Now using Barriosquare for Foursquare on the Nokia N900

Woohoo... I've been waiting for this day since I started using Foursquare and now it has come. I am now testing Barriosquare for my Nokia N900 and I like it... It's obviously not a finished build since it's not even in Maemo extras-devel yet, but that doesn't mean that it's not very usable and usefull.
To install Barriosquare I first had to get permitted into this group to be able to get the .deb-file after that I had to manually install the dependencies through X terminal with "apt-get install", luckily there's a great guide on how to install in the group.
When I first opened Barriosquare I had to login and then it worked. I could from the options menu choose how Barriosquare should acquire my position, I could see my position on Google Maps, see my badges, see the nearby venues, I could add a venue and I could search for a venue.
I was unfortunately not able to show my friends' recent checkin list, and my checkin history but I think that could have something to do with the Foursquare servers as I often get error screen when I use the browser version!?

Related articles by Zemanta

• Tell the world where you are and earn badges with Nokia N900 and Foursquare (jbhdenmark.blogspot.com)

Nokia N900 as your cookbook with Pyrecipe

Yesterday I had made vegetarian Swedish Sausage dish (Svensk Pølseret) with my Nokia N900 acting as my cookbook and my shopping list using Pyrecipe.
Pyrecipe is a great way to organize your recipes on the N900, with the option to both import and export recipes it is easy to build op a great database with all your favorite recipes.
With the build-in shopping list its easy to make a shopping list from the ingredient list and check-off the ingredient when you have put it in your basket.
Swedish Sausage dish is not usually a vegetarian dish and I haven't had it since I went vegetarian 7 or 8 years ago, but since the only meat in the dish is the sausages it is easily converted to vegetarian by choosing vegetarian sausages instead I bought Anamma Sausages at Helsehjørnet in Aalborg.

If anyone is interested in the recipe it can be downloaded here (Gourmet XML) here (KRecipies) or here (HTML) (The recipe is in Danish)

Blogging from the Nokia N900 with MaStory

I usually use my laptop when I'm blogging but for this post and the one before this I've been experimenting with using MaStory. MaStory has some really great features among them are great integration with Blogger, Wordpress, Livejournal, Drupal, Pixelpipe, Flickr and Picasa. But also support for a lot of HTML code and very advanced posting options. The only thing that I personally miss from MaStory is spell- and grammar-check.
MaStory for me means that I can work on my blog posts whereever I am, and I do not need my laptop for blogging anymore - that's a great freedom.
One problem that I have found though is that when I add pictures straight from MaStory they are way too big for my layout here on blogger.

Sync N900 contacts with Facebook and Twitter using Hermes

Another app that I really like for the N900 is Hermes, with my old Nokia N82 I had to use ZYB to sync the contacts on my phone with my friends on Facebook. With Hermes I can do that right on the Nokia N900, that means that the profile pictures and birthdays are saved in then contacts on the N900 and because of the great integration between contacts and calendar on the N900 the birthdays of the contacts shows up straight away in the calendar.

Bird demolition with Angry Birds

One of my favorite games on the Nokia N900 is Angry Birds. In the game you got 5 different kinds of birds with different abilities that you send off with a slingshot to try to kill some green pigs. The game loads fast and is great if you just have a few minutes to spare. Unfortunately there are too few levels BUT it seems like the Maemo community have come up with a solution - user made levels. I have not tried the user made levels myself yet but I'll post when I do. The new levels and information can be found here: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=40591.

If you are playing Angry Birds try to slide your finger up and down at the middle of the screen that will zoom in and out.

I wanted to post some screenshots but I think the video from the Angry Birds website is very good so I embedded that instead:



The game is also available for iPhone

Series database on my N900

One of my favourite apps on my Nokia N900 is SeriesFinal. I always keep forgetting how many episodes I've watched of each of the TV-shows that I follow and with Series Final I don't have to anymore. Basically what SeriesFinal does is download the information about a show that you choose so that you can see how many seasons it has been running, how many episodes there have been and even a little information about the episode itself. Then next to each episode there is checkbox so you can checkoff every episode you have watched.

I've made a few screenshots so you can see how it works.

Google Latitude and N900

I've been a great fan of the concept of Google Latitude for awhile now, but since nobody I knew used it I've not had the opportunity to really test it until now. After I got my Nokia N900 I managed to convince 3 of my friends to try Google Latitude - they have not been too impressed but they have used it enough to let me see it in action.

So how is it to use Google Latitude on a N900? Well the experience could have been much better...

First I used Google Latitude through the MicroB browser. To do that you need to use the mobile version of Google Maps by installing the MicroB extention Maemo-Geolocation and using this URL: http://www.google.com/maps/m. This will update your position and you'll be able to see where your friends are at but it has some shortcomings - you cannot zoom, you cannot scroll, the blue spot you use to center the position on yourself is underneath the "exit full screen button" so you cannot use that in full screen mode and also the whole thing is not touch optimized so it's very hard to use without the stylus.

What to do then? Well there is really no solution for most of the inconveniences of using the Google Maps website just yet, but there is an app that at least makes it a bit easier to update your position. The app is called Google Latitude Updater. This app is still in the Extra Testing Repository so it's basically a beta release, but it does what it promises it updates you position in Google Latitude and in the app menu you can choose between the map-view and the "app-view". What I would like to see in the future from this app is some kind of autoupdate ec. every 5, 10 or 15 minutes.

I've added some screenshots to show how Google Latitude looks on the N900:

My position shown in MicroB:

Friend list shown in MicroB:

Friend options and settings in MicroB:
Friend shown on map in MicroB:

"App-view" in Google Latitude Updater:

Map-view in Google Latitude Updater:

Danish TV on my N900

Yesterday I managed to setup streams for three Danish TV-channels on my Nokia N900. The channels I managed to find streams for were DR1, DR2 and DR Update. Here is a small walkthrough to how I did it:


First I installed KMPlayer from the Extras Repositories


Second I found the URLs for the channels and typed in KMPlayer

DR1: http://www.dr.dk/Forms/Published/PlaylistGen.aspx?qid=786405

DR2: http://www.dr.dk/Forms/Published/PlaylistGen.aspx?qid=786410

DR Update: http://www.dr.dk/tjenester/podcast/update.asx?gid=288417


Third I marked the channels as favourites

Enjoy :-)

All this is of cause only possible from a Danish IP-adress