nokia Device in my wwww log...
Sat, 09 Dec 2006 14:03:00 GMT
Some time ago I setup a script that greps for interesting strings in my www log, today I found this
entry (I highlighted the interesting parts):

 


Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; X11; Linux armv6l; U) Opera 8.5 [en_GB] Maemo browser 0.7.4 RX-34_2007SE_2.2006.48-10





A new CPU, newer Opera version, and a firmware name that is dated for next year :-)




In comparison, the current 770 firmware looks like this:




Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; ; Linux armv5tejl; U) Opera 8.02 [en_GB] Maemo browser 0.4.31 N770
/SU-18





And since the new device log was produced by a German IP I guess some people are allready 
running around with new a device. I wonder if this was the 870.


OLSRd package for the Nokia 770
Sat, 07 Oct 2006 00:19:00 GMT
since I'm playing with OLSR I quickly built a
package for my 770. In order to use it you need to be root 
and you need some basic knowledge about olsrd. The general steps are: edit /etc/olsrd.conf
to fit your network, bring up interface and assign an IP address, configure the wireless
part (essid, ad-hoc mode, and channel number), and finally start olsrd.



The package is available in my Maemo2 repository and on my Nokia 770 page.


MUlliNER.ORG Maemo Repository is heavily used
Wed, 19 Jul 2006 15:55:00 GMT
I just checked my site stats and saw about 6000 hits for my maemo repository during the last 20 days, this
is awesome! Especially nice is that my IpHome homepage plugin seems to have a lot 
of users.



Btw. I have a new utility in the queue. Hopefully I have enough spare time during my job search in order
to finish it before I start working.


My Maemo2.0 Repository
Sat, 01 Jul 2006 19:41:00 GMT
I now run my own Maemo2.0 repository. I know it is point less
that everybody sets up their own repository, but I just wanted
to play with it (I'm a long time Debian
user and I was just curious about how this repository thing
actually works). See the repository settings below:



repository settings

web address: http://www.mulliner.org/nokia770/repository/

distribution: maemo2

components: free




Xkbd-btHID for Maemo2.0
Sat, 01 Jul 2006 05:47:00 GMT
so I just uploaded xkbd-bthid for Maemo2.0. You have to follow the
install instructions otherwise it doesn't work!



I also installed the final version of the IT2006 software today. The first thing I noticed
is that it is much faster or snappier then before, really nice.


IT2006 Final is out!
Fri, 30 Jun 2006 19:51:00 GMT
The final version of the IT2006 OS/firmware for the Nokia 770 was released to developers
today. Get it here: maemo.org/downloads/nokia_770


IpHome for Maemo2.0
Thu, 29 Jun 2006 10:06:00 GMT
so finally I got my IpHome home page applet running on Maemo2.0. It took a little
longer due to some undocumented changes (well besides in the header files of course).
Anyway get IpHome for Maemo2.0 here. I also updated some
other applications for Maemo2.0.


sobexsrv for IT2006
Wed, 21 Jun 2006 23:48:00 GMT
I started porting my applications to IT2006/Maemo2.0, the first application is my Bluetooth OBEX server sobexsrv.
The package is available via the ApplicationCatalog2006 and of course via my Nokia 770 page.



I also wanted to update my IpHome homepage applet, but I have trouble getting it to work on Maemo2.0, so you have to wait a little longer for it.


News of the day - Nokia 770 OS 2006 Beta is out!
Sat, 10 Jun 2006 03:55:00 GMT
The developer BETA finally is out. See the announcement at:
www.maemo.org


I guess I have to rebuild all my packages :-)


Socat and Aircrack-ng for the Nokia 770
Sun, 28 May 2006 02:39:00 GMT
I did some Nokia 770 hacking today and I needed socat
for part of it so I packaged it for others to use. I also packaged aircrack-ng
because kismet is still not really working on the 770. So far I only tested airodump and it seems
to work, it nicely displays all networks and happily dumps packets. What do you want more?



As usual the packages are listed on the Maemo Application Catalog and on my Nokia770 page.


770 Software Upgrade
Sun, 14 May 2006 08:13:00 GMT
several sites (Slashdot, Engadget) 
are running stories about a new Nokia 770, I think this will just be a major software upgrade instead of a 
new device. The reasons for this are following: the current software doesn't support all hardware like the 
microphone which is obviously needed for any kind of VoIP application. VoIP or GoogleTalk is exactly the new
feature that is mentioned by these sites. Also, the 770 is still pretty new and it wouldn't make sense
to replace it already (making the 770 obsolete). The current 770 could do way better with just a software
upgrade so this is most likely to happen. Anyway they defently work on a new device but this will
not be released any time soon.


Kismet on the Nokia 770
Wed, 08 Mar 2006 05:15:00 GMT
so some guy started porting kismet (THE wireless sniffer/detector) to the
Nokia 770, see ApplicationCatalogWip entry.
It works in general but reports a bunch of ghost networks which makes it actually unusable,
I have just tried it (and was excited) but as soon as the ghost networks scroll by doh...



Anyway this looks promising, also I don't have to do it. Yea!


Tagesschau on the Nokia 770
Wed, 01 Mar 2006 05:08:00 GMT
so I finally got over to watching videos on my 770 and I noticed that there is almost
no CPU usage while playing a video, so I guess the Nokia guys did a good job and heavily use
the DSP :) The only annoying thing is the video format and resolution restrictions but I guess
that comes with the low CPU usage. 


Anyway I wrote a small script using a slightly modified version of peapod 
(a small command line based podcast receiver written in python) to download and convert
the 20Uhr (8pm) Tagesschau for the 770. So now
I can watch the Tagesschau by pointing my browser to my local webserver which holds
the converted file, nice! Streaming would be awesome but I don't have the time to set this up.
Also my room mate had the very interesting idea to just make a cgi/php/whatever to convert
videos on-the-fly by just handing a URL over to the script running on a webserver.


Dsniff 2.4 for the 770
Tue, 14 Feb 2006 08:45:00 GMT
so here is dsniff for the 770. Warning the package is BIG.


Nokia 770 Monitor Mode is working!
Tue, 14 Feb 2006 04:18:00 GMT
just read it on the developer list and tried it right away, and yes it works. So
since firmware 51-13 (should be the latest) we have working monitor mode.



Since you need the Linux wireless tools to set monitor mode (iwconfig wlan0 mode monitor)
and the 770 comes without them I complied and packed them. Download them here.


NMAP and Bluetooth Keyboard
Mon, 23 Jan 2006 03:13:00 GMT
so I just uploaded a packaged version for the 770 of NMAP. Its a really cool thing to have on the 770. Especially since I now (Dec. 2005) own a cool Bluetooth keyboard (Stowaway Think Outside) which I got as a birthday present from my girl friend. It, together with
an xterm console, really makes your 770 more usable. I started installing all the necessary shell utilities
and now its just a cooler device. Also the keyboard applet is far from perfect right now. I have problems
getting enter/return working sometimes. Also the power save mode kicks in too often.


xkbd-bthid screenshot
Mon, 16 Jan 2006 22:00:00 GMT

click to get full size



here is a much nicer screenshot of xkbdbthid I took it using
mst. Which is a nice networked screenshot tool.
Also it tells you to only bind to 127.0.0.1 (localhost) you can access it from any computer on the network.


xkbd-bthid
Sun, 15 Jan 2006 02:40:00 GMT
...is my latest Bluetooth tool. It's a soft-HID device as I call it. This is a
Bluetooth HID Keyboard software implementation. It turns your Linux box, PDA or
tablet into a Bluetooth HID Keyboard. This is the same thing some of the newer
cellphones have, now we have it for Linux!



This is the very first release, so expect it to be buggy. For example it
doesn't support MacOSX by now (because I don't have a Mac) since MacOSX
requires a other sub protocol (blablabla).



Check the xkbdbthid site and my Nokia770
page for downloads and instructions.



This is actually just my first HID tool, some more stuff is coming up but I just don't have any time
now so I first release this cool thing for you.



Feedback is more then welcome as always!


IpHome 0.2
Tue, 03 Jan 2006 01:56:00 GMT
Happy New Year, here is IpHome 0.2! Actually this was just a test tool
but so many people downloaded it and I got some emails with feature
request - so I decided to put in more features. Now you can cycle through
all interfaces which are up and have a IP address assigned. Just tap the
plugin display panel to switch to the next interface.



Download it from my 770
section.


IpHome
Wed, 21 Dec 2005 17:55:00 GMT

IpHome is a small and simple hildon homepage plugin that shows the current IP and
TX/RX bytes and errors. Its meant to be a first try homepage plugin, also I am an
information fetishist so I like to know whats going on on the network :-] I also
want to keep an eye on the network because of the wireless speed issues.





For those who don't know what hildon is, its the GUI system used by the Nokia 770.




Download is in my Nokia770 section, have fun.


770: wireless speed issues
Tue, 20 Dec 2005 16:15:00 GMT
while playing around in my home network I noticed that wireless is kind
of slow, I only have 1.5Mbit DSL so I didn't noticed it before. But now
I tried to download stuff from my laptop via FTP and boy this sucks. I
did a few tests with different security settings, since I use WPA and
WPA is done in software, I though this could be the problem. Here are
the results:




setup

 WRT54GS - with wrt-dd #22 prefinal4

 computer running Debian with proftpd (xinetd)

 N770 with Opera as ftp client


tests

 WPA-PSK TKIP+AES

  ftp ~80KB/s (cpu maxed out)



 WPA-PSK TKIP

  ftp ~150KB/s (cpu maxed out)



 WPA-PSK AES

  can't connect



 WEP 104bit

  ftp ~400KB/s (peek ~560KB/s)



 WEP 40bit

  same as for 104bit



 NONE

  same as for WEP




I didn't try WPA-EPA (radius). Also I noticed that the download
destination also impacts the speed. When writing to memory I couldn't
get more then 160KB/s, so all test downloads were done to MMC.


770: be nice to enjoy
Tue, 20 Dec 2005 12:21:00 GMT
after all the bashing against some of the 770 bugs I again have something nice to
say about it. I finally installed FBReader
and a bunch of e, pdfs and html-books. Now I use it as a handy reference manual,
search ability is so great (let's quick check which RFC xyz was specified in). It's not perfect
yet (perfect does not exist...).



To enjoy your 770 even more you need to be really nice and: don't open multiple websites
at the same time (most of the sites just have too much junk and make opera eat your memory),
be patient if things seem to hang it will recover faster if you don't try to switch apps,
open the menu or change back to normal screen. Disabling flash in opera is also a good idea
(I don't like it anyway - sometimes only for games).



Also by now I prefer the 770 over my h6315 for listening to podcasts. The 770 doesn't completely
freeze when playing mp3s. It now happened multiple times that it suddenly stopped playing, 
every time I thought damn it it crashed again. But it didn't I only drained the battery
to the ground - I guess thats a good sign :-)


eBook Reader
Sun, 18 Dec 2005 13:44:00 GMT
ebook reading really seems to be the killer application for tablets and/or big-screen
PDAs (if there is a difference between them besides the lack of PIM tools). InternetTabletTalk 
[1, 2] amongst many seem to think this way. Also yesterday at a friends
birthday party (90% IT workers aka GEEKs) we had a short discussion about PDAs, portable media players and friends. Many of us came to the conclusion that we want a viewing devices. This means
mainly: PDFs, HTML and insert popular ebook format here. Everybody complained about their
favorite device either the screen is to small or unreadable outside, the device is too slow when
rendering content, storage is to limited or DRM sucks to badly. Also what about watching
movies on the same device? Na - we don't want that, that just makes the device to multi purpose
and that never works out well.


As a comment to Russell's review,
I really think Internet access is the killer application for the Nokia 770. All the
other features are just add-ons. Of course you need the special viewers (web browser, 
rss reader, audio streaming client and all the different format readers).


Finally what I would like to know is, if people carry around their 770 during the day (when you are not at home/office)? Are you carrying it around with your cellphone or do you keep it at home
close to your couch and fast wifi access? I personal only take it to places where I know
wifi is available for me.


770 crashes
Sat, 17 Dec 2005 11:01:00 GMT
a rather sad report about my 770, I apologise to all 770 developers in advance for hurting
their feelings (I know how it is like when somebody complains about your software).



The web browser (Opera) continues to crash on me with random sites also sites not always 
make it crash, its a random thing (digg.com is a good example).
I tried to reproduce it but its to random, sorry no decent bug report.



The file manager is slow as hell (with big directories) - I guess this has to do with
the pre-fetching which I noticed with obexftp (accessing files on your cellphone). Also
I got many very long hangs (no display update or reaction to user input) and crashes, mostly
while browsing large directories. The memory usage seems to be pretty insane too.

I get around using the file manager for browsing large directories by using opera (url=file:///).



Device just rebooted/reseted while playing with WPA-PSK - I really guess it was just
a coincidence. This happened while setting up WPA-PSK on my parents Linksys WRT54GS (wrt-gg).
I had opera and xterm running and the connectivity-settings panel open. Suddenly the
device silently reboots (no low memory waring as usual when you do nasty things with opera).
No data lost! Just a normal reboot. I tried to reproduce it again - but no luck. Maybe just
some problem with the wireless driver where it dead-locked itself and some kernel watchdog 
killed and resurrected the device (I was heavily messing with the access point settings).
This never happened to me with any Linux box I wasn't messing around in the kernel.



Anyway I still totally like this thing also everybody always comes over to look at it :)



More feedback is on the way... I still need to investigate some of the things I want tell you folks.


Being a 770 user...
Fri, 02 Dec 2005 00:45:00 GMT
when I first got my Nokia770 I started right away with hacking (developing
and porting applications) rather then actually using it. I started being
just a user over the Thanksgiving weekend. Some user things I
noticed where:



We have Flash/Shockwave support, thats kind of nice. I actually didn't expect this. Also web browsing is really nice, just sitting on the couch watching TV
and surfing on the tablet. But unfortunately the browser (Opera) is
sometimes a little picky and crashes or just eats memory when going to some
of my favorite sites.



A PDF reader, yes there is one on the 770. Don't reading the product
manual really pays of - if you like surprises :)



Now for some bad things, the email client. I think I remember somebody
complaining about the lack of SMTPS (SMTP with SSL) support. Yes, this
is unbelievable the email client doesn't support SSL for outgoing mail,
why? This makes the mail client totally useless and just a waste of
storage space. Maybe the idea behind the email client is a email reader
because IMAP supports SSL. Anyway Opera nicely renders my webmail
page (IMP/Horde), so it's not to bad.



Some remarks about the filemanager, especially about the OBEX browser
(this is the thing that gives you access to the files on your phone).
The OBEX part is supper aggressive, it not only gets the current
directory information it also goes into subdirectories. If you browse
directories with a lot of subdirectories and files, the filemanager
sometimes is just blocked totally because of all the pre-fetching.



Also you can't directly use files from OBEX sources, I wanted to play
a MP3 from my phone on my 770 but the audio player complains. I
thought I could just use the big SD card in my phone as network
storage for my 770, but I guess I have to finally finish btfs to get this functionality.



One last thing, I noticed that the wireless antenna (802.11/WiFi) seems
to be pretty good for such a small device.


Xtris on the 770 - it's Tetris
Wed, 23 Nov 2005 12:29:00 GMT


I wanted to start writing my first maemo application but instead I ended up
porting xtris
a very cool Tetris implementation. The package is available here. The nice thing about this game is that it supports multiplayer mode,
the foto shows me playing against myself (laptop vs. 770). To play in multiplayer mode you need to start xtris by hand from the console (xterm) like this: 
xtris x.z.y.a where x.y.z.a is the IP address of the host running xtserv. If you start it via the menu the server is started for you, so your
opponent just needs to know your IP and your good to go.


Now I want a second 770 :-)


Digging around on the 770's filesystem
Tue, 22 Nov 2005 11:53:00 GMT
so I started pulling my 770 apart. First I flashed in the developer
rootfs, which turned out to be very striped down - so I decided to
immediately switch back to standard and add a few things on the way.
But first I needed to get the original image back, to do this you
have to go here.
And by the way, this nice awesome hardware is made in good old Germany!



I started going through the filesystem, a modified stuff like
/etc/sudoers to include user ALL = NOPASSWD: /bin/sh
so I can just get a root shell, without calling gainroot.


Searching further I found all the images, like the big Nokia logo
that you see on startup (/usr/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/hildon/qgn_indi_startup_nokia_logo.png) and the Nokia hands (/usr/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/hildon/qgn_indi_nokia_hands.png). Guess what, of course I replaced them - no big
magic. I also found this funny logo - actually its not funny if you get to see it
(/usr/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/hildon/qgn_indi_startup_failed.png).




 
Also all the themes are nicely split up into multiple files, so modifying
or creating new themes should be easy (I can't do graphics).



I guess I'll built me a real nice image over the next days. Also I don't
know how the licensing is - can modified images based on the original
firmware be redistributed?


770 Wireless Issues
Mon, 21 Nov 2005 17:32:00 GMT
I played around with WiFi (802.11) over the weekend. And found that promisc mode
is not working on the 770, this means no fun with tcpdump or dsniff (which I spend
hours on building). Also the whole monitor mode thing doesn't seem to work right now.
When asking on the developer list about this issue, I got told that they are currently
working on these things (due to popular demand!), which is nice to hear.


Also changing the MAC address of the device seems to work, its not really a feature 
that is needed by many people but I happen to need it.


The 770 and sunlight
Sat, 19 Nov 2005 21:39:00 GMT
so I just did the sunlight test (to see if the display is readable 
under direct sunlight [I used genuine Californian sun]). In the default 
brightness setting it is very hard to read anything (images are ok). If you
crank up the brightness setting to the maximum setting the text is
actually readable. I guess the battery wont last as long in the max setting.



I guess the display passed :-)


Nokia770 - finally I got it!
Sat, 19 Nov 2005 08:24:00 GMT

so I finally got my 770! And from the first second I loved it! It's small, black and 
has a big screen. WiFi and Bluetooth work like a charm. The first thing I did was: enabling
the R&D mode (to get root), installing xterm and dropbear-sshd.




The Nokia 770 is really nice, it boots fast. The UI seems pretty usable, sometimes a little to
slow for me (I'm an old Palm user) but since I'm used to PocketPC it's fast :-)




The first thing to test was of course web browsing (since it calls itself an internet tablet).
WiFi setup was fast and easy (it found a tone of access points around here (I haven't looked
for some time now)), so I could kick it of right away. Browsing is real fun thats clear. Most of
the web pages I checked showed nicely.




So Bluetooth, the sad thing is no GUI support. But it works once you have the shell. OBEX, when I
first setup my network connections the device asked me for the phone setup (for dial-up and file
transfer). File transfer is OBEX, so I fired up sobexsrv on
my laptop and told the 770 that it is a phone. And whups I can browse the files on my laptop
from my 770 with the built-in file manager, this is awesome! This makes installing applications really easy,
just double tap the .deb file and it gets installed (from your laptop). The next step was then to compile
sobexsrv for the 770 so I can browse the files on it from my laptop. It of 
course supports regular push/pull too. In the next weeks I will try to port all
my Bluetooth applications to the 770.



Thats it for now. I'll keep writing and porting new applications for my new toy, so keep reading!