Rockbox on the SanDisk Sansa Clip v1

I’ve been fascinated by the RockBox project for a while now. It is an alternative firmware (i.e. OS lite) for music players with a bunch of extra features. It is being ported to a range of different devices and it is becoming the Linux of sorts of MP3 players. (Soon to be replaced by actual Linux, one presumes…) The first device for which I had a RockBox port was an old iPod, the ones we would call “classic” these days. Continue reading

R.I.P. Kindle

The disturbing trend of electronic gadgets dying earlier in their life span continues. My Kindle gave up yesterday. I turned it on, and the e-ink display was broken, showing me weird streaks on the top right portion. It looks like blunt force, but the reader was not exposed to any force. Well, I was kinda happy with my Kindle – loving the wireless connectivity, long battery life, and clarity of the display. Continue reading

Developing for Maemo - Fremantle VirtualBox Image

So I’ve been playing around with the Fremantle VirtualBox image that Maemo.org provides on their web site. The idea is great: you get the image, run it in a virtualization environment, and you don’t have to set up anything. Great idea, poor implementation. First of all, the image doesn’t come pre-loaded with instructions. I would have expected a big icon to show on the desktop after launch, telling me what to do next. Continue reading

The Suicide of the Kindle

Who remembers the time when Amazon deleted a bunch of books from Kindles? It was the dark ages of e-ink, Amazon was the undisputed master of ebooks, its marketplace was teeming with “publishers” that sold books in the public domain. One of those publishers offered a book whose copyrights had not expired. Understandable, given the absurd length of copyright extensions. In any case, what Amazon did next was completely horrifying to any book lover. Continue reading