Amarok Blog

I'm happy to announce that we will have a KDE 4.7 Release Party, combined with the Amarok 2.4.2 Release and My Birthday in Ulm / Germany. Location is Mark's and Myriam's apartment.

We will have food, drinks, music, and we can discuss the latest KDE and Amarok releases. If you are in the Southern Germany area, please make sure to join us and sign up here:

KDE 4.7 Release Party @ Ulm

Also joining will be Ian Monroe (KDE/Amarok) and his wife Sherry, Christian "Muesli" Muehlhaeuser, and Manuel "Sput" Nickschas (Quassel IRC). Plus some work mates from Nokia.

Paaaaaady! (Image by Julio Martinez)

Update: The event is on July 30, one week from now.

I felt like it was a good idea to give you a little update on what I have been up to lately. So here we go

First of all I should point out why I have been so quiet lately (unusual for me). Roughly six months ago I started working for Nokia, which required relocation to Germany. I am now living in Ulm, which is mostly known for the Ulm Minster, the tallest cathedral in the world:




The first three months I had been living in a hotel, which is cool for about two weeks but then gets boring quickly. I'm now living in a nice apartment with Myriam, in a 500 years old house in the city center. Unlike most Nokians in KDE I'm not working on Qt, but rather on a new project as Senior Software Engineer in "UI Design and Implementation". Also, unlike many of my fellow friends from KDE, I happen to believe that Stephen Elop is a good CEO, and I am happy with Nokia's new direction. I am in the lucky position to work with famous developers like Matthias Ettrich and Lars Knoll, and I succeeded in bringing veteran Amarok hackers Christian "Muesli" Muehlhaeuser and Ian Monroe into our team. Working with Chris and Ian is a joy, and I would be happy to bring more talented FOSS people in the project (drop me a note if you are interested).

After my prolonged absence in KDE, I'm eager to start contributing again, and especially to work on Amarok. It's great to see that Amarok is still doing fine, and that our team has made some very nice progress, with the latest achievement being the release of Amarok 2.4.2 Beta 1. We have some nice plans for Amarok, like a port to Qt Quick, which will also help getting our plans for Amarok Mobile on track.

My latest obsession is Google+, we often hang out there with nerds like Harald Sitter and Paul Adams, doing community work like trying to teach some German to Ian Monroe (it's hopeless...) Find me here: Mark @ Google+

Last not least, I will be attending the Desktop Summit and Qt Developer Days 2011. Meet me there for sharing a line of beer or injecting some Coca Cola (at DS we could also laugh derisively at gnome devs).