Wednesday, July 29. 2009Wednesday, July 22. 2009How to install 2.2-git in your home (an update) http://gitorious.org Since Amarok switched to Gitorious, those of you running a local SVN build with markey's instructions will have to do some changes to stay up-to-date::
 For updates, you just run 'git pull' in your ~/kde/src/amarok/ folder and proceed as before with 'make install'. As usual, don't hesitate to come to #amarok on irc.freenode.net for more questions. Tuesday, July 21. 2009Presenting the KDE network on FacebookMany KDE developers are on Facebook. A while back I wondered if it would be possible to have an official KDE developers' network on Facebook -- after all, there are networks for schools, jobs, cities, and more (and for many developers, KDE is literally or figuratively a job...) As it turned out, there was a "Kde" network -- but something was odd. To join a work network you have to have an email address affiliated with the network. KDE owns kde.com and kde.org -- so who was this? The only other "KDE" I could find that seemed like it would be legit was the Kentucky Department of Education, and I rather doubted it was them, because they would likely have used all-uppercase KDE as well. So I started an inquiry with Facebook, trying to figure out if either it was someone squatting on our name (and trademark) or whether it was some legit organization -- in which case, would they mind donating the network to us? After several months of back-and-forth with the people at Facebook, who were very nice (if a bit slow
Monday, July 20. 2009we?re testing testing the water for everyoneAmarok finally switched to git today after many weeks of discussion and preparation. Our part of KDE SVN has been made read-only and commits should be made to the repository at http://gitorious.org/+kde-developers/amarok/amarok from now on. We can hopefully work out all the problems soon so the rest of KDE (except translations) can follow asap. Please report problems you encounter and help us get documentation up to date. Monday, July 20. 2009Friday, July 17. 2009Thursday, July 16. 2009Apple breaks Palm Pre compatibility. Or: an open letter to Palm
Dear Palm,
When you launched the Pre everyone was very excited about the excellent job you did. Everyone except Apple that is, they don't like such strong competition. You decided to reverse engineer the iTunes database "protocol" used in Apple products and implemented it from the device side on the Pre. This has the benefit of being able to sync the Pre with iTunes on any PC or Mac without installing extra software. And you didn't have to invest in development of your own desktop software, which is not a differentiating feature for you. You're in the business of selling phones, not software. I don't think deciding to "outsource" this to Apple was a smart move though. So now the bully is attacking you on their playground:  From Engadget Mobile And then they say it's your own fault. You could go crying to the principle (or whatever you want to call court you want to file the anti-competitive lawsuit with). But if you have a problem, if no-one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the AMAROK-TEAM! The media-player support in Amarok 2 is shaping up to be very flexible, complete and easy to implement thanks to the hard work of 2nd time GSoC student and hacker extraordinaire Alejandro.  We can quickly add support for the Palm Pre, or any other player, providing there is a way to access the database and we have documentation of the data-format. We already have iPod and MTP support and the same system is used to implement audio CD as a collection. iPhone OS 3.0 is being worked on as well as UMS (generic USB device) and OBEX (many cellphones). We promise not to change our application to prevent users to use Amarok with your device. Not only do we care about our users, we are not a competitor to you or have any ulterior motives. Amarok is already fully supported on all flavors of Linux and we have beta releases on Windows and Mac OSX which just need a bit of polishing and stabilization. Serious business proposals can be send to the Amarok team at business@getamarok.com (these emails will not be publicly readable).  Tuesday, July 14. 2009Sunday, July 12. 2009Communication ninjas all around?Have you ever noticed that some people check their IRC backlog and answer every ping while others couldn’t care less about who tried to contact them while they were away? Are there people around you who answer emails within a day (most of the time much less though) while you can wait a week for your uncle to answer that email asking for photos of your latest family reunion? The people around us communicate very differently on the web for various reasons. Let’s simplify it by separating them into 4 groups:
Communication ninjas are those who you can always reach, no matter where. They read their emails regularly, check IRC backlogs, follow what is happening on Twitter/Identi.ca, know who broke up with whom on Facebook and have a huge contact list for different networks in their instant messenger of choise. Selective communicators are reachable on a few selected mediums. They might check emails regularly and Jabber. Or follow Identi.ca and IRC. They have chosen one or a few mediums and stick to it. You can rely on reaching them there but don’t bet on reaching them anywhere else. Part-time communicators are on top of things when they are “online” but nearly completely drop off the earth from time to time. They are probably the trickiest of them all because you can’t always rely on their communication pattern. Communication abstainers… Well, don’t rely on them getting any information. They don’t like communicating online or simply don’t have the time for it. You will have to spent some extra effort on them. So you might ask yourself why this is important for you. It is very important if you want to get a message to a person or a group of people. Unfortunately in the Free Software community we forget about it too often or are not aware of its implications while relying so heavily on communication every single day. Say you have a part-time communicator who does IRC and reads backlog. There is little sense in sending him a simple “ping”. He’ll read it 5 hours later due to time-zone difference between you two and “pong” you. This ping pong can go on for days without ever any of you two getting the message to the other. (Yes I’ve see it happen multiple times. Don’t ask.) “ping - I need you to do X” would have been so much more effective in this case. Other example: You have a communication abstainer and need to contact him quickly. You could send an email and wait days to get a reply. Or you could ask around in his network and get his cellphone number and call him quickly. Or ask his collegues at work to tell him you need him to do X or know about Y. Another example: You have a part-time communicator who can’t use IRC at work but you need something dealt with quickly. Contact him on Jabber which he uses at work. Things to take away:
Thursday, July 9. 2009Adventure: A Photo EssayReporting not so live from GCDS. Last night after our first day of hacking a group of intrepid developers had tapas.
We ate way too much and followed with some great ice-cream. Try the dulce de leche. As most of our event destinations have been within walking distance, we figured we could also walk to the Collabora sponsored party. Map: check. It soon became obvious that walking to the golf course wasn’t as simple as we’d first hoped. We had to jump a few highway barriers. And we clambered along dirt shoulders.
We played frogger with Spanish traffic, and then decided it was time to head back to find a taxi.
We made it and went straight the the bar where the fun was flowing. Danimo and Chani in serious conversation. And Thiago decided to recite some shakespeare to us. And Markey was eyeing off the bar. Wednesday, July 8. 2009GCDS 2009: PhotosWednesday, July 8. 2009More Info on Gitorious.orgToday at the Akademy General Meeting, it was mentioned that Gitorious.org is being seriously looked at as a hosting solution for our Git repositories (as opposed to running an instance of Gitorious ourselves). Since I have been a major part of pushing in that direction, I feel that it would be prudent to make sure that those interested are aware of the relevant discussion and the current status. So, for those interested, read on. Please note that this is not a post about why KDE is migrating to Git, why this is a good idea/bad idea/neutral idea, etc. This is purely discussing the hosting aspect of Git. First, I would encourage you to read this kde-scm-interest mail, which I sent to the list on July 2nd. It goes into a good amount of depth as to why Gitorious.org could be beneficial for us, and the rest of this post will assume that you have read that email and the others in the thread, as it will simply update the information therein. On Monday a large group of interested people, including KDE sysadmins and the guys from Shortcut AS, went to lunch to discuss the technical issues. The output from that discussion is as follows:
We have two projects that are chomping at the bit to get onto Git ASAP: Amarok and TagLib. Amarok will be converted first and will serve as the initial guinea pigs to iron out any issues. Barring any major issues being found, TagLib will be converted in short order. I hope this gives everyone a better idea of KDE's Git-hosting plans. If you haven't checked out Gitorious.org, I encourage you to do so; it's made huge leaps and bounds in the past six months and has become quite a great tool. Please direct any questions or feedback to the kde-scm-interest mailing list at: kde-scm-interest at kay dee eee dot ooo arr gee, not to the comments section on this blog. Wednesday, July 8. 2009Thursday, July 2. 2009Berlin, we?ll meet againAs others on PlanetKDE already wrote we had a really great time in Berlin last week. The KDE/Kubuntu/Amarok booth was well staffed with my favorite gearheads and new KDE people now to be added to the former group
Thursday was probably the busiest day for me. Ingo interviewed me about Amarok for RadioTux. (Excellent job as always, Ingo!
Kreuzberg surprised a small group of us on Saturday with CSD. Definitely not what I would have expected for that evening but it was awesome! And let me tell you: Marge’s outfit was great but it wasn’t the best one by far. That one goes to someone dressed as Hellboy shouting “KDE! Awesome!” after seeing Frederik’s KDE shirt. This was my second time in Kreuzberg and the second time there was a party on the streets. Rock! (Way less police than on May 1st though Thanks go to KDE e.V. and Amarok for funding and of course the Linuxtag team for another great event. Oh and btw: I of course signed the FLA as well. (I think I got number 10 - nice round number.) Everyone going to Gran Canaria: Have a nice time and lots of fun and make sure to blog/dent/tweet a lot for those left behind at home. I want to see lots of photos |
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No more running from one side of the exhibition to the other like in previous years \o/
) The 
