Hi, I have 2 questions which I haven't been able to find answers to. First of all, is there a simple way to use the LEDs for the camera as a light? That would be awesome.

Also, I want to use my N900 as a portable media server, and reading through the forums it seems like a great way to do this is DLNA/uPNP. However most dicussions concerning this seems to be about using the N900 as a client, I' more interested in using it as a server. A portable device capable of playing 720p video as well as music wirelessly would be awesome.

moodLight in extras-devel or the flashlight applet.
(extras-devel: welcome to the danger zone :-)

it will suck all of battery power if you use led as a flash light.

flashlight-applet in extras-devel (or extras-testing). Works well so should land in extras someday...

They are just LEDs which don't consume too much power.

-Jeff

Ah, nice to know about the light.

Using mplayer & the shipped tv-out I've been able to display 480p content nicely on a TV, and while it does drain battery there's one thing in particular which I've noticed, namely that it outputs the video content to the n900 screen as well. This seems like a waste of battery.

I presume DLNA/uPNP would use the wireless on the phone to transfer the data to the client, would it be the transfer of the data through wireless which would be the large drain on battery?

Most likely yes. Perhaps your better with simply using it as a mass storage device, that way you can even charge it

I really like this when it's possible, for example when I'm at home I just plug it into my BR player and it works like a charm, even playing HD content. What intrigues me the most about having it acting as a wireless media server is:
a) I don't always carry the usb cord with me, so if I'm at a party or at a buddies place I can just start to stream content to their device without a cord.
b) I have one of the samsung HD tvs, which I've seen supports DLNA right out of the box. A lot of my mates also have this range of TVs, and I presume I would then be able to stream content to the TV without a device in the middle.

Doing a bit more researching I found that Rygel is slated for release with Harmattan, and Rygel seems to implement the functionality I'm interested in. So I'm going to cross fingers and hope that it's awesome

Well, if only used occasionally, it won't affect your battery that much. I jumped on the DLNA train a couple months ago and still learning a lot, but AFAIK it's not the holy grail yet, because the clients need to understand the format and codecs used in the video served. I also have a Sony TV with DLNA capabilities, but it only plays MPEG-2, so unless i convert all my movies (no way ), i need to stick with my PS3 (which also pretty much limits the formats, but at least understands m2ts, which takes only a couple of minutes to create from HD movies). Sorry for going a bit off, i just don't want you to get as much disappointed from DLNA as i was

flashlight application in extras-devel.

Unless something has changed in the last few weeks, the flashlight app just turns on the screen to full brightness, not the flash LED. AFAIK nobody has figured out how to do that yet, or whether it can be.