Yesterday I had the great pleasure of partaking in the first of what I hope will be more Mobile Geeks Meetup.

The event was organised by Tom who you may recall hooked me up with an N900 a few weeks ago. I wasn’t sure what to expect, especially since I’m more of a geeky phone user rather than a developer but I went, thinking I might learn something new and go figure, I did.

The night started with a presentation from Samir, a Nokia expert (I think – it was so loud I missed his formal introduction) who started off by wowing the crowd with the N900 and its various features. From the built in social networking aspects (like integrated uploading to services like Flickr and Facebook) to multitasking and the awesome browser which plays in-browser flash (meaning you don’t need to open a new application to watch YouTube videos and the like). It seemed a few folks in the crowd were pretty familiar with the device even if they hadn’t actually seen one (though I did get a couple of over the shoulder looks while I was tweeting away before the meeting started – mind you, with the new red protective case, it’s hard to tell what phone it is).

Samir then continued with an overview of MeeGo, the recently announced new platform Nokia is helping to develop. My non-geeky understanding of things is that MeeGo is a sort of cross device open source OS which will allow users to run the same system on all of their devices from their cell phones to their connected TVs. What that means is that rather than running one set of applications on your phone or pocket pc, your netbook, laptop and whatever else you might use on a regular basis – you’ll be able to run the same applications on all devices. The bonus for developers? One set of APIs with only minor user experience changes for each device.


From here the discussion moved into some “above-Marina’s-head” talk about development, DRM and cross platform integration (there was some muffled chat about Android application on MeeGo devices).

One of the major highlights of the night was news of the first MeeGo device to be released later this year. I’m excited to see what that new device and what MeeGo has to offer. It may mean another upgrade next year but from my limited reading so far, it looks like there will be a MeeGo install available for the N900 later this year. We’ll have to wait and see what it offers over the current OS and what sort of applications I have to choose from.

Tom also had some cool toys on display including a couple of E72s and the two Booklet 3G mini laptops which are really spiffy. I’d love to play with one of those for a few days. If all the new info wasn’t enough, I also walked away with a bit of swag – a great new bag and one of the coolest USB sticks I’ve ever seen.


Thanks again to Tom for organising and for extending the invite my way. I’m looking forward to the next one!