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! 🙂

19 thoughts on “Vagalume 0.2: it’s amazing and flies!

  1. Marty

    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?

    Reply
  2. berto

    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!

    Reply
  3. Cameron Desautels

    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!

    Reply
  4. berto

    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 🙂

    Reply
  5. Marcos

    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].

    Reply
  6. anonymous

    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.

    Reply
  7. berto

    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 … 🙂

    Reply
  8. opaco

    e eu, por pedir, ademais dos shortcuts, querería un iconiño chuliño 🙂

    Parabéns. Mola

    p.s. no sur aos vagalumes chamámoslles lucecús

    Reply
  9. Pingback: Smile » Blog Archive » The new status bar plugin for Vagalume

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