banshee-telepathy-extension 0.1.1

banshee-telepathy-extension 0.1.1

A day and a few hours later and I'm already releasing 0.1.1. Highlights are the following:

• Fix a major bug where the CPU gets maxed out during download of a contact's library
• Prevent 'Too many open files' exception during streaming
  
• Logging more messages related to streaming
• Fix 'make distcheck' (Fix courtesy of Bertrand Lorentz)
  
• README updated to reflect a necessary requirement of telepathy-mission-control5 >= 5.3.1
  
• A few other minor fixes

So, if you're looking to try this out, I suggest you download this version.

Testing performed yesterday afternoon and evening confirm that transfer speeds over tubes are highly volatile. Sometimes, it can take up to a few minutes just to offer and accept a tube. And, other times it seems instant. But, more often than not, it's sluggish. If you're using computers on the same network, however, the speeds should be really quick.

Also worth mentioning, Sandy Armstrong put together some packages to help users of openSUSE 11.2 get the dependencies installed.

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banshee-telepathy-extension 0.1.0

banshee-telepathy-extension 0.1.0

In an effort to make my Google Summer of Code work more accessible, I've packaged it all up into a tarball with all the autotools fixins to compile and install for use with your existing Banshee installation.

I felt like some were hesitant to install this because it requires the installation of NDesk.DBus git master. So, I decided to bundle the source into this tarball. It will all get compiled into one Dll, Banshee.Telepathy.dll. This way, everyone can keep their stable versions of NDesk.DBus and still use the extension. When the NDesk guys publish a new release, I will remove the bundled version.

This is largely considered a beta release because it's really only been tested by myself and my mentor. So, please, test away!

Please, read the README before you do anything. There are requirements for this to work properly but are not required to build. Therefore, they aren't checked by the configure script. For easy reference, here are all the requirements:

• Mono >= 2.4.2
• Banshee >= 1.5.1
• Empathy >= 2.27.91
• telepathy-gabble >= 0.9.0

If you're running Ubuntu Karmic, you'll mostly likely have all the requirements except gabble 0.9.0. You can get that here. Any of the 0.9.x series will do.

In addition to the requirements in the README, I've made some notes on the issues that I know of. The major one is sluggishness when traffic ends up getting routed through Jabber servers. So, if you end up playing the waiting game, it could be due to this. I hope to see some speedier tubes in the future.

If you missed the link for the download above, here it is again. If you find bugs, it would be awesome if you could file them on the github issue tracker. Enjoy!

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SyncMyPix 0.7

SyncMyPix 0.7

I've been listening to you, users of SyncMyPix. And, when I'm not listening, I'm reading your minds.

Version 0.7 brings you two major features. One, an option to crop synced pictures where SyncMyPix will scale and crop a 96px square using the midpoint of the original as its center. And, two, you can now manually crop pictures from the results screen. The cropping interface will even highlight faces for you!

In addition to the above, this version also includes the following:

• New logo
• New main screen
• Updated about dialog
• Removed menu buttons where appropriate
• Login button removed; sync process will request login, if required
• Will only sync if social network picture is new; new result: "Skipped: no update required"
• If multiple contacts found, a separate entry for each will appear in results
• View synced contact from results screen via long press
  

And, for your viewing pleasure, I'll leave you with a few screenshots...

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Mission Control...we have lift off! (for real this time!)

Mission Control...we have lift off! (for real this time!)

What do you know. The Telepathy folks have been telling the truth. The Client.Handler interface does work! And, the proof is in an updated branch of my Telepathy extension for Banshee.

All functionality has been migrated for compatibility with Mission Control 5. So, the new minimum requirements will be:

• Banshee 1.5
  
• Mono 2.4
  
• Empathy 2.27.91
• telepathy-gabble 0.9
• libnesk-dbus git master

I haven't used the ChannelDispatcher interface, as suggested by the Telepathy folks. I'm still using Requests since that route was the least amount of work to get things working with MC5. I don't know if I'll ever change to the ChannelDispatcher interface.

There is still no libndesk-dbus release in sight. So, I haven't put together a nice release with all the autotools fixins. Someday...maybe.

Anyhoo, it's easy enough to pull this mc5 branch off github, if you want to try this out.

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SyncMyPix 0.6 gets lots of "New"

SyncMyPix 0.6 gets lots of "New"

Since my last blog post about SyncMyPix, it's seen quite a few changes. Some of these changes landed in 0.5, but I'm only getting around to blogging about things now. Special thanks again to Inkscape for providing the needed tools for creating the background graphic. I think Inkscape is an awesome, easy-to-use product.

I am enjoying tinkering around with my little experimental Android project. What started out as an experiment has turned into something that I'm finding very useful. Anyway, I'm not going to blabber on too much about what's new, since the below pictures are quite self explanatory.

New start-up dialog

New configuration screen

New configuration screen scrolled to show remaining options

New icons for menu buttons

New results screen

Optionally add pictures to contacts manually

Clicking an item in the results screen shows a pop up of the associated profile picture

Filter results

Delete all SyncMyPix pictures

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Mission Control...we have lift off!!! well...kind of

Mission Control...we have lift off!!! well...kind of

Well, well. The Telepathy folks have successfully migrated Empathy to Mission Control 5. While they were probably plugging away, trying to get this migration completed, I was secretly (and sometimes openly) hoping the migration would not get done until after I was done GSoC.

What do you know. Dreams do come true. GSoC is over. I survived without having to port to MC5. But, that doesn't mean I don't have anymore work to do. I've already started porting my Telepathy extension to the new Mission Control interfaces.

So far, there's nothing exciting to brag about. I've done enough work to prevent the extension from crashing. By using various bits of the new AccountManager and Account interfaces, it can find connections and load up who else is online and running the Telepathy extension. What's left? LOTS!

Instead of using the ContactCapabilities interface to advertise what channels Banshee is going to handle, I need to start using the new method of exporting a DBus object that implements org.freedesktop.Telepathy.

Client and org.freedesktop.Telepathy.Client.Handler. And, I will need to re-work my existing stuff in the extension to manage creating and handling new channels (ie. tubes, file transfers, etc.) using these new interfaces and the org.freedesktop.Telepathy.

ChannelDispatcher interface instead of the Requests interface. I'm not even sure if I know what all of this means yet. But, I guess figuring it out is part of the fun.

In addition to depending on Mission Control 5, the extension will also have a dependancy on Mono 2.4. Thanks to packages from directhex, upgrading from 2.0 was a piece of cake. The need for 2.4 is to get around a bug that can no longer be avoided.

I wanted to get some more work done this weekend, but I was too busy playing tennis and eating Dim Sum. However, I will devote some more time to this soon. I am setting a goal for myself to get this done before Ubuntu Karmic is released on October 29th. I have two weddings, one in NY and another in Toronto, in October. So, hopefully, I will be sober enough in between to get some things accomplished.

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SyncMyPix 0.3

SyncMyPix 0.3

A week after the initial release of my new Android app, and I'm already releasing version 0.3. The app has gone through a series of bug fixes and enhancements. However, v0.3 brings one feature that I think many will welcome. Thus, it deserves to be blogged about.


As you can see, the configuration page has a new option: Schedule. Now, you can schedule to sync your contact pictures on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.



Also, in v0.3, but new since v0.2, is a new sync results interface. It shows when the last sync operation started and completed. It also lets you see the results of the sync and you can view the profile pictures that your friends have set on the social network you are syncing with, whether they were synced successfully or not. Now, this interface is set up well to allow manually adding pictures to contacts where matches were unsuccessful. Look for that feature in a future release.


Here's a shot of what it looks like with a friend selected. It loses a little with all the blurring, so try it out to see for yourself.

All this development has not been super smooth sailing. There is one problem that is really annoying. I have a workaround for it, but it is definitely not how I'd like it permanently solved. See this wiki page for a detailed explanation. I'd love to hear from anyone that may have an idea for a better solution.

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