Are you a proud owner of a new Nokia N9 (or N950)? Or perhaps you are looking into buying one (the N9, since the N950 is developer only model)? In both cases you would probably like to know what kind of apps are available for it. While the Nokia N9 doesn't and will not ever have as many apps as some other platforms, it does have apps and quite a few of them are really good. The trick is to find them.

Like many others, I've followed Nokia closely since the eyebrow rising, jaw dropping Feb 2011 announcement; the partnership with Microsoft on Windows Phone and the abrupt abandoning of Symbian. Why? Because it was the one of the roughest 180 degrees handbrake turn in Nokia's corporate history, and that the announcement came premature with no products to show.

The Nokia/Microsoft marriage in the public eye, didn't have a honeymoon, nor wedding photos to share, and some even wondered if it was a quickie at a Las Vegas tavern after one drink too many over their troubling and tearful market share stories. If not, did they marry for each others money or are they just friends with benefits? Will this marriage last?

When talking about Ovi Store, it’s not difficult to find opinions about it that are less than flattering. Yet, at the same time, Nokia is bragging what a great success it is. In Nokia Conversations it boldly claimed that 2010 was the year of Ovi Store! So, what is it then? The greatest mobile app store on the planet or the worst thing humankind ever invented after the car air freshener?

Most probably the correct answer is neither. Yes, Ovi Store does have a great potential. It’s hard to deny that fact. The constantly increasing download rates clearly show the demand for an app store for Nokia devices is there. Yet, at the same time, it seems that many end users and developers are not that enthusiastic about Ovi Store. Some of them, to the utter disbelief of Nokia, don’t even have any enthusiasm about it at all!

A completely new version of Currency Converter for Nokia N900 has been released in Ovi Store. The old free version is still available in Maemo Extras repository. So what is the deal with this commercial version in Ovi Store?

When I originally started this project, it was only for my personal needs. Later I got some requests if I could publish it. So I did a version for Maemo Extras. To my surprise, it proved to be fairly popular. As the user base increased, so did the requests for new currencies to be added and other improvements. However, I quickly ran into some practical problems.