Accessing N900 contacts from cars' Bluetooth systems
First up, an apology; your editor thought he'd covered this before, but a quick grep of the archives suggests not: many countries have laws which prevent the use of handheld devices whilst driving, and so Bluetooth-based "car kits" are becoming increasingly prevalent; either built-in to the car's head unit, or as a standalone add-on (similar to a GPS). The N900's Bluetooth stack, out-of-the-box anyway, doesn't integrate with these systems, but a number of enterprising users have found a way. Reflektorfalke describes the fundamentals: The Bluetooth Phone Book Access Profile (PBAP) allows to exchange Phone Book objects between carkits and mobile devices. Or in other words, PBAB profile gives your car unit read access to your mobile phone book... (to be exact: to both, the phonebook stored on SIM card and the phone book stored on internal memory. But for N900 only second one is relevant). The wiki page embedded within the thread below contains a number of deb files which have to be installed manually, so caution is advised.
Walkthrough of various N900 tethering options
Mustali Dalal has released an incredibly thorough series of articles on the varioues tethering options available on the N900 (thanks, mostly, to efforts by the community). The walkthroughs take you through nearly every possible tethering available combination for most platforms (Linux, Mac and Windows) in excellent detail - with pictures. Truly, now, the definitive resource for anyone with questions about the N900 and tethering.
Nokia Care seeking more information on users' experiences of N900 USB "defect"
Randall Arnold, one of your Maemo Community Council members, has apparently been asked to collect data on the severity of and Care response to the N900 USB port detatchment issue. To start this off, I am reintroducing the survey that galvanized the maemo.org community. That survey has closed but had collected a significant amount of data beforehand. The challenge here is to bring respondents back to the table. Even more critical, to obtain a reasonably accurate picture of the problem’s scope we really need response from as many people as possible, especially those not having any problems. More on that later in the article. Even if you've never suffered any problems with your N900's USB port, your input is still valuable.