Please test: MaePad 1.9, MaePadWeb 2.1, Trophae 6

Version 1.9 of MaePad is out, with a new translation into Catalan, updated Finnish (thanks to Marko Vertainen) and German translations, a "No items" indicator in empty checklists and full auto-rotation support (detailed changelog).

The File Transfers application seemingly does some weird things to "Open file" dialogs in other apps (not only MaePad, but reportedly also Xournal), so MaePad now conflicts with it until the problem is fixed (this means you can't have both "File Transfers" and "MaePad" installed at the same time). Test and vote for MaePad 1.9 in Extras-Testing!

Also new is MaePadWeb 2.1, which adds a missing dependency on python-simplejson. The app worked fine for me since the initial release, so I'm also promoting it to Testing now. Test and vote for MaePadWeb 2.1 in Extras-Testing!

And as a third release this week, I noticed that Trophae, the PS3 Trophy Viewer app, didn't get its newest release (6) uploaded to Fremantle Extras-Devel for two months, so I've re-uploaded it, and also put it up for testing. And even though the code is lame, it's now published in a Git repository if you want to hack on it. Test and vote for Trophae 6 in Extras-Testing!

A new release of your favourite podcatcher is coming in the next few days. There is still time to submit updated translations :)

MaePadWeb 2.0: Take your MaePad anywhere (even on a N8)

The companion app to MaePad that has been announced some days ago is now available in Extras-Devel for your N900, with some nifty features:

• Fully edit the checklists in your database
• Native Maemo 5 look and feel in the browser (title bar, toolbar, lists, ...)
• Dynamic themeing based on current Maemo theme
• Per-session password for some security (inspired by MAD Developer)

This means that if you are using the NSeries theme, it looks like this, but if you are using Digital Nature, this is how it looks (and that should work for all themes). On your device, you will see a simple info window. Now, that's bringing the Maemo 5 UI to your Desktop computer's web browser. But does it work on mobile devices as well? Of course! Let me present you MaePadWeb running in the Symbian web browser on a N8-00:

If you think that this looks shopped, check out the video for further proof and to see the checklist editor view in action :)

This project brings together some great technologies: Python (for the backend) and HTML/CSS and JavaScript (using JQuery for convenience) for the frontend. Apart from the artwork, it does not depend on anything from Maemo 5/Hildon that isn't available in MeeGo already. In fact, Python with SQLite3 support is the only real dependency of this app on the backend side. With all the confusion on what to use for MeeGo Handset UIs (MeeGo Touch Framework, QWidget-based Qt, QWidget inside QGraphicsView, QML, Qt Components, ...), the HTML/CSS/JavaScript combo seems like a good cross-platform alternative (you still have to run the backend somewhere, but it can run on the same device, of course). All you need is a good browser/JS engine/rendering engine combo (Fennec/QtWebKit on MeeGo Handset, MicroB on Maemo). This also works on the N8x0 with MicroB :)

MaePadWeb - A Web UI for MaePad running on your N900

One of the annoyances with task lists on mobile devices is that there is no easy way to view or edit your task list on your computer as well (there are some web services that allow for these things, but you have to trust your data to these services, and not all these services have a full-featured Maemo client app, and they mostly need to synchronize data between different clients).

So, what about having a simple HTTP server that you can start on your N900 and access from your computer's web browser to view and edit your MaePad checklists? Here's a short video of how it works at the moment:

Here's a screenshot of how the checklist view looks right now:

The MaePadWeb application will be available soon. On a related note, MaePad 1.8 is out now with live search support for the memo list - check it out and test it/vote for it!

Please test: Maemopad+ 0.37, MaePad 1.7 and Trophae 3

It's time for another release round of some of my lesser-known apps. First up is something that will make all the proud N8x0 owners happy: Maemopad+ has seen its first new release in 7 months, fixing a crasher bug that happens when creating a new database. The new version, 0.37, is now available from the Extras repository. I also noticed that I forgot to promote the version from February to Extras (it was sitting in Extras-Devel all this time), so if you are running on Extras-only, you should now see the first Maemopad+ update since early October 2008 ;) In this case, you also get a new feature that you didn't have before: Full-text searching in the toolbar.

Next up is MaePad, Maemopad+'s Fremantle-ified descendant. Still fighting for its place in the Extras repository, MaePad has not entered Extras due to some unfortunate typo in the bugtracker link. Now that this one has been fixed, you will also get the aforementioned bugfix (from Maemopad+), an update to the Russian translation (by Serge Broslavsky) and two new translations: Simplified Chinese (by hyao) and Czech (by fri). If you are on Transifex, submit your translation for MaePad to be included in the next release! If you are into testing stuff, test MaePad 1.7 now!

Last but not least is Trophae (known in the app manager and app menu as "PS3 Trophy Viewer"), an app that simply shows your trophy progress for your PS3 games. There has been a change on the PS3 website recently, which broke the app, so this provided a nice opportunity to not only fix the bug, but also properly package it up for Extras-Testing - with a new icon, bugtracker link and all these things that lazy developers tend to forget in a hasty first release ;) Please also test Trophae in Extras-Testing if you have about 4 minutes to spare and a PSN ID to test.

headphoned 1.9 for the N900 is now in Extras-Testing

The beloved Headphone Daemon, who usually sleeps in the darker corners of your N900 and makes sure that you do not embarrass yourself in front of other passengers or pedestrians with whatever kind of experimental music you happen to listen to when the headphones are accidentally unplugged (also known as public transport situations) got a small facelift (also known as code change).

A few changes that have accumulated over the last few months have now been packed up into the shiny new 1.9 release:

• Support for libplayback / whitelisting (by Faheem Pervez)
• Support for pausing Martin Grimme's MediaBox
• Detect headphoned disconnect during active calls and send pause command after the hangup

The last one in this list might be of special interest to some of you who have complained about headphoned not working when the headphones are unplugged during a call. This won't happen now, as headphoned now monitors the call status via D-Bus and keeps track of active calls. When the headphones are unplugged while a call is active, the pause signal will not only be sent right away, but also a second time when the call gets disconnected. This work for all types of voice calls, and should work for video calls as well (untested).

During the summer holidays, I have had less time to do more development and releases, but things are starting to move slowly again - expect new releases of packages like gPodder and MaePad in the upcoming weeks. I'd also love to port gPodder to Harmattan and add a fancy new MeeGo Touch UI on top of it (in March I said that Maemo 6/MeeGo is for later this year - which might be very soon now), so you can all enjoy your favourite podcatcher with the usual native UI support. Let's hope that the Harmattan SDK and/or Harmattan developer images get released for the N900 soon (and then the Python bindings soon afterwards - the PyMaemo team was very fast in previous release cycles), so the community developers have enough time preparing their apps for the next big release.

For now, please test and enjoy this new headphoned release, and don't forget to vote for and comment on the package once you have verified the new release from Extras-Testing.

App updates: gPodder 2.4 and MaePad 1.5

This week, it's once again time to update two of the more prominent apps in my collection: gPodder 2.4 "The Pants Alternative" for both Diablo and Fremantle and MaePad 1.5 "Productive" for Fremantle.

With the installation of PR1.2 on the autobuilder, MaePad can once again be built on it, so I've resumed uploading of MaePad releases to Maemo.org.

So, what's in it for you? Let's start with gPodder:

• Progress bar for loading episodes (and optimized episode list loading)
• "All episodes" view is not grouped per-podcast anymore (all episodes are now sorted descending by date)
• Faster download resuming on application start (with progress dialog)
• Automatic clean-up of finished downloads
• Simplified layout of progress indicator dialogs (e.g. deleting episodes, unsubscribing from podcasts)

And now for your favourite productivity tool, the MaePad:

• "w" in the checklist/sketch view now saves the database
• Fullscreen mode of checklists uses portrait mode (for shopping use, etc..)
• Node type displayed in overview (there's a themeing issue here with the highlights and the secondary text color.. suggestions welcome)

Now it's your turn: Please test the new packages and then vote for the packages here: MaePad QA page and gPodder QA page. Any bugs that you will find should be reported here: new bug against gPodder and MæPad t.m.o thread.

The PR1.2 SDK on the autobuilder adds a dependency on a newer Hildon version that cannot be fulfilled in earlier firmware versions, so I'll build a package compatible with pre-PR1.2 firmware soon and publish the package on the MaePad homepage for manual installation during this transition period until PR1.2 becomes available for end users.

MaemoPad+ ported to Desktop Linux

Some weeks ago, a user of MaemoPad+ asked me if it was possible to port MaemoPad+ to the Desktop, so users of Tablet PCs can make use of it. Apart from that, this can also be useful for users of MaePad to copy their "memos.db" file from the N900 to their PC and edit the file (or just view the contents) on the big screen. The file format used by both MaemoPad+ and MaePad is the same, so users of the mobile versions can share their database files with the Desktop version (and vice versa), which by the way looks like this at the moment:

Most of the Maemo 4 libraries are readily available in Debian (hildon, libosso, hildon-icons, etc..), so the initial port has not been too difficult, even though proper Desktop integration obviously needs more work, and there are some ugly crashers still hidden inside the code ;)

I wonder if it's possible to also package Maemo 5 libraries (Hildon 2.2, etc..) for Debian and upload them to the Debian repositories - this should make it easier to port Maemo 5 applications to the Linux Desktop without having to re-write the whole UI layer. Another cool thing would be to have Hildon 2.2 for Diablo, which would allow us to "backport" Maemo 5 apps to Maemo 4 - again, without the work of having to re-write the UI.

Packages for Ubuntu are available from the MaemoPad+ PPA, and the source is available via Git. Please send backtraces of crashes or (even better!) patches against the "desktop" branch in the Git repo.

Utilize the hardware keyboard with MaePad 1.3 and Vim keybindings

Yesterday, MaePad 1.3 was released. Apart from updates to the Finnish translation and a new Hungarian translation, this release adds Vim-like keybindings to the UI, which allows you to be very productive when managing lots of checklists.

The enabler here is the hardware keyboard that allows for indirect multi-touch interaction with good, tactile, haptic feedback (something that no touchscreen to date can provide - you can't type "blindly" on any touchscreen).

Watch the demo video here:

The package is available as binary .deb from the MaePad homepage and the source is available in the Git repository (no package in Extras until Bug 9070 is fixed). Leave feedback in the forum thread, including ideas for additional shortcuts.

Maemopad+ 0.36 for Diablo and some Extras-Testing QA requests

I've written enough about MaePad in the last few weeks, so today I'm announcing something for all the Maemo 4 fans out there: Maemopad+ 0.36 has been released, and with it comes a nice search function (the code for which has been written in 2008) and updated translations. We also added a Git repository and the updated website to the mix.

Here's a request for all the Maemo 5 lovers: Please don't forget to give some Extras-Testing QA love to the following packages: gPodder 2.2-2, Panucci 0.3.9-2 and headphoned 1.7. These packages already have passed their 10-day quarantine (or will do so during the coming days), and are just waiting for enough votes to be allowed to go into the Extras repository, so all end users can profit from the updates. Thanks for you help!

Want MæPad 1.2? Vote for bug 9070!

MæPad 1.2 is out now, and includes (apart from bugfixes and usability fixes) some cool new features such as word wrapping, mass-removal of all checked items and the often requested "share your sketches" feature that allows you to upload sketches to Flickr or send via E-Mail or Bluetooth.

Sadly, the "share your sketches" feature makes MæPad build-depend on the "sharing-dialog-dev" package, which is not available in the auto-builder. Anyway, with MæPad 1.2 you can upload useful or even pointless sketches directly to hosting services:

If you want to get MæPad 1.2 into Maemo Extras, please vote for bug 9070. Alternatively, you can grab the armel .deb for MæPad 1.2 from the MæPad website.

In other news, the MæPad Git repository and MæPad on Transifex are now online, so if you want to contribute code or translations, please feel encouraged do so (send me your Transifex username, so I can add you to the MæPad project there to allow uploads).

MaePad 1.1 and gPodder 2.2 hit Extras-Testing

After a week of initial testing of MaePad 1.0 in Extras-Devel and some very helpful feedback from users, MaePad 1.1 "The Large Hadron Collision" hits the street (or more precisely, Extras-Testing). You can read the list of changes or go straight to the package page to test it.

In other news, gPodder 2.2 "LA X" (release notes on gPodder.org) was uploaded to Extras-Devel at the end of last week. This new release includes the promised UI changes and some other under-the-hood changes, but there have been some minor regressions (broken streaming for example) which have since been fixed in the development repository. Please test gPodder 2.2 (on the package page) and report bugs against it in the bug tracker, so that any issues can be fixed before the next package version.

Again, please report any bugs you find to the bug tracker, and don't go whining in the forums - it's a hassle to search and hunt for bug reports on the web, and your "bug report" forum post might never be seen by any of the developers of any given app.

gPodder 2.2 is of course also available for Maemo 4, and has been pushed into the Diablo Extras repository already. Starting from this version, no Chinook builds will be provided for gPodder anymore, but due to the interpreted nature of Python code, you can install the gPodder package from the Diablo repositories should you really need to run gPodder under Chinook. If you are reporting bugs against gPodder for Maemo 4, be sure to mention "Maemo 4", "Diablo" or "N8x0" in the bug report.

Ready to go into Maemo Extras during this week: Panucci 0.3.9-1 and headphoned 1.6 (thanks to all the testers for taking the time to test, review and rate these packages).

Announcing MaePad for Maemo 5

Last Thursday, Claes Norin asked me if there's going to be an app like Maemopad+ for Fremantle. "Neat idea", I thought, and started hacking, overhauling the whole UI, refactoring some ugly parts of the code and making it generally shine and be usable as every day productivity companion on the N900. Claes was kind enough to provide me with valuable feedback and the necessary artwork. Now, let me introduce you to... MaePad!

Due to the big changes in the UI and source code, MaePad is only available for Fremantle at the moment, but I hope to be able to provide it for Mer as well when it becomes available for the N800 and N810.

If you are feeling adventurous, please try out MaePad 1.0, which is available from Maemo Extras-Devel now.

Panucci 0.3.9: Silent mode and landscape mode by default

Now that the winter term has finally ended, and February is in sight, it's time to do some overdue fixes, releases and other random stuff. After headphoned 1.5 has found its way into Maemo Extras (thanks to the testers), it's Panucci's turn. Here is a list of user-visible changes in Panucci 0.3.9:

• Playback in "Silent" profile (thanks to Martin Grimme et al in bug 6694)
• Default is forced-landscape mode, the menu has automatic rotation and forced-portrait mode
• Volume controls removed (Maemo 5 already handles volume control for us)

If you are a Panucci user, please take the time to review and rate it: Maemo.org package page for Panucci

You can expect at least two apps/releases in the next few days: MaePad (Maemopad+ re-born for Maemo 5) and of course a new version of gPodder with my.gpodder.org sync and the re-designed UI.