• Search for:

• Archives

  Select Month November 2011  (1) September 2011  (1) July 2011  (2) June 2011  (2) May 2011  (2) March 2011  (1) November 2010  (2) August 2010  (1) July 2010  (1) June 2010  (2) April 2010  (2) March 2010  (1) February 2010  (1) January 2010  (2) December 2009  (2) November 2009  (2) June 2009  (1) May 2009  (3) February 2009  (1) January 2009  (1) December 2008  (2) November 2008  (1) October 2008  (1) September 2008  (1) August 2008  (1) July 2008  (2) June 2008  (1) May 2008  (2) April 2008  (2) March 2008  (3) February 2008  (1) January 2008  (2) December 2007  (4) November 2007  (2) October 2007  (3) August 2007  (3) July 2007  (2) June 2007  (4) May 2007  (2) April 2007  (2) February 2007  (5) January 2007  (3) December 2006  (9) October 2006  (5) September 2006  (4) August 2006  (1) July 2006  (5) June 2006  (2) May 2006  (12) April 2006  (21) March 2006  (8) February 2006  (3) January 2006  (5) December 2005  (1) August 2005  (1) July 2005  (2) June 2005  (1) May 2005  (2) April 2005  (3) March 2005  (2) February 2005  (3) January 2005  (1)

• Recent Comments

  • My Bookmarks » Ubuntu 12.04 Development update on First Community Appreciation Day
  • Ubuntu 12.04 Development update on First Community Appreciation Day
  • Links 1/10/2011: Firefox 7, ODF 1.2 | Techrights on Jukka Ehto is the Linux Contributor of the Year 2011 in Finland
  • Jukka Ehto is the Linux Contributor of the Year 2011 in Finland : the … | What is Linux on Jukka Ehto is the Linux Contributor of the Year 2011 in Finland
  • Ubuntu One se actualiza y llega al millón de usuarios - Siskatec on Call for operators in #ubuntu-server

• Subscribe

  
  Full Feed
  Comics-only Feed
  

• Small print

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
  
  Cartoon artwork created with Stripgenerator; dialogue copy/pasted from #ubuntu-offtopic on Freenode.
  

  ---

This installation features xipietotec, gord and mc44.

Moral of the story: many famous people, including Albert Einsten would have trouble telling the difference between gconf and GNOME. So did General Patton, so apparently it doesn’t make you incapable of leading your comrades to barren wastelands either. Cher is dyslexic too albeit in a different way: she can recall the lyrics to “I Got You Babe” but would have difficulties with “99 bottles of beer.”

My Nokia E70 smartphone came with some nice software like MS Office compatible office apps and the regular PIM stuff that smartphones should include. However, I’ve made the thing much more useful with some cool pieces of freeware (mostly not open source though) leeched from around the Internet. Here’s a shortlist of favorites:

First of all, a mobile phone is a communication device, right? So let’s pack this thing up with apps to really talk to people in all ways possible! Let us see what we want to do and how to do it.

• To talk to people, there’s fring which supports VoIP calls over Skype, Google Talk, MSN and SIP. Not much of a chat client but chat does work. (note to self: bother fring support about chat functionality improvements)
• For real chat, there’s a new IRC client called mIRGGI, a native S60 app. mIRGGI is very young but works well.
• The best Jabber client around is probably Bombus_mod but it’s a Java app, meaning it eats more RAM than fring and mIRGGI combined. It does support every aspect of Jabber though, including transports which also makes it an awesome multiprotocol chat tool.
• I let my friends know about my presence status and activity updates via Jaiku. As fun as twitter but also genuinely useful for keeping in touch with people you actually care about. As Marko says, Jaiku is “not about celebrity” but about “silent sociality” among small groups. (I do share presence with a group quite a lot larger than that though, via the Jaiku badge in the sidebar of this blog. Lurk away!)

Then there’s always the fun side of the device. First off, we need music!

• If I get inspired to buy a large memory card for this phone, I’ll probably enjoy OggPlay a lot, since I don’t have many MP3 files to play with Nokia’s own media player. Currently I use it to play “We Are The Road Crew” every morning at 8 for wakeup alarm. Works very well.
• Currently, I don’t feel a huge pressure to carry my own music around since I can use Nokia’s own open source Internet Radio app to listen to my favorite channels.

Since things do sometimes slow down, I want to be able to enjoy games.

• There’s no nethack like there used to be one for my old Communicator, but luckily we have DOOM!
• Tetris should be required by law or standard on every device sold, but Nokia doesn’t care. There’s S-Tris2 though and it’s great with very cool graphics and fantastic gameplay.

And of course whenever I miss my Linux box, I’ll simply call home with PuTTY. Armed with these, the phone is more useful and fun than it was when I bought it.