InfoTart

As a UI guy, the one of the first things I wanted to install on my 770 the day I bought it was a screenshot utility. Not only do I like to collect screenshots (seriously!), but such a utility is extremely useful for bug reporting and general UI design. In my day job designing cross-platform enterprise communications software at Nokia, I frequently use a cool free screenshot utility for S60 devices by a guy named Anthony Pranata. (Thanks, Anthony!)

(By the way, I have a gazillion screenshots primarily of web pages from the late 90’s. One of these days, I swear I’ll put them online, perhaps some of them with comments…)

So imagine my delight when I saw a screenshot utility listed in the Nokia 770 software catalog today. Could my prayers finally be answered?

The product is gloriously called “CPU/Mem/Screenshot Apple” — a name that reeks of the Soviet-era consumer product naming style. What it lacks in naming panache it makes up for in sheer utility, though. It does 3 things and 3 things only. Fortunately, they seem to be done pretty well.

Screenshots

Either immediately or with a short delay. The default delay is 7 seconds, but you can change that in settings. New screenshot images are automatically saved in the device’s Images folder. You can change the default name, “screenshot”. A number 1 - 99 is appended to the file name to avoid overwriting existing screenshots. Not bad — but could be better (see below).

List Active Processes

It displays a list of active processes and how much memory they’re taking up. The “List processes” feature is similar to the feature on the Microsoft Windows Task Manager’s Processes tab. You can “watch” or “kill” a process, but you can’t sort the list by name or memory usage.

Live CPU & Memory Usage Graphs

The product sits in the top status bar as a plugin, active all the time. The icon has two sides: The left side shows a vertical bar graph with 4 sections for real-time CPU usage. The right side shows another 4-segment graph for memory usage. Launch an application and watch the CPU bar light up all 4 segments. Launch a handful of applications and browser windows and watch the memory graph fill up. Cool! Now I can keep half an eye out for avoiding overtaxing available memory by multi-tasking with too many open apps.

What’s it missing?

Given my interest in the screenshot feature in particular, I’d love if I could select the image format. I prefer PNG because of its versatility. (Stick a PNG in a Word doc or Visio diagram and it looks great on the screen and also prints very well.) Fortunately, PNG is the default format. But some folks like to collect screenshots in other formats, such as JPG or GIF, so it would be nice to be able to choose.

I’d love it if the product could remember the last number across device bootups. For example, if I take a screenshot right now, the first file’s name will be “screenshot00.png”. If I forget to move that file to my computer, then I restart the Nokia 770 and take a new screenshot, the product resets its numbering scheme at 0. So the new screenshot overwrites the old one and is saved as “screenshot00.png”, as well.

Feature Request: Let’s adopt the file naming system that S60 uses for cameraphone pictures. Basically, it’s like: screenshot. And because the app remembers where it left off even if the phone is restarted, it doesn’t overwrite any existing pictures.

Given that this product’s source code is available on Maemo Garage (the open source project site, similar to SourceForge), folks have taken this product and forked it. One variant has Swapon/Off, while the second variant adds another new feature related to having it execute and store arbitrary commands. To be honest, I’m not really clear on what either of these variants add to the party. Undoubtedly, software developers would find these useful, though.
The the product really needs is a spiffy name! I went to WordLab’s Naming Tools page and played with some of their fun naming tools. After clicking on the name generator buttons a few gazillion times, here are my favorites:

• JangoNut (Name builder tool)
• BrainSister (Name builder tool)
• Burn5 (Name builder tool)
• ZengaShot (Name builder tool)
• Blazin’ Axe (Name your band tool)
• Finodexy (Drug-o-matic tool)
• Lenfloxa (Drug-o-matic tool)
• Fega (Morpheme Machine tool)
• Datrino (Morpheme Machine tool)
• Antipix (Morpheme Machine tool)

What do you think? Do any of those names work for a product like this?

Use it or snooze it?

Use it. Even regular folks will appreciate all of its major features. Geeks and hackers might try one of the two variants with the extra stuff. But regular folks should stick to the basic product.

Summary

Product Name: CPU/Mem/Screenshot Applet

Publisher: Individual contributor (a Nokia staffperson, I think…)

Price: Free

Download it at: Maemo Software Catalog (Maemo 2.0)

Project Homepage: https://garage.maemo.org/projects/load-applet/