Some of the units are going to certification, others to review and a good part to launch qi’s “projects” effort.

As we have seen in the past, software visions of a company and its community are not always the same or even close. At Qi we believe that the community is far more capable of handling and coordinating a product’s software effort. And therefore we want to put the decision which projects to follow up for discussion.

To launch the software projects we will, together with the community, search and select certain projects to receive hardware funding in the form of Ben NanoNotes, either full sponsorship or special prices to project developers.

The software projects can come from a whole range of areas and should drive the device to its limits. The final decision about which projects are to be funded will be taken on the developer mailinglist (sign up here).

To get the discussion started we have assembled a list of potential projects and areas, if you yourself know a project you want to nominate or want to add a whole new idea please join the discussion on the list (sign up here). For now we will start with the list below.

Initial idea list:

OpenWrt
OpenWrt serves as our build environment and our distribution system. Mirko V., Marek, Xiangfu, Lars and Florian and others have made considerable progress and are on a good path to providing a reliable software basis. Qi Hardware believes that a small and individualized Software Image with an up-to-date kernel is the best basis for any end-user software on an embedded device.

Wikipedia
As a first SW use case we envision an offline wikipedia client. The idea is to carry as much knowledge and articles with you on a small and handy device. One possible basis could be the openzim[1] implementation. A variety of clients already exists. We are looking for a resource-friendly and easy-to-use client. Wikitravel may also be a great project to start as an offline version of wikitravel that you can take with you to places that don’t have connectivity may be an interesting application.

sysadmin apps
Due to the usb-boot capabilities of the Ben NanoNote it is the ideal device for sys-admin tasks. Imagine you connect the NanoNote to your server/router/XXX, it automatically boots and displays you the options and settings for the device at hand.

Mobile data/Mobile media
As the NanoNote is so small and handy it is the perfect travel companion, carrying music and short clips. We were thinking in terms of a media player for video and audio. Maybe a picture viewer could also be added to be able to show your favourite pictures (or lolcats[2]).

Messaging Services
At some point in the near future the NanoNote will, via SDIO or a tiny, external device, get RF capabilities. Wouldn’t it be nice to have IM on the NanoNote? Tweet or send message through identi.ca ?

GPS apps
Location is everything. Many usefull and fun applications can be built around GPS, think location, navigation and direction :). Currently, the Nanonote could only support GPS using Sdio, but selecting software applications and starting the porting is a project we would support

[1] http://openzim.org/Main_Page
[2] http://icanhascheezburger.com/