I’m a simple man with simple needs. The Nokia N900 is awesome. There is a huge body of people developing cool applications for Maemo 5, the N900’s operating system. In fact, I only have a few problems, none of them very large problems.

For instance, there’s no Shazam app for the N900. I used that program all the time on my old phone to identify music in restaurants and on the radio.

You can’t have multiple ringtones on the N900, for instance giving each contact a custom ringtone. Not a big deal, but still odd that the N900 doesn’t allow it. In fact, that feature is so common in all phones now, it’s not even anything I thought to investigate when researching the N900.

The biggest problem for me was reading RSS feeds in Google Reader. I love Google Reader. On my pc. The interface is a little hard to use on the tiny N900 screen, and using the iPhone’s mobile Google Reader interrface doesn’t sort feeds by web site, nor does it act at all like I want it to.

This was a problem, and I have even been evaluating other web-based feed readers for a better mobile interface, when I read about Grr.

One of the reasons I bought an N900 was so I could put a 16GB microSD card in it and use it as an mp3 player. The N900 has 32GB of storage–about 26GB of that are available due to the N900 needing about 6GB for system files. Adding a 16GB SD card makes 40GB total available for files such as mp3s.

I don’t even have 40GB of mp3s on this device, because I need to save space for downloaded files, photos, etc. Right now I have maybe 35GB of music on my N900, split between the internal storage and the microSD card. This, by the way, from someone who nearly ran out of space on a 120GB Zune. 110GB – all music, no videos (the Zune Pass subscription service was primarily to blame).

Right now the device has 8,465 songs on it, according to the N900’s default media player.

If you have or want an N900, then I’m sure it has something to do with it’s amazing web capabilities.

Here’s a quick run down of my experiences with the 2 main browsers you’ll play with, the default ‘microB’ and Firefox.

I’ve started and stopped this post about a dozen times. The N900 is a relatively new device, and a lot of the times I start to write something, I think, “Oh, maybe it works this way…” and I get sidetracked by playing with my new phone for another while.

Then I get into forum posts, wikis, tutorials, etc. I completely forget I even started a blog post.

Trying not to get in over my head here, I’m going to try and write a lot of small posts instead of one big one.

First, let’s talk about T-Mobile. I had the phone for a day before I got my T-Mobile SIM, so I already had 40GB of mp3s put on it, as well as a lot of games, apps, email accounts, etc.

Guess who has an N900? I’ll give you a clue, it’s me.

So even though I was a bit worried in previous posts, I eventually got enough info that led me to just mellow out and wait for the damned packages to arrive.

I have to say, I was mentally going over my history of tech, and it seems like every time I’ve wanted a device this bad the experience of actually receiving the device has usually been marred

So, in response to my last post, I can say with a strong bit of joy that it now seems as if both packages are probably on their way out for delivery. If both aren’t, the important one is, so I’m not worrying too much.

I have two separate packages coming my way, a MicroSD card and a N900. Both scheduled to arrive today. To update all of you from my last post, Both packages hit bad weather this morning (assumedly) in Kentucky. Both couldn’t have been delayed for too long because tracking listed both as being in Kansas City later this morning.

Here’s a timeline:

I know the title of this post is probably going to open this site to a whole new wave of spam, same as if I put “I need a bigger penis” in a post. Oh, shit.

Point is, I’m trying to learn a foreign language, but I can’t seem to find tapes or books to help me out.

Anybody know a good set of tapes or a correspondence course that can teach relative fluency in UPS Tracker-speak?

Okay guys, I’m seriously trying not to constantly post about the N900. That said, there’s another N900 post coming up in a day or so but, like this post, it’s just a link to some video.

The one problem I had with the N900 thus far is it’s lack of a really good twitter client. I’ve heard good things about the few clients that were available, but I want the advanced features I’ve come to expect from desktop apps like Seesmic and TweetDeck, but with a finger-friendly interface.

Well as this video from Nokia Experts claims (and shows), Witter delivers:

Can’t wait to try it out. I was all set to buy an N900 this month, but unfortunately I had a few financial problems, so it’ll be a few more months. Dammit!

Till then,

Lark

So a few months ago I started a dastardly experiment. I took my Nokia N800 out of my closet, put two 32GB SDHC cards in it, and tried it out as a 64GB flash-storage mp3 player. Results? Slow, sluggish, and to top it off there were no mp3 player apps I was happy with. I cannibalized the project, using one of the 32GB cards as an easily swappable storage drive for work files, and the other card became a backup of the first that I carry on my person.

The N800, however, still hasn’t made it back into my closet. This is due, more than anything else, to the amazing speakers on this device. I used to wear headphones while I cooked or washed dishes. Now I bring my N800, which has a 4GB card full of music, prop it up, and let it’s speakers fill the kitchen. It’s not extremely loud, but it’s loud enough and still sounds really good considering how tiny the device is.

I also keep it in my shirt pocket as I’m playing video games, such as Uncharted 2 on crushing mode. I can’t wear headphones, as I need to hear if someone shooting at me, plus I still like to watch the cutscenes, but I can keep the game volume low and play music on the N800 during.

I have an eeePC 901 (netbook), and its speakers sound terrible. That’s the only way to describe them, terrible. I can watch some videos on it, movies or tv shows, but listening to music is out of the question. Keep in mind this is a 9″ netbook being compared to a 6″ internet tablet. In addition to the N800 sounding better than the 901, it’s actually louder. How did this happen?

This is, of course, another reason I’m anxious to get my hands on a N900, because I’ve heard the speakers aren’t quite as loud but they’re still fairly loud and sound pretty good. So maybe when I get my hands on an N900 I’ll be able to finally put my N800 back in the closet. Until then, I don’t see it going anywhere.

Lark

I had a N800, the first or one of the first mobile devices to use the Mozilla web rendering engine. I really didn’t notice any difference between Mozilla’s engine and the N800’s stock engine, so it wasn’t a big deal to me.

In addition, it wasn’t a big deal to me when I heard that Firefox for Mobile would be used on the N900, either. Until I heard that it supports Mozilla Weave.

Weave is an addon for Firefox that syncs bookmarks and passwords like Xmarks, but in addition it also syncs history and tabs that are open on your other devices. I just started using it today (on my desktop and netbook, I don’t own an N900 yet), so I’ll have a more in-depth Weave post in a few days. Watch this short video to see Firefox’s mobile browser in action on the N900 (Weave is only touched upon briefly), I’ll talk about more after.

Imagine you’re at your desktop, reading an article online, waiting for a friend to come pick you up. You get a text, your friend is outside. You go to a restaurant where there’s a 30-minute wait. You can now pull out your phone and resume reading the article you were reading at home. After that, you can continue your browsing in full on the N900, because it supports the full web.

That’s really cool. Another reason to buy one.

Lark