Since Skype is being ported on the Nokia N800, I had the chance to use the N800 quite a bit in the last months. Last year I reviewed the first iteration of Nokia’s Internet Tablet, the N770. The N800 is definitively a nice upgrade over it, it keeps the strong points and fix some of the weaknesses.

The hardware has been upgraded, with a faster CPU and more RAM, making it much more responsive. The browser for example loads fast now, zooming in/out is smooth and the additional RAM makes it possible to have several applications opened at the same time.

The form-factor is nicer. I like the new stand, practical, better than the N770 solution. The screen is still gorgeous. Big improvement, the N800 now supports standard SD cards. They are very cheap these days, so it becomes very easy to add a lot of storage to the device, opening possibilities for it as a music and video player. The Wifi connectivity is still very good, as is battery life. This device can just be kept on all the time and be always accessible.

The N800 is a very good video player. Under Linux this excellent script will convert your videos to a format that will fit nicely on the N800. I tried some DIVX files and the quality was excellent. With the best preset of the script, 25 minutes of video took 100 MB.

The N800 of course includes a music player. One nice use for it is to access your music collection stored on a PC in the house. The PC needs to have a UPnP server (like uShare or GMediaServer under Linux) and you can then browser and listen to your music collection on the N800. A great way to have your music collection follow you in the house. The device now has stereo speakers so it’s even possible to listen to music without headset (but don’t expect miracles in term of quality).

Another music use for the N800 is to use it as a remote control for your media center (a PC with all your music and connected to your stereo, but without a keyboard or mouse). If the PC runs Linux, you can install the Music Player Daemon on it. It is a music player without user interface, allowing various clients to connect to it. And there is a client for the N800.

Some things still bother me with the device. Like the N770, it is missing a scroll wheel, and scrolling is just too slow on it. The web browser is missing tabs too. The way I’m using a web browser most of the time is by opening tabs in the background, allowing me to continue reading the current page. On my laptop this is a one click operation, on the N800 it requires way too many clicks.

It still doesn’t have a retractable keyboard, but this isn’t such a big deal anymore because there is a very good on-screen finger keyboard. It has big keys and it allows to type with your fingers, which is faster than using the stylus.

Already a cool device, with Skype it will be even better

After 3 years of using Bloglines I switched to Google Reader for reading feeds. Outside work, I spent 90% of my browsing time in my feed reader so this is a very important tool. I’ve used almost since ever web based feed readers, which are much more convenient. I always liked Bloglines simplicity, but now I’ve had just enough with its incapacity in handling duplicate items. I got also tired of seeing the Bloglines plumbers.

So far I like Google Reader. It is a fast and nice interface, as always with Google. The possibility to switch between the list view (where only the title of the items is displayed) and expanded view (where the full text of each item is displayed, like in Bloglines) is great. With some blogs like Engadget I read only a minority of the posts, so the list view is much more efficient.

Very nice also is when choosing to read a feed, not all items are immediately marked as read like in Bloglines. Here they are marked as read as you actually scroll through them and read them. This allows things like reading only half of the unread items of a feed.

With Gmail for email, Google Reader for feed reading, and of course search… now I will spend all my online time on Google web sites, kind of scary…

On April 6th we celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary. We celebrated our wedding at Leigo, a farm house in some very nice surroundings in the south of Estonia. The place is actually well known in Estonia, since every summer they organize open-air music concerts and theater performances. The musicians’ stage is on an island in the lake, surrounded by the listeners on the sloping shore.

And it seems Leigo hasn’t forgotten our wedding either: The first photo on their gallery page, that’s us. Yes there was some snow still. Even better, in the Otepää tourist information brochure, Leigo has a little publicity and they also put our picture there. I understand them, we were the cutest newly weds ever

That’s the number of chat messages I have received and sent in almost two years at Skype. Around 150 per day, 20 per working hour.

Chat (1-to-1 and multi-chats) are the most important communication tool at Skype. Together with the wiki, they form great pair, so simple (I like simple) yet working so well. The company has grown, but these tools still do the job very well. I cannot imagine dealing with that much communication using only email like in so many places (like Sten).

If you also want to know how many messages you have sent and received, it’s easy. Check in your Skype directory (Document and Settings/username/Application Data/skype etc. under Windows, $HOME/.Skype under Linux) and look for the chatmsgXXX.dbb files, XXX being a number like 256, 512, etc. To get approximately the total number of messages, multiply the size in bytes of each chatmsgXXX.dbb file with the XXX number and sum all results.

Like almost every French, I followed the presidential elections closely. It was an interesting election, with a lot of good debates. Finally there is a new generation coming in French politics. And I was happy with the final result too.

The fantastic participation numbers (around 85%) and the fall of the extreme-right party gave us again good reasons to be proud of being French. With the riots, the European constitution referendum, strikes and in general France falling back, the last years have been tough.

What made me also happy is not only that Nicolas Sarkozy won, but that he won with a liberal program. France needs to be more competitive in this global world, be realistic. By having said clearly what he will do and by winning with an important lead, Sarkozy may be able to execute the reforms France needs.

Indeed, the first days of his government gave good hope I think. I appreciated especially having an experienced man like Alain Juppé and second in the government after the Prime Minister in charge of the environment.

Finally, I have hope in Sarkozy because he’s an ambitious man. Think about it: A country in its history has countless presidents, but only a handful will be remembered. My grandchildren will know who de Gaulle was, but they will probably have no clue about Chirac. The only way to enter into history is to accomplish great things, and to do great things you have to take great risks. I think Sarkozy doesn’t see being president as the achievement: The real achievement for him as a man will be to have been a president that is remembered. I hope he will take the risks it requires to become one. Maybe he will fail, but at least he will have tried, unlike Chirac who hasn’t done much in his two terms.

I got a new laptop a few weeks ago, a nice ThinkPad T60, with an Intel Core Duo, 2 GB of RAM, a 120 GB hard drive and a big screen with a 1400×1050 resolution.

What I like the most about this laptop is that it’s silent. Before I had a heavy HP laptop, whose fans were very noisy. The T60 is just silent, it’s such a wonderful change. And it doesn’t warm, one doesn’t burn its lap. Of course it’s fast and the big resolution is great for working.

I installed the latest Kubuntu on it, Feisty, as always without big problems ( just a bit of trouble getting the wifi drivers running, but Google quickly gave me the answer). Linux on desktop keeps getting better and better. The only thing I’m still using Windows for is making Skype video calls (and video is coming in the Linux version).

I set up an encrypted partition, using dm-crypt and LUKS. I used these two howtos, but I’m still wondering why this is not an installation option in Ubuntu. Encrypted drives are fully transparent these days. I copied all my home directory on the encrypted drive. Simple and easy.

Migrating all my old data was very easy too. I just put both of them on the same network, mounted my old laptop’s hard drive on the new one and copied everything, including Firefox, Thunderbird and Skype data.

Speaking about Skype, I’m now using the Linux version 1.4, still in beta but fully usable for me. Andrew and Berkus have been doing a great job.

Five months without blogging, that’s like eternity in the Internet world. So what have I been up to? Having fun with Henri of course. He’s now almost 10 months old, crawling like crazy, standing up and exploring every last corner of the apartment. He’s an amazing boy and it’s great fun.

In other news, I’m getting 30 on Sunday. Not sure how I feel about that… I guess it’s not such a big deal. I’m pretty happy with the first 30 of these years, I just have to keep going so.

And maybe I will blog more when I reach this venerable age

What would you want to have in a “NXT+”, a power-user version of the Mindstorms NXT brick?

Here is my list:

• ARM9 at around 200 MHz
• 32 MB of RAM and 32 of Flash
• Wifi
• Powered by rechargeable battery
• Possible to plug on the main supply (= not running on battery)
• More engine output ports
• Some USB ports, host and self-powered

An ARM9 processor with a MMU would make it easy to run standard Linux. It’s also possible to run Linux on the current NXT ARM7 (if it had more memory) but an ARM9 and a MMU just makes it all much easier.

Of course I would put much more memory than in the current NXT (256 KB of flash and 64 KB of RAM, what were they thinking?). I would put a minimum of 8 MB of RAM and 16 MB flash, but since memory is cheap these days, 32 MB of RAM and Flash should not cost much and would just make it comfortable. The amount of memory is the only thing that prevent us from putting a Linux on the current NXT. In fact the default firmware of the NXT+ would be Linux based.

My NXT+ would have Wifi. A real OS like Linux and Wifi would open a lot of possibilities. You could connect to the NXT+ directly with ssh and execute commands on it. You could run a web server on it and control it from a web browser. Your robots could connect to the Internet and send you emails. You could run Skype on it. And many more…

The NXT+ would be powered by good rechargeable battery, and you could plug it directly to a power supply and not having it running on battery. This would allow for robots that are on for a long time, like some surveillance robot.

I would also try to add one or two motor ports. With a more powerful battery it should be possible.

Having one or two USB port that support USB host would allow to plug all kind of USB devices to it: webcams, mouse, harddrives, etc. Again that opens a lot of possibilities.

I would keep the screen as it is, it’s not very important and it keeps the costs down. I would also keep Bluetooth, it’s cheap and makes it have the same feature set as the NXT. I would change the buttons maybe to make them easier to connect to some bricks and be pressed by the robot itself.

How much would it cost? LEGO sells the NXT alone at $135. This is not its “price” when sold in the kit, because when you add to the NXT the touch sensor ($17), the light Sensor ($17), the sound sensor ($25), the ultrasonic sensor ($32) and 3 motors ($18 each), you get $280, more then the full set with the 500 bricks ($250).

ARM9, memory, wifi and USB don’t cost much, a few dollars each. The battery and the charging part is more expensive, but at the end it should stay under $200 I think, maybe making the full set at $300. Would you buy the NXT+ instead? I would for sure.

Including everything I listed would require a new box for the NXT too, because there are new connectors. But if you remove the additional motor output ports, the USB ports and put the charger in a separate package that plugs to the NXT, I think you could keep the same box as the current NXT. There should be space to fit more memory and wifi in it.

How would your NXT+ look like?

It’s been already 2.5 years since I asked on this blog “Why don’t we have an iPod phone yet?” It’s finally here, and it’s really impressive. It has actually such advanced features (full web browser, touch-screen, etc) that one may forget there is also an iPod in it. Apple didn’t keep it simple about the amount of features, but looking at Steve Jobs keynote they seem to have done it right. Will it work that well too? We will have to wait a few months to know.

One disappointment, they play along with the carriers and in the US the only way to buy it will be with a 2-year contract by Cingular.

The device is said to run OSX, but is it full OSX including the UI components, or only the kernel? Many mobile devices “run Linux” but it’s the Linux kernel, not the Gnome or KDE user interface. I’m also wondering what’s the hardware in it. Which processor? Who provides the cellular chipset?

And funny that the hottest electronic device during this CES week was not announced at CES.

For Christmas we got ourselves one of the RTX Skype cordless phones. Skype runs directly on the device, without the need for a PC.

The question came which Skype user name to use on the device. Using my main Skype name was not really an option. First I would not be the only user of the phone, as we share it with my wife. Second, if I had used my main Skype name, I would have appeared always online to my contacts. This is inconvenient, because I use Skype heavily for work. By the way, we are working at Skype to improve this situation and to make your online status behave nicely when being signed-in on multiple PC or devices.

So the solution we chose was to create a new Skype account for the family that would be signed-in on the phone. But we didn’t give this name to all our contacts. My wife and myself set our main Skype accounts to call-forward to this family account. This is Skype-to-Skype forwarding and it is free.

When someone calls us on our main accounts, or on our SkypeIN numbers, if we don’t answer on our laptops, the call gets forwarded to the cordless phone, without the caller noticing. Our contacts don’t need to wonder on which name to call us, they keep using our main accounts.

It’s a pretty neat solution I think. We still need however to give the family account to the people we want to call from the cordless phone, because they need to authorize our family account. But this is a limited number of people, not a big deal.