fMMS, enabling multimedia messages on Maemo 5, on its way to Extras

Nokia has been long criticised for the lack of MMS functionality in Maemo 5. MMS, a cousin of SMS, allows the sending of pictures, sounds and text via the mobile network. The iPhone was similarly criticised when it was first released. However, due to Maemo's open platform, the implementation wasn't dependent on Nokia releasing an update. Instead, Nick Leppänen Larsson stepped up and - after some initial promising experiments - his MMS application, fMMS, now allows you to send and receive multimedia messages on your N900.

The development process has been long, and Nick has been supported by Nokia; the result of which is a very polished application (which, in PR1.2, will be able to auto-detect the "APN" settings necessary for communication with the MMS-portion of the mobile network) Nick describes how the application works: v1.0.0 had a few bugs, caught by the Extras testing process, and so v1.0.3 is in Extras-testing. If you want to help push polished applications to end-users via Extras, please help this app, and others.


maemo.org sprint process: future discussion

maemo.org currently organises its paid contributors; and some volunteers; through an agile "sprint" process. This process has tasks picked up and run with for a month. However, this agile process used by those working for the Maemo community has been straining at the edges recently. Dave Neary, the maemo.org docmaster, has kicked off a discussion, on the maemo-community mailing list and talk.maemo.org about the dissatisfication felt by many people operating in that process recently: If you'd like to shape the future of the collaboration between the amateur and professional aspects of the community; and how the MeeGo transition may affect that collaboration, please get involved.



In this edition...

1. Front Page
   • fMMS, enabling multimedia messages on Maemo 5, on its way to Extras
   • maemo.org sprint process: future discussion
2. Applications
   • Manual focus during video capture using lfocus
   • Portrait SMS writing comes to Maemo 5 thanks to community efforts
   • Using icedtea (Java port) and microemulator to run Opera Mini on Maemo 5
   • PortaBase: portable database application for Maemo
3. Development
   • Open build system for MeeGo and Maemo
   • Experimental Qt 4.7 packages available for Maemo
4. Devices
   • N900 may be able to achieve USB host mode after all
   • N8x0 community updates site is now live to pick up where Nokia left Diablo
   • Why PR1.2 has been delayed
5. Announcements
   • Maelophone: stylophone pocket organ emulation

For some reason I now can't use tags with four letters; which rules out mwkn and news. <sigh />

Thanks for this, as always.

I'm just wondering: Can these posts to t.m.o be tweaked to include a direct link to the "Download issue" of the current issue, e.g. in this instance to http://www.mwkn.net/2010/19/download.html ? I find such a link useful so I can read the entire issue in one go.

I subscribe to the RSS feed at http://maemo.org/news/latest.xml and I notice that when the MWKN item appears in my RSS reader, it has a handy Download link next to "In this edition", so I'm just wondering if the t.m.o version can have the same link.