[Announce] "Here and Now" for Maemo 5
 

The N8 comes with a service called Here and Now. This reads the cell tower information you're currently connected to and opens a web page detailing the current events (cinema listings and weather, for example) near you. I've done a quick port to Maemo 5.

Once launched, it sends your approximate position to Nokia's servers and shows you what's currently going on. As it doesn't use the GPS, it's really quick:

http://bleb.org/software/maemo/here-and-now_rugby.png

More info >>

Re: [Announce] "Here and Now" for Maemo 5
 

I guess this is writted in QT webruntime? :)

atleast this is a of proof that N900 still rocks and we will se lots of backports from nokia mobiles cause of QT :D

However it would be great if someone could integrate qtwebkit as a hildon desktop widget that way we could see some great wrt apps like above in as desktop widgets :D

Re: [Announce] "Here and Now" for Maemo 5
 

What is it written in? Python? Qt?

Re: [Announce] "Here and Now" for Maemo 5
 

It opens in the default browser AFAICS.

Re: [Announce] "Here and Now" for Maemo 5
 

Thanks. Works well, but Nokia needs to refine their data as it misses the local stuff and wants to send you to the next town, unless you select "More results from" then you get more local things but still doesn't want to sort by distance.
Keep up the good work.

Re: [Announce] "Here and Now" for Maemo 5
 

Thanx mate!

Works great for me, even in a big city, pretty fast on wifi...and yep it's opening the browse.r

Re: [Announce] "Here and Now" for Maemo 5
 

I thought about Qt, and using Qt WebKit, to try and get more control over the CSS (make the fonts bigger, relayout better in landscape), but instead opted for:

• a shell script that
• executes a DBus command to get cell information
• uses awk to pull out various bits
• executes a DBus command to open microb

Qt WRT can already be used as a widget:

http://xizhizhu.blogspot.com/2010/08...ello-view.html

Re: [Announce] "Here and Now" for Maemo 5
 

Has anyone else tried Here and Now while using AT&T Go Phone? If so, are you finding success? I get "Location not detected", and I wonder if that's due to AT&T, Go Phone, or the towers in my region.

Re: [Announce] "Here and Now" for Maemo 5
 

I've had that once or twice - I think there are gaps in Nokia's geocoding database :-/

Re: [Announce] "Here and Now" for Maemo 5
 

Yes, well, if there are gaps, my area is an excellent candidate for one of them. I'll admit I mostly installed your port of Here and Now to test how wide an area the service considers to be "local". For instance, I know of only one, tiny restaurant in my Zip code, and there are certainly no theaters or official weather stations, so it's always interesting seeing how far location-based search services will "zoom out" to find results.

Re: [Announce] "Here and Now" for Maemo 5
 

FWIW, 0.0.3 is now in Extras-devel: http://maemo.org/packages/package_in...and-now/0.0.3/

Re: [Announce] "Here and Now" for Maemo 5
 

@Jaffa, great application. Unfortunately I am getting "Connection failes"

Re: [Announce] "Here and Now" for Maemo 5
 

oo man this is gold.... brilliant.. just brilliant!

Re: [Announce] "Here and Now" for Maemo 5
 

Don't feel bad. I live in a US city with a population just under two million and I get the same "Location not detected" message.

Re: [Announce] "Here and Now" for Maemo 5
 

works in Kolkata, India...perfect

Re: [Announce] "Here and Now" for Maemo 5
 

Ohh, I loved this Here And Now on my old N96. Thx for this one.

Re: [Announce] "Here and Now" for Maemo 5
 

Live also in a small city in Suriname 250.000
Probably you must go outside if you are in a building.
got the same "location not detected" but outside works pretty well and I got the local information

Re: [Announce] "Here and Now" for Maemo 5
 

Excellent stuff. Thanks Jaffa. Applications like this keep me with my N900.

Re: [Announce] "Here and Now" for Maemo 5
 

Sadly, entering the great outdoors didn't resolve the problem for me. A lovely day for a walk though.

Re: [Announce] "Here and Now" for Maemo 5
 

Thanks for the effort Jaffa... Anything else from the N8 in the pipeline?

BTW, I experienced something strange after using this. I now have this unexplained urge for Starbucks coffee :confused:

:p Thanks again dude,

Re: [Announce] "Here and Now" for Maemo 5
 

This is really wow !!!!!!!! whoever from Nokia watching this forum see this and we need more from you ........ This community is just awesome and still keeps this device alive and top of everything

Thanks Jaffa !!!!!!!

Re: [Announce] "Here and Now" for Maemo 5
 

Works beatifically. So, the icon is just basically a bookmark ?

Re: [Announce] "Here and Now" for Maemo 5
 

No, it's more than that. The desktop file calls /usr/bin/here-and-now, a script created by Andrew to work with Nokia's service.

Re: [Announce] "Here and Now" for Maemo 5
 

I did also get "Location not detected" when I tried it on T-Mobile network.

After all this is basically similar app than Earthcomber? The exception is that Earthcomber uses GPS for location. Because of that reason the Here and Now likely is more battery friendly, if it worked... :rolleyes:

Re: [Announce] "Here and Now" for Maemo 5
 

It worked for me earlier at my home. But now I'm at my fiancee's apartment and it doesn't work (guess it has to do with Nokia's mapping of T-Mobile towers).

Re: [Announce] "Here and Now" for Maemo 5
 

i also has the same issue. In my home it worked from one place and from another room it didn't work and shown " location not detected".

I started GPS Jinni and restarted Here and Now, it worked. Can be used as a temp solution until they fix it.

Re: [Announce] "Here and Now" for Maemo 5
 

Not all towers in the US send back information in the same way for some reason...

I did something like this 4 or 5 years ago with a J2ME app. I used a standard query then parsed what returned to find the cell towers zip code. I then used that for simple location searches from a very infant Google at the time. I would think this app now uses the geo coordinates which also are reported.

The thing is, the zip code was not always in the same place in a string of returned information and as a result this approach was not very reliable in a small J2ME applet.

Perhaps this kind of thing is what is affecting this app in the USA. I would have hoped it would have been standardized by now.

BTW, sitting at home in Pennsylvania it was very fast. I'll be on the road toward Albany, NY tomorrow and will give it a go along the way.

Re: [Announce] "Here and Now" for Maemo 5
 

It worked for me with a Go Phone SIM in the SF Bay area.

Everything was within a couple of miles, but this area is pretty dense.

Re: [Announce] "Here and Now" for Maemo 5
 

I also get a Location not detected in our London office. I wonder if there's some portion of the cid that is required in the URL (say via a bitmask).

Need a device with Nokia's Here and Now client at the same location. Something to test tomorrow (if I remember).

Re: [Announce] "Here and Now" for Maemo 5
 

And to balance matters out, Here and Now does succeed from my office. If there's anything I can do to help troubleshoot--running a custom, log-generating script in both locations or whatnot--please let me know, Jaffa.

Re: [Announce] "Here and Now" for Maemo 5
 

If you run /usr/bin/here-and-now from X Terminal, it logs some info. However, unless there's an area where it work on Symbian, but not on Maemo, the information won't be useful.

I'll let you know.

Re: [Announce] "Here and Now" for Maemo 5
 

Brilliant little application. Thanks!

Re: [Announce] "Here and Now" for Maemo 5
 

Just back from a 700 mile road trip in the Northeast of the US. On the way out I attempted to connect about every 10 miles. In this un-scientific study I was successful approximately 65% of the time. The failures may have also included times when I had insufficient or no cell signal. I was driving and could not check easily.

All and all I have to say this app is well worth keeping on board. However, as with all connection dependent services, it can not be relied upon 100% of the time.

Another note: At one location where I stopped for the day I received a "location could not be detected" when I arrived @ 6:30 PM. When I checked again @ 10 PM from the same location, the app found me.

This happen once again at another location during daylight hours but it also seemed to correspond to cell peak volume times. Later on during the long drive home I recalled some of the problems I had with the JAVA app I posted about earlier. It seemed that I would sometimes get a prefix or more characters than expected attached to the string returned by the CID call.

A few years later while in discussion with a carrier's network engineer I learned that the prefix, suffix, or extra characters I encountered in the Cell ID string may have been because additional, supplemental equipment was added to the cell site that the tower off loads volume to when all slots are full.

Re: [Announce] "Here and Now" for Maemo 5
 

I don't get any movie listings. I'm in the Los Angeles area and I guess there are about 15 movies within long walking distance of where I live. I don't know what zip code they are in.

The selection of cafes seems odd. Do places pay a fee to be listed?

Re: [Announce] "Here and Now" for Maemo 5
 

I'm on the O2 network in the UK, I get the all of the Here-and-now information including the movie selection. But out of interest I tried it out with an old dead SIM from the Orange network, although the SIM regisrtation fails, the phone still knew which cell it was in and could give me a location fix and the Here-and-now database (through Wifi) could give me some info but not the movie listings.

So my assumption is that the server gets a little confused with certain cell IDs. One though I had, is that where I live the Orange signal used to be very good then out of the blue it died and Orange became useless to use, so I changed to O2, now having tried the old dead Orange SIM out I find the Orange signal to be much better so maybe it's a new transmitter and it's not fully regognized by the Nokia servers yet. Just a thought.

To get the Movies, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the Event icon I found Movies in there!

Re: [Announce] "Here and Now" for Maemo 5
 

I've continued to try Here and Now from home occasionally, and one time, early this morning, the service actually succeeded in determining my location and pulling in data. Unsurprisingly, it had no events, movie theaters, or restaurants to report to me, but it did provide the weather.

Unfortunately, I hadn't run it from the command line, and it returned to the familiar "Location not detected" on subsequent attempts. I'll keep trying though, and eventually I may have success and failure logs to contrast.

Re: [Announce] "Here and Now" for Maemo 5
 

I got some concerts there. I get the weather and restaurants.

It's nice, though.

Re: [Announce] "Here and Now" for Maemo 5
 

The most of the time I get informations like restaurants, weather, cinema and so one. Really nice.

Only at work I got every time: "Location not detected"

In my opinion this is not a bug in Jaffa's port. I guess Nokias table with cell tower locations is simply not complete.
Perhaps someone could borrow me a N8 and I will compare it carefully.

Re: [Announce] "Here and Now" for Maemo 5
 

Works Perfectly fine to me :D , a great port to the N900 ! , but i wonder if is this thing just more link a thing to link to this page which can detect your location or coordinates using the GPS or IP ? I expected it to be some kind of application.

And i encountered a problem while trying to click the phone or call icon of a particular restaurant .

It says : Unable to Open . Address type not supported. wtai://wp/mc;(thephonenumber)

thephonenumber - being the actual number i'm trying to call from that app.

Re: [Announce] "Here and Now" for Maemo 5
 

Works perfectly in Oslo! Thanks for porting this :)