Learn about Linux
Download Linux
Get Linux helpSpecial Offers
Feature: Open Source
KDE 4 Multimedia Meeting exceeds expectations
Share
Print
CommentsK4M attendees hailed from 15 countries and four continents. While open source software is often developed by individuals separated by thousands of miles who communicate through email and IRC, airfare and lodging expenses may be justified for short bursts of fantastically productive meetings such as this. Meeting organizer Adriaan de Groot notes in his blog, "It's difficult to quantify how much extra bandwidth 'being there' adds to development, but our past experiences are just great."
The weather in Achtmaal was unfortunately rainy over the weekend, so most attendees chose to stay inside the Annahoeve hotel. Nonetheless, Sebastian Kügler's photo gallery illustrates a happy and well-entertained group. Meeting organizers made sure that food and accommodations were available to the programmers so that they need not worry about such distractions. A day by day first-hand rundown of the meeting is available at The Dot, KDE's news site.
The meeting began with a presentation by amaroK developer Max Howell. Though work continues on amaroK 1.4, much of the discussion at the meeting would revolve around amaroK 2, planned for release alongside KDE 4. The first step towards 2.0, porting the code to Qt 4, began during the meeting. As coding continues, the team plans to utilize the advanced features of Qt 4 to enhance amaroK's interface. Developers hope to add Windows support for version 2, as well as improved last.fm integration. Users can already have their listening habits submitted to the site and be returned a list of songs which they may also like. Users may soon take advantage of last.fm's other features, including being able to stream suggested songs that are not in their collection. Last.fm also provides the capacity to automatically create playlists tuned to users' interests, and automatically fill in missing tags for their files.
Though the attendees were eager to discuss the next major version of amaroK, they didn't neglect the current version (1.4.1). A dramatic improvement in startup time and a similar speedup for the context browser were committed to the repository during the meeting, which will benefit users following the next minor release. The moodbar, which made the color of the song position bar reflect the "mood" of the currently playing song, was removed because it was no longer being maintained. The collection will now also be updated via inotify signals from newer kernels (2.6.13 and above), which allows amaroK's song database to reflect changes in a user's collection instantly. A new mailing list set up by roKymotion will inform distribution package maintainers about amaroK. This should help to dispel problems such as distributions making their amaroK package rely on MySQL inappropriately.
User interface changes that were made to the current version include a categorized display for scripts in the script manager and experimentation with the position of the context browser. Users will be able to move the browser to the top of the window, above the playlist, from its current position alongside the other browsers, which are used for playlist creation and media device handling. This will allow users to have things such as lyrics and Wikipedia information available without having to switch away from the other browsers. The additional width afforded by a horizontal situation will also ease viewing of Wikipedia pages and other context information. Many of the changes planned for amaroK 2.0 may also find their way into 1.4.1.
Phonon, KIO, and more
Following Howell's talk was a presentation by Phonon lead developer Matthias Kretz. He gave an overview of Phonon, the recently unveiled multimedia API for KDE 4. Great progress was made on his project at the meeting, much of it to satisfy the needs amaroK developers expressed.
KHTML developer Allan Sandfeld Jensen made a significant improvement to KIO, which is responsible for handling network protocols for KDE applications. His work allows programs to seek during media playback, which will allow, for instance, users playing videos over HTTP to skip to the middle of a file without having to watch its entirety.
Because KDE multimedia applications besides amaroK were not well represented at the meeting, little progress was made for projects such as Kaffeine, Juk, and Noatun. However, all KDE applications will benefit from the work done on fundamental KDE technologies such as Phonon and KIO.
The meeting, one of a series of KDE subproject meetings designed to accelerate the version 4 development process, was sponsored by KDE supporters such as Novell and Trolltech, and attended by about 20 representatives from the KDE Multimedia team (consisting chiefly of amaroK and Phonon developers), the KDE marketing team, and Open Usability. Previously, the Personal Information Management team met, also in Achtmaal. Other major KDE subprojects expect to announce similar gatherings.
The subproject meetings and initiatives such as Appeal and Plasma are both professionally executed marketing strategies and methods for focusing developer manpower in areas which are crucial to KDE's success. By leveraging support from its backers, who sponsor developers as well as meetings, KDE has been able to adopt many of the financial and organizational advantages which proprietary commercial software companies traditionally hold. Kügler writes, "All in all, the meeting has exceeded all our expectations by far.... The network effects of the meeting are not measurable, but probably even more important than the code that has actually been written."
Comments
on KDE 4 Multimedia Meeting exceeds expectationsNote: Comments are owned by the poster. We are not responsible for their content.
<a href="http://www.javasigns.com/decals">truck decals</a>
Nokia N91 220$
Posted by: nexet1 on June 16, 2006 09:54 PMjames lawal
Managing Director.
PRICE LIST BELOW:
Nokia N91 220$
Nokia 6060 145$
Nokia 6111 132$
Nokia 6270 125$
Nokia 6270 115$
Nokia 6280 125$
Nokia N90 115$
Nokia N70 115$
Nokia Vertu 155$
Nokia 5140i 125$
Nokia 6230i 115$
Nokia 8800 105$
Nokia 6021 105$
Nokia 6030 115$
Nokia 6680 125$
Nokia 6681 120$
Nokia 6101 110$
Nokia 6822 110$
Nokia 7710 110$
Nokia 6170 145$
Nokia 6260 145$
Nokia 3510i 95$
Nokia 6630 120$
Nokia 9300 110$
Nokia 7260 120$
Nokia 7270 110$
Nokia 7280 120$
Nokia 6670 110$
Nokia 6020 120$
Nokia 3220 65$
Nokia N-GAGE QD 75$
Nokia 7610 120$
Nokia 9500 145$
Nokia 5140 85$
Nokia 6610i 120$
Nokia 7200 133$
Nokia 6230 145$
Nokia 6820 120$
Nokia 7600 105$
Nokia 6600 120$
Nokia 6800 105$
Nokia 6220 120$
Nokia 6620 120$
Nokia 7250i 65$
Nokia 8910i 120$
Nokia 6100 95$
SAMSUNG D600 155$
SAMSUNG P860 165$
SAMSUNG P850
sidekick 1 $110
sidekick 2 $100
Sony Ericsson K500i.....130 USD
Sony Ericsson P800......200 USD
Sony Ericsson P900......260 USD
Sony Ericsson P910i.....270 USD
Sony Ericsson T230......80 USD
Sony Ericsson T310......80 USD
Sony Ericsson T610......100 USD
Sony Ericsson Z1010.....180 USD
Sony Ericsson Z200......90 USD
Sony Ericsson Z600......130 USD
Sony Ericssson T630.....130 USD
Sony Ericsson S700i.....170 USD
Sony Ericsson S750i.....170 USD
9806LL/A) MP3 Player = USD$110
Motorola A388C......170 USD
Motorola A760.......250 USD
Motorola A768.......260 USD
Motorola A768i......200 USD
Motorola A780.......290 USD
Motorola C550.......90 USD
Motorola C650.......100 USD
Motorola E365.......100 USD
Motorola E398.......120 USD
Motorola E680.......240 USD
Motorola RAZR V3....270 USD
Motorola V220.......170 USD
Motorola V303.......100 USD
Motorola V400.......150 USD
Motorola V500.......150 USD
Motorola V501.......200 USD
Motorola V525.......150 USD
Motorola V600 (OEM) w/ Bluetooth Headset..260 USD
Motorola V600 OEM...180 USD
Motorola V690.....170 USD
Motorola V750.....180 USD
Motorola V80......200 USD
Motorola V80 with Bluetooth...260 USD
Motorola V872.....200 USD
Motorola V878....180 USD
Motorola V300....150 USD
Samsung D500...240 USD
Samsung E600...140 USD
Samsung E800...180 USD
Samsung P510...120 USD
Samsung SGH-D410.200 USD
Samsung SGH-D500..270 USD
Samsung SGH-E700..150 USD
Samsung SGH-E715..170 USD
Samsung SGH-P100..130 USD
Samsung SGH-P400..95 USD
Samsung SGH-P408..240 USD
Samsung SGH-P730..150 USD
Samsung SGH-S200..90 USD
Samsung SGH-S300..70 USD
Samsung SGH-S300M..100 USD
Samsung SGH-S500...100 USD
Samsung SGH-V200...110 USD
Samsung SGH-X400...100 USD
Samsung SGH-X430...100 USD
Samsung SGH-X600...100 USD
Samsung X450.......100 USD
mp3 player
Mp3 Player Price List
iRiver IFP-790T MP3 Player = $80
H10 6GB MP3 Player = $120
Sonic Impact Technologies 512MB MP3 Player w/ Flash Drive & Voice = $85
iriver H10 5GB MP3 Player, Gray = $110
YP-MT6X Yepp 512MB Portable Compact Digital Music MP3 Player = $70
Zen Micro 5 GB MP3 Player - Dark Blue [ Creative Labs = $100
iRiver 5 GB MP3 Player (Silver) = $110
Creative Labs NOMAD Jukebox Zen Xtra 30 GB MP3 Player = $90
Sony MZ-NH600D 1GB MP3 Player Hi-MD Walkman Digital Music Player = $90
Network Walkman NW-HD1 20GB MP3 Player = $150
Cowon iAudio X5 20GB MP3 Player = $110
Digital Audio Players from Motorola: Audio MP3 Players, Digital = $70
Gigabeat Meg-F60S 60GB MP3 Player - Gray = $155
Sony 1GB Personal MP3 Player, Network Walkman = $100
Creative Zen Micro 6GB MP3 Player (red) = $125
laptops
SONY VAIO A217S-- 100GB-- 512MB RAM-- XP HOME-------------$300
SONY VAIO B1VP-- 40GB HD-- 512MB RAM-- XP PRO--------------$330
SONY VAIO T370P/L-- 60GB HD-- 512MB RAM-- XP----------------$200
SONY VAIO A215Z 60GB HD-- 512MB RAM-- XP------------------$2450
SONY VAIO A397XP-- 80GB HD-- 512MB RAM-- XP----------------$300
SONY VAIO B100B08 60GB HD-- 512MB RAM-- XP---------------$250
SONY VAIO B100B08 60GB HD-- 512MB RAM-- XP---------------$400
SONY VAIO FS295VP 80GB HD-- 512MB RAM-- XP---------------$350
SONY VAIO FS215Z 100GB HD-- 512MB RAM-- XP---------------$350
SONY VAIO A417M 80GB HD-- 512MB RAM-- XP-----------------$450
SONY VAIO B1VP-- 40GB HD-- 512MB RAM-- XP PRO-------------$200
SONY VAIO T370P/L-- 60GB HD-- 512MB RAM-- XP PRO----------$400
SONY VAIO LAPTOP-- VGN-A117S---------------$400
ipods
Apple iPod from hp 40GB = USD$150 Apple iPod from HP 20GB = USD$120 Apple iPod U2 Special Edition 20GB = USD$130 HP Apple iPod / 40GB / Click Wheel / MP3 Player = USD$170 Apple iPod MP3 Player, 20gb = USD$115 Apple iPod Shuffle1GB MP3 Player = USD$85 Apple iPod for Windows - Digital player - 10GB Hard Drive = USD$130 Apple iPod 40GB 3rd Gen M9245LL/A A1040 = USD$140 Hewlett Packard Apple iPod from HP 20GB With Click Wheel = USD$95 Apple Ipod 20GB 4th Generation = USD$130 APPLE iPod mini Player 4G Light Blue Model M9802ZP/A = USD$93 Kingston Apple iPod from hp 40GB with Click Wheel = USD$140 iPod Mini 6GB = USD$145 iPod 60GB = USD$170 iPod Mini 4GB = USD$105 Apple iPod shuffle (512 MB - M9724LL/A) MP3 Player = USD$80 Apple iPod mini Green Second Gen. (4 GB - M9806LL/A) MP3 Player = USD$110
#