Ari Jaaksi interviewed on The Linux Link Tech Show, 28 Feb 2007. Lots of N800 and Maemo.org discussion plus a little on the 770 to start.

Ogg and MP3 podcast downloads.

Total running time 124:27

Running list:

1:05 - intro (another week another show, new names in the IRC)
3:15 - Allan & Linc helped Pat move a bunch of stuff into the mancave, HDMI issues, AVS forum, SNL still sucks
6:48 - Venture Brothers gets green lighted for a 3rd season, "fitting it in the mancave", VisualBashPodder?!
11:24 - Dell's IdeaStorm site gets flooded with F/OSS requests and basically ignores them
15:10 - Dell's small business support, Dell does sell servers with Red Hat
19:10 - silly article on M$ buying Linux
25:01 - Dan still hasn't posted the survery results, M$ coughs up 1.5 billion in Alcatel mp3 patent infringement lawsuit
29:00 - has M$ changed?, Dan loves World of Warcraft under Crossover, Linux warez?
36:20 - submitting Allan as a speaker at OLF, Ted Haeger is a busy guy
40:52 - we talk to Dr. Ari Jaaksi from Nokia, target audience of the 770
42:20 - the N800 is more defined than the 770 and a mass market product
45:20 - community response and life cycle of the product, value of building with F/OSS software, why Linux?
51:20 - more add on options for the N800, more codecs for the N800?, maemo.org developer website
54:40 - what do you need to know to develop apps for the Nokia N800?, applications needed for the N800?
59:10 - hardware add-ons for the N800 in the future?, getting your application on the maemo.org website, approval process?
66:00 - any chance Java will be ported to the N800?, hardware improvements, ARM processors
71:10 - availability of the GPS unit outside of Europe, biggest improvements for the N800
76:50 - accessories available for the N800, "Apple gets it all wrong"
84:10 - where does Nokia want to go with the N800?, what makes a good cell phone? too many features?
90:50 - Dan had a problem with a network cable, seems to be fixed now, code in VB!
94:10 - Vista marketing campaign, M$ "innovation"
96:00 - Levelator seems to work great, sound quality is fantastic, TWIT "blueness", podcasts we listen to
102:50 - "their podcast is too scripted", binrev is a great show, last days of AllofMP3.com??
109:20 - electronics companies are implementing 5c/hdcp to block recording of high definition channels
115:10 - new weekly segment - geek pron?
117:20 - wrapup (frappr shoutouts, Nerdcore)

any text transcript?

Ari's suggestion for development of new apps for a "sniffer/notification" got me thinking. If anyone's used OSX, Growl is an awesome notification system that would be pretty sweet to be used as a notification system on the IT platform. Too bad I have no l33t linux programming skills.

Not that I'm aware of.

listened it, one unexpected answer I got is that they really want to phase out the n770 as fast as possible by not reducing the price. So while they are still saying they will sell and support n770 as long as is the demand, they actually don't want to increase the demand. I was expecting them to drop the price sooner or later and now I understood it won't happen. Ari clearly said - the N800 price is not very different from n770 so we hope customers will choose better product. Also as we know from bugzilla many bugs are now closed for N770 product as WONTFIX, no further development
https://maemo.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=169#c9 so it is clear where we stand with n770 future.

Otherwise most of the talk was expected, it seems they are really happy about the Maemo platform inside Nokia so the future looks bright but as a manager he can't say anything else about it so we'll see.

This is confirmed by posts today on the maemo-dev lists, mentioning that bugs in the 770 bugzilla are being closed by the Nokia team with the mention "WONTFIX, no activities for N770 anymore", like this one :

https://maemo.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=169#c9

End of the road ?...

EDIT: sorry for the dupe with Fanoush's post above...

Not looking good is it? And not surprisingly, nobody from Nokia has replied to the newsgroup post asking for clarification of the Bugzilla situation, and Ari hasn't posted anything about the 770s future for some time.

Ari needs to clarify the situation and turn his words into action - ie. get someone assigned to fix the bugs raised against the 770 (many of which are actually bugs in apps common to OS 2007, so "not fixing" is harming the N800 too) and release a bug-fix update for OS 2006. A roadmap wouldn't hurt either.

Anyone got a direct line to Dr. Jaaksi?

EDIT: I've left a comment in his latest blog posting - hopefully he'll reply but if anyone has direct contact please give him a nudge.

Surely Daniel (Thoughtfix) will be our proxy! My efforts were met with... silence. :/

I think what Nokia really needs is an official community ombudsman to interact with the community and build good will. More direct communication needs to take place than is presently occuring. I know that some users (myself included) have been really put off my Nokia's lack of responsiveness. I don't care if the answer is the one I want to hear, just having a clear answer is better than being left in the dark.

There is a fair bit of Nokia representation in the development community (newsgroups/irc) but many questions go unaswered because the developers have to toe the company line and can't divulge information on certain topics, becuase they are not allowed to or they may get into bother with management.

What's needed is, as you say, a community liason who has more or less direct access to Nokia Internet Tablet management and can help address failings and concerns within the community. Kind of what Ari does, but more hands on. Having the liason post in this forum - which is after all, dedicated to Internet Tablets - would reach a far wider audience than newsgroups and irc. That, or a blog. Or both.

Fat chance!