Rui CarmoI've been reviewing my to-dos and WishLists, so here's the five pieces of software I'd love to have on a Nokia/770 based on what I've read about it and experienced during the eight hours that I had my hands on one so far.
I played around with a sample a few weeks back and am still trying to buy one for myself, which doesn't seem too likely right now.
All of these were carefully weighed against what I need and don't need from such a device. For instance, I couldn't care less for PIM functionality (it can be replaced by adequate access to my desktop machines and Backpack for short-lived to-dos and reminders), I don't need multimedia (not besides updated Flash support, at least), and pretty much everything else I might need to do in one can be done via the browser.
So here's the list. And yes, there are five of them, as usual:
- Since there doesn't appear to be any VPN support whatsoever (and there's little chance of a Cisco VPN client being developed for it), my first wish has to be an SSH tunnel manager with SOCKS support - one with a decent UI for public key and port forwarding management.
- The second wish is a Remote Desktop client with virtual screen resizing (i.e., I want to use it both at native resolution and a scrollable 1024x768 virtual screen) and a sane text input UI. VNC might do in a pinch, but I will not touch NX with a five-foot-pole - plus RDP should make it a lot easier to map the memory card as a remote drive (which should work if it's built out of rdesktop sources).
- My third wish would be a vector-based notepad that lets me scribble atop a set of predefined page templates in portrait mode. I'm thinking D*I*Y Planner here, with the templates defined as either PNG or SVG files that you load on to the device and pick from when creating a new page. I don't need (or want) handwriting recognition, only some form of SVG or PostScript export to back up the results and eventually send them to a printer. Being able to use the osso text input to tag each sheet with keywords would be nice, and just about all the metadata I need besides page creation and modification dates.
- My fourth wish would be a Gaim port that displayed Growl-like notifications instead of taking up the whole screen and had some form of pre-defined template replies. I don't plan on chatting intensively on a 770, but presence and a short "I'm on the sixth floor meeting" are essential and save a lot of time on the phone.
- My fifth (and last) wish is for a Newton emulator port (yeah, I know it is pretty damn impossible for all sorts of reasons, including legal ones). Despite the work that has gone into Maemo and the sheer technical brilliance of the complete 770 package, I would drop it in a flash for a Newton-like environment.