I have for years now been using iTunes on my PC because in my opinion it's the best music-player for PC. But because iTunes is an Apple product it does not work with any other device then the iPhone and iPod and that is very annoying. So what do you do when you want to sync you Nokia N900 with iTunes, well you could do like me and use Salling Media Sync. With Salling Media Sync you can sync music, podcasts and photos. When syncing music you can choose to sync all you music or just specific playlists. Salling Media Sync is free in the unregistered version, the only drawback when using that version is that whenever you want to sync you music to the N900 Salling Media Sync will delete all the music and re-transfer it making sync time longer then when using the registered version where Salling Media Sync only transfer the new music to the N900. So far I've really enjoyed using Salling Media Sync especially because it makes it possible to continue to use iTunes on my PC when using the N900 as my portable music device. But even if you are a Mac user don't worry there's also a version of Salling Media Sync for you.
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!?
I've used Last.fm for many years now, I do not stream music from Last.fm and I do not pay for the service but I like to be able to keep track of which tunes and artists I listen to the most and I'm a great fan of how Last.fm is able to recommend artists to you by analyzing what you normally listen to.
When I used my Nokia N82 I used Mobbler and I when I got my Nokia N900 I really wanted to have something similar first I tried Vagalume but could not make it work and thought it was to big and clumsy, then I found Last.fm Scrobbler which is perfect. It is small and runs automatically you just login once and then every time you listen to music through the build-in music player Last.fm Scrobbler scrobbles your music.
Now I can still keep track on what I listen to, and with Last.fm connected to my Twitter profile, Last.fm automatically sends out tweet for me every week with my top 3 artists of that week.
A few days ago I wrote a post about Foursquare, but Foursquare is far from the only location based social network service that you can use on the Nokia N900. When checking into Foursquare you are limited to public venues (I know that some people are adding their homes but that is not the purpose of Foursquare). With Brightkite on the other hand you have the opportunity to check-in at any address so that you can tell your friends that you are at home or visiting your grandmother. Brightkite gives you the opportunity to send your check-ins to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Fire Eagle. Because Brightkite does not have the game element of badges that Foursquare has it is not as fun to use therefore I find that using Foursquare and Brightkite together is the best way to use these services, checking in with Foursquare when I'm at a public venue and checking in with Brightkite when I'm at a private location. As far as I know Foursquare are working on some way to allow people to add private venues to the service but until then I'll be using both services. Since there is no Brightkite app for the N900 there are two ways to use Brightkite on the N900 the first is through the Brightkite mobile website and the other one is through the normal Brightkite website, since the normal website works perfect on the N900 that is what I'm using.
The last week or so I've really become addicted to Foursquare. I think that with more and more people carrying around smartphones, sharing you location is gonna be huge, and I think Foursquare is a great example of how location sharing can be done. I've in another post written a bit about Google Latitude, but for me Google Latitude has not done the trick, because even after a great deal of convincing, I have not succeeded in getting any of my friends to use it, and since Google Latitude cannot be connected to either Twitter or Facebook it is essential that you friends use it as well. Foursquare is different, of cause it is more fun to use if your friends use it too, but since it has great integration with Facebook it can still be meaningful to use, even if your friends doesn't. With Foursquare you check-in to venues through the Foursquare mobile website. The venues has either already been added or you can add them through the Foursquare website. When you check-in at the venues you earn badges, and so far I have earned the Newbie badge, that you get for your first check-in, and I have earned the Local badge, that you get for checking in at the same place three times in the same week. You can also get to be the mayor of a venue if you are the one with the most check-ins at a venue (atm. I'm the mayor at three different venues.). Foursquare has dedicated apps for iPhone, Android and Blackberry, users of the Nokia N900 are stuck with the mobile website that looks far from great in the fantastic MicroB browser. But the mobile website is usable and since the only thing you need it for is checking in it is alright. But we will not be left out for long... BarrioSquare is coming... BarrioSquare is a Foursquare client for the N900 developed by Chris B and is as far as I know in private beta atm.
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)
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.
For some years now I've been interested in genealogy, first I used different offline solutions on my PC for building my family tree, but in the start of 2007 geni.com went into public beta and since then I've used geni.com. Today I'm connected to nearly 35.000.000 profiles with more than 100.000 blood relatives on the tree. With the help of geni.com I now know how I'm related to the Margaret the 2nd of Denmark and I can follow my bloodline back to Yngvi Hálfdanarson born in the year 20. Geni.com is in my opinion a fantastic tool for building family trees because it combines pure genealogy with social networking because you can invite your family to participate in building your family tree. The reason why I mention all of this if because of the fantastic browser MicroB on the Nokia N900 the full flash support in the browser makes it a perfect toll for using geni.com on the go. So far I have not found a single thing I cannot do on geni.com with my N900, I can even navigate the tree. All this means that I can now do genealogy while I'm on the train, waiting for the bus or even laying in my bed.
Another app that I use a lot on my N900 is gPodder. gPodder is a podcast application with many features most importantly u can stream or download podcasts. I have yet to explore all the features of the app especially in connection with the many ways you can add podcasts and that is because so far all the podcasts that I’ve added has been video podcasts which had URL feeds. Because of that the only thing I had to do after I installed the gPodder was to copy the URL for feed into the app by choosing “Add new podcast” and then select “Podcast feed/website URL”. That’s all. The Podcasts I’ve added are mostly Danish podcast and I can very much recommend these Podcasts: