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.

A bit of bad news for N900 owners, as I’ve gotten confirmation from a Nokia employee that Flash 10.1 is not planned for the N900 and will NOT be released for the device. One of the first devices to support the full Flash experience, in this case Flash 9.4, the N900 seems to have been forgotten and is quickly falling being as Flash 10.1 is already available. Making things even worse is the fact that some Flash 10.1 won’t run on 9.4 devices, eventhough technically it could.

There’s a huge thread about this at Maemo.org, signaling how important this is to the N900 community. There’s no doubt that MeeGo devices will be getting Flash 10.1 and beyond, but why forget about the N900? This little news is a bit of shock to us, especially when you consider the fact that N900 was the very first device demoed running Flash 10.1!!! We’ve talked about this in an earlier post.

We really hope Nokia gets its act together and still decide to change this decision.

What is your take on this sad news?

Well, technically it’s about 56.93GB of total storage, since the way electronic devices process these Gigabytes is different. So in reality that 32GB SanDisk microSDHC card is actually more like 29.8GB. Same thing can be said for the N900’s built-in 32GB, minus a few system files of course.

Thanks to our friends at MobileFun, we’ve gotten our hands on the new Sandisk 32GB microSDHC, the SDSDQ-032G-A11M to be exact. Putting this into N900 adds A LOT to the already impressive storage amount available on the N900. So yes, that’s 57 GB(!) of storage, on a mobile device! Stay tuned for our full review.

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?

Nokia Experts has posted a good review of the Game Gripper accessory for the N900, giving it high praise as a good gaming accessory. But what did catch my attention was the warning slip in the package that indicates that the accessory my cause accelerated wear on the handset’s keyboard. I would even say that it will most certainly will cause excessive wear on certain keys and because of the fact when you buy such an accessory chances are it’s to do some serious gaming, which again will cause the wear to happen even faster.

While, it is a cool accessory I simply can not recommend for this reason. Well, that’s if you appreciate the keyboard of the N900. Check the review and let us know what you think? Are you still getting the Game Gripper?

The N900’s memory card is not hidden beneath the battery, which means that in theory you could pull out the memory card with the phone turned on, possibly damaging the device, the memory card and corrupting data. For this reason Nokia has included a neat feature which disconnects the memory card if the back cover is not in place. If for some reason you don’t have the back cover on and in File Manager your are not seeing the memory card, it’s a possibility that you have a corrupted memory card. It could also be that because the back cover is not there, it’s triggering the mechanism to disable the memory card. Try putting the back cover on and make sure it’s securely in place.

There’s no denying that the N900 is quite the capable gaming machine. With various native Maemo games and lots of emulators from DrNokSnes to VGBA and on the hardware side a capable graphics, fairly fast CPU, TV-out and a QWERTY keyboard. But let’s say you wanted to take things to another level. Well, now you can add Game-Gripper to the list. It’s basically a controller that latches on to the N900 and takes advantage of games and emulators that allow for custom keyboard binding, like DrNokSnes. It comes in 9 different colors, out of which we think the all-black model will look extremely good on the N900. It’s a pretty basic with a  rubbery flexible design, and it also have openings to accommodate things like the charger and headphones with the controller attached. It will set you back €14.95 and pre-orders can be done here. 

Would you buy the Game-gripper or do you prefer the QWERTY keyboard?

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?