fMMS, enabling multimedia messages on Maemo 5, on its way to Extras

Nokia has been long criticised for the lack of MMS functionality in Maemo 5. MMS, a cousin of SMS, allows the sending of pictures, sounds and text via the mobile network. The iPhone was similarly criticised when it was first released. However, due to Maemo's open platform, the implementation wasn't dependent on Nokia releasing an update. Instead, Nick Leppänen Larsson stepped up and - after some initial promising experiments - his MMS application, fMMS, now allows you to send and receive multimedia messages on your N900.

The development process has been long, and Nick has been supported by Nokia; the result of which is a very polished application (which, in PR1.2, will be able to auto-detect the "APN" settings necessary for communication with the MMS-portion of the mobile network) Nick describes how the application works: fMMS installs a daemon (program running in the background) which will start whenever an SMS Push message (this SMS is of a special kind which is not handled by default in Fremantle) related to MMS is received by your phone. It will read the SMS message and try to fetch the MMS from your operator. v1.0.0 had a few bugs, caught by the Extras testing process, and so v1.0.3 is in Extras-testing. If you want to help push polished applications to end-users via Extras, please help this app, and others.

maemo.org sprint process: future discussion

maemo.org currently organises its paid contributors; and some volunteers; through an agile "sprint" process. This process has tasks picked up and run with for a month. However, this agile process used by those working for the Maemo community has been straining at the edges recently. Dave Neary, the maemo.org docmaster, has kicked off a discussion, on the maemo-community mailing list and talk.maemo.org about the dissatisfication felt by many people operating in that process recently: The monthly check-list meetings have not been satisfying for me. Nor has not having a meeting at all. Over the past 3 months, it's felt like large sections of the Maemo community have moved into wait-and-see mode with MeeGo, and no-one wants to be working on things now which end up being obsoleted by MeeGo/Harmattan work in a few months. If you'd like to shape the future of the collaboration between the amateur and professional aspects of the community; and how the MeeGo transition may affect that collaboration, please get involved.