Every Flavour Beans

The first change you notice after updating from OS2007 to OS2008 on your Nokia N800 Internet tablet(or after buying N810) is that it looks remarkably good and comes with a better set of themes and background images. At least that is my personal opinion. If you are more of a ‘use the device to get the work done’ type of person then here are a bunch screenshots with OS2008 running on an N800 device to get you motivated to spend ~5 minutes with your device and change its default look to make it look even more beautiful. Not to say that the default look isn’t beautiful(I did include screenshots with the default look too), but you would get bored having the same look on the device for more than a month, wouldn’t you?

1. Changing the default desktop layout.

When OS2008 is installed, by default only a couple of applets are visible on the tablet screen. You can add more by going to the Home menu and selecting “Select applets…” option. After adding the applets to the desktop, you can drag them around until you get the desired layout. Dragging can be done using a finger nail too but I recommend using a stylus in this case. I have these applets on my tablet desktop:

What you see in the above screenshot are default theme and default background image(Echo).

2. Changing the default Theme.

OS2008 comes with five themes installed by default. You can select one of them by going to the top menu and selecting “Set theme…” option.

Try out all the available themes and decide which one you like the best. The screenshots below give you an idea about all the five default themes available in OS2008. (Each theme uses its designated background image as provided in OS2008.)
See all on one page on Flickr
Echo Theme and Wallpaper
Felicia Theme and Wallpaper
Glasser Theme and Wallpaper
Hendrika Theme and Wallpaper
Plankton Theme and Wallpaper

Unfortunately, not many themes are created by the Nokia Internet tablet community. Not many that I know of anyway. Some user created themes can be installed from the Application Manager, so see there if you can find any.

3. Changing the default Wallpaper.

OS2008 comes with six wallpapers by default. Maemo UI team released 10 more on their weblog. That gives you around 15 wallpapers to try and match with your selected theme. You can download more from other websites or create your own. Couple of my favourite combinations are Hendrika-Lauttasaari Sunset and Glasser-Driving in Vermont but it all boils down to your taste.

To change the background image/wallpaper, go to the Home menu and select “Set background image…” option. Select one of the provided background images from the “Image” dropdown box or select an image from the memory card by clicking the “Browse” button.

You can download more wallpapers from these websites:
Tim Samoff’s Christmas present, Maemo UI Teams’s Christmas present part 1 and part 2.
[via itT]

End Notes:

Here are some more screenshots of my tablet’s screen with different themes and wallpapers and my selected applet layout. Enjoy!

Hendrika Theme and Abstract Wallpaper:

Glasser Theme and `Lauttasaari Sunset` Wallpaper:

Felicia Theme and `Driving in Vermont` Wallpaper:

Glasser Theme and `Driving in Vermont` Wallpaper:

Hendrika Theme and `Lauttasari Sunset` Wallpaper:

Felicia Theme and Echo Wallpaper:

Media Player in Echo Theme:

Though people have been using the beta version of it for quite some time now, the stable version of OS2008 for Nokia N800 was officially announced on the Maemo website couple of days ago. Also released was the first update to OS2008 for Nokia N810. Read Reggie’s post about it on itT. My initial impression is that the update process is not documented correctly by Nokia[see note below]; OS2008 looks nicer, performs faster and many of the important applications are already available for it. Canola 2 Beta is officially released while I am typing this post!

You can participate in the discussion about this release on Internet Tablet Talk forum thread. Half of the posts there complain about the lack of proper infrastructure on Nokia’s end to meet the download demands of Nokia tablet community. There are several alternative ways to download the update posted in the same thread if you are facing the same download problems with Nokia’s servers. MaemoPeople.org also posted links to OS2008 torrent downloads for N800 and N810.

There is a detailed review of OS2008 for Nokia N800 - filled with pictures - on tabletblog.com, so don’t miss reading it. Many people seem to have positive experience about this update so far but those who don’t seem to be all too happy about it are Ricky Cadden of tablet-guru.com and Jonathan Green of Maemoapps.com; Ricky is not impressed with the application restore process as the download speed from the Nokia repositories is too darn slow(which is not really related to OS2008 itself) and Jonathan notes that the stylus keyboard doesn’t pop-up when restore option is used right after OS2008 is installed.

List of links starts here(to be expanded further):

• OS2008 Applications and Repositories for N800 and N810.
• Nokia’s official website for OS2008 (Browse to it from N800/N810 to access more goodies)
• Want to try some cool wallpapers? Maemo UI team has some for you.
• Nokia’s Internet Tablet Video Converter for Windows platform(Beta).
• Tablet Video Encoder and Media Streamer
• Canola 2 Beta
• Some cool games for OS2008: Crazy Parking, Bomberman, ScummVM games, GPE Sudoku. More games for OS2008.
• How to develop applications for OS2008/Chinook:
  • Maemo Training Material and Development Tools.
  • Scratchbox + Maemo 4.0 + Ubuntu Gutsy = Nokia N800 Dev Environment
  • Maemo SDK VMWare Appliance

Maemo SDK Appliance 0.4 for VMWare was released a few hours ago. This is the quickest way to get started with developing applications for the Maemo platform[Nokia N770/N800/N810 Internet tablets]. It is easy to setup(just boot-up the image in VMWare player] and all the necessary tools (and documentation!) are integrated nicely into a custom environment.

More details about the announcement can be found on Marcelo’s blog.

This release is loaded with a lot of goodies: Maemo 4.0 (Chinook) final and Maemo 3.2 (Bora) with Nokia Binaries Installer, PyMaemo packages, Vala compiler and its Hildon bindings for Chinook, Maemomm libraries, EVAS (Bora and Chinook, but i386 only), qemu-arm-eabi used as default cpu transparency method, Eclipse with ESbox plugin, and Firefox has now a lot of bookmarks for reference material. There are code samples for all the libraries and development packages cited above.

Already a user of Maemo SDK VMWare Appliance? You can read the complete list of changes from the previous version or Marcelo also provides a summary of the changes on his blog post:

* Scratchbox installed from official Debian Repository.
* Maemo 4.0 (Chinook) release.
* Maemo 3.2 (Bora) (the last release was using 3.1)
* Added a lot of bookmarks in Firefox for reference material.
* Maemomm (C++ bindings) added, with code samples.
* Eclipse 3.3.1.1 with CDT 4.0.1 and ESbox 1.2.0 plugins.

Preferred way to download it is by using the torrent file. You can also download using the direct links provided on its poject homepage. Lot of information about the release is available from the README document.

And finally, watch the video showing a sample session of how to use Eclipse + ESBox plugin to create Maemo projects:

Expect beginner-friendly tutorial(s) on how to get the best out of Maemo SDK VMWare appliance in the near future.

[Project Home Page]
[Maemo Garage Page]

It’s easy to control the desktop of your computer from a Nokia N800 Internet tablet. If the computer is running a GNU/Linux distribution, you can run a VNC server on that computer and then connect to it from N800 through an application like VNC Viewer. You can do the same if the computer is running either Windows or Mac OS operating system too, but they also support their own native remoting protocols - Windows supports RDP protocol and Mac supports ADP protocol - which are generally, though not in all cases, considered to be better options over VNC. You can learn more about the differences between VNC and other native protocols like RDP and ADP over the Internet.

If you decide that you want to use RDP to connect to a Windows machine, then read How to Access the Windows Desktop Remotely From Nokia N800 Using rDesktop.

Here is the summary of what we have to do in order to get VNC working: 1) install a VNC Server on the computer running Windows or GNU/Linux OS; 2) install VNC Viewer application on Nokia N800 Internet tablet; and 3) configure/run VNC Server and VNC Viewer to connect them together. So let’s get started.

Installing and configuring VNC Server on a Windows Computer

You can download and install any VNC server available for the Windows platform but I am going to use TightVNC server as the example here.

Our first step is to download the TightVNC server from its website. Either a) download the “setup.exe” version and install it by running it and going through the installation wizard, or b) simply download the “zip” version highlighted in the screenshot below, extract it in a directory and run “WinVNC.exe” from the extracted directory.

In the properties window that is shown when you run it, erase whatever is present in the password text fields and enter your own password (twice) in them, and then click OK. Make sure that you remember this password!

That completes the server side configuration.

Installing and configuring VNC Server on a GNU/Linux Computer

Most GNU/Linux distributions come with a VNC server pre-installed so this step is not required in most of the cases. If you are using the GNOME desktop, go to System -> Preferences -> Remote Desktop. In the opened dialog box, select the settings as shown in the screenshot below. Remember the password that you enter in this dialog box.

If you are using the KDE desktop, go to KDE (start button) -> Internet -> Krfb Desktop Sharing. You basically need to search for Krfb Desktop Application in whichever menu your distribution might have placed it. Click “Configure” and select the settings as shown in the screenshot below:

If the above mentioned VNC Servers are not available on your GNU/Linux system, you can search your package manager or search one for your distribution over the web and install the one that you like. TightVNC server is one example that can be installed on almost all the platforms.

Installing VNC Viewer on Nokia N800

If the Maemo Extras repository is already added in your repository settings, you can install VNC Viewer from the Application Manager. If not(or you don’t know what repositories are), go to the website of VNC Viewer(from N800’s web browser) and click on the Single-click install file link for your tablet version(N770 or N800).

It should then be downloaded and installed on your tablet(answer OK/Yes whenever you are prompted to).

Connecting to your computer remotely from Nokia N800

The first thing we need to do now is to find out the IP address of your computer. Open a terminal/command prompt and run “ifconfig” as root on GNU/Linux or “ipconfig” on a Windows machine. On Fedora you may have to run “/sbin/ifconfig”. Example output on a Gentoo machine:

Note the IP address of your computer from the above output. You can run the VNC Viewer application from the Extras application menu.

When you run it, it will ask you for the IP address of the computer you want to connect to. Enter the IP address as shown in the following screenshot(substitute the IP address of your computer):

The format used to to connect to a GNU/Linux system is IP-Address:Display-number as shown in the screenshot i.e. 192.168.2.10:0; 0 is the display number here(the VNC Server will show you this display number; see the “Remote Desktop Preferences” screenshot above). To connect to a Windows machine, just enter the IP address like “192.168.2.10″(without the quotes). If all goes well you should be seeing the desktop of your computer displayed within the window of VNC Viewer on your tablet:

Well done! Here are more examples of how the desktop of a computer looks on the N800 tablet:
Ubuntu on N800 in fullscreen mode
Gentoo on N800
Windows on N800
Kubuntu on N770

Additional Notes

When accessing the desktop of your computer from Nokia N800, you do not have the access to N800’s on-screen keyboard. You can use the the keyboard of your PC if yours is a wireless one, but obviously it needs to be in the range of your PC to work. If you have a bluetooth keyboard that you have paired with N800, then it’s party time for you!

VNC access is usually slow on Windows systems(that’s why we use RDP). You can take several steps to make the experience more satisfactory:

1. Disable the background image on your XP/Vista machine or just configure VNC server to disable the background image whenever someone remotely connects to it.
2. Configure TightVNC server to refresh only the window under focus or window under the mouse.
3. Experiment with other VNC servers. Examples are RealVNC, UltraVNC.
4. I have heard from my friends that installing DFMirage on their XP machines made the experience better. I couldn’t test it as it is not yet totally supported on Vista operating system. In an email response, DemoForge’s CEO informed me that the next version due in a week or so will support both 32-bit and 64-bit Vista editions.

Now you can control the file downloads, select the music to play, or whatever that you would like to manage remotely, from the comforts of your bed/sofa. There is a lot more that you can achieve through VNC remoting but I hope this primer will help in getting you started.

If you are looking for information on how to convert DVD format to AVI(DivX/XviD) format, refer to my earlier posts on video conversion.

The technical specification page of Nokia N800 claims that the device can play a variety of video formats but in real experience it plays only a very limited number of formats. I strongly recommend installing MPlayer on your N770/N800 as it makes it possible to play many popular media formats(e.g. DivX/XviD) which the N800 won’t play in its default state. (Open the file mplayer.install from your N800 to install it.) You still won’t be able to play most of the videos that you have stored on your hard drive (or elsewhere) by directly copying them to N770/N800 - you need to convert them to a proper resolution that N800 supports, and occasionally, take care of the frame rate and data rate too. There are many tools available that can convert a given video to a format than can be played on N700 or N800 and one such easy to use tool is Media Converter(also called Nokia N770 Video Converter) created by Urho Konttori.

Install Nokia N770 Media Converter on Your Computer

Download Media Converter for Windows and run the executable. (Mac and GNU/Linux versions are also available from the same page. This tutorial applies to all platforms except this installation part.) Follow the wizard to complete the installation. You will find a menu entry for it created in the start menu. Run the application by going to Start Menu -> Media Converter -> Media Converter.

Convert DivX/XviD/etc Format to N800 Format

1. The interface of the main window of Media Converter looks like this:
   
   (Click to see the enlarged version of the screenshot)
2. The first thing to do here is to select the appropriate settings for the conversion process. Media Converter provides quite a few options in terms of settings and I encourage you to experiment with them and see what type of movies(documentary vs action movies) convert best with what type of settings(13fps vs 18fps).

   Select your device(either N770 or N800) from the “I Have” dropdown box. I suggest you to start with “N800 High Quality (400×240)” which I consider to be a safe choice(as opposed to ‘creates best quality video’). (Select something similar if you use N770 tablet.) The video and audio bitrates will be automatically selected for you but you can still change them if you want to. If you are not satisfied with the converted video at this resolution, you can retry with the other video resolutions and see what works best for you. You have to experiment like this only once though; when you find the setting that works best for you, you can then note it down and use it for all the future video conversions(Media Converter remembers the last selected conversion settings, so you don’t have to enter them again and again). You don’t have to convert the complete video file while doing experiments; read Step 3.

3. If you want to merge subtitles into the video file during the conversion process:
   1. Name the subtitle file exactly the same as the video file except the file extension, e.g. Black Book.avi and Black Book.srt
   2. Copy the subtitle file to the folder where the video file is located. In other words, video file and the subtitle file should be in the same folder.

   

   3. Select ANSI or UTF-8 from the “Subtitles(.srt)” dropdown box in Media Converter.

   Media Converter doesn’t currently support all subtitle formats and encodings but it works well with the popular formats that it supports. You can always merge the subtitles first with the video file and then convert the merged video file using Media Converter.

4. There are other options that you can select like “Enhance Color” and “Audio Gain” that come handy with some video files. “Optimize for fullscreen” should be selected by default and you can leave it like that. If conversion time is not an issue with you, I strongly recommend selecting the “High quality conversion(2 passes)” option. A 500MB video file typically takes less than an hour with 2 pass conversion on my computer. YMMV. The remaining option “30 sec preview only” can be used to convert only the first 30 seconds of the video file, which is useful for experimenting with different resolutions and video rates.
5. As a final step, add a single video file or a list of files by clicking “Add file(s) to queue” button. (You can add multiple files from the same folder by clicking on the files while holding the Ctrl key on Windows.) You can also drag and drop the video files on Media Converter main window. All the files that you have added will be listed in the table. When you are done adding all the files that you want to convert, click the “Convert Videos” button to begin the conversion process. The converted videos are stored in a directory called 770 which will be created in the directory where the source video is present. You can select a different destination directory if you want by clicking the “Select Directory” button.

   

   After the conversion process is finished, go to the directory where the source video is located and there you will find a directory named 770. Go into that directory and you will find the converted video file in it. Copy that video file to your N770/N800 (by connecting through the USB cable) and then play the video using the default media player or MPlayer or any other media player of your choice(e.g. Canola).

End Notes

The interface of Media Converter looks good on Mac OS but looks horrible on Windows and GNU/Linux. Perhaps it can be enhanced using a custom Java Swing look & feel. Make a trip to its neatly designed website. Maemo wiki has an informative article about video encoding for N800.

Another easy to use Free video conversion tool is Nokia N800 Video Convert by Paolo Sessa. (Of course you can use any video conversion tool to convert videos to N800 format as long as you know what settings and codecs to use, in case you are wondering.) I will try to adapt this post to use Video Convert instead of Media Converter in a future post.