University and Nokia Research Center, Palo Alto, have created and released a new, open-source digital photography platform, called Fcam, (short for 'Frankencamera'). It allows developers to create new capabilities for digital cameras, and users to take advantage of a whole new class of photography apps. The platform is available as a free download for the Nokia N900, starting today, at https://garage.maemo.org/projects/fcam/.

Fcam allows the creation of new digital camera applications that help users overcome some of the shortcomings of their devices or create interesting new types of imagery. It is part of the Camera 2.0 project, created in collaboration between Nokia, Stanford, and other partners.

Nokia Fellow Kari Pulli said: “The N900 is a camera phone, but it runs a version of Linux almost as complete as that installed on personal computers”. For this reason, it was chosen as the host device for the Fcam platform.

The researchers have already created a series of new photography apps for the platform, some of which will also be free to download. These three will be available from the Fcam project page:

Fcamera is an example camera application that uses Fcam libraries and drivers. It is released in source code to serve as a starting point for programmers to create their own camera applications.

Low-light Assistant helps in situations where there is not enough light to avoid the choice between a quick exposure that will look sharp, but dark and noisy, and a long exposure that will have enough light, but likely be blurry. Instead, the app captures two images in rapid succession and then automatically combines them, resulting in a photo that is both bright and sharp.

HDR Capture helps in situations where there is too much light, such as a portrait of a person with a bright sky behind her. The camera takes up to three images with different exposure settings and combines them to an image that shows the details of both the foreground and background objects, without under or over-exposing any of them.

Photo-trickery is also on the cards. One of the applications described in a research paper captured the position and trajectory of playing cards thrown into the air with complete clarity through the use of two flash units, each behaving independently. The paper will be presented next week at the SIGGRAPH conference in Los Angeles.

The hope, though, is that once Fcam is in the public domain, Nokia developers and camera programmers will work to create a whole new class of programmable camera applications which will be gathered together on the project web site.

What other applications would you like to see emerge if your device's camera had a bit more brains behind it? Personally, a slimming effect on selected subjects (me) would definitely be of interest.

If you needed another reason to look beyond Maemo 5 to its successor, Maemo 6, set to be released in around twelve months time, then how about multitouch and gesture-based input?  Nokia have confirmed that Qt 4.6 will be optimized for Maemo 6 but also see a port to the upcoming Symbian 4, as well as bringing with it improvements to the WebKit browser and a reduction in the need for widgets

The Nokia N900 runs on the latest Maemo 5 operating system but we’re all aware that Maemo 6 is already in development. Now, a rumour has started to circulate that we may well get the first such device in the second half of the year. Join us after the jump to find out more about Nokia Maemo 6 devices in 2010 H2…

Got your Nokia N900 and happy with it? Of course you are but anyone with a love for the latest and greatest will no doubt already be keeping an eye on the developments of Maemo 6. So, when an article popped up this morning suggesting such a device would be here this year we were all ears. The big thing with Maemo 6 is that it will bring with it a whole host of new features, including multi-touch support, so we may well get the first capacitive Nokia Mameo device too.

Maemo5 on N900

Nokia PUSH N900 MENA (Middle-East & North Africa) has just launched their Own Facebook Fan page yesterday (16/1/2010) with Great insight and Have Some NEWS about an Arabic version of Maemo5 and an Update to the English Version (v1.2009.44.1) Also it will have a Download Center that is related to the Official Maemo Site (Maemo.org) to Direct Download For All NEW Application and Updated Daily Which Gives All Nokia N900 Fans & developers from All over the World a Chance to be Always up-to-date with All Everything New with the N900 and Maemo5 OS.

The Page is Still New and other sections is still Under construction But If you have a Facebook Account (I think you do!) and interesting of Nokia N900 I suggest to Check the Page Daily to be up-to-date and Also this Page is available in Both languages English & Arabic too.

Visit the Page