Afiestas Blog

Let’s talk about “File Sending” in BlueDevil 1.1, and area that has been highly improved in this version.

We had mainly three complains about the 1.0 version:

1. The wizard was too complicated with too many pages bko
2. No way of sending files via Terminal or from other Apps
3. No way of sending files from Konqueror/Dolphin

I’d like to remark one thing before continuing, the first point of the list was reported in a proper way in the right place, by adding a bug in http://bugs.kde.org , and the process until we get the right solution was “beautiful”, getting feedback from a different user of who reported the bug int he first place. So please! instead of comment blogs, if you want to be sure that you feature is not going to get lost, report it on the bko, we will be glad to help you in any way we can.

So, let’s start by showing the old wizard process:

BlueDevil old send files

All that have been reduced to:

New wizard single step

Quite an improvement, eh? idea inspired by Martin Koller at bko

Then, we had the terminal/application problem, solved by adding 2 new options:

New terminal options

And finally, we get to one of the most requested features, sending files from konqueror and dolphin !

Dolphin sending bluetooth files

Konqui sending files!

We hope you like the changes and as always the mandatory video:
Direct Link

See you in the next post: BlueDevil 1.1, The new Pairing Wizard

With the 1.1 BlueDevil version, the system tray has been improved adding new features as well of revising the usability, this is the new aspect:

BlueDevil 1.1 system tray

And this is the old 1.0 system tray:

BlueDevil 1.0 system tray

A few changes can be notice here:

• The most common actions have been placed at the top and at the bottom
• The configuration action have been merged to just “Configure Bluetooth”
• The list of known devices is homogenous with no separator between types
• Active/Disable discoverable mode has been added
• Added “Turn off” for
• Small overlay icon indicating that at least there is one device connected
• Tooltip (not visible at the screenshot) indicating if there is any activity

We’re now quite happy with our most important interface, its usage is fast and it is feature complete, because of that no new changes are expected, though we may work on a plasmoid to replace it, but that is at least for +2 versions.

And, here it is the mandatory video:
Direct Link

Next review: Three different ways of sending files.

In a few days we will be released the fourth “patch version” of our KDE Bluetooth stack together with the second “featured version” 1.1.

After that point, we will be changing our release policy to a “Release Soon Release Often”, which is the natural next step since BlueDevil reaching maturity.

For the next days, I will try to make a post each day explaining the new features and changes in BlueDevil 1.1.

Cheers and Happy Hacking!

In my way to work I have been thinking in something that happened the other day, I was showing/explaining to a coworker some mobile applications made with web technologies and discussing about Android/MeeGo/iPhone development. After a few minutes of good conversation the next chat happened:

coworker: Maybe we can even create a Windows Phone application
me: I’m not going to install nor use Windows  and even less I’m going to write an application for Windows Phone.
coworker: C’mon  you should not be that radical
me: Excuses for being a radical

So, after thinking about this chat with a cold mind, I started to wonder the little respect that people have for others with different values, for example I know people that thinks that being a Vegetarian is stupid and foolish, or that everybody who have a religion is dumb. This issue is no different.

I can’t do anything for those with closed minds, for those who currently don’t respect anything beyond their values and beliefs but I can tell something to everybody else:

If you won’t force a vegetarian to eat meat, if you won’t force a Muslim to eat pork, if you won’t force others to do what you do, please don’t force me to use private software.

I (L) Freedom
I (L) My Computer Freedom.

Be happy.

While working on BlueDevil 1.1 we’ve found time to release the third “patch release” of our KDE Bluetooth Stack, so here is the changelog:

• Fixed requestPin helper by flushing cout buffer
• Fixed requestConfirmation by passing the correct arguments
• BUG: 267302 (crash reproducible for example with an iPhone)
• Improved wizard device name detection.
• Fixed “Send files” in some system by being sure that the defaultAdapter is NOT discovering.

With this version we’re releasing also libbluedevil 1.8.1, with the following changelog:

• Workarounded bluez consistency for default adapter (this will fix some adapter detection errors).
• Added a new signal to fix device scanning

Downloads:

BlueDevil tarball:
md5sum: a2d4aa126f86dbc1f429a3aa9e95671d
download: here

LibBluedevil tag:
git clone git://anongit.kde.org/libbluedevil; cd libbluedevil; git checkout v1.8.1

Note:
The new version of libbluedevil is a dependency of the 1.0.3, so be sure to install them both! without the new library the wizard’s won’t work!

Well, this is it for now, stay tunned because we’ll start to publish information about 1.1 soon!

The second minor version of BlueDevil (KDE’s Bluetooth support) has been released and it is the most important release since 1.0 because it adds support for some basic bluetooth feature we have been missing since 1.0, regarding Device Pairing.

The tarbal can be downloaded here:
MD5: c0c814146098b865144957bc8b3bd7e7

By now almost all distributions have packages, so if your distribution doesn’t poke them because this release is very important stability-wise.

Happy hacking!

Short Description:
Kamoso is an application for taking Pictures and Videos using any webcam.

Long Description:
Kamoso is an application between two worlds, “Multimedia” and “Toys”. While its main propose may be seen as just “Take Pictures” and “Take Videos”, our plan goes beyond that: we are planning to add a bunch of effects that will allow to the user to play with the webcam, we want it to be fun, in the end. All of these is followed by a tightly integration with the Web 2.0, by adding export features to the most common Web 2.0 services, such YouTube, Facebook, twitpic…

Screenshoots:

Kamoso 1

Videos:

Small review of Kamoso 2.0
Pre 2.0

Help needed:

• Semaphore designs (What happens from when you click at the shot button, and when the picture is actually taken)
• Mockups, ideas, whatever!

After few months of work, we’re glad to announce the availability of Kamoso 2.0-alpha2.

Despite of being an alpha version, it has demostrated to perform quite stable in all the test we did during the alpha1 (this was a private release), in fact judging by the feedback we got

this version is way more stable than 1.0.5, so give it a try!

Changelog:

• Kamoso now uses QtGstreamer
• Improvements in the interface (by Andrew Lake)
• New semaphore
• Make "action" non hidden features by adding a new button to "share".
• Added "share" button to improve feature discoverability.?
• Better Nepomuk integration
• No more audio/video synchronitation problems.

Errata:

• Crash when switching from "Record Video" to "Photo" mode (some times)

Test needed:

• We need test in different environments with different webcams.
• Take picture and then upload it to Facebook.
• Record a video, and then upload it to Youtube

With this version we’re confident of the quality and future that Kamoso can achieve, because of that when 2.0-final is released, we will move Kamoso to kdereview, and if accepted to extragear/multimedia.

Source Tarball can be downloaded at:

http://download.kde.org/download.php?url=unstable/kamoso/2.0-alpha2/

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Hi there

Since we released 1.0, we’ve been working hard to stabilize BlueDevil as much as possible and after fixing a bunch of bugs in kio_obexftp, now it’s turn for the wizard.

This is the changelog:

• Added support for Bluetooth 2.1 (SSP pairing)
• Do not pair devices that don’t need it
• Better automatic mode (Updated PIN database)
• Randomized the default PIN
• Random PIN of 6 characters, shrink if needed (depending on device)
• Improved the flow for lot of devices

As you can see, there are plenty changes for a minor release and that’s why we need some testing before release BlueDevil 1.0.2

This is already packaged in OpenSuse KDE:Unstable:Playground and to build it from the source you have to:

git clone git://git.kde.org/bluedevil
cd bluedevil
git checkout stable
cmake ./ -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr (well this depends on your installation)
make -j3 install (you will probably need root for this).

Thanks!

If you have arrived here, you’ve got extra credits:
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