Jussi Mäkinen of Nokia has demonstrated a few of the new apps on their way to Maemo's Ovi Store. One, Zen Bound, is described by Nokia's Conversations blog as a brain-bending 3D puzzle game [...] that sees you stroking the screen in an attempt to wrap rope around objects floating in space… yes, it’s very strange, yet super intriguing and utterly original.
A neat little technology showcase allows you to use the N900's camera to capture an image and have it translated from a foreign language into your native tongue. Imagine yourself walking on a street somewhere in a foreign country and you face a warning sign, but you have no idea what it says. Just take a picture of the sign and open it with PhotoTranslator, crop the text in the sign and PhotoTranslator translates the text to your language. In addition the PhotoTranslator can be used also for translating copy/pasted or typed text, not just for text from pictures. The developer is uncertain when it will be available to the public, as it is still pending some packaging changes and "stuff".
iPlayer is the BBC's heavily promoted TV catchup service for all their TV and radio channels, and all the programmes broadcast in the last 7 days. DanCairo from talk.maemo.org has documented how to use a combination of the Wii's finger-friendly UI and the low-bandwidth version to get the full features available in Maemo: BBC iPlayer is the greatest catchup service in the UK. Though it’s only BBC channels, it implements on demand video better than anyone else in the UK, with fast streaming of videos appearing seconds after the show finishes airing on live TV. It even does live streaming sometimes. The powerful browser on Maemo opens up opportunities unavailable on other platforms without custom apps; and even works over the TV out cable of the N900.
You might expect Mozilla Firefox's mobile version to be available through the maemo.org Extras repository which is full of open source software. However, they've taken the somewhat surprising - but probably higher profile route - of delivering it through Nokia's Ovi Store. Firefox is ready to download directly from the Ovi Store. Officially released at the start of the month on the Mozilla website, the app has been working its way through the Ovi Store approval process and is now ready for N900 users to download. The "Ovi Store approval process" is vague and opaque, compared with the community run Extras-testing process; and there have been mutterings about the quality of packages in Ovi which wouldn't make it through the community's quality assurance process. The decision also means that users will not be able to see Firefox when browsing through the Application Manager, only by going to the web-based Ovi Store from their Maemo 5 device.
Valério Valério has released a new application that lets users pick their startup media on Maemo 5. Manage the system startup media. Add multiple videos or play a random video on boot. BootScreen is available from Extras-devel (standard warnings and disclaimers apply), testers and contributions welcome.