If you’re interested in saving up battery, here’s a little how-to on adding a desktop-cmd-exec button that will enable/disable WiFi completely upon being pressed.

First, get desktop command execution widget, if you don’t have it already:

sudo gainroot

apt-get install desktop-cmd-exec

Next you would want to get an enable/disable script. For your convenience, I’ve uploaded it to Pastebin: http://pastebin.com/3ZHx11GZ

Copy the script and save it as wifi.sh in your home directory. Make it executable:

chmod +x wifi.sh

Now, to add the button. Switch to a desktop where you wish to place it, go to edit mode (long tap on the screen or tap on an empty space and tap the gear button that appears on top). Add Desktop Command Execution Widget from the menu, and click the wrench on the widget that appeared. Select the “Add cmd” option on the right. Name the command “Enable/Disable WiFi” or however you’d like, in command put this:

echo “/home/user/wifi.sh” | sudo gainroot | echo “”

Add the command, you’ll be kicked back to the edit mode, so press the wrench again. You’ll see that the new command was already chosen (if it is not, chose it), so you need just to adjust a few options, check the “Update on click” option and uncheck “Update on boot” and “Update on desktop change” buttons. Ta-da! Now you have a button to completely disable the WiFi when you don’t need it and enable it on need, which will save up quite some battery charge.

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Of course, you can utilize the script otherwise, like adding an Alarmed job to disable/enable wifi on certain times.

With all the latest hype about QR-codes, you must certainly would want a QR scanner on your phone. Especially if you’re living in Japan, where QR-codes are most popular.

Well, the N900 sure has a QR-scanner, and a pretty good one! mBarCode, together with a QR plugin can read both barcode and QR information.

You can get both mBarCode and the QR-plugin from the Extras repo:

sudo gainroot

apt-get install mbarcode mbarcode-plugin-qrcode

Launch the application and now you have a very good scanner! Target your camera at a QR or a barcode and the information gets read almost instantly. Links and other “can-be-malicious” content is shown to you before getting opened with your tap. You can even check the shortlinks by copying them and visiting this site.

You can also store the scanned code into a file, or read the code from a file you stored. That way you can use the codes later, or scan the codes downloaded from a website.

With all that, mBarCode is a must-have if you’re used to dealing with QR and barcodes.

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In case if you’d want to test how it works and you don’t have any scannable codes around, you can use an online generator, like this one.

If you happen to run a GNU/Linux machine and often play video games, then you might have heard of Teeworlds. If you didn’t hear about it yet, Teeworld is a retro-styled 2-D online side-scroller, which has pretty graphics, fast-paced gameplay with the well-known game mods: CTF, Deathmatch, etc. A lot of user-created content is available for the game, including extra modes, maps, and graphical sets.  Well, thanks to the Maemo being a complete GNU/Linux distribution, Teeworlds is surely available for playing on your N900!

The package for Teeworlds is available in Extras and you can install it with

sudo gainroot

apt-get install teeworlds

Once installed, you can launch it and see how actually well does the PC game run on your phone. Teeworlds starts up pretty smoothly, can access all the servers, settings and everything else. While you might think that the N900 keyboard might not be suitable for playing, the default key bindings prove otherwise, the game is played fairly well. If you don’t like the bindings, of course you can set your own.

Another point for Maemo’s power as a mobile platform, such a game is definitely worth trying, so check it out!

Check out our new page Funny LOL Pictures (click here) - it brings you daily funny pictures that will make you LOL!

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Note: the steps we go through this how-to include modifying low-level system files and imply that the readers know what they are doing. If you can’t understand some bits or think you might break something, you might want not to try this hack.

Interested in further customization of your N900? Then let’s take a look at how to change that “Swipe to unlock” screen that appears when you press the powerkey with screen locked.

The files we’re interested in are located under two directories:

 /usr/share/themes/alpha/backgrounds/

and

/usr/share/themes/alpha/images/

Now, the files are lockslider.png, which is a background image located in the first directory mentioned; LockSliderTop/Bottom/Left/Right.png, which are the backgounds for the slider itself and are located in the second directory mentioned; and, finally, LockSliderThumb.png and LockSliderPortrait.png, which are the images for the slider button in landscape and portrait mode. These are also in the second directory mentioned.

You know the file names now, so you’d want to get creative and make substitutes for those originals! Back them up, if you need it.

Use the original files as a base, you need to be sure the image sizes match. That is, lockslider.png needs to be 800×480, other files need to be the same size as their originals. Check out this custom set for further example.

As soon as you finished creating your files, drop them all to their respective directories and reboot your phone.

  cp -f lockslider.png  /usr/share/themes/alpha/backgrounds/

cp -f LockSlider*.png /usr/share/themes/alpha/images/

sudo gainroot

reboot

Enjoy your new custom Swipe-to-unlock screen!

Check out our new page Funny LOL Pictures (click here) - it brings you daily funny pictures that will make you LOL!

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Need to take a couple of notes? Simple calendar notes and/or text files not enough for you? Then check out Conboy, a clone of Tomboy, which is a very good note management program!

As soon as you get the package (which is available in the Extras repository) and run the app, powerful note managing capabilities will unfold on your screen. Conboy allows text formatting, text alignment, zoom and quite some extra stuff, all of which you can check by looking around the menus and the interface. And it’s all quite readable and manageable!

By pressing that little folder icon, you’ll get a list of all your notes, which can all be searched, sorted, deleted, edited… All management operations are handled quite well, which makes Conboy even better.

So, if you keep forgetting things, or if you’re used to taking a lot of notes, like I am, then Conboy is surely a must have on your Nokia N900.

Check out our new page Funny LOL Pictures (click here) - it brings you daily funny pictures that will make you LOL!

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No doubt, your phone must be something very valuable for most of you. If so, you will want to keep it away from thieves. HandsOff is a handy app that will help you with that.

HandsOff is a simple alarm tool that will detect possible theft of your N900, using light and proximity sensors. Just type in a PIN-code and, well, press the big red button on top.

After armed, as soon as your N900 leaves the area where it’s supposed to be, a loud alarm will notify you about it right away, and might prevent a theft. Surely, the alarm won’t stop, unless a proper PIN-code is entered. You can also set your own alarm sound and sensitivity, so you can carry the phone in your pocket. You might want to tweak the settings a bit, until your desired settings are discovered.

Even something that relatively small can prevent a theft, so if you’re paranoid, or just want to keep your N900 safe, you should probably try HandsOff.

Check out our new page Funny LOL Pictures (click here) - it brings you daily funny pictures that will make you LOL!

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Ever played Crayon Physics Deluxe? Well, I’m sure you’ll be happy to learn about it’s FOSS clone, Numpty Physics! And what’s more, it runs on your Maemo device perfectly!

In case if you never heard of the game, here’s a quick overview: you have a ball/box/something ‘A’ and you must get it to star/box/something ‘B’. How you do it is completely up to you, your stylus and your imagination. With such a simple premise, the game is very-very fun and has a huge replayablility factor, as every level can be passed with at least 10 ways.

Need to get a ball over a palm tree? Build a giant mallet to hit it! Or create a zipline than will take the ball over the tree. The possibilities are basically endless. In case if you get bored with 17 alread included levels, you can download more, or easily create your own levels!

A little and simple, but very addictive game that will make sure to hold your interest for long and kill the time whenever you want. So get the game and start creaating!

Check out our new page Funny LOL Pictures (click here) - it brings you daily funny pictures that will make you LOL!

Are you in a liking of chess games? Playing with the AI doesn’t seem as good as playing with real players for you? Then you should totally check out Miniature, an FICS client for Maemo!

Miniature is currently only available at Extras-devel, which means you would want it enabled in your repo list. Don’t worry, that doesn’t mean the game is not good enough for everyday use, I myself have tested many releases and they work perfectly. In case if you need help enabling it, check out this wiki article. Make sure to disable it right after downloading the package though.

Now, Miniature enables you to play games hosted at FICS with thousands of players all across the world and even allows you to play P2P games with people nearby or with people in your contacts list. Registering at FICS is not required, but is recommended, if you want to keep easy track of your own games and stats. Host a game or join one of those already available and you’re ready to dive into a nice game of chess with anyone. And you even have easy to use text chat!

Miniature also holds quite some learning possibilities, as you can watch games already played, view chess lessons and participate in one of the tournaments FICS often holds! In case if you would want to play different kinds of chess, like antichess, Miniature allows that too.

A great client for every chess player, or just somebody who would want a nice game while waiting for the bus to arrive, Miniature is definitely worth checking out.

Check out our new page Funny LOL Pictures (click here) - it brings you daily funny pictures that will make you LOL!

Want to read some of your favorite articles on Wikipedia? But what if you don’t have any internet available for some reason? Or maybe you just want to save up money or battery charge for keeping internet connection.

Evopedia will allow you to download an archive of all Wikipedia articles and read them online, optimized for the N900 screen size.

Archives of Wikipedia for many different languages are available. A few Wiktionary archives can be downloaded as well.  A demo archive with 999 articles is available under the name “small”.

Note: Most archives take up more than 100 mB of space on your MyDocs, make sure you have space.

As soon as you download the archive(s), you can search for any article from the main screen. Since all archives are stored locally, the search is very fast. Pick any article and it will be opened in your Web application, and easy to read, thanks to optimized view.

One and only problem I had with Evopedia is that most archives are downloaded via BitTorrent, which takes up a lot of system resources and sometimes can be very unresponsive. Maemo’s watchdog reboots the phone in such occasions and this sometimes messes up the file system. In case if you get a problem with MyDocs mounted read-only, run this as root and reboot the phone (don’t worry, you won’t lose any files):

  fsck.vfat -a /dev/mmcblk0p1

Apart from that, Evopedia provides a nice and easy way to read Wikipedia articles without having any internet connection whatsoever.

Check out our new page Funny LOL Pictures (click here) - it brings you daily funny pictures that will make you LOL!

Note: The steps we go through this how-to include modifying low-level system files. Changing the loading bar is done at your risk, do not attempt if you think that you might mess something up or if you don’t understand some parts of this how-to.

Want to make your boot sequence more cooler? Maemo allows you to change the loading bar that appears at startup.

First, we want to go root:

sudo gainroot

Next, backup the files we want to change:

cd /usr/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/hildon

mkdir /home/user/MyDocs/Bar_Backup

cp indicator_update* /home/user/MyDocs/Bar_Backup

Now, for the fun part. Create your own loading bar images. You may use the originals as a base, you would want 8 PNG images with a size of 192×48, alpha-channel is optional. You can look at this custom loading bar set, for example. Name them all as indicator_update?.png, with ? going from 1 to 8, in the order you want the images to appear.

Drop all the images to /usr/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/hildon

cp -f [your images] /usr/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/hildon/

Once done, try rebooting your phone and checking out if all went smoothly.

Enjoy!