Nokia's PUSH N900 finalists in action: meet Bike Dashboard, Niko, and Pit Crew

I personally had the honor of helping to judge the finalists of Nokia's PUSH N900 MOD IN THE USA contest yesterday morning, and in the process of watching all three teams do their thing, I took the opportunity to film some footage. All three hacks showed some serious ingenuity -- not just in terms of the sheer difficulty of pulling a serviceable demo together in a little over three weeks' time, but also in the breadth and depth of the concepts: Pit Crew takes classic slot cars out of the stone age by using the N900 as a wireless controller, Bike Dashboard is a handlebar-mounted N900 with a number of sensors and features for tracking your bike ride, and Niko is a Lego Mindstorms-wrought robot with an N900-powered brain and a penchant for Twitter. Follow the break for video of all three pitching their wares -- and find out who won this thing!

Second runner up: Pit Crew

First runner up: Niko

Winner: Bike Dashboard

[samin100 Posted Mar 24th 2010 7:01PM]

WHY DO NOKIAITES GET ALL THE FUN???

[shoxite Posted Mar 24th 2010 7:04PM]

OK, so what else can the N900 do????

[naashak Posted Mar 24th 2010 7:11PM]

@shoxite

Make your dinner for you
Light your candles for you
Clean your apartment for you
Lock you out of your apartment
And date your girlfriend for you
:-)

[williamlau05 Posted Mar 24th 2010 7:14PM]

@shoxite

The question is, what CAN'T the N900 do?

[williamlau05 Posted Mar 24th 2010 7:16PM]

@naashak

The N900's sequel or OS upgrade will be able to do all of that provided everything runs on Maemo6 /MeeGo

[JJJ Posted Mar 24th 2010 7:26PM]

@shoxite Does the Droid do this...??? ;-)

[yomachaser Posted Mar 24th 2010 10:07PM]

@williamlau05

Keep it's usb port from falling out? I kid I kid (no seriously that's why I had to return it).

[Diko Posted Mar 25th 2010 4:33PM]

@williamlau05 Will it blend?

[SolidSnake Posted Mar 24th 2010 7:19PM]

Skynet is pleased.

[Johnny Tremaine Posted Mar 24th 2010 7:21PM]

It's too bad the N900 only has 3G on T-Mobile.

Hopefully the next version (Meego 1? Maemo 6?) will be compatible with AT&T's HSDPA frequency.

[stoffer Posted Mar 24th 2010 8:09PM]

@Johnny Tremaine Can't you get an N900 without a contract and then go to any carrier? In my whole life I had only one subsidized phone and it turned out overpaid. There can't be free lunch. But then again, I live and Europe and it's common here to get a phone and a subscription separately.

[Johnny Tremaine Posted Mar 24th 2010 8:41PM]

@stoffer
Nope. Even the two GSM carriers we have (the others are CDMA) use different frequencies for 3G data. The N900 only works on one carrier's 3G.

Read the Engadget post today, and the comments section, featuring the Verizon CTO. It's basically how U.S. carriers purposely use incompatible frequencies to lock in their devices, and their customers, to their networks.

[incognito Posted Mar 26th 2010 3:24AM]

@Johnny Tremaine, given the outrageous data prices in my country, somewhat spotty 3G, and no unlimited data plans, I barely even use the 3G capabilities of it - I even don't keep it non-stop connected when not needed. For the most `on the run` parts - i.e. email checking, instant messaging and so - 2.5G (EDGE) will do just fine, and when I'm stationary usually there is at least one open WiFi network available (mainly because the country's biggest ADSL provider gave WiFi routers to its dumb enough customers not to put WPA on it) so I don't find the 3G all that necessary, nor the lack of it - crippling.

[Raffstyle Posted Mar 24th 2010 7:22PM]

Is this more from nokia at CTIA ?? or only PUSH N900?

I wanna hear something new for Symbian or Nokia phones..

Whats the Next event where Nokia can announce something new for them?

[Johnny Tremaine Posted Mar 24th 2010 7:35PM]

@Raffstyle
The Nokia conference/show in September, in London. If they have anything new (high end) this year, they'll likely wait to show it off there.

[Forphucsake Posted Mar 24th 2010 7:28PM]

Shows just how versatile an open OS is with great hardware.

[stoffer Posted Mar 24th 2010 8:12PM]

@Forphucsake And also shows why most of Apple customers won't buy it - they are not smart enough to utilize it's potential. Don't get me wrong, I do not mean that Apple customers are idiots, it's just that N900 buyers are usually smarter and more interested in engineering.

[microlith Posted Mar 25th 2010 12:21AM]

@stoffer
Not even that, they're just gadget fiends or more interested in having a device and that much more control over it.

A lot of engineers I know just use iPhones or whatever Android phone they can beta test, because they "just work." After all, they spend their day doing software engineering, doing it at home isn't necessarily their thing.

[stoffer Posted Mar 24th 2010 8:14PM]

@FCUK YOUR COLORING BOOK what do you mean by "least supported"? That there are few apps? I think that you rather mean that that there are few apps you have heard of.

Anyway, Nokia is notoriously bad in marketing. Nokia is a company of brilliant engineers, not marketorids.

[HellFlyer Posted Mar 24th 2010 11:19PM]

The Bike Dashboard won because they had a woman in their team :D

[Mr w00t Posted Mar 25th 2010 2:18AM]

@FCUK YOUR COLORING BOOK 3rd FW update will be out on few days...

[crappish Posted Mar 25th 2010 4:08AM]

Holy hell, that was some botched up camera work right there. I mean, it would be nice to at least have the heads of the people in the frame, not to mention those who are talking, while the gadget itself covers 5% of the frame...

[cashclientel Posted Mar 25th 2010 6:05AM]

"and a penchant for Twitter" made me laugh.