N9 and MeeGo Harmattan: Loss of Widgets

Having thought about the Harmattan UI a bit more, I realized that since there are no 'desktop screens' as the N900 has, there are also no widgets!  The demonstration at #nokiacnxn showed the three aspects of the UI: Events, Applications, and Open Applications.  It appears that certain application events can populate the Events View.  For instance, the AccuWeather application puts the current weather conditions in the Events View. 

One of the most useful N900 widgets I use is the contact card, providing one-touch access to frequent contacts from the desktop.  It will be interesting to see if users will miss the N900-style widgets, and if Events View and/or the Swipe UI can make up the difference. 

N9 Excitement in #nokiacnxn

It was like a group of friends watching Superbowl, or World Cup, or Olympic Gold Hockey. Last night, a bunch of Maemo veterans gathered on #nokiacnxn on freenode to watch Nokia Connection 2011 go down. When the N9 was announced, irc erupted with joy, URL's to Nokia's 'swipe' pages were revealed and shared, and the banter went on into the night. It was exciting, and also somewhat disappointing once the realization sunk in that MeeGo-Harmattan could be a game changing OS for end users.

It remains to be seen how 'disruptive' this device will be. I hope it is, and so do others. Let us pass this message back to Nokia executives: We Want Nokia to Keep Meego. That is all.