Vagalume 0.2: it’s amazing and flies!
I have been busy lately so I haven’t had much time to work on my little Last.fm client, but I finally managed to prepare a new release, so here is Vagalume 0.2!
First of all I’d like to start with an introduction because some people asked me about the name of this program…
So what does Vagalume mean?
Vagalume is Galician Portuguese for firefly.
The name has absolutely no relation to Last.fm and it doesn’t have anything to do with music either. I chose it just because I liked how it sounded :-)
How do you pronounce Vagalume?
This word is composed of four syllables and it’s stressed on the third one: va-ga-LU-me.
To pronounce each syllable you can follow these examples:
- va as in vast, vantage or varnish (*)
- ga as in garden, garlic or gasp
- lu as in lucid, luminary or lunacy
- me as in medal, melody or medical
(*) although we Galicians pronounce it as in bargain, basket or bathroom
(Updated 10 Nov 2007: as stated in the comments of this post, the Galician phonological representation of the word is /bagalume/ and the usual pronunciation is [bɑɣɑlumɪ]. Thanks Marcos and Cameron)
What’s new in this release?
There haven’t been many big changes, I basically added support to some parts of the protocol that weren’t implemented in the previous version. Here’s the quick summary:
- Support for recommending tracks to other users
- Support for adding tracks to your playlist
- Volume control for the Nokia devices using the hardware +/- keys
- A combo box to select a friend instead of having to type his/her name
- More visual feedback for some actions
- Some bugfixes and other minor changes
Now that most of the core features are more or less working, from now on I think I’ll begin to work on the UI. But beware! I’m not a good UI designer, so be prepared for the disaster :-)
Where can I get it?
You can get Vagalume from my page or from garage.maemo.org.
There are packages for the Nokia 770, N800 and N810, as well as a package for Debian etch (x86).
And that’s all for now. I’d like to thank again all of the suggestions and positive comments that I received these last days. Thank you all! :-)
UPDATE: It seems that this post has just entered planet.gnome.org. This is my first post there, so hi all! :-)
Posted: November 9th, 2007 under Planet Igalia, English, Software, Planet GPUL, Planet Maemo, Planet Gnome.
Comments: 19
Comments
Comment from Frederic
Time: November 9, 2007, 11:27 am
I guess you didn’t knew one of the first internet music recommendation service was called Firefly. It was bought by Microsoft which merged it into MSN.
Comment from berto
Time: November 9, 2007, 11:56 am
No, I didn’t know that. And well… even if I did, when I decided the name I hadn’t even thought of the English translation :-)
Comment from Piega
Time: November 9, 2007, 2:50 pm
Add the function to download free tracks!
Comment from Marty
Time: November 9, 2007, 8:21 pm
In your ui rework, it would be nice to have actions directly available on the main page. For example, Loving or Baning tracks without going into the menu.
Could even map them to hardware keys?
Comment from berto
Time: November 9, 2007, 8:32 pm
Yes, I plan to include buttons and shortcuts for all those actions in the main window :-)
And I had almost forgotten the function to download free tracks! Of course I have to add it too!
Comment from Cameron Desautels
Time: November 9, 2007, 10:57 pm
Admittedly this is nitpicky, but for clarity’s sake, your pronunciation guide has two slight inconsistencies regarding vowels.
“va as in vast, vantage or varnish”:
The “va” in “vast” and “vantage” have basically the same sound: a /v/ consonant followed by a /æ/ vowel (the pronuncitation notation is IPA - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPA) . Formally that vowel is called the near-open front unrounded vowel.
“Varnish”, however, has the /a/ vowel (open front unrounded after the /v/ consonant.
“ga as in garden, garlic or gasp”:
Similarly (but with the vowels swapped), “garden” and “garlic” are pronounced /ga/, but “gasp” is /gæ/.
So the question of how to say “vagalume” remains open!
Comment from berto
Time: November 9, 2007, 11:09 pm
Wow! :-)
I have to say that I used an English dictionary to make sure that the vowels were pronounced /a/ and not /æ/. So I probably made a mistake (or the dictionary wasn’t good enough).
I’m not a linguist but as far as I know we Galicians always pronounce the ‘a’ vowel as /a/ and not /æ/ (see here).
So if I’m not wrong our prounciation is /bagalume/
And forget about your comments being nitpicky, I really intended to reflect my real pronunciation so I appreciate your corrections very much :-)
Comment from Marcos
Time: November 10, 2007, 2:52 am
Hi,
I’m Galician too and I think that the ‘correct’ phonological representation is /bagalume/. However, a postlexical phonological process turns some vowels [+high] and/or [-back] (it depends) so the normal pronunciation is [bɑɣɑlumɪ].
Comment from anonymous
Time: November 10, 2007, 8:10 am
Cool app. I’ve gotta be honest though, I think that’s an unfortunate name. Most people won’t see the pronunciation guide, so they’ll just sound it out. When I try to sound out a word starting with “vag”, one word in particular springs to mind… I guess my mind is in the gutter, but I bet I’m not the only person who might read the name “Vagalume” and think of a feminine hygiene product.
Comment from berto
Time: November 10, 2007, 11:58 am
Well, I think I can guess what’s the word you’re thinking of :-)
I don’t know how English speakers think when they have to pronounce new words, but in my language that word you’re talking about is spelled exactly the same as in English and I had never thought about the similarity with vagalume… maybe if it began with vagi- instead … :-)
Comment from Quim
Time: November 11, 2007, 12:18 am
… and what exactly are you waiting to upload the Vagalume page to http://maemo.org/downloads/OS2008 ? The world is thirsty of Chinook software.
Comment from opaco
Time: November 16, 2007, 12:21 am
e eu, por pedir, ademais dos shortcuts, querería un iconiño chuliño :)
Parabéns. Mola
p.s. no sur aos vagalumes chamámoslles lucecús
Comment from berto
Time: November 16, 2007, 12:24 am
Também estou a trabalhar na pare gráfica, todo se andará, é que quero acabar antes outras cousas ;-)
Alegro-me de que che ajude a desfrutar melhor do teu novo N800 :)
p.s. que eu tampouco sou do norte :-P
Comment from opaco
Time: November 16, 2007, 12:00 pm
e ti que goces co teu novo N810, i mean you’re one of the 500 fortunate applicants, aren’t you? :P
Comment from berto
Time: November 16, 2007, 12:08 pm
No, I’m not, I didn’t apply ;-)
Comment from nofxx
Time: December 31, 2007, 8:35 am
No Brasil a gente fala vagalume mesmo.. xD
Comment from berto
Time: December 31, 2007, 5:38 pm
nofxx: e aqui também !! ;-)
Pingback from Smile » Blog Archive » The new status bar plugin for Vagalume
Time: February 1, 2008, 10:04 pm
[…] As many of you could know, last November 1st my mate Berto released the first version of his Gnome/Maemo Last.fm (codenamed “Vagalume 0.1″), which started being just a “three-button application” and evolved to be a nice application to listen your favorite custom radio stations, providing lots of the typical features that a Last.fm user would expect. […]
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