Openmoko on Design

[ezuall]

Potential, that is the first word that comes to mind when I think about and
play with my freerunner.  I spent months absolutely obsessively waiting for
the release, but when I first received it I was afraid.  The gps issue was
all over the mailing list and I was thinking that things weren't working out
exactly as I wanted.  It is embarrassing that it took me some time to
recover from that initial shock (3 days) and to realise that what I held was
truly open. 

Deep down I knew it wouldn't arrive in my hands perfect, but that is the
point.  One closed device can never be perfect for everyone.  Only through
customisation and expansion can each one of us make the device perfect for
him/herself.  And we need not do this in isolation, when we do something
cool we can share it, and then others have the *choice* to implement this
feature/gimmick/personalisation on their own device, in their own way.

I have grown accustomed to companies telling me what looks pretty and how
things should work and that is part of what scares me.  There is no excuse
not to make the freerunner behave exactly the way I want it to.

To start settling into the freerunner I flashed ASU (using VMware) this
weekend and was amazed at how easy it is to customise.  Changed the icons,
created new launcher items and linked these to plain-old shell scripts to
connect to my home network etc.  Installed vte terminal, changed the font
size, to summarise:  Nothing ground breaking yet, but I did it the way I
wanted to and there is a lot of potential.

Rock on freerunners!


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