Amarok Blog

Friday, April 25. 2008

I can has bling-bling?

Some people might be aware of one of our competitors attempts at making something which looks all swish with all those high quality CD covers that people have for the albums in their collections. Now, we long ago decided that while eyecandy is all good and stuff, we really don't want eyecandy without a reason behind it. So when people started asking repeatedly "Hai, I can has coverflow?" on #amarok, we started thinking how something like that could be kicked into some form of usefulness.

And, so, when Summer of Code came around, we decided that it would make good sense to throw up an idea on the page for exactly that - our thoughts on what might make a useful bling. Many came forward with proposals for taking up this idea, but unfortunately, though in fact several of them were really good, in the end we had to not accept them as there were some that were more important for Amarok 2's release. However, luckily, one student came forward with a refined proposal for the CD Stack after the accepted projects had been presented. In stead of talking more here, i will let nottheones tell it himself:

My name is Nicholas Lovell, and I study computer engineering at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, IN. This summer I will be providing a new collection view. My idea is to provide a 3D list of albums that can be browsed much like a physical CD collection. Think of it as how CoverFlow should have originally been implemented. Rather than simply allowing selection of an album (or simply displaying the album currently playing), it will also allow selection of individual tracks from a selected album. Selecting a CD from the stack will display the front of the CD and the tracks from the album underneath it.

So, ladies, gentlemen and everybody else - forget the CoverBling widget from early Amarok 2 code - real niftiness is coming up!

Posted by Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen in leinir at 16:46 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)

Introduction: I'm Amarok's new Artist

Hi All!

I'm really happy to say that I'm a new artist for the Amarok project. You might remember me as a programmer, but now we Amarok programmers also create artwork for the project.

Please check out my first contribution, a new logo:

Isn't that awesome? I've always had a talent for drawing, and I think this really shows.

Ooooooook, I realize that it's maybe not a really good idea if programmers also do artwork. But we have no choice. While we really can't complain about lack of coders in the project, we have about 0 artists left, so someone's gotta do the job.

If you are a talented SVG artist and if you like Amarok (or if you know such a person), please contact us and help making Amarok 2 a beautiful application!

Sincerely,
Mark Kretschmann, Amarok Founder (and artist from hell).

Posted by Mark Kretschmann in markey at 15:28 | Comments (18) | Trackbacks (0)

Go Go GTK!

Update: Since I've gotten a few relatively profane comments (which I've elected not to post) about blah blah pissing contest blah blah cant we all work together blah blah you are a stupid moron blah blah, please note that nowhere in this post did I mention Qt. This was not a "my widget set is better than your widget set" post. This was a "WTF, why can't I resize this box properly, and why does it end up moving up into the toolbar, how silly of it" post. If it's broken, it's broken, and since I found this to be broken in an amusing way, I thought I'd share it with others. Everyone likes to laugh, after all. So essentially: chill out.

Continue reading "Go Go GTK!"

Posted by Jeff Mitchell in jefferai at 10:17 | Comments (19) | Trackbacks (0)

READ ME - P A R T Y!!!!

It's that time of April again, Ubuntu/Kubuntu released the all new shiny versions of their distributions. This time the releaes is called Hardy Heron *woohooo*

So, what do we do when a new version is out?
Right, party!
Join the Halligalli Hummel Party(tm) in #kubuntu-devel and celebrate the latest Kubuntu release with us on 24-04-2008 @ 16UTC. Of course as party guest you should use the official party wallpaper -> this svg or png

Make sure not to miss the grand party kickoff!
We also have our own bar and a radio show, sponsored by Amarok, (maybe

)

In case you just want to have some information about the release, head over to kubuntu.org

Finally: spread the word by bloging, twittering, talking, giving calls etc
GO GO GO!

Posted by Harald Sitter in apachelogger at 07:32 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

GSoC: One Intro with a side order of awesome ( Full MP3Tunes support )

In this years Google Summer of Code, I will be mentoring Casey Links project "Amarok: MP3Tunes Service Enhancements". I asked Casey to write a small introduction about himself and his project:

Hey everyone! My name is Casey Link and I am an undergraduate Computer
Science and Philosophy major at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA. As a
part of Google Summer of Code I will be tightly integrating the
MP3Tunes service with Amarok 2 as well as implementing a generic
synchronization framework between Collections. In Amarok 2, collections
have been abstracted, allowing Amarok to treat a local SQL collection the
same as an online Web Service based collection. Why is this awesome?
With the addition of the service architecture (thanks to Nikolaj) it is now
possible to plug in remote, local, and soon portable collections without
having to differentiate between their interfaces.

Not convinced yet? Here is a real example of just how cool this is.

Enter MP3Tunes. MP3Tunes provides an "online music space" for its
users to store their entire music collection so they can listen to
their music anywhere. Using their API and client libraries,
applications can be developed for just about any device, so you can
literally listen to your music anywhere! This summer I will implement
full MP3Tunes functionality into Amarok so you can seamlessly
synchronize your local music collection with your MP3Tunes Locker. Not
only will you be able to upload your local music collection, but if
you add music to your MP3Tunes Locker via other methods - such as
buying music from an online store - the new tracks will be added to
your collection. This is just the beginning. Technology is seeing a
trend towards ubiquitous connectivity and information storage in 'the
Cloud'. It won't be long before "local" and "remote" are terms of the
past as you are able to seamlessly access your information everywhere.
Amarok and MP3Tunes will be on the forefront of this technological
shift. I hope you'll be there with us.

I am really exited about this project, as this is one of the initial ideas I had when creating the MP3Tunes service, but unfortunately never had time to implement ( Anyone knows where I can get 10 clones made cheaply? ). I also think that some of the less visible framework stuff that this project will complete will be really usefull for other cool things, such as downloading an album from Magnatune or Jamendo straight to a media device or online locker without storing it in your local collection. So lets give Casey a warm welcome and hope this project turns out as great as I think it has potential to.

On a related note, you might be aware that MP3Tunes is currently engaged in a lawsuit with EMI over the legality of storing your own, legally acquired music online. Their CEO has published a letter about this, describing why he sees this as an attack on the concept of digital ownership. I think this battle is worth following as it is not about piracy or file sharing, but really about what you can do with your own music. And here I thought that EMI was at least starting to come around...

Posted by Nikolaj Hald Nielsen in freespirit at 03:20 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0)

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