Hi Qgil,

I've e-mailed Texrat with my suggestions a few weeks ago, related to productivity. I'll restate some again.

First of all, some kind of PIM suite which is not online dependant (can sync with chosen server). Please, not Google-only solutions. Make sure you aim towards platform indepdence. Default can be Ovi-based. The one I liked most thus far is Osmo. I packaged this to Maemo, but need to make the packaging better, and there are some issues; mostly usability based.

On productivity, the points are made to allow syncing with Outlook. Again, I suggest platform independent solutions. Not everyone uses Outlook. Lets stick to open standard wrt syncing as much as possible (e.g. syncml, ical).

If you want to package Rdesktop 1.5 I suggest to go for a NX client instead. This allows RDP, VNC, and NX (for X server) support. Its proprietary, but they've ported it to various other platforms and architectures. I've asked if they were interested in a port, but my money offer wasn't high enough, and they're busy on a web version. There is also an open source NX project; they also programmed various clients.

Fennec. I wish, after the initial quirks, it'll become the default browser on 'N900'. I suggest Nokia contributes to Fennec, and with expertise from MicroB, will be able to help in making Fennec better. Programs like Fennec, Canola2, Liqbase, and Carman give the NIT value because they're made FOR the touch screen. Compare their usability profile to say one which was specifically made for Maemo but not quite there yet. e.g. Modest. Lessons learned from these applications can be implemented in other applications as well. Nokia must learn from competitots who are very much into the touch model, and Nokia must research this aspect very well, and besides that, Nokia must encourage developers to embrace the touch mechanisms. The Python + QEdje virtual keyboard is a good example of a good, touch-based program, but I haven't been able to see it working on my NIT. How to achieve this becoming more popular? Make a contest?

Nokia Maps 2 port (internal funding). The current Wayfinder application is too archaic (and heck, I have a lifetime license for it but still prefer something better). An alternative might be Maemo Mapper, but the interface is not user-friendly at all (not for normal users). A usability expert must look at it. There is some research between stock gpsd and minigpsd; some reports state they get a faster lock with minigpsd.

Must go now, more later..

https://wiki.maemo.org/Killer_Apps

What we're really talking about here is new applications rather than ports, but I hace added a section in the bottom for people to list ports and what they think needs to be done to them, etc.

Let's get typing

Something that I've been daydreaming over the last little while but haven't actually had the time to work on...

Something that the N810 ads seemed to push was social networking and connectivity... especially with Facebook and so on. What I would really like to see is an app that makes social networking, specifically the things done on those networks, easier. And I want it to work offline as well.

One app that can do blogging, microblogging, uploading photos to Flickr/Facebook/etc, compiling songs played in Media Player and scrobbling them to Last.fm... all of that stuff in one app, perhaps a status bar icon allowing quick access... or an frontend/daemon setup.

Personally, I don't have a phone and I'm not always within distance of a wifi access point, but I don't want to have to stop and wait until I do to do things.

A typical usage scenario might be... I guess doing what I do daily, leaving work and heading for home at the end of the day. I'll be listening to music with Media Player, sit down on my seat on the bus and decide to write up a blog post, tag and upload a few pictures to Flickr and Facebook, and maybe a tweet or two. I'll open up this app and get to work. (Maybe we'll call it Sociale... just to give it that extra international flavor Maemo fans seem to like.)

(Perhaps the front end stores and sends everything (by d-bus?) for doing these tasks to a daemon that awaits a connection and once it sees one active, posts everything as asked without further interaction from the client. This can work like the e-mail client currently does, where you write your e-mails offline and hit send and then when your tablet goes online, you just see the "mail sent" notification box pop up. No apps needing to stay open hogging screen space.)

Once I get back home and the tablet connects, the backend posts my blog posts, my tweets and microblogs and sends Last.fm my musical choices.

Basically, think of something like the ping.fm site except it's an application, can work offline and can handle other types of things such as photos and music and whatever else.

Dunno... just an idea. I know it would make my tablet usage much more efficient and fun.

Nice explanation, add it to the wiki page then

+1
Sounds good. I like the analogy with writing emails offline and pushing them when you go online. That's how I used to work back with my Palm+wi-fi card: I wrote and replied to emails on the bus, then at the bus stop there was actually a hotspot so I just went online there and the emails went off. Then I walked away, out of wi-fi range again.

lardman: I think brainstorming application ideas is a fantastic plan. I have some ability to create useful programs, but I am almost totally devoid of useful ideas.

Having a list of applications people would like won't necessarily mean they will all get made, but it will certainly help. Especially if there are more people like me who are looking for something to work on, but have no clue what it should be.

Maybe an idea could be for Nokia to start doing bounty-based initiatives - such as putting out a bounty for certain programs to get written.

Work on PIM, improving open source wifi driver, etc..

For those writing their ideas on the wiki page, more than one line is necessary to explain the idea and why it would be a killer app....

Exactly, putting people in touch with developers, UI designers, documentation writers is what we should be striving for in the community for all of the projects that are being developed, not just the possible "killer app" ones we're talking about here. Hopefully we can learn some useful skills and processes from this push for applications to be showcased for Fremantle that will feed back into the overall development community.

I'm kinda in that boat too, but there's one thing holding me back from coding. I don't want to put hundreds of hours into something that's not going to work with the next generation of tablets.

I have no idea of N900 screen resolution, whether a physical keyboard will be present, whether there will be an "always-on" IP address as with Android, whether there will be multi-touch, physical size, etc.

So I'm going to wait until some news starts to flow. If the next generation of tablets aren't going to be right for me to buy, I don't want to spend a lot of time developing for the current generation.

Regards,
Roger