* Yes I was one of the 500.
* Yes I have been checking in and applying my code daily to see if it would take.
* Yes I have become worried that I missed a critical email regarding the availability and search my entire gmail archives.
* No I am not mad and outraged at Nokia for this.

Am I disappointed, yes, I want it now now now. I want to be the first techogeek on my street with it.
BUT I also remember the mess with The N800 discount codes. LetsTalk.com ( the US Nokia online distributer) is crap.

Before everyone jumps to conclusions of Nokia profiteering for the holidays at developers expense, let's just think for a moment that there may be some logistical Snafu here causing online delays.
So lets think for a moment. Nokia cell phones have had a very small market in the US. With the provider mess in the US, Nokia USA does not have a direct.nokia.com store in the US. Instead it chose an online distributer, LetsTalk.com. They probably have a silly contract making it such the Nokia cannot open a portal for direct online purchase. Now brick and mortor is different. Enter Flagship stores. The discount codes for US people are not really Nokia discount codes instead they are a letstalk.com code, thus no discount at BnM stores.

I know Quim has hinted that they are desperately working on the issues (just quietly). The Dec 19th date is currently our best guess.
Quim, any chance a *little* information can flow out regarding codes?

A side rant. b2evolution (meamoepeople hosted blogs) is crappy. The # 1 issue is I still get all the SPAM people try to post to my blog. It fills up the same list as real comments (sorry if I missed publishing any) SO I will probably be moving to Wordpress soon. At least then I get akismet and wordpy.

I was ecstatic about the new non-beta, let's call it Technology Preview of the SIP and Gecko integration this week. I am currently running both and loving them. They are exactly what I like to see from unreleased software.

* Is the Mozilla engine fast? No.
* Slow? No, just not as fast as Opera
* Is it perfect? No, it crashes once in a while.

* Is the SIP client good? Yes!
* Is it perfect? I doubt it, but I can make and receive calls from my home VOIP service. Stellar!
Personal aside: SIP is THE killer app for me on this device.

The most important part of this is that they are starting to *get* community based development. They are sending out code that is operable and pretty good, before we have to wait months for a whole new release. Quim, on the list is giving us insight as to the development process. It was not too long ago where almost all questions Quim and Nokia would respond to were of the form "We can not disclose current or future features". Now this may not be all of Quim's doing, but I give a big Thank You to him for taking our barbs, while working within Nokia to get them to start doing the right thing. This stuff may not seem hard to us, but Quim summed it up well in a recent post: http://lists.maemo.org/pipermail/maemo-developers/2007-July/011000.html

For large companies you need to make a business case for every choice. This is hard, I have seen MANY companies fail at defining the biz case for giving away code. Remember, a biz case needs a real return on investment, not just zero cost. 3rd party developers in a code base is a strong liability.

Anyway good job Quim and the rest of the team in making the biz cases, but more importantly getting this stuff out. So where is BT audio? :)

I have been quiet the last few months. It is funny how life gets in the way sometimes. I am having an experience I have never quite had before. A child's toy is confounding me. So I have a 2 year old I have put together COUNTLESS toys, some with good directions, some with bad. But never have I run into something as terrible as the swingset (cue dramatic music). The directions are so horrible I am basically doing 4 steps to every 3. Now I am resonably, handy, and I am an engineer, which mean I do read the directions, but this is absurd. Many of the steps would be improved by a simple note stating interesting alignment features like "Climbing Rope Hole" But no instead EVERY page reminds you that to use a tee nut you put the lock washer, then the washer on the bolt! Come on now! I would rather write Windows drivers! And so this has gobbled up much of my life along with the tree-felling and landscaping need to place the swing set. They better love this thing! But I digress, on the N800 front I have 2 projects now where I intend to integrate the N800 inf oto a front end. Can't wait to see how it works out.

Check out:
http://andyabramson.blogs.com/voipwatch/2007/04/playing_with_vi.html

Compares Skype Video with Google Chat video. Google chat running on the N800. Only a few words, but they are good words at that.

Qil asked a question. What is a PIM 'suite'. I for one do not know. BUT I know what everyone who drools on my N800 wants. Sidenote: "Yes I spout off about this is an internet device for your life, not a PDA."
But the things I think people want in a PIM suite

• Calendar with Alarms.
• Email app that integrates with calendar.
• A SINGLE address book with convienent interafces to hold all data about contacs and spawn off appropriate applications. IE email, phone, IM, sip address, physical address.
• Synchronization with MS Exchange. I know this is contentious, but I would even accept a commerical product that works even if I had to pay for the addon. Sadly many companies use Exchange for email and calendaring. I have enough trouble manually syncing Kontact to our server, I can't handle another sync job
• ToDo List.
• Note taker.
• Finally, a method of linking the data together.

So how to do it? I don't know. I seriously wonder though if the status quo PDA methods are right. IE: Link-n-Sync to your PCs that have some syncing SW. Instead I'd like to start thinking about something more Internet Tablet focused.

My unformed thought is something akin to but not schedule world. But online storage. Maybe like Google Calendar + custom App on the N800/770. Keep a cache of data available on the device and sync it up/down when online.
This blog is long enogh, but I'll try to form this idea a bit more later.

Sorry for the wasted bytes.