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I’ve talked about the Maemo platform’s commercial failure in the past, and recent months following the N900 – both on the Maemo.org forums and in Engadget coverage – haven’t exactly convinced me of its longevity in the US market. As a phone the device is limited to AT&T for voice and 2G data, or TMobile for voice and 3G, and as an app platform it has an extremely weak Ovi Marketplace. Seeing Intel and Nokia announce the merger of their mobile platforms at Mobile World Congress, however, has given me even larger doubts about the platform’s relevance.

I can’t help but see this merger as Nokia giving up on Maemo and tossing whatever assets it had left in that fight to the Linux Foundation to merge them into Moblin. As far as I can tell no Moblin product has ever hit retail, and the Linux Foundation Wikipedia entry notes that Intel basically handed off its Moblin project to them some time ago. So far the score looks like this: Failed Open Linux Platforms: 2, commercially successful Open Linux platforms: 0, and both of those failures are now in the hands of the Linux Foundation. Read more »

The Palm Pre is the last great hope for Palm to come back from its marginal position up against the likes of RIM and Apple's iPhone. Its announcement in January caused quite a stir with the folks at Engadget, among others, and we've been waiting for Sprint and Palm to announce a delivery date. Read more »

CCP announced this week that they'll no longer develop or support the native Linux client for the dog-eat-dog MMO and followed up with an announcement that they'll be getting rid of the "classic" client in favor of the souped-up graphics version that appeared with the Trinity expansion. These tidbits were dropped along with yet another record peak concurrent user record to the tune of 48,065 users. Perhaps all those folks were looking to jump into the breach opened by the destruction of one of the largest and most powerful alliances this week. Destroyed from within by a turncoat, of course.

I'm sure CCP crunched the numbers for the former, probably noting a low percentage of Linux client logins compared to development funds to keep it running, and really I can't blame them if the hardcore Linux players have found ways to run the Windows version as well as it seems to run using unsupported instructions outlined on a FAQ page on CCP's site. But getting rid of the Classic, lighter-weight graphics engine game sounds like a bad idea to me. Yes, computers are getting faster and GPUs are stronger all the time, but don't they realize that part of WOW's appeal is that it can run on almost anything?

Last time I ran a trial of EVE Online it didn't go so well with the Premium graphics client, so I switched off the premium graphics and chugged along with Classic graphics. And frankly I didn't find the Classic graphics to be poor at all. Maybe they'll compensate by giving more options to turn special features of the Premium graphics setup off or scale them back, maybe not. Time will tell.

One bright spot in recent EVE news is that they've decided to add in a skill queueing feature. You'll be able to queue up skills as long as all of them will begin within the next 24 hours. This will keep the hardcore players from having to log in at 3am when training finishes up to avoid losing time while sleeping, and it will allow new players to set up a chain of low-level skills with a minimum of fuss. Not a bad feature if you ask me.

From Aeropause.

EVE Online's next expansion has been given the name Apocrypha and lands March 10th. There are a few things in the writeup for this one which caught my eye. Unlike the most recent WOW expansion, which of course was sold at retail as opposed to EVE's expansions continuing to be free to all subscribers, this one has content for PVP, PVE, veteran, and new players. Read more »

Remember Disney's Aladdin? In it the genie, voiced by Robin Williams in top form, summed up his life beautifully when he erupted in magic and light, juggling the planets themselves, booming aloud "Tremendous cosmic power!" He then shrank down beside the little lamp and squeaked "Itty bitty living space."

Such is the destiny of the T-Mobile G1 as well. Read more »