Prismic Wallpaper Manager
Iolite Technologies has released the Prismic Wallpaper Manager a $3.75 application that offers easier wallpaper management that hooks directly into n900wallpapers.com. Interestingly, this is the second application that's offered as a standalone-deb after payment through PayPal, which makes for a complicated install process, with users required to resolve dependencies manually and no option for automatic updates. Get the newest, highest rated, most downloaded wallpapers at the touch of a button, or browse hundreds of wallpapers in over a dozen categories to find 'the right look' for your N900. PR1.2, the forthcoming major update to Maemo 5, is said to have a feature whereby any 3200x480 image on the device will be shown in the built-in "Choose wallpaper" dialogue; potentially undermining some of the feature set of Prismic.
Intel & Orange announce Atom-focused MeeGo services tie-up
Intel and Orange have announced plans to partner on future Atom-based mobile devices running MeeGo. Orange is hoping that more of its users will make use of devices that are powered by Meego, though it will have to come up with some enticing new products and services soon. According to the firm, 75 per cent of its subscribers are 'yet to embrace mobile Internet'/. The partnership, while signaling operator interest in Nokia and Intel's joint venture and likely to increase developer interest in the platform, is worrisome because of Orange's history of invasive and buggy customized firmwares. This may have a negative effect on perception of the platform and may say troubling things about what MeeGo will permit for manufacturer and operator customization. It will also be interesting to see whether the specific mention of Atom and Intel is indicative of the fragmentation of MeeGo which is considered Android's achilles heel.
Array: stylish, simple, grey/black theme
Johannes Siipola has released Array, a new theme for Maemo 5. I worked on this for quite a while and it seems to be almost perfect now. Let me present you the Array Theme, a clean and stylish grey/black theme that will make you N900 look great. The theme is currently available in Extras Testing (standard warnings and disclaimers apply), testers are welcome.
Initial port of IPTraf network monitor
An initial port of IPTraf, a console-based network monitor, has been released for Maemo 5. It is described as, An IP traffic monitor that shows information on the IP traffic passing over your network. Includes TCP flag information, packet and byte counts, ICMP details, OSPF packet types; general and detailed interface statistics showing IP, TCP, UDP, ICMP, non-IP and other IP packet counts, IP checksum errors, interface activity, packet size counts. Although console-based, IPTraf has a full-screen, menu-driven interface and an icon to launch it from the applications menu. It is currently available from Extras-devel (standard warnings and disclaimers apply), contributors and testers are welcome.
Symfonie, directory-oriented music player with equalizer, under development
Talk-user "code" has announced Symfonie - a Qt-based, file/directory-oriented music player for Maemo 5 with an equalizer. It's currently under development and in the Extras-devel repository (so standard warnings apply). In his announcement, he says, The original intent of writing this application was that I need an simple media player to play mp3 files by folders. I didn't want to tag my music library nor create play list manually. I use directory to manage all my music files because I can group them into exactly the way I wanted. Thus this application is created. He describes it as "lightweight" but a known bug is "high CPU usage"; so an impact on battery life is to be expected whilst it is under development.