Nokia Qt SDK beta gives preview of MeeGo application development

The next stage in Nokia's Qt strategy, and the evolution of Maemo, Symbian and MeeGo was unveiled this week through the beta of the Nokia Qt SDK. Building on top of the Qt SDK, this bundles Nokia's Qt IDE (Qt Creator) with simulators and targets (via MADDE) for all three of the above OSes. The new Nokia Qt SDK leverages the power of the Qt framework and tools, combining them with tools designed specifically to streamline the creation of applications for Symbian, the Maemo platform, and the forthcoming MeeGo platform. The first beta release of the Nokia Qt SDK is now available, so you can explore how building applications for hundreds of millions of Nokia device owners will become even easier. This should make targetting multiple platforms easier but, above all, also massively lowers the barrier to entry of Maemo/MeeGo development. Hopefully, this will provide a platform on which hundreds of developers can build applications with relative ease.

Maemo 5 PR1.2 leaked

A new Talk user posted a link, on Sunday, to what was claimed - and seemingly turned out to be - a version of the next update to Maemo 5: PR1.2. The new version, which is well understood from both from Bugzilla and its SDK, introduces a faster version of the Gecko-based MicroB engine (which powers the browser); options for browser portrait mode; Qt 4.6 and a host of bug fixes. The image, which claimed to be the same version as that installed on the Hong Kong N900s caused pandemonium on talk.maemo.org. Randall Arnold was amongst those warning caution: Again: this was NOT an official or even remotely sanctioned release. It was pulled, probably by an employee, from an internal company repository and released to the wild without authorization. That's not a reflection on Nokia but rather on the individual responsible. The thread ended with Reggie Suplido, after discussion with other moderators and the Community Council, removing links to the unauthorised image. This is consistent with the stance taken over the unauthorised distribution of other company's copyrighted material (such as emulator ROMs) and was decided without the involvement of Nokia (as far as your editor, and the council, is aware).

There are many reasons why the Hong Kong N900s may have a newer firmware than the rest of the world, including bugs with features not used in Hong Kong; or the introduction of a new hardware variant in Hong Kong which doesn't experience issues faced with earlier devices on the same firmware.

Further threads have highlighted a few problems with the release (which is why it's not been released to the world!) including breaking the cellular modem on downgrading - resulting in an inability to make calls. It is strongly recommended that you avoid flashing random pre-release firmware images to your device!

MeeGo Conference 2010 team formed

Quim Gil has announced the initial team responsible for the MeeGo Conference - which replaces the Maemo Summit this year. He and Dawn Foster will head up coordination; with Dirk Hohndel, Thiago Macieira, Michael Meeks and Carsten Munk forming the content committee. Quim said, Here you can already see a good bunch of people with experience organizing free community events focusing in free software and related topics. The area that needs to grow is Logistics. [...] About the content committee, a first key task is to define the structure of the program. Many of us has opinions on what works and what doesn't so much nowadays in our online world when it comes to community events and conferences in general. Brilliant ideas welcome as well. If you've been to particular good (or bad) conferences in the past, chip in with your ideas.