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  • in GNOME
  • 1 min read

GNOME 2.32 Screenshots needed

The GNOME 2.32 release notes need your help!

If you have a GNOME 2.31.x development environment, I’m looking for 2 or 3 screenshots:

  • GNOME desktop with either Nautilus (and some files and folders cut and ready to be pasted) OR 2.32 desktop with Empathy showing meta-contacts
  • Empathy with meta-contacts
  • Nautilus with some files or folders cut and ready to be pasted

When using the GNOME screenshot tool, you can select the entire desktop or the application with focus. No effects should be applie and you may need to turn Compiz off with some distros (otherwise the window borders aren’t visible).

A couple guidelines:

  • Screenshots must use the Clearlooks theme, a GNOME background / wallper and the default GNOME icons
  • The icon in the GNOME menu on the panel must show the GNOME foot, not a distribution logo
  • Your GNOME panel should be as clean as possible (If using Ubuntu, do not show the messaging menu in the panel)
  • If using openSUSE, your panel needs to be on the top
  • Your screenshots will be licensed under a CC-BY 3.0 license

Sorry for all the rules! You will receive attribution in the release notes. Email them to me at pcutler at gnome dot org. Thanks!

Taking Snowy for a Walk – Issue 3: What users want

We launched the sign-ups for the upcoming Tomboy Online alpha last week. As part of the sign-up process we included a brief survey asking what features those signing up were interested in and to rate them on a scale of 1 – 5, which 5 being very interested.

We asked them to rate the following features:

  • Free note synchronization for Tomboy
  • Sharing my notes so other users can read them
  • Editing my notes from my desktop web browser
  • Native Android app (Tomdroid)
  • Native iOS app
  • HTML5 offline client (for all mobile desktop browsers)
  • Editing my notes from my mobile device (browser, native app, whatever)

Here are the results:

Tomboy Online Features

(If it’s hard to read, here is link to the png file too, squint really hard)

It’s a fairly small sample, but I’m still please to see so little interest in iOS and a huge interest in Android and HTML5.

Snowy was approved for a hackfest at the Boston Summit. The hackfest goals include match up nicely with the survey results. The goals include:

  • Mobile client for accessing and syncing notes
  • Implement UI / Design via CSS
  • Implement a text editor
  • Implement note sharing between users via the web interface
  • Prepare Tomboy Online for Beta release

And if there are any companies that want to help sponsor the hackfest, please let me or Stormy know!

We’re excited to be working on a web service that integrates with the GNOME Desktop. We have one bug to fix that’s delayed the alpha launch slightly. Thanks to everyone who has signed up and we’ll get the invites out ASAP.

  • in Hardware
  • 2 min read

The Needle Doctor is moving

The Needle Doctor, Minnesota’s premier retailer (and online retailer) of everything related to turntable hardware, is moving.

After I first bought my turntable in April, I had gone on a buying spree of used records.  Most of them needed cleaning and I also needed something to get the dust that would build up on my cartridge.  Doing some quick Google searches, I kept coming up with links to the Needle Doctor.  I was pretty excited to realize they were in Minneapolis.

One afternoon I printed out directions (yes, I live way out in the ‘burbs) and took Zoe, my six year old daughter, along for the ride.  We get there and I realize I didn’t need directions – they’re located in Dinkytown in the heart of the University of Minnesota campus.

Whether you need something cheap and basic like cleaning supplies to a new turntable to $1200 cartridges, the Needle Doctor has it.  When we visited, there were 3 or 4 people working up front and another 2 or 3 in the back of this tiny store front.   The customer service rep answered my questions (and confirmed I had picked out the right cleaning solution!) and took care of me.  After the sale was completed, I realized I had forgotten to pick up a 45 adapter for my turntable.  After I asked, he reached into a drawer and tossed me a used one free.  Now that’s service!

The Needle Doctor has everything online – I highly recommend them if you need to pick anything up for your turntable.  I’ll make sure to be visiting their new location – especially as it cuts down on the drive by 50%!

Make sure to read this article as it has more detail than the City Pages article linked above and gives you a feel for what Dinkytown used to be.

  • in General
  • 1 min read

Get notified about new releases

Albumreminder.com is a website that can automatically inform you of when your favorite artist has a new album coming out.

After signing up for an account, Albumreminder.com can import a list of your favorite artists from Last.fm or iTunes.  You can then choose to be emailed the day of release or a few days before when your favorite artist has a new release coming out.  Alternatively, you can turn off email notifications and subscribe to a personal RSS thread instead.

If you’re a music junkie like me, this can help make sure no new release slips through the crack.  Even if you avidly read music blogs or track your favorite artists, it’s always nice to have a backup plan.

(Via Lifehacker)

Six Months Without Satellite TV

img_6217.jpg

It’s been six months since I cut the cable and canceled DirecTV, going over-the-air and internet only.

Do I miss DirecTV?

In a word, no.

This past Sunday started the real test as I’m a huge (American) football fan. Living in Minnesota and being a Green Bay Packers fan, this season is the first in ten years that I haven’t had DirecTV’s NFL Sunday ticket to watch out of market games (luckily the Packers were the national game this past Sunday). I also missed my beloved University of Wisconsin Badgers play the last two weeks, but I think I’m going to make it (especially as they play tomorrow on ABC).

None of this would have been possible except for three innovations: Boxee, MythTV and streaming Netflix.

The only hiccup I had was my antenna setup – the first couple of months everything was great, except NBC was a bit flaky, which was to be expected. The local NBC affiliate is the only TV station not on the HDTV antenna array here in the Twin Cities, and the antenna they use is notorious for its weak signal. But after a couple of months, I started experiencing signal strength issues with almost all of the channels. After doing a bit of research, I climbed up on the roof, and turned the antenna 90 degrees, as seen in the photo above so it faces the direction of the antenna tower. I was worried that even if I did so, I’d still have signal strength issues as the antenna is now parallel with the roof but under the roof line – but thankfully all of my signal strength issues appear fixed going in to the fall TV season. And now my satellite dish just sits on the roof, unused.

I’ve previously talked about my setup and with summer TV being mostly re-runs, I’ve been using Netflix. A lot. I’m glad to see Netflix continue to focus on expanding their catalog for streaming titles and was interested to read how much cheaper streaming is for them vs. mailing DVDs. With the new fall TV season starting, MythTV has proved invaluable in recording off-air TV shows and automatically removing the commercials helping make watching TV more enjoyable. I’m probably only using 20% of what MythTV is capable of. And for the cable shows I don’t have, Boxee’s Hulu integration continue to works pretty well. It’s standard def quality – but you get what you pay for, so you won’t find me complaining. Additionally, I’ve converted all of the movies I own and store them on my NAS, adding another library of content to watch through Boxee as well as stream to my old Netgear Eva in my bedroom.

I’m also keeping an eye on the Boxee Box, launching later this year. I’ve been using Boxee with my 60″ Sony HDTV in my man cave and if and when we replace the old analog TV in the living room, I’ll have some interesting choices to make. Between Google TV, Boxee and even litl working on a set top box, there will be some interesting choices to bring internet content to the TV. And with CNBC reporting this morning that 37% of adults 25-34 who subscribe to Neflix now use Netflix instead of cable and satellite service, DirecTV, Comcast and other satellite / cable providers are going to need to find a new business model. Fast.

Rolling Stone’s 25 best record stores

Rolling Stone released their list of the 25 best record stores in the United States yesterday.

Minneapolis was well represented with Electric Fetus coming in as the sixth best record store in the U.S. and Hymie’s Vintage Records rounded out the list at twenty-five.

In July I went on a bit of a shopping spree at Electric Fetus, which is also where I spent Record Store Day 2009.  There is no question that Electric Fetus has one of, if not the best, selection in the Twin Cities, though Cheapo gives them a pretty strong run for selection.  I have to say I was disappointed in the service at Electric Fetus in July.  I asked two different clerks questions about the vinyl I was buying and both times they couldn’t answer my question (and they weren’t hard questions – it’s not like I was trying to play stump the clerk).

I’m embarrassed to admit I hadn’t heard of Hymies until now – I definitely know where my next round of shopping is going to be!

  • in GNOME
  • 2 min read

Taking Snowy for a Walk – Issue 2: Alpha dog

Annabella and Bam at play

(Licensed under a CC-BY 2.0 licensed by tanakawho)

Things have been relatively quiet since my last update about Snowy a couple of weeks ago. What’s been going on behind the scenes:

  • Sandy triaged and assigned milestones to lots of features requests in Snowy bugzilla.
  • Jeff hacked on Snowy to allow users to add a second OpenID provider to an existing account. Unfortunately it will have to be refactored as it works great for new users signing up but not for existing users as the form enforces that the users are unique. (Here’s a great area to help out with if you know Django and / or OpenID!)
  • We started working on a privacy policy.
  • Jeff implemented breadcrumbs for notebooks and the UI needs to be finished for this.
  • Jeff and Sandy did some troubleshooting about how debug works in Snowy.
  • The FAQ was updated about the alpha that starts today.

Just in case you were skimming, I’ll say that last part again:

The FAQ was updated about the alpha that starts today.

How do you get in the alpha? Well, the alpha is still invite only, but first you should read the FAQ and then you should fill out the form to let us know you’re interested. The form helps us by first, keeping a list of everyone who is interested, and secondly, understanding what features are important to our users. But please understand that by signing up for the alpha and the beta we are asking for your help – if and when you encounter a bug, let us know!

Did you know? Snowy is Tintin‘s pet dog.

  • in GNOME
  • 1 min read

Privacy Policies

Dear Lazyweb,

I’m working on the privacy policy for Tomboy Online and I’m looking for examples of good privacy polices.

Users will have the ability keep their notes private or share them with other users and as the GNOME Snowy server will be hosting all of the data we will want to have a privacy policy in place.

If you know of a website or web service with a good privacy please comment or drop me an email. Thanks in advance!

  • in GNOME
  • 2 min read

Keep On Rockin’ Me Baby

_Well, I`ve been looking real hard

And I`m trying to find a job

But it just keeps getting

Tougher every day

But I got to do my part

Cause I know in my heart

I got to please my

Sweet baby, yeah

Steve Miller

I’ve been using Banshee for years now and I don’t know how I’d manage my (too) large music collection without it. The Banshee team released 1.7.5 on Tuesday. Banshee 1.7.5 has two new big features:

Trying to do my part, I’ve been working on all new documentation for Banshee written as topic based help using Mallard. The first release of user help was last month in Banshee 1.7.4 and with 1.7.5 I’d call it functionally complete.

banshee-help

(Click through to see a bigger version)

Now is when the fun starts! My process is to write and write some more, and then come back and edit. I think I have most of the major help topics covered. Or do I? I need your help! Take a look through the docs. Have I missed any topics? Can you find mistakes I’ve made in how Banshee works? (I don’t pretend to be a Banshee expert or even use half of it’s features!) Typos? Grammar errors? (I wish I was a machine and could type perfectly, but sometimes I type like Aaron on a Thinkpad T410).

Lastly, I need to add content for common problems and advanced help, such as adding an is_audio file to some MP3 players to have Banshee recognize the player.

How can you help after doing one of the tasks above? File a bug! Drop me an email! Ping me in IRC in #banshee on GIMPNet! I want your feedback and ways I can make the help better, especially with the advanced topics and common problems that users may see.

And a big thank you to Aaron, Gabriel, Bertrand, Alex and all the developers who keep Banshee rockin’.

GNOME Journal Issue 21 is out!

The GNOME Journal team has released the latest issue, featuring five brand new articles.

We have three articles based on talks and experiences at GUADEC 2010 in The Hague and two interviews.

What are you waiting for? Go read it!

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