FrontView turns N900 into proper document scanner
Ben Lau has released the first version of "FrontView"; this clever little application allows your N900 to act as a convenient scanner. It will convert [an] image of paper / hand written notes into a flatted document image by de-skewing automatically. Now, your Nokia N900 is not only a mobile phone, but also a document scanner. A set of screenshots and a video demonstrate the ease in which the paper can be extracted and skewed to produce a straightened document, as if you'd taken it straight on. The package is in Extras-testing and has already reached the threshold of votes required for promotion to Extras; however brave users should continue to test to see if there are any major bugs.
Scrobbler for Maemo hits version 2.0
Felipe Contreras has released an update to his Scrobbler application (formerly maemo-scrobbler) that brings with several improvements and bug fixes. It’s time for the second release of scrobbler for Maemo featuring support to mark tracks as “loved”. There have been many improvements over the 1.0 release: support to “love” tracks, detect network connectivity, support for Now-Playing. Scrobbler is currently available for testing in Extras-testing.
Play chess with your contacts
Alban Crequy walks us through setting up a network chess match with your contacts in Miniature (a chess program for Maemo). The protocol used by Miniature is based on the Forsyth-Edwards Notation. At the moment it sends the whole state of the board to the remote player at each move. Miniature only sends valid moves, but does not have any protections about possible unfriendly other implementations yet. Miniature implements the standard Telepathy Client interface with the Telepathy-Qt4 library. This enables Miniature to be automatically started by Mission Control on your N900 when a contact invites you to play. Telepathy stream tubes care about the connectivity to the remote device. The Address Book APIis used to to show your contacts in the same way as other applications on the platform (avatars, contacts are merged correctly, status). The latest version of Miniature is currently available from Extras-devel. Contributors interested in testing or providing development help should check it out, but bear in mind the standard warnings and disclaimers still apply.