MeeGo

This week in MeeGo Conference all attendees received Lenovo S10-3t IdeaPad convertible netbook/tablet computers from Intel and Nokia. For many of us this was the first time we're actually using MeeGo on a device, and so I thought to post some notes ... [More] on how it feels. IdeaPad hardware The IdeaPad looks and feels like a typical netbook: cheap plastic construction, big protruding battery, small trackpad and screen. However, it suddenly becomes quite interesting when you swivel the screen around, making it a tablet computer with a nicely sized touchscreen. The whole package is quite much heavier than my current MacBook Air, but that is a price you pay for almost eight hour battery life. I wish a PC manufacturer started making as clean hardware as Apple does. A Nokia Booklet with MeeGo would come close. All the normal stuff like WiFi (mine had Atheros), display-out and touchscreen work. For some reason trackpad buttons don't, and there is a mystery SIM card slot under the battery that needs a bit more investigation. Integrated 3G would be sweet! MeeGo Netbook When we got the netbooks in the conference there were two options for the install: fully free software, or one with proprietary WiFi drivers. Both images were development snapshots of MeeGo Netbook 1.1, a descendant of Intel's Moblin desktop. The system boots very quickly, and generally feels very responsive, though at times the bundled Chromium browser can make the whole system slow. Getting the netbook set up was reasonably straightforward. Different areas of the MeeGo toolbar had integrated functionality for various services, with setup wizards for connecting to your accounts on them. In minutes I had my work calendar on the system, was connected to the IM networks I use, and had tweets appearing on the "MyZone" desktop. Having all this cloud integration in place means the IdeaPad can quite easily serve in its intended "conference laptop" purpose - I don't need to do anything special to copy my data to the device, just connect it to various services. IdeaPad as a tablet Out of the box MeeGo Netbook doesn't deal with the tablet mode of the IdeaPad too well. Touchscreen works but generally applications are clumsy to use with it, and there is no on-screen keyboard. This can be fixed by installing a Chrome kinetic scrolling extension and grabbing the on-screen keyboard from the MeeGo Handheld repositories. I've also heard reports that the IdeaPad would be able to run the full Handheld UX. But probably it is better to wait and see what kind of touch elements appear once the hackers who got their netbooks in the conference have time to play with them more. The MeeGo Forum has a thread discussing IdeaPad improvements. Just how MeeGo is this? The Netbook user interface comes from the Moblin project, and so builds on top of the GNOME stack, and ships mostly with applications coming from that desktop, even though MeeGo's official architecture designates Qt as the toolkit to use. It may be that at some point the Netbook user interface will get rewritten, but the more important thing to developers is that apart from default applications the MeeGo Netbook appears to be a pure MeeGo system: it uses MeeGo repositories, and all the services like Telepathy, GeoClue and Tracker are there. This means that you can easily start developing and experimenting with MeeGo application development on this machine. The Community Applications system, including PPAs on the community OBS are being set up to help this, and there was some discussion on how to run Qt Creator on it. For now Git, Gedit and Python are enough for me. Computer minimalism I've written earlier about unitasking and the importance of having a computer environment that helps maintaining focus and getting things done. In this particular branch of computer minimalism the idea is that generally you should be doing just one thing at a time, with minimal distraction. The MeeGo Zones paradigm does this reasonably well. In a normal usage situation there is nothing else on the screen than the application you're working on. The applications themselves can be organized between multiple zones, so you can cluster things based on working context. MeeGo's toolbar autohides to the top and can be invoked by either moving the mouse there, or by pressing the Windows key. There you can quickly access areas of current information, like calendar events, TODOs, instant messages and tweets. When you've done handling those just let the toolbar slide away and you're back in your application. Information access, with minimal hassle. Wrapping up This initial look at MeeGo makes me a bit torn. On the other hand, I love the minimalistic interface paradigm, and the UI feels fast and smooth, but also lots of necessary software is missing and many parts feel unpolished. But still this isn't bad for a new OS that has been around for only about eight months. The hardware itself isn't too great, but probably the best current option for a cheap tablet/netbook convertible. For now I plan to keep MeeGo Netbook on the machine. It won't be my work computer, but instead a travel and conference machine for quick hacking and browsing while on the road. I'll keep monitoring the relevant conversations to see how things improve, and will also try to write some improvements myself. The first step, though, is to report the bunch of bugs we've found so far. [Less]

This week George merged some of the patches I have been working on to the QtGStreamer master repository, including support for Events. (*) He also wrote and committed a bunch of bugfixes and some improvements to the build files. I started to work on ... [More] some refactoring for our refCounted object, with an eye on addressing two issues that are common to other GStreamer bindings as well. So far things are promising, but this effort will take a little more time before it is ready to be merged. And finally, the Kamoso team announced that they have completed the intial port to QtGStreamer. It is still a work in progress, but it is good to be able to collaborate on real world applications instead of just hacking on an “ideal” library API. We have already some adjustments in our long and public TODO list thanks to the input from Alex, and I wish the Kamoso team good luck with the project. (*) As a comment to that, I still need to adjust my workflow to git: I use to prototype things and commit frequently in the local directory to avoid losing work, but this produces a not-so-good history as things are added and deleted… and do not end up in the final patch, just in the commit history. To avoid this I was rebasing and squashing, but the side effect of this for big changes (like the TagList support I was working on) is that it tends to be a very long and not-so-manageable merge request, which takes more time to process. I promised George I will send smaller, atomic patches from now on . But generally I think that I am now finally getting into the git mode of thinking: it requires a mental adjustment for people like me that were used to CVS and SVN and were afraid of branching… Once you adjust there is no going back, I am glad KDE is migrating to it. [Less]

I’m now back home after a very successful MeeGo Conference 2010. Thankfully for me, the flight was short and it arrived ahead of time, even with a 10-minute delay on departure. The winds have been favourable to us (though the Harmattan wind doesn’t ... [More] help airplanes — not yet anyway). Upon arriving, I was reminded immediately why the conference shouldn’t be in Oslo in November, like someone suggested some time ago in the MeeGo Wiki: it’s cold here and snowing. Compared to Oslo, Dublin’s weather was comforting and warm. Add to that the welcoming social events that were organised for us and you see why it was a good reason to go — visiting the Guiness Storehouse and watching live Norway 2 x 1 Ireland was a nice touch! I even made a cameo appearence in Norway’s largest newspaper, in a weird fish-eye lens photo. But the social events, weather, international football, and the Werewolf sessions (thanks Dawn!) are not the reason why we went to Dublin. It was the conference itself, with a great line-up of talks and excellently put together. It’s one of the two best developer conferences I’ve ever been to and I’m left wondering how to properly rank them (add warmer weather and a swimming pool and it would definitely be #1). I guess I shouldn’t try and should simply acknowledge the best of each. Many thanks to the organising committee and the volunteers for the tireless effort, especially to Amy (if you were at the conference, you know why — someone even told me “now I know who really calls the shots here”). When we started planning this event, we started guessing how many people would attend. Based on similar events in the past, like the Maemo Summit 2009, Akademy and GUADEC, we ventured a number. I guessed 400, others guessed more and eventually it was decided that a venue for the most optimistic guess, 700, would be better. At one point, it was looking really good when we had 600 attendees registered. About a month ago when we were finalising the Qt Certification for the event we had 800 and then I said “well, it’s a free event, so let’s say 200 people who signed up will be no-shows”, so we were at the same number. Last week, before the event, I heard that we had 1000 people registered. On Monday morning, I got confirmed: 1050 or so signed up (two colleagues of mine from the Oslo office contributed by registering on Thursday). If you discount the no-shows, of which there weren’t many, and add the people who showed up without registering, of which there were plenty, I hear we were about 1100. And that’s not because of Nokia and Intel people showing up. It may have seemed that way to some, but the registration for Intel and Nokia was limited intentionally, so we’re sure we were way less than 20% of the attendance. We wanted to ensure that this was a community event, where people from all origins (students, self-employed, contractors, etc.) would be given the chance to be there. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the chance to watch many of the talks, not even the ones I really wanted to, like Ryan and Elena’s double session in security. Fortunately, the sessions were all filmed so I’ll have the chance to do it later when the videos are online. For some sessions, it already is. Instead, I ended up in what Dirk calls the “Hallway Track”, which consisted of talking to people. I talked to my Nokia colleagues whom I see often, the Intel developers whom I don’t see that often, and friends and colleagues from other companies, from KDE and elsewhere. In fact, there was a nice presence of KDE people in the event — were we about 50 people or was it more? I actually spent most of my time figuring out who I should introduce to whom and then making these introductions. I should really have written it down, because I kept forgetting who needed the introduction when I finally found the person who needed to be introduced. Oh well, in the end it worked out fine — a friend tells me “no matter where in the stadium I was, looking around there was always a Thiago”. I did deliver my Qt Roadmap Update talk and my Improving cooperation BOF (videos and slides available soon). It was thankfully easy, since I’ve been talking about the roadmap quite often. Two weeks ago, in the week of Qt Developer Days San Francisco alone, I went through it 9 times. I also helped organise the MeeGo Conference lightning talks, though the thanks go to presenters there (see parts one and two). In addition to the talks, I had nice discussions with several people about the Qt Open Governance, which is a something I’m passionate about and the other topic I talked quite a lot about during Dev Days. I have several offers of help, which I plan to cash in pretty soon as we’re now moving to the implementation phase. I also had a chance to catch up with Chris Schläger, from AMD, who came to make a surprise announcement of their joining MeeGo and contributing engineering expertise. Chris has been involved with Qt for a long time, from his KDE developer days, SUSE days and leading Open Source Qt-based projects like TaskJuggler, so I was quite happy to see him around. Mark Shuttleworth also make an impromptu appearance but he confessed he didn’t have much time available. I got to talk to him about some topics we discussed during UDS last month. Plus I think we made a lot of progress in many areas during the Unconference sessions and simple face-to-face discussions. Again I was positively surprised when the schedule board was practically full from early in the morning, as we were afraid that people would leave on the day before. Lots of interesting topics were discussed and I hope to see the notes posted online to the MeeGo Wiki soon (don’t forget to post yours if you were leading a session!). Of the topics that I wanted to see discussed, most happened: Wayland for MeeGo, Plasma on MeeGo, the hard floating point ABI for ARM, etc. Now we need to follow up on those and put them in the MeeGo Roadmap for 1.2 or later. In all, a great event. Now that I’m back in the office doing regular work, I wish I were back there. Well, we have several great conferences lined up for 2011, including the Desktop Summit 2011 (in Berlin) and a proposal for a MeeGo Conference in May (San Francisco). I have already collected some feedback on what we can improve for next conferences, but please let us know what you liked and what we can do better, in the comments below or by email (to me or to the other organisers). Praise is accepted, whining isn’t — instead, make a constructive suggestion. See you soon! [Less]

Linpus have announced a tablet operating system based on MeeGo. The platform was on show at the Dublin MeeGo Conference this week, running both on a prototype tablet device and a netbook. The OS has been built upon the MeeGo 1.1 core, but with a ... [More] bespoke multi-touch user interface and six custom made applications. The platform is aimed at OEM's rather than consumers, and therefore will undergo further brand-specific customisations before it reaches the market.Because the Linpus tablet OS is MeeGo 1.1 compliant, it we can expect to see integration of Intel's AppUp application store. Linpus have developed a number of Qt applications (e.g. eBook Reader and Media Player) to demonstrate their expertise and show potential commercial partners the sort of user experience that can be created. The exact application suite and UI will, of course, depend on OEM's who use the platform. The media player will support audio, video, and streaming from YouTube. The user interface features multiple home screens, being able to move up and down and side to side between different desktops. Again, this is not a consumer product, Linpus are looking to licence the platform to OEM's who will further add to the driver and application support. From Linpus' press release: Linpus, a leader in the field of open source operating system solutions in the consumer space, announced today a full Meego-based multi-touch solution. Linpus' solution is not just an operating system, but also includes a  comprehensive suite of key applications including: an ereader, browser, media player, photo viewer, virtual keyboard and webcam.   “The openness and flexibility of MeeGo makes it a great choice for a multi-touch platform,” said Rita Jing, vice-president of sales, Linpus. “Over the last few months we have worked extremely hard to ensure a fantastic multimedia experience and deliver one of the first and most complete MeeGo multi-touch solutions.” Linpus developed and designed from the ground up their own user interface including: many aspects of the multi-touch functionality. For that interface there is a icon-based launcher and also a widget desktop which can be easily swapped between with up and down swipes. The addition of extra media such as USB or SD cards is solved in an extremely intuitive and easy-to-use way: the type of file will pop up as a folder under the appropriate application and you can just copy between. The included applications are also all customized for multi-touch and ease of use guaranteeing a full browsing, movie watching and music experience. The ereader application has a bookshelf with the ability to categorize – for example - for crime or non-fiction novels; and then highlight text, skip quickly through the pages of a book, and zoom in. The media player has a: virtual jukebox, support for HD, and Youtube functionality all built into its main menu – If you put in a SD card the music on it will pop-up in this main menu and can then be easily selected and played. Additionally, they have worked hard adding personalization features, not only wallpaper but a number of themes. And created a virtual keyboard that includes the option to change your keyboard layout to up to 17 languages. Despite forging ahead with this MeeGo-based touch solution, Linpus has continued to work closely with the MeeGo community. Their solution is MeeGo 1.1 compliant; it has the user interface and applications all written in QT, and includes the full MeeGo Touch Framework (MTF) with gesture support. By being MeeGo compliant they will be able to include Intel AppUp center. Also, to show you the tablet OS in action, here is a video taken by Steve "@Chippy" Paine of UMPCPortal.com.   David Gilson for All About MeeGo, 18th November 2010 [Less]

Photo Credits: Quim Gil – Photo License: AttributionShare Alike Attribution, Share Alike Entre ayer y hoy en Dublin se llevo a cabo la MeeGo Conference 2010, con un concurrencia de mas de 1000 developers y con muchas novedades desde el principio ... [More] , quizás la noticia mas importante la dio AMD anunciando su ingreso al proyecto, algo lógico de cara al próximo lanzamiento de sus procesadores AMD Zacate orientados al mercado de la netbooks, mercado en el cual Intel quiere empezar a posicionar a MeeGo el año que viene. También se hizo el anuncio de que para el próximo año se van a realizar dos MeeGo Conferences las primera de ellas en Mayo en San Francisco que va a estar orientada a los partners de hardware y la segunda se realizara a finales de año y estará enfocada en los developers, ademas de estos anuncios se pudieron ver los planes para las próximas versiones de Qt y Meego. Pasando a las charlas, la temática ha sido variada, tocando todas las versiones de MeeGo (Netbook, Handset, Connected TV e IVI) y por suerte todas ellas han sido grabadas, en este momento ya se encuentran disponibles los vídeos de casi todas las charlas dadas el Día 1 y próximamente estarán disponibles las del Día 2, pueden ver el listado de las mismas aquí, para ver los vídeos o bajar los slides solo hagan click en la charla de su interés, sino pueden ir a la pagina de la Linux Foundation donde también se han subido los vídeos. Como verán, la comunidad y las empresas que giran en torno de MeeGo no paran de crecer, así que les dejo algunos links con recursos por si están interesados en investigar mas y probar MeeGo. MeeGo Downloads MeeGo Blogs MeeGo Roadmap MeeGo Architecture MeeGo Developers MeeGo Community [Less]

Justin Noel, a Senior Consulting Engineer at Integrated Computer Solutions, showed me an application they built on top of Meego IVI 1.1 from scratch in just a couple of weeks. They’re at the Meego Conference to show how far developers can get ... [More] with Meego in a short amount of time. Justin showed a demo of [...]Continue reading Video: Meego IVI Preview Demo at The Nokia Blog [Less]

Rafe and Reggie are at the MeeGo Conference in Dublin. Here we have live coverage from day two and day three; we'll be bringing you live coverage, with updates from the sessions and surrounding activities. Joining us in our live coverage is mobile ... [More] analyst Julien Fourgeaud and The Handheld Blog. We're using Cover It Live, which is embedded below, and lets you read the latest updates, view pictures, vote in polls and add your own comments and questionsYou'll also be able to follow along on Twitter - follow @allaboutmeego for our Tweets. Other back channels, which you may want to follow, include the #meegoconf hash tag on Twitter and commentary in the #meego channel on the Freenode IRC network. Some of the sessions are also be streamed, see the MeeGo Conference website for more details. <a href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php/option=com_mobile/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=4815eb0372" _mce_href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php/option=com_mobile/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=4815eb0372" >MeeGo Conference Day 2</a> [Less]

Rafe and Reggie are at the MeeGo Conference in Dublin. Here we have live coverage from day two; we'll be bringing you live coverage, with updates from the sessions and surrounding activities. Joining us in our live coverage is mobile ... [More] analyst Julien Fourgeaud and The Handheld Blog. We're using Cover It Live, which is embedded below, and lets you read the latest updates, view pictures, vote in polls and add your own comments and questionsYou'll also be able to follow along on Twitter - follow @allaboutmeego for our Tweets. Other back channels, which you may want to follow, include the #meegoconf hash tag on Twitter and commentary in the #meego channel on the Freenode IRC network. Some of the sessions are also be streamed, see the MeeGo Conference website for more details. <a href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php/option=com_mobile/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=4815eb0372" _mce_href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php/option=com_mobile/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=4815eb0372" >MeeGo Conference Day 2</a> [Less]

There’s a huge geocaching scene around us that I can’t believe I just stumbled upon. The basic idea is to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, outdoors and then share your experiences online. I was introduced to this treasure hunt by ... [More] some of the attendees here at the Meego Coference. Here’s my first experience hunting caches [...]Continue reading Geocaching Around Dublin at The Nokia Blog [Less]

It has been announced that Pelagicore AB has now joined the Linux Foundation. Pelagicore AB is a company who applies open source software to develop of automotive infotainment products. They have joined the Linux Foundation specifically to ... [More] participate in the building of the MeeGo In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) reference design. Also today, Rudolf Streif of the Linux Foundation, hosted a work-group session at the 2010 MeeGo conference in Dublin, to present they key challenges and considerations of MeeGo IVI. Read on for more details and our photo coverage. Rudolf Streif speaking at the MeeGo Conference IVI work group The GENIVI alliance is a non-profit organisation, whose members include the BMW Group, Delphi, GM, and Intel. MeeGo was selected by GENIVI as the basis of its next platform release. MeeGo IVI is already engaging in wide-spread collaboration with: car makers and various automotive consortia (e.g. GENIVI), semiconductor companies, operating system vendors, and independent software vendors, and of course the community. Furthermore, Pelagicore are already experts in both IVI software and developing in the Qt development framework. It therefore makes sense from a governance point of view for Pelagicore to join the Linux Foundation which already oversees the governance of the MeeGo project. As reported in the Linux Foundation's press release: "Pelagicore understands this evolution of the automotive infotainment industry and is a leading contributor to MeeGo’s IVI reference design. It is working with the MeeGo community to include a Qt-based IVI user experience, while Nokia is working with the Consumer Electronics For Automotive Group (CE4A) on Terminal Mode, a proposed industry standard for the integration of mobile applications into the car environment. The combination of MeeGo, Qt and Terminal Mode extends the capabilities of IVI with the ability to update during the life of the vehicle, enhancing the usability of mobile device capabilities in the automotive environment." Meanwhile, at today's IVI working group session, Rudolf Streif (of the Linux Foundation) gave a presentation outlining what is required in the development of MeeGo as an IVI platform, and the current state of development. The MeeGo IVI Hardware and Software Stack In the session Streif told everyone that MeeGo needs to add features and functionality, as detailed below, to become a viable IVI solution. Vehicle Buses Controller Area Network (CAN) Media Orientated Systems Transport (MOST) FlexRay Local Interconnect Network (LIN)   Human Machine Interface (HMI) Multi-zone Video Split Screen Layered HMI Video Policies (priorities)   Audio Management Multi-zone Audio Audio Routing and Ramping Audio Policies (priorities)   Hands-free Phone/Control Voice Recognition Text-to-speech Acoustic Echo Cancellation Noise Suppression User Input Button, Knobs, Joysticks, Touch, Gestures   Software Updates Kernel Boot <250ms Device Activation <50ms from ignition Early Audio <2s; Early Video <2s Secure boot loader   Network Connectivity   CE Device Connectivity iPod/iPad, iPhone, Zune,MP3 Players, USB Drives, Android,Blackberry, Meego, etc.   IVI Application Framework Standardised access to vehicle datae.g. fuel level, temperature, rain sensor, etc. Control API This is a relatively new context for consumer electronics; as such, the anatomy of the platform is completely different. From an in-vehicle entertainment point of view, there is one main control interface, yet there are up to five users/consumers. Each of whom may all require separate audio and video streams routing to their display. Also, the safety aspect is of course a top priority; if IVI is to be viable, it will eventually become the platform on which in-vehicle instrumentation is built. This places requirements that the data be shown in real time, and system crashes are out of the question. The anatomy of IVI technology   David Gilson for All About MeeGo, 15th November 2010 [Less]