The roads I take...

This Monday, my new Nokia N810 arrived! I'm played a bit with its features now, installed some additional software, tried browsing a number of websites, and all in all, I really like it.



You (as a geek yourself, probably) might notice that on the picture, its UI has a lot of similarity to Star Trek TNG's mobile tablets (PADDs), that's not the default look - one of the first things I installed was the LCARS PADD theme package, when I tried how well free WLAN hotspots work in Vienna - and I was satisfied (both with freewave and the theme).



Of course, for people like us, the web browser is quite important - and the device running on Linux and having a Gecko-based browser were among my main reasons for buying the N810. And, despite not being SeaMonkey , I like the microB browser a lot. It works like a real browser and displays web pages like they should look, not garbling a number of them like the Opera mobile version on my Nokia 7710 phone (which performs well enough for the N810's GPRS internet connection where no WLAN is in reach). I even did write a paragraph on the last weekly status update on this blog from the microB browser, when my desktop locked up and I had to reboot it - something that I haven't seen with the N810 yet.
The system feels very stable and comfortable, and you wouldn't realize it's actually Linux unless you e.g. open up an X terminal on it or connect to the device via ssh (after installing OpenSSH, that is). Oh, and as a regular long-time Linux user, I just like being able to look into top or ps to see what the system's doing/running and just ssh'ing into all my computers from all my computers.
Now I finally got a device I can take with me to take notes, look into the web and such stuff without needing to bring with me and unfold a fully laptop computer. Yay!



One further reason why I finally decided to get me an N810 is its GPS and mapping capability. Especially when I was in the US in April, but eventually also when on my way somewhere here in Vienna, I often felt it would be nice to have a good map handy, ideally along with some indicator pointing out my position. The N810 promised to be able to do both, with software being able to use free OpenStreetMap data (maemo-mapper), and even GPS positioning and tracking capability. I already read in advance to buying the device that its internal GPS takes a very long time to find a satellite fix, but then work quite well even where signal quality is not that good - and I can confirm both, though esp. the former. When turning on display of GPS details in maemo-mapper, it's quite common for the device to have 2-5 satellites in view but being unable to establish a fix - at least in the central area of Vienna that is covered with 6-7 story buildings. Once the miracle happens and an initial fix can be established, the position isn't always accurate due to heavy signal reflection between those buildings, but it hardly loses the fix and can re-establish it fast when it gets lost, at least when not being in a building for a longer period of time.
I'm looking forward to trying this outside the city (in my home town) this weekend and see hoe well things work there. If anybody knows a good trick to ease the device getting an initial GPS fix, please tell me, I'll happily try out your suggestions.

All in all, I'm positively impressed by this device, it works very well and perfectly shows off how well Linux and Gecko 1.9 are suited for mobile use already - but then, I barely scratched the surface of what it can do in those two days I have it now. I'm looking forward to the N810 supporting my work and perhaps even some fun activities in the future. Well done, Nokia!

This Friday and Saturday, I spent a lot of time at a local free and open source event called "Linuxwochen Wien". Both days I had intended to only visit there for two talks or so, but on both days I didn't come home before 2 in the morning, spending the rest of the evenings and nights with people from the local FLOSS community and talking about all kinds of interesting things.

My first contact with that community (yes, I know, I probably should have done that earlier) was a lot of fun, and I surely intend to repeat the experience. And I even could reply that SeaMonkey 2 and Firefox 3 will improve exactly some of the areas where people complained about Mozilla - though one guy was surprised that we still aren't a GTK application on Linux, because we feel so much like one nowadays that he couldn't tell the difference.

I had lots of interesting conversation with people from CAcert, OpenOffice.org, the FSFE local interest groups, etc. At the official event, I attended a discussion about "Linux vs. FLOSS" (mostly about which name should be part of a mass-targeted event like this), a talk about customizing Firefox (mostly actually listing and demoing "Add-Ons you must have") - and an inspiring talk about the OpenStreetMap ("OSM") project, which works towards free map data, created by a global community.

After 2 days of not getting much "real work" done, I would have thought to dig deep into SeaMonkey stuff today, but instead, I could not get OSM out of my mind. I looked at the currently available maps from my home town of Steyr, which are/were only rudimentary there, and decided to "just improve a few bits" like names of the streets they had in, maybe some missing connections, just for trying how this works. Well, that's what I thought, at least. After I guess about ten hours of naming streets, drawing new areas and streets according to satellite imagery and correcting already existing data, you might be able to grasp the amount of changes I made by a look at the images below - the first is the nicely rendered view of what OSM had before, the second is the current data in the edit view (nice "Mapnik" view will only be rendered mid-week):

Yes, this really is the same sector of a map, click on the images and view larger version if you don't believe it.

OSM is not just a nice project, I fear I could get hooked on it - not sure if that's a good or bad outlook.
Additionally, I have just added a few items to the list of why I may want to buy a N810, as there's software for it to work with the free map data from OSM and it should also be able to create GPX tracks that I can use with OSM to improve map data. Not sure how long I can hold myself back now before throwing my euros over the counter just to get this device...

Running a Gecko browser on it might even get me back to Mozilla-related work.