Etienne Laurin has published a video showing off a port of CellWriter, a "grid-entry natural handwriting input panel", which adds integrated handwriting recognition to Fremantle. The plugin integrates into the normal Maemo input system to give handwriting recognition. Despite requiring manual steps to enable and disable it, the plugin already looks very cool.
Marcus Wikström has released a game for Heroes of Might and Magic II for Maemo. An engine compatible with Heroes of Might and Magic II. You will need the map and data files from the original game to play. You can use the ones from The Heroes of Might and Magic II demo to try it out. The game is currently available from Extras-devel (standard warnings and disclaimers apply - that is, don't update any applications whilst you have Extras-devel enabled, and disable it after installing the package of interest). Testers, contributors and enthusiastic retro-gamers welcome.
Dmitriy Chirva has released Telescope, a Maemo 5-style task switcher for Maemo 4, to Extras-devel. The launcher, along with other packages, allows users to create a UI experience very similar to Maemo 5 on Maemo 4 (sans acceleration, for now). Telescope is currently available from Extras-devel (standard warnings and disclaimers apply) testers and contributors are welcome.
Søren Pedersen has announced the nQa Audiobook Player for Maemo 5, which is among the first audiobook players for the platform, Nqaap is a simple audiobook player that has the following features: Plays books saved as multiple .mp3 or .awb files, automatically changes to next chapter, remebers position in multiple books, sleep timer. nQa Audiobook Player is currently available from Extras-testing (standards warnings and disclaimers apply) testers and contributors are welcome.
Talk user stantheboss has posted his review of Sygic Mobile Maps for Maemo. I am very happy that Sygic made this app available for N900 users and it's been well done. Even if there still some things and bugs to be fixed, we can be sure that Sygic people would stand up to the task. Mobile Maps 10 should be even better, Symbian users report so. The review includes lots of screenshots showing the Symbian-inspired UI. As there's no trial version available, users interested in Sygic Maps are well advised to check out the review.
A user on the Talk forums has released a complete Arabic translation for Maemo 5. I've been working on a project to fully translate the Maemo 5 into Arabic language. I've finished translating all strings using Poedit, so i have a complete list of .po and .mo files fully translated into Arabic. The translation is currently available in Extras-devel (standard warnings and disclaimers apply), testers and contributors are welcome (especially those with a background in translation to Arabic).