If you use the N900, you probably know gPodder, an extremely good podcasting client for the Maemo 5, so good in fact we that we picked it as 1 of our top 10 must-have apps for the N900.

The developer behind gPodder,Thomas Perl, has integrated notification support into the latest gPodder as you can see from the image above. Another welcome addition is MAFW support. What this basically means that:

“gPodder now listens to MAFW and also talks to it at times. MAFW is the backend of the Media Player application, and you profit in two ways from this integration:

• The last playback position and duration of an episode are displayed in gPodder and synchronized to gpodder.net
• Playback can be resumed even with the Media Player application”

The updated version is still in the Extras-Testing catalog, but judging by the popularity of the app, testing should in record time releasing out of the testing phase.  In the mean time, test, review and vote on the package.

There’s also a gPodder application for Windows and MAC, which has been my podcasting client of choice for Windows 7. You can download that here.

So, you bought the N900, what’s next? With news about MeeGo devices being announced soon, the obvious question remains: Will the N900 get MeeGo? Or will I need to buy a new handset to enjoy MeeGo? Here are are reasons why we think it the N900 might get the full MeeGo treatment.

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One of the N900’s biggest feature has to be it’s browser, promising the full desktop experience. Here at The Nokia Guide we tend to agree that it indeed does live up to this promise and one key component that enabled this was the excellent Adobe Flash support. When the N900, it came with Flash 9.4 pre-installed and all was well.

In the mean time Adobe released Flash 10.1, which brings many improvements like hardware acceleration and other mobile-related improvements such as pausing the Flash Player when there’s an incoming phone call. Several mobile devices received the update, as expected many of which are Android devices. Nokia has been pretty quiet about the issue, while the Maemo community has started to wonder if the N900 will ever get this crucial update. The lack of a Flash 10.1 update for the N900 strikes us as very odd, and here’s why:

1.The N900 was one of the very devices demoed with Flash 10.1 As you can see from the video above, the N900 is smoothly running Flash 10.1.

2.Nokia is partner of the Open Screen Project led by Adobe.

3.ARM fully supports Flash 10.1. The N900 uses an ARM Cortex-A8 CPU.

If we put all the pieces together there is no reason why the N900 won’t get Flash 10.1, hey it was even shown running it! But we suspect that suspect that as all resources are pushed towards MeeGo, this will eventually happen, but not as quick.

Do you think that Adobe Flash 10.1 is essential for the N900?

Daniel Would, developer behind the impressive Witter app for the N900, writes an in-depth article about what he thinks could be improved in the Application distribution system used on the N900.

Maemo uses a three-tier application system, to host application according to the phase they are. These tiers are called  Repositories:

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Nokia enthusiasts didn’t have much choice when it came the OS, either you went the basic S40 route, or as any true Nokia power user would, get Symbian. But that’s about to change. With the N8 launching soon and MeeGo devices to follow shortly after, Nokia fans are in a unique position of having the choice between 3 different operating systems: Symbian, Maemo and MeeGo. Yes, Maemo will hang around for a while, but eventually will be completely replaced by MeeGo, leaving the choice between it and Symbian.

With the impending release of the N8, Nokia powers users have  the choice of either buying now or wait for the very first MeeGo device, an OS that most of us have yet to see the final product. While only a lucky few can get both devices, most of us will have to choose where our hard-earned cash will go for the next months or years, making the choice even more critical.

The N8 sports impressive specs and Symbian is a proven OS, but its dated UI might leave you wanting for something more 2010. MeeGo on the other builds on Maemo, which has a lot of eye-candy and multi-tasks like no other, but it will certainly have less apps compared to Symbian and the uncertainty behind any new OS is sometimes hard to swallow.

Are you in the MeeGo or Symbian camp? And why?

Ask a Google Nexus One owner why they chose it over the other Android offerings and chances are they’ll tell you it’s because of the frequent updates. Back in the day you had to take your phone to a Nokia repair center to get a firmware update, that’s if you were lucky. Most of the time the firmware you had the day you received the phone, that’s exactly the firmware it will have at the end of it’s life cycle. But with the increasing popularity of firmware-over-the-air (FOTA) updates, updating using your PC is becoming less popular. The best example of this is the Nokia N900, which got all of its updates using FOTA. So what exactly should can Nokia learn from Google?

The Nexus One not only provides the vanilla Google experience, but also gets lots and lots of updates. Big or small, as soon they’re available to the public, they are available for the Nexus One. This gives you the ability to quickly address issues and give your customers their most requested features that didn’t make it in the initial feature list. The latter is especially important for the mobile enthusiasts that wants the latest features and bugs fixed. Other Android devices with similar specs get the updates many many months later. Better yet, the Nexus One even gets all the major releases. I never heard of a Symbian device getting an update to the next major release.  

In the case of the N900 there has been a lot of improvement when compared to Symbian devices. First of all, because every single update has been done using FOTA, it’s more user friendly. There’s even an early build of MeeGo for the N900, arguably the next major release to follow Maemo. Despite Nokia’s lack of commitment to fully support MeeGo on the N900, we still see the early build for the N900 as a step in the right direction.

A lot is at stake with MeeGo and Nokia should treat it like it’s only child, giving it frequent updates. Listening to community and knowing what they want and putting these in frequently released FOTA’s is a big lesson they could learn from Google.

Do you value frequent firmware updates?

Back in May we brought you the scoop on the upcoming Documents To Go Premium Edition (PE) and now it’s finally here. Technically, Documents To Go Premium Edition isn’t the first documents editor for the N900. That honor goes to FreOffice, but seeing that it’s still in extras-devel repository, it’s not something we would recommend yet. So the first, stable, ready for prime-time release indeed does go to Documents To Go PE.

Now let’s get to the more important details. Buying the full version will set you back $29.99, while the Viewer Edition still costs $9.99. But if you were smart enough to get it during the introduction period, you’ll get the update to the Premium Edition for free!

Where you the one of the lucky ones that go the first version of DTG? Will you be getting the viewer or premium edition?

Last weekend my Nokia N900 was stolen. With hundreds of contacts, losing the device was horrible, but losing my contacts was a nightmare. I did make a backup a few months ago, but that means that some of my newer contacts are lost. While the N900 does have a backup feature for contacts, it makes a lot of sense to have this process happen automatically and store these contacts into the cloud. We usually don’t think of these until it happens to one of us. This is one of those times where I wished I made more frequent backups, but that I also wished the N900 had feature that stores contacts into the cloud. Funny thing is that Nokia does have such a feature and it’s called Ovi Contacts. Sadly, after many months it still only a Symbian exclusive.

Why? There’s absolutely no reason why the N900 can’t  support this feature. There’s onboard support for OVI chat and even files can be uploaded to OVI, so why no support OVI contacts stored into the cloud?

It’s true that I should make regular backups, doing so would save me a lot of headache! But fact is that the average user won’t bother making any backups and that both the average and power user will simply we forget to this. For this reason  the process should be transparent and automatic, and should at least allow some level of customization when it comes to the frequency it makes backups. Nokia should enable this feature and allow activation through a one-time setup. Such a feature can be a life saver, but Nokia you should at least enable this for us N900 users.

As a N900 owner, do you wish it had an automatic backup feature that stores contacts into the cloud?

Amazon is now offering the Nokia N900 at a great $399 price, with free shipping and no coupons to deal with. While not as good as Dell’s $369 deal, which now officially has gone the way of the Dodo, the Amazon deal is quite a steal for such loaded device.

I might hit the buy button myself.

Know any other good deals on the Nokia N900? Let us know!

That other browser for the N900 has been updated to version 1.1 and in the process gains a few neat little tricks. Firefox for Maemo now includes interesting new features such as Self-Updating Add-ons, Save pages as PDF and context sensitive menus. This build finally integrates portrait browsing, just like the built-in microB browser and zoom using the volume buttons.

Other usability improvements include Start page with for example a list of your tabs history, there’s also a Form Autocomplete and Smart tap.

This update is for both the N900 and N810. Madhava.com has more  details on the new features.

Want to get this browser? Use the built browser and visit: Firefox.com/m