Thanks to the work of Luis Garcia Rio (who has also been working on the OpenMoko port), we have just released Vagalume 0.6 for MS Windows.

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.

Update: 23 Jan 2009

Vagalume for Windows can now be found here.

I got back from Istanbul a couple of weeks ago. We had a really great time there, it’s one of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever seen.

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.

I’ve got a thousand things to do these days so this is going to be a very schematic post :)

• 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 !!

Vagalume 0.6 is here!

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

We’re about to release a new version of Vagalume and this one will be the first with gettext support. So if you want to help to see Vagalume in your language feel free to send me an e-mail, download the latest vagalume.pot file and send me the translation (you can also join the vagalume-devel mailing list).

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! :)

Mario and me have just arrived from our trip to San Jose (California) for the Mobile Rules! awards ceremony. Unfortunately we had no luck this time and we didn’t get the award.

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!

OMG ! Last Friday I published the new version of Vagalume and the same day the list of finalists of the Mobile Rules! competition was announced. Guess who is one of them …

Award ceremony in San Jose (California) next month.

Thanks Óscar for your words of support!

The people have spoken and the results have been overwhelming.

Vagalume 0.5.1 is out. More UI updates soon.

Thank you all for your comments and see you at FOSDEM :-)

FOSDEM 2008 is around the corner. Of course I’ll be there along with other igalians so I hope to see you there :)

If you’re a Maemo user/hacker then you’ll probably be interested in this wiki page where we’re trying to coordinate a meeting.

By the way, some people have suggested me to use GTK themeable icons in Vagalume instead of the custom ones that come with v0.5. Here’s a couple of screenshots comparing both (click on the images to view them full size).

I’ve just created a survey so you can vote which one you prefer :) If you don’t have a user at garage.maemo.org, just leave a comment in this post.

See you at FOSDEM !

The last version of Vagalume was released more than a month ago. And although it was dead for some weeks because I had many other things to do, here comes Vagalume 0.5, back from the dead!

As I said before, I’ve been busy lately so the list of changes is not as big as it might be, but thanks to the help of my colleagues Mario and Felipe we have some new things. The list of changes include:

• New buttons and other minor UI improvements
• New plugin for the Maemo status bar (IT OS2008 only) (*)
• Fixed a bug that made scrobbling fail under certain conditions
• A window to see the progress of downloads (and cancel them)
• A new setting to select the download directory

Here’s the new look of Vagalume under IT OS2008:

And for those interested, now we have a new vagalume-users mailing list.

(*) Mario has written a detailed post about the status bar plugin, including a screenshot. Check it out!

Go here to download Vagalume.

And that’s all. Enjoy!