Here are our guitar heroes Edu and Claudio:

Besides all of this, I’ve also found a bit of time to play with my tablet. I’ve just ported Fuse, the Free Unix Spectrum Emulator (unrelated to this FUSE, btw) to Maemo.

Fuse is one of the best Spectrum emulators I’ve ever used (definitely my favourite one for Unix), and also one of the few released as free software. It supports all standard models (16K/48K/128K/+2/+2A/+3) and some Russian clones too. It can load most file formats, has good sound support, joystick emulation, … well, better go to the project page to see all features ;-)

The port still has a few rough edges, but it’s perfectly functional for everyday use.

Here is a screenshot of Fuse running Head Over Heels on Maemo:

Fuse is available in Maemo extras. For more information go here.

On another note, Vagalume development is progressing slowly, but there are some news: we have Vagalume packages for Intel MIDs based on RedFlag Midinux. Go here to get them.

These years have been an amazing experience to us. We’ve tried to do our best in our work and I honestly think that the results haven’t been bad, but I’m sure that the best is yet to come. Thanks to everyone who supported us during all this time.

On another note, we’ve just arrived from Berlin. The city is lovely and while OSiM was good, I have to say that Maemo Summit was really great (look how happy we are in the photo, courtesy of Daniel Gentleman).

Congratulations to all the people that made it possible, including of course the c-base crew for maintaining such an unique place. I’m looking forward to repeating the experience next year. I’ll try to blog a bit about it soon. But now I need to rest !

In this world of broadband internet access, when we talk about music the concept of owning a record is losing its meaning, as anyone with a decent connection can easily download all the music that they want, but that doesn’t mean much: in the past a guy with hundreds of records at home was certainly a music lover. Nowadays any teenager with a DSL connection can easily have the same amount of songs in a few days or weeks and yet have much less interest in music.

Besides this, an increasing number of artists are uploading their songs to websites such as MySpace, Last.fm, iLike and others. So in many cases you don’t even have to download mp3 files to your computer in order to listen to new records from your favourite artists. You don’t have to own a record to be passionate about it.

If you don’t need to store in your computer your e-mail, your photos, your documents and your videos, does this mean that you don’t need to have your favourite records either? This is not the case right now, and I obviously don’t know what’s the future going to be like, but it certainly seems that things are moving in that direction.

In the case of Last.fm (and outside of the UK, US and Germany, see the previous link) there are lots of records that can be already streamed for free. Such is the case of the great Swedish label Labrador, which have their (almost) complete catalogue available in Last.fm.

Many other artists ranging from the less popular ones (Tarántula, 6PM, Menomena) to the best sellers (Nine inch nails) can be listened on demand for free. There is a group in Last.fm dedicated to this kind of records. While you won’t see many free albums from mainstream artists, the selection is by no means restricted to unknown amateur bands with no record contract. Many well-known independent artists (those who play in the most popular music festivals and appear regularly on specialised magazines) have free albums available (examples here, here and here, and also the aforementioned Labrador label).

Vagalume 0.7 is out

For all the things explained above, it’s very useful to be able to keep a list of all your favourite music that is available on demand. That’s why the new Vagalume 0.7 introduces a new feature that I had already talked about during Guadec: bookmarks.

With the bookmark manager you can have a list of Last.fm radio URLs (those starting with lastfm://). This includes all of your favourite radios (your best friends’ libraries, your preferred tags, etc.), and also all the free music available in Last.fm. I like to think about it as the equivalent of the music library in Rhythmbox and other programs. To add free albums to your library you just need their lastfm:// address. It used to be available in each album’s page. However after the Last.fm site update it’s no longer there. They are working on it. Meanwhile, there are workarounds (see here and here).

Vagalume’s bookmark manager is still very simple, but I think that it is “good enough” ^TM to get started and to get the idea. It’ll be improved in future releases.

Another interesting feature in Vagalume 0.7 is that the desktop version has finally D-BUS support. Thanks to the vagalumectl script that is provided with the package, you can now control Vagalume (play, stop, skip, change radios, love tracks, etc.) from a remote host using SSH, for example.

The multimedia keys in some keyboards are supported as well. We have also added Latvian and French translations, and fixed some annoying bugs (activity in our bug tracker is increasing, thank you reporters!).

Last but not least, support for the Moblin platform has been enhanced. We have some binary packages now in case you want to try them out.

Regarding the MS Windows version, it’s still experimental. Vagalume 0.7 for Windows is not ready yet, but we’ll try to release some packages soon.

As usual, go to the Vagalume page for details on how to get it.

Going back to Germany

On another note, I’ll be flying again to Berlin in a couple of weeks, this time for OSiM World and the Maemo Summit. There’s going to be a lot of people there so it’ll be a great opportunity to meet known faces again :)

It’s also a good chance to see Vagalume running in a device other than a Nokia Internet Tablet: during OSiM World I’ll be showcasing the Moblin port in one of Intel’s MIDs.

See you in Berlin !

In case you’ve never heard about it before, Vagalume is a Last.fm client designed for the Maemo platform. More info here.

Please note that this is an experimental release and doesn’t contain the complete set of features. It might also be more unstable than the GNU/Linux version. We’d like to hear about your problems with this version in the mailing lists.

Vagalume for Windows has been tested on XP and Vista. Here are screenshots of both versions (click to enlarge):

Installation

To use Vagalume in Windows, you need to install:

• The gtk2 runtime.
• GStreamer including all gst-plugins-* packages (base, good, bad and ugly).

Some important notes:

• When installing GStreamer, you will be asked whether to use the existing GLib installation or to install a new one. Choose no to use the existing installation.
• When installing Vagalume, you will be asked whether to install an icon theme. If in doubt, choose Yes.

Go here to download Vagalume for Windows. There are two different installers, the full and the minimal installer.

Both will ask you to install GTK+ and GStreamer (just choose no if you have already installed them). The difference is that the full version comes with both packages, while the minimal version will point you to their respective web pages.

To uninstall Vagalume, go to the Windows control panel.

As usual, comments and suggestions are welcome.

Regarding Vagalume 0.7, we’re fixing a couple of bugs that we’ve recently found. It will be out soon.

After GUADEC me and other Igalians spent some days visiting the city. Back home I enjoyed the Galician sun and beach (including the Cies Islands, which are wonderful) for some days more.

Regarding the conference, so many things have been said that I don’t think I have much more to add. Congratulations to all the people behind the Gran Canaria bid, I’m sure we’re going to have a great time next year :) (by the way, I uploaded a video of the closing session here and here). Also, if anyone has good quality photos of my Vagalume talk (better than this one) please contact me, thanks !

Getting back to work after holidays is always hard. I’ve got lots of things to do, including some lessons in our Master on Free Software this weekend. So if you have written me an e-mail and haven’t got a reply, please be patient :)

I have had no time to release Vagalume 0.7 yet, although the code is mostly ready (I’d like to see how this Last.fm problem evolves, also). However the development never stops. Luis Garcia Rio has been working with OpenMoko and here’s the result:

Yes, that’s Vagalume running on the Neo 1973. It does work and you can actually play songs.

This is a preliminary version and nothing has been uploaded to the SVN yet, but expect things soon. If you’re interested, join vagalume-devel.

However I am missing a very important feature ! Where’s the ability to listen to free records in the Last.fm client ?

When I went to pages like this one there used to be a “Play in Last.fm software” which pointed to this lastfm:// address so I could play the album in my Last.fm client. But I can’t find that link anymore, it seems that the only choice now is to use the flash player.

Has this feature been removed ??

• On Thursday me and some other igalians are flying to Guadec-ES (Madrid) where we’ll meet the Spanish-speaking Gnome team. We have some talks there: I’ll talk about the Maemo platform, a topic which will be further extended by Mario. Victor will show his YouTube viewer and Claudio will talk about how to extend Eye of Gnome,
• From there we’ll go to Guadec at Istanbul (not Constantinople). There we’ll meet the rest of the Igalia crew. Some of us will deliver talks there as well: I’ll talk a bit about the Vagalume Last.fm client, Iago will talk about the Gnome Buildbot and Juanjo about Gtranslator.
• The next version of Vagalume is going to be released very soon. Among other things, this will be the first version with support for the Moblin platform (the support is already available in SVN). Here you can see a screenshot of Vagalume on Moblin (click to enlarge):
  
• Regarding Vagalume, I was interviewed some days ago in a program called Extrarradio in the Galician radio (Radio Galega). Those interested in hearing the interview can get it from here, but note that it’s in completely in Galician Portuguese and that I talk very fast :)
• Wanna see Vagalume in action ? Someone has posted a nice video here.
• Our beloved Modest has finally seen its first official release !

See you in Istanbul !!

Among the new features introduced in Vagalume 0.6, the coolest one is probably the brand new tray icon for desktop users written by Mario, similar to the one already available for Maemo:

Other highlights from this version include:

• Update the status message of your IM client. Tell everyone what you’re listening to. Currently supported: Pidgin, Gajim, Gossip and Telepathy
• Gettext support: Vagalume has been translated into Portuguese, German, Finnish, Spanish, Galician and Italian
• New setting to disable the love/ban confirmation dialogs
• New D-BUS methods and a script to control Vagalume from the command line (currently only for Maemo, more news soon)
• Osso-backup support

I would like to thank all the contributors, in particular Tim Wegener for his work in the IM status support. And of course all the translators too!

Last but not least, I’d like to remind you again that, as I said in my previous post, I’ll be at LinuxTag 2008 in Berlin with other Maemo hackers. Hope to see you there!

And now, enjoy!

P.S.: I’m moving Vagalume to Maemo extras, so one of these days it should be available there. Stay tuned!

Update: Vagalume 0.6 is now available in Maemo Extras

Note that there are people already working on translations, so if you want to help please have a look at the translations that we already have and ask me before starting.

I’m also glad to announce that I’ll be talking about Vagalume in a couple of conferences:

• First, at LinuxTag 2008 in the Maemo track (Thursday 29 May) with other Maemo hackers and users.
• Second, at Guadec 2008 in Istanbul where I’ll give a lightning talk. It has been scheduled for 14:55 on 11 Jul 2008.

Hope to see you there! :)

We had a great time nonetheless and I’d like to congratulate Nokia for having organized the event and all the other participants (namely the winners, specially the people from MyStrands who beat our Vagalume in the Multimedia category). The trip was great, we enjoyed it a lot and we met some cool people.

A thing I’m more sure about now is that Vagalume still needs lots of improvements. I’ll continue working on it very soon (but it’ll take me some days because I’m starting teaching this weekend in our Master of Free Software). So it is time to get back to work!

Oh, no, we didn’t get the award!