Notices

If I'm not mistaken those modes already exist in the droid-
When you connect it to the charger in your car you get big finger-friendly buttons and I'm not sure what happens in night stand (alarm clock) mode.
I think it would be cool to have car mode on the n900- big icons that take you to the navigation app, the music app, phone app, etc. I really don't see anyone using or looking at any of the widgets while driving, so you don't really need them when you're in the car.
And as for alarm clock mode, it would be cool to have it sitting on the night stand with the stand open and a large display of the time and date (on the whole screen), with, maybe, quick access to alarms, and whatever..
So what do you think? How useful will it be? What's the best way to implement it? Should it be triggered by being connected to the charger in any way (I mean, I mostly charge my phone when I go to sleep)? And also- How can we make it 10 times better than the droid's car and alarm clock modes..

I would hate having to have some dumbed down interface. By all mean have the ability to trigger an app that provides the same but just change the profile to another one with changed sound settings etcetras. Works fine for other phones and there are more important features for car integration.

Why not allow manual switching of profile for people without car kits but allow configuring of profile chnage upon conection to a car kit as opposed to a headset? This is one area that S60 performs very well in: might not be eye candy but very functional and as you said: who's lookng at the phone most of the time whilst driving?

you can always use one of the 4 desktop views for 'car-mode' but the big disadvantage you have there is you can't use the same shortcut twice on the desktops.

Yeah, the car mode would have to be activated.. If it's an app, then just activate the app..
Why not have a dumbed down interface though? Let's say you want to turn your GPS on while driving, the ideal way is to have a big icon on your screen taking you there rather than having to look for it.. And while you're driving you're pretty much limited to GPS, music player, phone app and I can't think of anything else right now...
The idea is that it would provide a car mode for those apps as well- big playback and GPS buttons..
Ah well, maybe it's not that necessary after all, I was just wondering if it's doable, and if so, is it worth doing.. Same goes for the alarm clock thing.

I thought of the night stand mode idea the other night when setting the alarm before bed. Would imagine it would be fairly simple to do an app for this. Also a brightness control or dimmer within the app would be good as the display is quite bright for my liking.
Has there been any movement on this since it was suggested?

You can, but must manually modify their .desktop files in /usr/share/applications/hildon-home by adding the "X-Multiple=true" entry.

Source reference

Keep checking on the release of FlipClock for your N900. It has both "Day" and "Night" display modes and has a separate display dimmer control so that you can set the brightnes very low at night. It also plays your favorite mp3 music for the alarm. The N8xx version already works great, and I like the fact that the alarm sound starts out very low, then gets louder over a 60 second time period.

I don't see a .desktop file for say the browser icon...

I guess the car profile could also include hands free mode:

a) auto-answering phone calls after a number of configurable rings and,
b) configurable auto-activation of louds peackers for phone calls.

Hey there.
I support this concept in a big way as I am using my n900 more and more as my car media/nav device.

Could a set of custom 'widgets' be made using Queen Bee to open the various apps or change profile state?

then have some nice finger/drive friendly buttons to choose from.
like:

Has anyone already gone there???