This Old Blog

I'm a commercial user of Trolltech's Qt on Windows. I got this in the inbox today: 28 January 2008 Dear Customer, Today, Nokia has made a public tender offer for all the shares in Trolltech. We think this is great news for both you and us. In Trolltech, we have for a long time had a vision of “Qt Everywhere”. Being acquired* by Nokia, we will continue to provide you with the most advanced cross-platform software framework for desktop and devices in the market. There will be further investments in Qt and Qtopia and an even better long-term security in your decision to choose Trolltech for your business. We are confident that with Nokia we can accelerate our cross-platform software capabilities and grow Qt and Qtopia significantly in desktop and mass-volume device markets. The plan is that we will continue our current organizational setup, operating inside Nokia as a distinct unit. Nokia is already using Qt for its PC Suite, and they aim to significantly expand the use of these t...

Apple Shows Some Style Apple's latest was all about the iPod. Apple released a update to every member of the original iPod product line, plus a new member derived from the iPhone: iPod shuffle. At $79, it competes against all the trashy MP3 players you can pick up at Target, WalMart and your local drug store in the same price range. The Shuffle and the trashy players differ in that the trashy players give you a display (very tiny) and AM/FM radio (very poor). The Shuffle trades the display and AM/FM radio to give you style and a quality product which will last longer. A lot longer. Tough choice that. iPod nano. Starting at $149 for the flash-based 4GB model, it also comes in an 8GB model for just $50 more. The biggest mark against it seems to be that it's "fat", at least according to Jeff Smykil at ArsTechnica . Well, Jeff, guess what. You and your closest associates aren't on the Apple design committee, and for good reasons. The layout of the nano allows for pers...

Criticizing a product as poor as the Nokia tablets accomplishes nothing in the long run. What's the point unless you can find something better? From a technology standpoint you can make a very good argument that the Apple iPhone is better, but the iPhone still has some significant disadvantages, not the least of which is the need to get an AT&T Wireless contract. It looks like such a better product may be shipping around mid-August. Manufactured by Asus, the Eee PC is a folding ultra-portable with a 7" display. Unlike the OLPC, the Eee is aimed at the general market. From what I've been able to gather, the Eee should come with the following features: Display： 7" 800 x 480 CPU & Chipset: 900MHz Intel Dothan based Pentium M CPU, 910 mobile chipset OS: Linux and Microsoft Windows XP compatible Communication: 10/100 Mbps Ethernet; 56K modem WLAN: WiFi 802.11b/g Graphic: Intel UMA Memory: 512MB, DDR2-400 Storage: 4, 8, and 16GB Flash Webcam: 300K pixel video camer...

It's no secret I despise the Nokia 770. That's why I didn't rush right out earlier this year and spend another $400 on the N800, just 10 months after I'd spent my initial $380 on the 770, and after countless hours working with the 770 and complaining about what was wrong. Hey. Everybody needs a hobby, right? Well, in perusing the LinuxDevices site I came across an article detailing how the 770 had dropped down to $140 on buy.com and shop.com. Sure enough, I went looking on buy.com and found it for $139 brand new and still in the box. I thought it was cheap enough to get a spare. But when I chatted with my friend Matt about buying a spare, he asked "Why?" Even Matt, who owns one and is more hard-core geek than I am about these things, smiled and said it wasn't worth the money, even at that low price. Matt's advice was like divine guidance, and because of Matt I'm $140 dollars richer. Bless you, Matt. Of interest to me were the snarky comments about...

The Apple iPhone has finally arrived. And boy, does it every look good. The interface is gorgeous, it plays audio and video, it makes phone calls, it surfs the web with a standards-compliant web browser (Safari)... here, let me list what I've found so far. Wireless: quad-band GSM, Cingular’s EDGE network, 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR. Accelerometer: detects when you rotate the device from portrait to landscape, then automatically changes the contents of the display, so you immediately see the entire width of a web page or a photo in its proper landscape aspect ratio. Proximity sensor: detects when you lift iPhone to your ear and immediately turns off the display to save power and prevent inadvertent touches until iPhone is moved away. Ambient light sensor: automatically adjusts the display’s brightness to the appropriate level for the current ambient light, thereby enhancing the user experience and saving power at the same time. OS X: a fully multi-tasking embedded ...

Update: The N800 is selling on the Nokia site , selling along side with the Nokia 770. The price is US$399. There are more photos of the N800 out, this time courtesy of C|Net. I'm still waiting for the official Nokia announcement at CES .

There is an actual physical next-generation Nokia web tablet out in the world tonight; it's the N800. I read about it first on OSNews , then followed the link to Linux Devices . There's a collection of photos of the N800 taken at a store in Chicago where the N800 is being sold, posted on Flickr . There's very little to go on at this point. No technical specifications what-so-ever. Nokia hasn't published anything about the N800, nor has it even announced its availability. My questions: Is this the so-called 870/880, or is this the low-end version of an 800 series of devices? Will Nokia allow a trade-in (or trade-up) from the N770 to the N800? What are the technical specifications of the device? Does it have more memory and a faster processor than the N770? Maybe this time the N800 will be more of a real device instead of the hacker come-on of the N770. And if it is a real device (with sufficient resources and processor power) then maybe it'll attract serious main-str...