This is Part 2 of 2 to my feature on apps for the Maemo 5 platform. In case you missed Part 1 or if you just want to read it again, click HERE
grr
The N900 ships with an RSS app and homescreen widget that does exactly what it is advertised to do and nothing else. It updates your live bookmarks automatically in the background at an interval you can set, displays them according to the time they were posted in the widget and even attempts to keep track of how many unread items you have waiting (a task it fails miserably at by the way). grr is a very simple Google Reader app (meaning you’ll have to have a Google account and subscriptions in Google Reader). The first screen you see when you launch the app is your list of subscriptions and how many unread items for each subscriptions. With any Google Reader app, you have to be sure to keep it as simple as possible, otherwise you’ve defeated the whole purpose and grr doesn’t betray this at all. In fact it might be a bit underpowered as it doesn’t include a few features that may be considered dealbreakers for some (for example, there are no filers to say, view only unread items) but all in all, it’s “the best way to manage the best way to manage your RSS feeds” (that’s not a typo, read it carefully, it makes sense 
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MussOrgSky
Anyone that knows me knows that I love the way that the Media Player on the N900 organizes music on the device, using thumbnails of the album art instead of a vanilla list of album titles. However, it doesn’t provide a way to manually change the cover art that it selects out of the box or edit the ID3 tags that contain the song title, artist & album name as well as the genre of the song. This can be frustrating if the N900 selects the wrong cover art or one of the tracks is tagged wrong and ends up in a different folder than the rest of the album. That’s where MussOrgSky comes in, it serves two purposes. The first is to allow you to edit the ID3 tags of all of the music files on your device and the second is a search that finds missing cover art for any album you select. If you have as much music on your device as I do (6386 songs as of today) and you’re as anal about cover art as I am, this will become one of your favorite apps.
Prismic Wallpaper Manager
This is an app that would probably get more publicity (or if it were in Ovi Store) if it were free but it’s well worth the $3.75 they ask for it. Prismic Wallpaper Manager connects directly to N900Wallpapers.com and from there, allows you to browse, download, apply and organize the hundreds of wallpapers offered on there right from your device. The wallpapers are sorted into dozens of categories including the highest rated, most downloaded and latest. On top of that, they are broken down into the type of wallpaper, whether they are Abstract, Animals & Plants, Architecture & Cities or Vehicles. Once you select a wallpaper, you can apply it to your wallpaper directly or download it to your device to apply later and one of the features of the app that I’m glad they didn’t overlook is the ability to mix and match wallpapers. This means that just because you download a set of 4 wallpapers, you aren’t bound to applying all of them to your 4 homescreen panels. Please note that this is the only app featured here that cannot be found in the App. Manager. You can download Prismic Wallpaper Manager for your N900 over at Iolite Technologies in exchange for $3.75USD.
TweeGo/witter
You may be curious as to why I chose to group these 2 very different applications together. The reason being, while the only thing these 2 applications have in common is that they are both Twitter apps, they each have something the other desperately needs and the first one to deliver the whole package will prevail. Let’s take a look at what we got here. In one corner, we have witter. A full featured Twitter app that allows you to look at your general timeline, replies, direct messages and auto-refreshes at an interval you can set like any good Twitter app should and it even includes some features that most mobile Twitter apps don’t include like the Public Timeline and current Trending Topics but while witter sounds perfect, it has one overwhelming drawback: It’s hideously ugly. Now, I believe in function over fashion as much as the next guy but there comes a point where you must draw the line, that line is witter. The icons are childish, it never wants to stay in a fullscreen view, and it was only recently that they added support for avatars. A lot of work has to be done on the GUI if witter wants to be mentioned in the same breath as the Gravitys and UberTwitters of the world. In the other corner, we have TweeGo. Now TweeGo is an absolutely beautiful app that’s written in Qt and includes gorgeous transitions and animations but sadly, not much else. TweeGo only shows you your Timeline with no way to view your mentions, direct messages or even auto-refresh the timeline. So at the same time, fashion over function only goes so far as well. Other than looks and functionality, there is one more major difference between these two apps. Support. witter receives an update just about every other day it seems to fix this bug or to add that features even though there is only one developer behind it. TweeGo, on the other hand, hasn’t received an update since the end of March and that was just to change the name from TwitterBox to TweeGo. I would like to think that this lack of progress is due to the Qt SDK just being released and Qt 4.6 about to be installed on every N900 with the PR1.2 device but something tells me that that’s the optimist in me speaking.
These are just a handful of what I find to be the most useful, powerful or just my favorite apps for the N900. If I went into my favorite plug-ins and headless applications, we might end up with a Part 3 and 4 of this post. One of the overlooked features of PR1.2 is the inclusion of Qt4.6 which will bring several new apps and ports of familiar Symbian apps to the Maemo platform. To give you a little preview of what’s in store for the future, let me share with you these videos by Nokia Conversations showcasing some of the apps that developers are currently working on. You should see some familiar favorites in here.
As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please leave them in the comments sections below.
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Kyron has written 18 articles for your enjoyment.
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About: Your favorite blogger's favorite blogger coming at you live from Toronto, Canada. One of the original BMEs and a cell phone fanatic.
