Thursday, June 18, 2009

A New Role for Megan Fox

Get this ... The sexy Megan Fox plays a "tough, no nonsense" prostitute in the comic-turned-movie, Jonah Hex. She enjoyed playing the part and said it was loads more fun than she thought it would be. In fact, she could related. “When you think about it, we actors are kind of prostitutes,” she says in the July issue of British GQ. “We get paid to feign attraction and love. Other people are paying to watch us kissing someone, touching someone, doing things people in a normal monogamous relationship would never do with anyone who’s not their partner. It’s really kind of gross.”

Gorgeous and smart! We look forward to her movie coming out late in 2010. (oh, and don’t forget to go see Transformers!)


*Getty Images


- Aanchal

Efficient text input shortcuts on N800/N810

These "tricks" are scattered around the web, but I have not found a compact, to-the-point post with all the shortcuts that we can use on the on-screen (stylus) keyboard and with the hardware keyboard, so here it is:

N800/N810 on-screen stylus keyboard gestures

  • Space: Tap and move right
  • Enter: Tap and move down
  • Backspace: Tap and move left (keep the stylus on the touchscreen and move to the right, then left again, etc.. for multiple backspace keypresses)
  • Shift inversion: Tap the character you want shifted and move up (also works for the number block and its special characters)

N810 hardware keyboard shift+Fn alternatives

  • Shift single character: Press shift, release shift, then press character
  • Single "blue" character: Press Fn, release Fn, then press character
  • Shift lock: Press Shift twice (press shift once to leave the shift lock mode)
  • Fn lock/"Number mode": Press Fn twice (press Fn once to leave the Fn lock mode)

The Single "blue" character shortcut is helpful to enter special characters and numbers on the left side of the hardware keyboard with your left thumb only, as there is no Fn key on the right side of the keyboard.

Update: Timeless pointed out that these are well documented in the OS2008 "Help" application under "Text input methods" and then "Virtual keyboards" and "Integrated keyboard". The latter even includes another hint for entering accented letters and umlauts: Hold down Chr and press the letter key repeated until the desired accented letter appears. Even if you normally don't read the online manual, these two pages are worth reading.

Monday, June 15, 2009

gPodder Maemo 5 UI Preview

While we keep the Diablo packages of gPodder updated, and even improve the UI somewhat, it's also time to think about how to create a good podcatcher UI for the next iteration of Maemo. During the weekend, I've come up with some ideas on how it could look like. Some of the problems have already been fixed in the latest release, watch the video of the new UI here:

You can find a list of things that are already working and things where you could help on the gPodder Fremantle Roadmap, and don't forget to report any bugs you find (both in Diablo and Fremantle) to gPodder @ Maemo Bugs.