Can I recycle my old Nokia 770 to do something useful on my desk, like display notifications or something?

June 17, 2009 5:15 AM

TechQuestion: Can I recycle my old Nokia 770 Internet Tablet to do something useful on my desk, like display notifications (or something else)?

Currently, I'm running three monitors on my desk. This is not intentional, it just sort of happened that way (I swear!), but it's given me a new appreciation for extra screen real estate.

With this in mind, I'm thinking about re-purposing my sadly neglected Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. It's got a stand and a charger, so I can sit it on the desk, and it will also connect to the network via WiFi, but I can't work out WHAT to do with it and HOW to do it? The best I can come up with is to use it for notifications of new tweets, facebook status updates etc, but I can't find any software for it that monitors these things and lights up when something comes in.

Basically, I'm happy to do anything to the tablet to get it to do what I want. I'll reflash another OS, wire it up in some fancy way if that's what it takes, I just want to see if I can do something with it, since it's been pretty neglected since Mr iPhone arrived... :)

Hoping someone on MeFi has been here before and can give some hints and advice. Thanks guys!

posted by ranglin to technology (7 comments total)

mauku is a twitter client that turns on the screen whenever there's activity activity.
posted by duckstab at 5:21 AM on June 17

remove one "activity"
posted by duckstab at 5:22 AM on June 17

There is BlueMaemo. It lets you use the tablet as a bluetooth input device:
BlueMaemo
posted by crenquis at 7:51 AM on June 17

Vagalume streams LastFM stations.
posted by l33tpolicywonk at 7:53 AM on June 17

While I'm not familiar with the 770 in particular, I can vouch for the utility of Twitter and Pandora on my iPod Touch as a standalone device. Since you already have an iPhone, I'd go straight for Pandora or Last.fm since it never has to move and can therefore stay hooked up to your stereo.
posted by a halcyon day at 9:01 AM on June 17

I've been using FlipClock on my n800 lately.
posted by Tu13es at 5:31 PM on June 17

I'm not sure about the 770, but later versions of the NIT has a Chumby emulator which can turn your tablet into a virtual chumby.
posted by bottlebrushtree at 10:40 PM on June 17