Tuesday, October 26. 2010Last Week in Amarok
This new series of articles was inspired by Boudewijn Rempt's great "Last Week in Krita". Thank you Boud, for giving us the idea
Please enjoy an overview of current Amarok development. Things are moving at a crazy fast speed currently, and Amarok 2.4 is going to rock hard, I can promise you that. Here is what we did last week: We launched our annual Roktober fundraiserEach donor who agrees will have a “Thank you” entry in the Amarok “about” dialog, optionally with social networking features provided by openDesktop.org for those who have an account! Rick's mega patch, fixing most Applet issuesAmarok developer Rick W. Chen committed a mega patch, consisting of no less than 110 separate commits! What he did is simple to describe, but hard to do: He fixed almost all bugs and various issues in Amarok’s Plasma applets (those applets in the middle part of Amarok). Additionally, he made many small improvements to the applets, such as: The main features (the main motivation for context view changes for me) were supporting Wikipedia locales and upcoming events for specific venues. MusicBrainz auto-tagging from SergeyThis is a killer feature, as far as I am concerned. Like most developers, I am very, very lazy. To be honest, I have not tagged an album in my life. This feature changes all that. You click one button, and everything you want is tagged correctly. This is awesome. ![]() MusicBrainz tagging in action New option for hiding the menu barThis has been a much requested feature for a long time. And since we care about usability a lot, Amarok is going to explain to you how to disable this feature before you activate it. Font size of On-Screen-Display is now configurableThe user can now control the font size of the text in the OSD. Rather than setting the absolute point size, as was the case in Amarok 1.4, the user can specify the size in a relative percent-of-normal size. For example, setting the size to 115% makes the OSD font a bit larger than the normal screen font. Why the change from absolute to relative sizes? It lets Amarok look better on a wide range of devices, from small mobile or netbook screens, to HTPCs. Playdar Collection by Andy Coder (GSoC project)Amarok will now render this menu readable with all color schemesBugs and WishesOver all, we closed 98 bugs and implemented 6 wishes: 29 were bugfixes, 3 downstream bugs, 4 upstream bugs and 62 were marked as duplicate. Thank you to all Amarok developers who have contributed to this article Monday, October 25. 2010
Podcast Interview with an Amarok ... Posted by Mark Kretschmann
in markey at
16:24
Comments (6) Trackbacks (0) Podcast Interview with an Amarok Developer (me)Image copyright by Ian Hayhurst A few days ago, Paul Adams and Guillermo Amaral recorded a pretty nice Podcast interview with me. We were talking about some pretty interesting things (secrets will be revealed!), and about some pretty silly things (ROFLing will be achieved!). At any rate, we had a blast recording this, and I recommend to check it out. You'll find the Podcast for download here: KDE and the Masters of the Universe: Amarok founder Mark KretschmannPS: Of course you could also use Amarok's Podcast feature to subscribe to the feed Thursday, October 21. 2010
Nokia N900 - The best smartphone? Posted by Mark Kretschmann
in markey at
10:10
Comments (37) Trackbacks (0) Nokia N900 - The best smartphone?![]() Short answer: Yes. Longer answer: I have been very lucky recently. At the fantastic OVI and KDE Sprint, kindly hosted at the Nokia office in Munich, I was given a N900. First of all I would like to say "Thank you!" to Nokia, for doing that. It's a great gift, and I promise to put it to good use (MeeGo port of Amarok...) I had already heard great things about this device. As a former owner of a Nokia N810, which was nifty, but "not quite there", I was very excited to find out if the N900 got it right. And hell yeah, did they get it right this time. This is the device that every geek has been dreaming of: A full Debian computer that fits in the pocket of your jeans, including a phone. Usability is excellent (far better than e.g. of the N97 Mini, which uses S60). I will admit that this device is probably more suitable for geeks, than for example for my daddy. It's a bit too "computer'ish" for the average non-technical person. However, I find it easy to use. And features... well. There isn't anything that the N900 cannot do. Every day I'm discovering some new amazing feature. It has: A full Debian OS, with all the apps that you would use on a desktop too, e.g. X-Chat, ScummVM, and even an X terminal. Which brings us to another important point: It runs X11. What other phone does it? None that I know of. The big advantage is that all your favorite Linux apps will run just perfectly, without much of a porting effort. Hardware wise, this is just the best of the best: The OMAP 3 CPU (well, SoC really) is pretty fast, the camera is neat (although the image noise level is a bit too high for my taste). It has Bluetooth, 3G, WiFi, a real keyboard (big advantage!), pretty decent battery life, and great sounding speakers (they sound far better than my laptop does), and really good in-ear canal headphones, that can be used as a headset too. Ah yes, it also has an FM radio receiver, which I haven't used so far. The display is really good, excellent viewing angle, great contrast. In fact it's so good that watching movies is a pleasure with the device. I watched "Avatar - The Last Airbender" in bed the other day. Btw, that movie is far better than people like to say So, to sum it up, for a geek, there isn't a better phone currently than the N900. This is the device you want, believe me that. Well, there is one better device, which is the N900+1, but it's not yet released. I will probably buy it on day one, because thinking about it alone it already gives me a nerdgasm. Sunday, October 17. 2010
Testing: Review of Kubuntu Maverick ... Posted by Valorie Zimmerman
in valoriez at
00:11
Comments (3) Trackbacks (0) Testing: Review of Kubuntu Maverick 10.10, and new blog
I'll keep up my Linux Grandma blog for now, but Blogger has started adding an insidious ad across the blog content, obscuring it from the reader. That must be really annoying, and I don't want to subject people to that. Serendipity is the blog software that KDE uses, and so far, it seems great. I might install it on my own server for the other blogs I have, and move the content. What a pity, blogger used to be great.
Maverick Meerkat Kubuntu, released 10/10/10, was quite an adventure in installation, due to PEBKAC (problem exists between keyboard and chair), but with the help of my son, and friend maco, and my blogged experience of the last install, I have quite a beautiful install going. All apps installed well, most importantly Amarok and Konversation. Once I regained my old /home partition, I have my music again, unfortunately without covers and lyrics. However, the new cover-fetching is excellent, and I hope to have that all rebuilt in the next couple of months. Until then I'll be playing "Random" a lot! While mentioning Amarok, I have to say that it's Roktober, so give! I did, and it feels great. Also, it's great to have it built from git again. All the latest! The biggest surprise with Mav was installing Skype again, to test my built-in video camera and mic. Previously, the camera worked, but never the mic. I thought maybe it was mis-installed. However, once I unmuted it in pavucontrol (Pulseaudio controller), it worked perfectly! I've been recently given Kubuntu membership, and am headed for UDS next weekend, to plan for Natty, the next release. Please give me any feedback you'd like me to take to Florida about the future of Kubuntu. Saturday, October 16. 2010
Ovi and KDE Sprint Posted by Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen
in leinir at
10:41
Comments (2) Trackbacks (0) Ovi and KDE Sprint
In the weekend leading up to the Qt Developer Days 2010 in Munich, 13 KDE hackers and community members, and Nokia employees Knut Yrvin and Ralf Engels have got together in the Nokia Offices near by. There they discuss the potentials of Nokia's Ovi services offering and what opportunities exist in Ovi for KDE as well as what KDE can offer Ovi. The meeting was sponsored by Nokia, and approved by the KDE e.V. - both of these indicating that both parties are interested in seeing such a collaboration succeed.
I am "sorry" to report that we have been so busy here that i have not been able to set aside time to do a proper blog entry about the sprint each day as normally happens during the KDE sprints, but as you can tell from the following, and the Dot article which is going to be posted soon, this sprint was really quite a heavy deal - in the good way! Friday![]() My Friday started out with me getting up at horse o'clock England time (that is, the moment in time when by all rights only horses ought to be standing, in this case meaning 03.15), and as my poor house mate had offered to drive me to the airport, he of course got up a matter of minutes later. So, off to the airport we went, and i shall not bore you with any details of the entirely uneventful remainder of the trip itself. Arriving at the Nokia office in Munich to find Rune 'dimse' Jensen already there, i promptly got my little, already prepared signs ready to be hung up. Unfortunately, as it turned out, their monochromatic nature, caused by our printer's lack of colour quality, meant that they were mostly unnoticed by the intended recipients, but oh well - i know to make them bright KDE-blue for next year ![]() After spending the day waiting for people to slowly trickle in and chatting with Knut and each other in general, we decided to go into town and find a place to get something to eat. So, off we went, finding a nice bar, which in stark contrast to so many places in Germany simply had English language menus by default - an obvious hint to the fact that central Munich is a place where a lot of people come from all over the world to drink beer and gawk at really pretty architecture. After managing a really nice steak for a surprisingly small amount of money (EUR 19 for a perfectly prepared, rare cooked steak, very good!) and further chatting - this time including beer - we went off to the hostel. We had ordered space for 13 people, which in A&O Hostels speak seems to actually mean "the smallest number of rooms we can fit that many people into", which here meant four people per room in six person rooms... which when we arrived were even equipped for eight people, with four bunk beds in each room. Somewhat confused, we tucked ourselves in and prepared ourselves for an early start the next day. Saturday![]() Early starts are not something geeks traditionally are particularly brilliant at, and as a result we did not manage to get everybody up and out before almost an hour after the planned time. At least we got to the office before mid day So, with everybody arrived at the office, we started out by attempting to describe in some detail just what Ovi actually is. A lot of people have been confused about this, so this helped streamline the whole thing a lot: Ovi is not just the app store, or more recently Ovi Maps. It is, in essence, an umbrella term which covers all of Nokia's service offerings. And it means "door" in Finnish - yes, door, not gateway or portal or somesuch, simply door ![]() After getting the basics done, we began our discussions - in particular this happened by putting three big pieces of paper up on the wall. Each then had a title added, reading: What can Ovi do for KDE, What can KDE do for Ovi, and What features could be added to Ovi. During these discussions, another piece of paper was added when we realised that one of the Ovi services, Ovi Files, would be shut down (in fact it is being shut down as i am writing these words). As a result, we made it one of priorities to come up with specific ideas for Ovi Files, and how to offer a sensible replacement for the service. As we are reasonably well informed that the reason for shutting it down is technical and not a lack of users or the like, we spent some time coming up with ideas for what we could possibly offer in this area, and came up with what we believe is a sensible business model for using ownCloud to provide an Ovi Files style service. ![]() After working out the first details of this, it was time to get ready for the fact that Germany is entirely shut down retail-wise on Sundays. As such, we went out and bought enormous amounts of food. To be exact, 120 euros worth of food was purchased, preparing us for lunch on both days. Bread, meats, cheeses, salad things, and even some pasta and sauce, in case of occurrances of The Geek Hunger In the evening, after much more talking, including a round table, where we talked about our individual wishes and interest areas (with notes taken by Chani), it was pizza time. However, getting 15 geeks to agree on which pizzas to buy can be quite a task. One we managed to complete in only two hours! ![]() Before catching the train back to the hostel - something which was much fun, and took two hours(!) due to strike action, and leading to the discovery that the extra bed had now been removed - was that Knut handed the devices over that he had brought. This meant that the first two people, Dipesh and Arjen, were given an N900, to assist in their work: Dinesh on his PIM work, and Arjen for his work on making GluonGraphics work in other places than the desktop. The remaining devices were put back in the bag and put to one side for the next day. SundaySunday started with a breakfast in the hostel's hotel section. While some people seem to have assumed this would be in any way different, it was of course discovered that, being A&O, the only real difference was the fact that it was higher up and had families with children in there ![]() After a relatively successful getting out of the hostel (only twenty minutes late this time! At some point, we finally reached the point where some structure was needed: We split into the groups suggested by the round table presentations from the previous day, with yours truly joining the group discussing Ovi Store related items. This, in essence, focused on how we could potentially convince Ovi that exposing their store through a web API would be advantageous to them, and have no real drawbacks. Seeing as the Ovi Store seems to run as a web page as opposed to a fat client on the various devices, we have based our ponderings and suggestions on there being no API already. Talks with the head of device development at Orange Labs R&D, Rafel Uddin, at Qt Developer Days following the sprint have shown that this seems to in fact be the case: Orange have wanted to create a rebranded version of the Ovi Store, and they would very much like to do this as a fat client rather than the current solution which requires them to do it as a web application. The suggestion this group comes up with is to suggest basing this exposure on the well proven and by now extensively implemented (both for clients and servers) web API named Open Collaboration Services, as this would instantly bring support in various places around the world - including directly in the KDE desktop. ![]() At some point when most of the teams were reaching some level of completeness in their discussions, it was agreed that it was time for food. And so, lunch happened. This consisted of leftovers from the previous day, as well as something which translated roughly to white saussages. I am told this is a Bavarian specialty, and they are eaten by peeling the skin of the rapidly boiled sausage, and with mustard and brezes - the soft version of pretzels as you might know them from beer drinking After lunch, people slowly start working again. Rune mentioned that he is in need of arguments for the mobile devevelopment camp he helps run for UNF.dk (the Danish youth association of science) to use Qt rather than Android. Pradeepto consequently offered to put him in contact with Jarmo Rintamaki, the manager at Forum Nokia responsible for contact with universities and other educational institutions. This finally happened at DevDays - networking, people, is the name of the game Arriving at dinner time, we were all more or less ready to round off the sprint. The video below is the current end result of what has become an on-going discussion of what we need to contact Ovi about: In summary, we have many very good arguments for why it would make all kinds of sense for Ovi to help us and also let us help them. Drop by the wiki page to see where we are at the moment, it's already looking good, but needs much more work on the formulation part before we can hand it on to go further. Saturday, October 16. 2010Amarok Celebrates "Roktober" Fundraiser![]() Here it comes: October in all of its glory! For some, this is a time of falling leaves. For others, it is a time of warm sunbeams. Either way, we are once again nearing the year’s end and are ready to sum up our efforts, while we continue to develop and Rok the World! In the last twelve months, we have made more than 4000 commits, closed over 4000 bugs, released 6 new versions of Amarok, wrote a Quick Start Guide to Amarok, attended over 10 conferences and had a big developer sprint in Switzerland. All of this, thanks to your donations! Some of the highlights we worked on in Amarok itself: For Amarok 2.4 (planned for early 2011) and upcoming releases we have planned: You might have noticed that our development pace has quickened! In order to continue working on Amarok at such speed, we call on your help. Costs such as server maintenance and travelling expenses are too much for our tiny budgets to handle. Remember, everything we do, we do for free! And this is where you come in! This year’s Roktober, our annual fundraiser, has a goal of 5000 Euros. Reaching this goal will help us handle this next exciting year smoothly. The funds will help us develop more powerful features in Amarok, pay for our servers, and send team members to conferences; we may even run a developer sprint or two! As a sign of our appreciation for your support we will add donors agreeing to it to a special section in Amarok’s About Dialog. Your name will then appear in each version of Amarok that gets released in the next 12 months. So join us, and throw in your share to Rok the World! Thursday, October 7. 2010
Qt Dev Days 2010 - And OVI Sprint Posted by Mark Kretschmann
in markey at
16:58
Comments (0) Trackbacks (0) Qt Dev Days 2010 - And OVI Sprint![]() I will be attending the Qt Developer Days 2010 in Munich. As I hear, the number of attending KDE developers is especially high this year, so I'm really looking forward to meeting many of you. Before the event there will be a developer sprint hosted at the Nokia office in Munich. This will be the first time I'll visit the Munich office (I've had the chance to visit the Berlin team a while ago), and I'm sure we will make good use of our time and do some cool things with MeeGo and Qt hacking. So, I'm pretty excited about the upcoming week. It will be interesting to learn new things, and at the same time it'll be fun to meet old friends, and to make new ones. Friday, October 1. 2010
bouncing around the echo chamber Posted by Leo Franchi
in lfranchi at
19:55
Comments (2) Trackbacks (0) bouncing around the echo chamber
So following the mantra that nothing is official until it is blogged about, let it be known that version 0.1.0 of my small pet project libechonest has been released. Tarball available here:
http://pwsp.cleinias.com/libechonest-0.1.0.tar.bz2 sha1: 4c4e6a478a3bd7be0121af586e635e30840fe984 What is libechonest? A small C++/Qt wrapper around the APIs provided by The Echo Nest: http://developer.echonest.com/docs/v4/ . And what is provided by these APIs? In few words, the same sort of information you get from Last.fm but much better and much, much cooler. Some Amarok users who enjoy using the Dynamic Playlists feature may already be familiar with The Echo Nest, as it has already crept into recent Amarok releases. It has been possible to run a dynamic playlist based on Echo Nest-suggested similar artists and tracks for a few versions now. However, this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the information available from The Echo Nest. They provide up to date information about artists including audio,bios, blogs, news, reviews, images, similar artists, and much more. So libechonest is designed to make it as easy as possible to extract this wealth of information from whatever small app you are creating. Maybe the Plasma Media Center could display related images about the currently playing artist, for example, without having to figure out what images from the artist Spoon are actually about Spoon and not about a certain type of cutlery. Alternatively, a mobile app could use the beat analysis features in the API to play continuous music that fits a certain BPM to match up with your desired running cadence. The possibilities are, of course, endless Anyway, libechonest is being developed in KDE's git repository at git://anongit.kde.org/libechonest . For the moment the public-facing site is on KDE's projects page: https://projects.kde.org/projects/playground/libs/libechonest |
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