After having improved the movie showtimes support and updated the UI so it aligns better with the Swipe UX, this Saturday I submitted Butaca to the Ovi Store. Yesterday (yes, that quickly!) I got a notification that it had been accepted. I'm really satisfied with this release: I use the application myself a lot, and it's great to be able to check which movies are playing on the cinemas and later review their details and the crew's.

Searching movie showtimes

I've uploaded a screencast to Youtube, displaying how the application works, and -as usual- screenshots are available at my Flickr gallery. You can also review the release details at the project page (where you'll be able to file bugs or get support as well).

If you wonder what's to come next, here's some insight:

• Localization
• Check for extras after and during the credits (now that I have an API available for that)
• Offline mode / better data caching
• Embed trailer playback in the application
• UI improvements

Download Butaca for free from the Ovi Store!

You know, I'd got heartily fed up of explaining to all and sundry why the 'FM transmitter' in my Nokia smartphone was so insanely great. Not because my enthusiasm for the feature was waning - far from it. But because just about everyone heard the 'FM' bit and switched their brain off - surely it had to be a radio receiver, as featured in just about every phone since 2004? "No, no, no!" I would exclaim - "it's the exact opposite!" If you, too, are still confused then you might like to read on - it seems that Nokia has finally put an end to the confusion by renaming the feature. Thankfully!

Front Page

Measuring MeeGo activity?

Jarkko Moilanen has a thought-provoking article that sets out to try to measure MeeGo community activity by the participation in various mailing lists:

"I noticed someone mentioning that mailing lists seem to be quite quiet. I agreed with the statement. In the past months there has been a lot more activity, but lately not so much. One obvious reason came to my mind immediately: holidays. Yet I was not completely convinced that all can be explained with that. So I decided to take a closer look."

The author acknowledges that a straightforward conclusion cannot be drawn simply by looking at mailing list participation, but he offers some interesting insights as to why the numbers may be trending the way they are.

Read more (blog.ossoil.com)

In this edition (Download)...

1. Front Page
   • Measuring MeeGo activity?
2. Applications
   • Wordsler updates
3. Community
   • Follow forum.meego.com with forumemail bridge
4. Devices
   • MetaWatch shipping
5. In the Wild
   • Nokia N9 commercial leaked
   • Samsung buying MeeGo? (No.)
6. Announcements
   • glol - global orientation lock on MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan
   • Developing Harmattan sharing plugins
   • Spectrum, NES, GameBoy and TI emulators now available for Harmattan

A Quick Look at Extras in Bugzilla
2011-09-05 through 2011-09-11

The Nokia Developers blog has announced a range of demonstration applications showcasing what can be achieved with Qt on the N9. There are fourteen applications to download, along with their source code for developers to learn how each was built. Many of the applications demonstrate how to utilise hardware interfaces. For example, the guitar tuner shows how to address the audio API, the compass application interfaces with the N9's magnetometer, and several games show how to interface with the accelerometer, all in Qt, Qt Quick and Qt Mobility. Read on for more.

I keep hearing about how great QML is to learn so I'm a bit baffled as to why I am still having such a hard time with getting more than a toy program written.  I'm trying to save my rant about that once I've gotten an application completed and can help provide more useful feedback.  In the mean time I wanted to cover a set of changes to my python code that will made the QML port a bit easier.  This is regarding code to make it easy both for users to provide good bug reports and for me to figure out what went wrong.

FileTea is a simple way to send files to other people: drag a file into your web browser, give the link to your friends and they can start downloading it right away.

This is not a substitute for DropBox and the like. FileTea is not a file hosting service: the web server is only used to route the traffic, no data is stored there.

You can see it as a web-based P2P file sharing system, or a replacement for good ol’ DCC SEND. You don’t need to worry about firewalls or redirections: if you can surf the web, you can send the file. The only client that you need is your browser.

FileTea is a project developed by my fellow Igalian Eduardo Lima, and you can see more details about it here. It was written on top of EventDance, a peer-to-peer inter-process communication library based on GLib and also written by him (see also The Web jumps into D-Bus).

FileTea is free software and you can download it and install it in your machine.

We have also set up a server at http://filetea.me/.

Important: this is still an alpha release and our bandwith is limited so bear with us if you find any problem

I was interested to see the starting of the "Near Field Connectivity Blog", under the auspices of Nokia's Developer program, along with some titbits about Nokia's plans for NFC and its devices. Read on for more links and quotes.

Ever since the February 11 2011 Nokia event cheekily tagged as #NoWin and known colloquially as The Elopocalypse, I’ve struggled to cover Nokia’s present and abandoned strategies here with equal care.  Don’t be misled by my attempts of objectivity over Linux and Microsoft activities, though– it hasn’t been easy.  I’ve been moderating an internal conflict between a growing invasion of open source love versus a legacy of Microsoft development experience combined with strong curiosity.  Neither side has a clear advantage over the other for me and therein lies a conundrum.

As announced by the fearless accessibility leader himself Joanmarie Diggs will be joining Igalia. I just want to direct your attention to one tiny detail. From this:

To this:

in less than 4 hours. We are just that cool. Welcome Joanie!