Good day, dear reader. I continue the series of articles on the Nokia N900.
Previous articles can be found here:
Nokia N900: Young fighter course (KMB) or mastering and looking around
Nokia N900 - Who?

In previous articles, we found out what the Nokia N900 is, how to make friends with it and a list of some of the programs available for this platform.


')
What will be discussed in this article? Yes, in general, we will move on and I will talk about such things as:

1. We load maps into Ovi Maps, so as not to use extra traffic on the way.
2. Creating a playlist in the media player "on the fly" ("on-the-go").
3. List of useful shortcuts.
4. What blinks LED on the front panel.
5. List of useful programs (continued).

Nokia Map Loader for Windows

If you do not know yet, then the wonderful and already absolutely free program Ovi Maps for N900 “pulls” maps over the network and caches them. As you understand, with our providers, and even more so when roaming - this can result in the cost of several GPS navigators (from the experience of friends).
With Google maps, the same problems, but unlike Google, Nokia released the official map caching tool - Nokia Map Loader. For Symbian, this application was a long time ago, but for the N900, support for Map Loader was implemented quite recently (I saw information that even without official support you could flood maps ).
I decided to try on both supported platforms: Windows and Mac OS. Alas, there is no support for Linux, and not only in this case, but in general (and it’s a pity, it’s time, and it’s strange that the device itself is under Linux and there is no official support for the desktop version of the OS). At first I tried it on my Windows XP, I can’t do it on the seven, sorry, the toad presses it to buy, it’s too expensive. But judging by the skipping information I stumbled upon during the surfing process (no links, I lost :-)), everything works there as well. In principle, everything works well, except for inaccuracies in the tooltip. In the video, I focused on this.
To run MapLoader on Windows, you must install Nokia PCSuite (not to be confused with the OVI-suite, since the OVI-suite does not yet support the N900).
Download links:
Nokia PC Suite - europe.nokia.com/support/download-software/pc-suites
Nokia Map Loader - www.nokiausa.com/get-support-and-software/product-support/maps-support/compatibility-and-download#/nokia-n900
Well, further on the video:

Small comments on the Windows version. The tooltip clearly states that the device must be connected in the PC-Suite mode, but in reality the program cannot find the device in this mode. Secondly, if the device turns on in PC-Suite mode while Map Loader is running and then reconnect in mass storage mode, nothing will happen. The sequence of actions should be as follows: we connect the device in the memory mode, we make sure that a disk appears, and then start Map Loader.
Everything else is great.

Nokia Map Loader for Mac OS

I tried it on my macbook, on which Snow Leopard stands. Everything works without complaints.
Since there is no Nokia PC Suite under Mac OS, the program works with the device through Nokia Multimedia Transfer (I described here why it and how to use it).
1.We start and set up Multimedia Transfer (if not standing): http: //europe.nokia.com/support/download-software/nokia-multimedia-transfer
2. Download and install the Map Loader: www.nokiausa.com/get-support-and-software/product-support/maps-support/compatibility-and-download#/nokia-n900

Next on the video:

Everything is simple and fast.

There is a small note on both versions: none of them shows which maps and voices I downloaded before, although on the device I found the cities / MapLoader / cityindex.xml file, something like this:

<? xml version ="1.0" encoding ="ASCII" ? >
< cityindexlist >
< cityindex name ="Index Europe" version ="00.01.23.112" id ="17414037" >
< folder name ="ALB" />
< folder name ="AND" />
< folder name ="AUT" />
.........................
< folder name ="UKR" />
< folder name ="VAT" />
</ cityindex >
</ cityindexlist >

* This source code was highlighted with Source Code Highlighter .

As you can see, this is the index of directories that are available, the version and some kind of id (apparently for internal purposes). It is interesting why it was impossible to put a file with information about the uploaded files here, or next to it, or determine it by the files themselves. It may still finish, but still not clear.
The most important thing is that the cards really work without a network, I checked that both programs coped with their task - this is the most important thing.
Now I’m almost a happy person: I have a free, sensible navigation that doesn’t need to go online for maps and is always at hand. Thanks guys from Nokia.
But even here there is a fly in the ointment, searching by address does not work when the network is disconnected, and when it is connected, it still climbs into the network for the cards, but the truth is not for everyone. For which parts of the card he climbs is not clear, it is necessary to study this question in detail. Can anyone know?

“Why is it almost happy?”, The reader may ask, but because I lack one program, Lingvo. I understand that you can use QStarDict \ MStarDict with converted dictionaries, but this is not very legal. I have a mobile version of dictionaries and I wrote a letter to ABBYY, with a question about the legality of using their dictionaries with third-party programs. But there was no answer yet. Apparently they are not very interested in this question. But this is not the topic. Go ahead.

Create a playlist on the go

It happens that something annoys you, or a mood changes drastically and no playlist fits. For the opportunity to create a playlist on the fly, I once very much thanked Apple. The iPod was my first device to do that. Now I changed my IPhone to N900 and thanks to Nokia Multimedia Transfer I didn’t have to change my habits with iTunes. The whole media library lives there, with the device I synchronize only the playlists I need and moreover, I discovered a way to create a playlist on the go. That's exactly what I would like to share with you now.
Here is a video in English (taken from the blog www.allaboutmaemo.com ):

Now in Russian. All you need to do is choose a song or album or another playlist or genre or artist, generally any item in the list and hold it for a couple of seconds with your finger / stylus (analogous to the right click) and select “add to current playlist” in the menu that appears. . To go to the list that is playing now - you need to click on the small playback visualizer in the lower right corner. After you have listed the list, you can save it and it will appear in the appropriate category of the playlist list (taftalogs :-)). It is even more convenient than on the iPod, as you can make as many lists as you like.

I will share another small bonus about music on the device. If you read carefully the characteristics of the device, you probably know that it has an FM transmitter. It is very convenient, especially in the car. You can listen to music on any car stereo (it's very simple to turn on, for example, in the media player on the main menu, select the “FM transmitter” item and select the frequency in the dialog that appears and turn it on, and that's that !!!). But the N900 also has a radio! But for some reason this is not written anywhere and there is no application in the bundle to use this receiver. Well, it does not matter, there is a good application (although I don’t really like the interface), it is in the stable repository of maemo.org. It allows you to listen to FM broadcast radio.
Thanks to Martin Green for this app. You can download it here or from the package manager. This is how it looks like:

From the buns - lists of radio stations are available for different cities (Moscow is :-)), the rest of the cities did not look. It is planned to write to the file. And of course RDS is supported (a small stream of information from the radio station, usually there is the name of the station, the name of the current song and the advertisement).
More from the radio, I do not know what to expect :-).

List of useful shortcuts

Here I will be brief, the device is a keyboard and this has its advantages, one of them: key combinations for speeding up work and providing an additional interaction mechanism.

Common combinations (global):
1. Ctrl + Backspace calls the task manager.
2. As usual, Ctrl + C copy the text, Ctrl + V paste, Ctrl + X and Ctrl + A to move the text.
3. Ctrl + O Open.
4. Ctrl + N: Create a new item.
5. Ctrl + S: Save.
6. Ctrl + Z: Undo (Undo).
7. Ctrl + Y: Undo (Redo).
8. Ctrl + F: Opens the search bar.
9. Ctrl + Right arrow: The END function is like on a PC.
10. Ctrl + Left arrow: HOME function as a PC.
11. Ctrl + Shift + P: Screenshot.
12. Ctrl + Shift + X: Opens 'X Terminal'.
13. Ctrl + Space: Switch keyboard layouts.

Browser shortcut keys:
1. Ctrl + N: New browser window
2. Ctrl + R: Refresh, also applies to RSS
3. Ctrl + B: Opens bookmarks.
4. Ctrl + D: Bookmark the current site.
5. Ctrl + S: Saves the current page to memory.
Not exactly a combination, but useful: zooming in the browser.
Double-click on the area and it will increase it, and the increase is “smart”, it will bring the region to which the element belongs as close as possible. For example, there is an input field in the form, if you double-click on this field, it will bring it closer to the maximum and it will be convenient to enter. Or, for example, in order not to engage in a sniper sight on a small button, it is enough not to push twice very accurately in this area and this area will come closer and you can without straining to get on the button. Press twice more and everything will go back. Very very convenient (on the iPhone very similar behavior).
Also, the lack of a multitouch can be compensated by alternative movements, for example, to change the scale, you can still make circular movements clockwise and counterclockwise (with a finger / stylus on the screen naturally, rather than a phone :-)), thus removing and zooming in.
Well, the hardware scale method is the volume control. In the browser, it acts as a scale control, though with the keyboard open it is not very convenient, but with the keyboard closed, what you need.

Just a couple of goodies:
when you have a desktop on the screen (there is no active application), you can immediately type the name of the contact, and a contextual search by name will appear;
alternate pressing (not simultaneous) Alt, Ctrl - a list of additional characters will appear. Alt is the blue arrow on the left, between Ctrl and Shift.

What does the LED on the front panel blink

Indicator light:
1. Blue flashing - the application informs you about a new instant message, sms or email.
2. Orange flashing - battery is charging
3. Green - your battery is fully charged

How would everyone? And it was not there. These templates can be changed, and I can offer you two methods.
1. For geeks, you need to “hack” a certain file /etc/mce/mce.ini, which is responsible for these templates, it has a section [LEDPatternLystiRX51] with approximately the same content:

PatternCommunicationCall = 30; 1; 0; b ; 9d80400002ff03ff02ff03ff71080000; 9d800000
PatternCommunicationIM = 30; 1; 0; b; 9d80400002ff03ff02ff03ff71080000; 9d800000
PatternCommunicationSMS = 30; 1; 0; b; 9d80400002ff03ff02ff03ff71080000; 9d800000
PatternCommunicationEmail = 30; 1; 0; b; 9d80400002ff03ff02ff03ff71080000; 9d800000
PatternCommonNotification = 30; 1; 0; b; 9d80400002ff03ff02ff03ff71080000; 9d800000

Here the bold letter is “b” means blue, you can use “r” or “g”, which means red and green respectively, you can also use their combinations: “rb”, “rgb” ...
More details can be found in this article.
2. Method for normal people. There is a wonderful program - LED Pattern Editor. An applet for the options menu that allows you to edit LED signals.
Offers a graphical interface for editing blink patterns and colors.
See the changes, save the settings and reboot the devices for them to take effect.
Runs from “Options” -> “Personalization”.

Very functional program, and done with dignity.

List of useful programs (continued)

Well, for a snack a couple of useful programs:

For geeks:

AutoDisconnect

Quite interesting program that allows you to turn off the network if the traffic for a period of time did not exceed a certain limit, for example, you can choose a network (WiFi or 3G), a scan interval (for example 5 minutes), and a maximum trigger traffic (say 512 kilobytes). Thus, if less than 512 kilobytes of data has elapsed over this type of network in five minutes, the network is disconnected. Convenient to save time and money (in the case of 3G).

BatteryGraph

There are a number of similar programs, but this one I personally liked for several reasons: it is simple, works well and is written in Qt. The main goal is to monitor the battery charge in order to understand at what point in the beginning more power is consumed or less power is consumed (to understand who is running out of battery resources). It consists of two parts - a daemon, which starts with the system and at intervals writes to the mySQL base state at these moments and a graphical shell for visualizing and analyzing this data. It may of course be the case that this demon eats the battery :-), but I did not notice.

Programs for all:

Browser Switchboard

A very very very useful program that allows you to choose a browser that will be used by you by default. Ported from Diablo. Out of the Box supports MicroB, Tear, Fennec / Mobile Firefox and Midori. But it is easy to configure another browser (specify the path and some parameters). But even if you like MicroB, this program can be very useful, it allows you to run MicroB without a fairly heavy browsed daemon that works all the time, even if MicroB is not running. This will naturally save memory and battery.

Erminig

A useful program for synchronizing Google events calendar and calendar on the device. I use it because corporately we use event planning with the help of Google calendar. Saved a couple of times.

Feedcircuit

Another program ported from a previous version of the platform. I previously wrote about gPodder - which allows you to download and listen offline. This is a similar application, only for reading news feeds. The interface is very similar and pleasant. I advise everyone.

Keyboard Layout Status Icon

Utility made by our compatriot - Emil Biserov. Allows you to display the layout in the status bar (where there is a clock, batteries, etc.). It supports only the Russian layout (as an alternative), but do you need another?

Conclusion

A lot of interesting and unidentified on the Nokia N900, and constantly added a bunch and a bunch of new applications. This is very encouraging, since almost all of them are open-source and free. I would like to hope that Nokia will be able to attract more commercial developments on this platform. Just at the conference there will be a report on this topic, and here we will listen.
I want to remind everyone about the upcoming conference !!!
The second international open conference dedicated to the development of Maemo, an open source platform for mobile devices. The conference is held on March 25, 2010 in Moscow, Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov.

Here is a link to the preliminary conference program.
Here is the link to the registration.
Register, come and take part. The conference promises to be interesting.

In the following topics I will talk about a number of applications that can help you in everyday life.