Handful of Nothing

Well, I’m very excited to know that some incredible people are going to be at BossaConference in Recife, Brazil. This will be an excellent time to absorb a lot of information and also gather with some brilliant minds and maybe create some nice stuff for Maemo. I hope this become a annual event, and specially I also hope that more Brazilians get involved with it!

If you’re coming, drop me a comment or 2!

Conference website : http://www.bossaconference.org/
Conference venue : http://www.hotelarmacao.com.br/eng/index.html

Adam Curry, the famous dude has talked about our babies in his latest episode! check it out here

Canola Overview after the launch
Very relax launching. I said that because in the beta 1 we had a LOT of problems, and we stayed in the office for almost 8 hours in the morning.

Problems so far:
Seems to me that the only REAL and worrying problem is about some bug for those with older versions of canola installed. The new web-based configure tool keeps asking for the password, letting the users on loop. If you face this, please let us know, cause We’re really trying to track this bug but no success on reproducing it till now.

Feedback
Feedback has been great, both on Canola and Carman and I can see a bright future ahead of this 2 products. Maybe a convergence? Something like Canola Car Edition? That’s why we went with a more complicated but expandable architecture : we can now create more and more plugins for Canola and really add value when need, and only for those users who want it.

I will write later about the next packages that we will ad to the Add ons page on canola website and also about theming canola!

So after some delays we are finally, and officially releasing the Canola beta2, it’s website and we really expect people to enjoy it.

A hell of a work, lots of bug crushing, UI enhancements. We tried to keep Garages bugs at a minimum number always and I think we did.

So point your Maemo device to our site and download canola! Now without those nasty installation problems of the first beta.

ps : Canola is also on the maemo application catalogue

Thoughfix has done it again. He makes some of the best videos and now you can see how Carman works.
Remember Carman is a very early version and is going to evolve a lot!

take also a moment to read how he pu everything to work on his blog here

We’ve just released Carman, an slick application that turns your maemo device into one Cars lover useful tool. It provides two views, one pyGTK other using Python (pygame) and let you monitor your car’s sensors through OBD-II.

The nice thing is that we gave the user 2 options, the pyGTK is a analysis tool while the Python UI is a fancy made for in car usage onboard computer, that can have several themeable “widgets” and really fit into your car’s look and feel.

pyGtk Screenshot

The “Tunning” theme for the rich view.

The “default” theme for the rich view
So, that’s what I belive. Canola turned the 770 into a real pmp with streaming capabilities and also a real in car system option. Now Carman is also showing that your 770 or n800 can be used as onboard computer. =)

Now the best part, and accidental feature I suggested just after getting to the office and seeing my badge clearly reflected on the wind shield:

To do this a “big numbers - info ” theme must be done. Don’t need to be inverted the graphics, just press the fullscreen button and pam! I’ve tested this in day and nighlight. Actually day is a lot better then night. The only requirement is to place it in a 90degree angle with the windshield. That can be hard without a mounting device.

Some concepts mockup =) Hei teemu I think I used you picture =) ehehe

Anyone wants to sell some used 770? =)

Ps: this also shows the power of python in this platform =) Come on, stop asking for java and try out python for maemo! Lots of good documents here ,here and ofcourse a camera.py demo here

Marcelo

maybe things were predicted !, originally uploaded by MarceloEduardo.

This FM interface was done more than 1 year ago, way before the n800. We considered the canola a media player, so we tried to “test” almost every feature on it’s UI.

Simple radio FM is easy and can be done PRETTY fast if we the API is public. Let’s see, but of course we would love to see one more use of it.

Question for potencial FM users on Canola :
As you can imagine, there’s no “solid” way to make the 4 buttons of the hildon UI (scan between favorite stations & auto scan + stepped scan)

So, is it ok for you a simple interface where, you have your favorite radios on a list screen, and you can :
single touch for step by step scanning
touch and hold for auto-scan?

tell me what you guys think. It like it simple, so lets see what we can do about it =)

Things haven’t changed in the UI but…, originally uploaded by MarceloEduardo.

We are almost there. Really. just polishing /testing the final things and make sure everything is going to be hell easy with the installation!

Yes, no problem for 770 users, or n800 users no more repositories to add and all those problems we ran into with the previous version.

So, the ui has just a few improvements on some features, but under the hood it’s a major release : lots of fixes, enhancements, better cpu usage and improved upnp support.

the only thing I really miss is the itunes7 : /

Well, it was just a matter of time to for this to happen so :

And that really shows something : we had compiled quake2 for the 770 2 years ago, and quake 2 was like impossible, Quake one ran at 0.5 frames per second.

If this video is really true, you can imagine the power of the new device compared to the old one. Sad thing : we still have the nasty Vsync problem :p. Hey Daniel stone, pleaaaaaase solve this one for the sdl lovers = /

and I’m pretty glad that the interest in the platform is growing and people are tinkering with it more and more =)

Maybe now it’s time to adapt my crap stylus-ui from doom to quake 2?