November 26th, 2009
Is this the end of storing and synching your music collection on a mobile device??
Grooveshark has a massive catalogue of high quality music tracks available to stream at your leisure. You can create a free account and save multiple play lists. If you are still waiting to get your hands on the N900 check out Grooveshark online via your browser, I’m pleased to tell you though, that it works just as well on the N900. Now, anywhere you have internet connectivity (3G or wireless) you have a huge library of music at your fingers.
Grooveshark
To use GrooveShark on your N900, simply point your browser at listen.grooveshark.com,
Grooveshark is flash based so if you are using a 3G connection it will take a little while to load the main panel.
Although you don’t need to sign up to the service to start streaming music, I would recommend going and setting up an account using your PC to get somewhat familiar with the service, maybe create a playlist or two just to make things a bit easier when you start using it on the N900.
It can be a little tricky to use on with the screen size limitations and touch screen interface on the N900, but using the volume controls to zoom in and out will certainly help for things like selecting individual tracks and the embedded controls (track seek bar or volume control etc.)
With this service you’ll probably want to have an unlimited data plan with your provider as it is a high quality music streaming service and will consume a lot of bandwidth.
October 9th, 2009
Scrolling
The are two handy tips for scrolling on web pages using the keyboard. First (and most obvious) is to use the arrows keys. For vertical -user up / down (and when zoomed in) horizontal, use left / right, this give a really nice, smooth scroll action.
The second tip is the full page scroll, hit Space bar and the browser will scroll down one full page.
Shift + Space will scroll up one page.
View browser history
A quick shortcut to view your recent browser history. Starting just off the right hand side of the screen swipe your finger quickly across the screen towards the center.
Back button
You can you the backspace keyboard button to go back one page in you browser.
Highlighting Text (Pointer mode)
Starting just off the left hand side of the screen, just below middle. slide your finger onto the screen. The pointer icon will appear. Click the pointer icon to lock it, then highlight any text using the stylus or finger.
Standard browser controls
Ctrl + F : Find on page
Ctrl + B : View bookmarks
Ctrl + N : Open a new window
Ctrl + R : Reload current page
Ctrl + S : Save current page
October 8th, 2009
If you want to get back to your (multiple) desktops quickly, simple press and hold the main nav button at the top left corner of the screen for two seconds while in any application. This will send you straight to the desktop, leaving the previous application running in the background.
October 7th, 2009
On most mobile devices it’s not possible to capture screenshots without downloading a third party app (if one is available). Not so with the N900! At any time
Ctrl + Shift + P
will take a full screenshot and save it automatically to your Images folder. Brilliant.
October 7th, 2009
There are three ways to zoom while browsing the web on your N900, the first and probably most obvious is the double-tap.
1 Double tap.
Double-tapping anywhere on your browser window will automatically zoom in or out to the main view depending on the current view. The problem with this method is that it attempts to guess what your are trying to do, sometimes it can zoom out when you want to zoom in and visa versa.
2 Circular zoom.
This can probably be considered as an alternative to the pinch control found on the iPhone and iPod touch. Tap and hold then move your finger in a circular motion, clockwise to zoom in, anti-clockwise to zoom out. See image below.
3 +/- Control.
The volume +/- control buttons located at the top left corner of the device will allow you to zoom in or out of a webpage.