hello.

I finally got my hands on an Openmoko Neo1973 phone tonight. Not sure if it’s ready for primetime. A few notes:

It took me an hour and a half to flash the root file system and kernel on it. The getting started page and the Mac OSX page were helpful. I used this version of the kernel from buildhost.automated.it and the 2007.11 snapshot of the rootfs.

The operating system takes longer to load than OSX 10.4 on my macbook.

There are a couple things about the UI that bother me:

• It’s not obvious how to answer or hang up a call
• There’s no obvious way to access system settings through the UI, including things as basic as ringtone or volume
• It’s apparently not yet possible to send or get text messages.
• There’s no way to turn it off when the OS hangs, other than removing the battery.

I hope it gets better. It’s a nifty-looking phone.

Phil Torrone did a nice Arduino gift guide for the holidays on the Make site. I like Ladyada’s getting started kit a lot. And I’m still totally in love with the LilyPad. I can’t wait til there’s more stock in the super-accelerometer board for a project I am working on that needs accelerometers.