Amarok article

[Martin Steigerwald]

Hello,

Please feel free to remove CCs again when replying.

Am Donnerstag 30 August 2007 schrieb Leo Franchi:
> On Thursday 30 August 2007, Martin Steigerwald wrote:
[...]
> > Thus I would like to have a contact or two to ask questions
> > specifically about part two and three. Would there someone be willing
> > to answer some questions as they pop up when I gather information
> > about those two parts and possibly also part one? If so, please
> > contact me.
>
> Due to the way development has been progressing in Amarok  2, the
> codebase is very modular and developers have generally been working on
> separate parts of the code (with exceptions). For that reason, I
> suggest that instead of asking for one or two developers to interview,
> you provide your questions and the most qualified developer in that
> area can answer it.

Okay, so why not ask some questions here. I finally digged further and 
registered a lastfm profile and was nicely surprised that they do not 
even require my email address in order to register... I hesitated quite 
some time due to privacy concerns.

1) When writing about current state of affairs (i.e. Amarok 1.4.7), is 
there anything that you think I should include in any case? Anything that 
might be easily overlooked? I think I have quite a good grasp on the key 
features, but if you have some additional input for me, go ahead...

2) If I provide a tips and tricks section in my article, what tips&tricks 
should be in there IMHO? Anything else than 
http://amarok.kde.org/wiki/Tips_and_Tricks?

3) What social web offers and music shops does Amarok 1.4.7 support: Is it 
lastfm, magnatune.com, wikipedia, podcasts, lyrics or did I miss one? 
There are also streaming radios, but I think most of those except lastfm 
are one-way (producer => customer).

4) Whats the main point about integrating social web offers like lastfm, 
wikipedia, lyrics and alternative music shops like magnatune.com with 
Amarok. I think along

- promoting alternative ways of licensing and sharing music? free 
software - free music

- fill the "Rediscover your music" slogan with live

- offering two-way approaches of experiencing music to complement just 
listening to / consuming (=one way) it

Is it roughly about this? Anything to add?

5) How do you see privacy concerns with social web offers related to 
Amarok? To me it seems that lastfm has a quite acceptable privacy policy, 
I even did not have to provide an email address to register. How does 
Amarok ensure that the user is in control on what data Amarok sends out 
to those service providers? IMHO there could be some more hints in the 
Amarok UI and documentation. Are there any plans for improvement?

6) When doing a part about Amarok 2 what in your eyes should be mentioned 
in it? I have a collection of the following:

- context view becomes main focus of the application and is plasmified. 
Here I would like more details. What does this plasma integration 
actually give to the user, what are the advantages? What are your plans 
for context view? Will it be possible to switch back to a layout like 
Amarok 1.x like previous Amarok users might be used to

- enhancements regarding integration of social web offers and music shops: 
I read that a generic interface for social web offers and new music shops 
is already in implementation phase. What will be the advantages of it? 
What new social web offers and what new music shops are on schedule? I 
read something about Jamendo, concert information.

- planned support for Windows and Mac OS X, while Unix remains primary 
platform

Anything else? I bet there sure is. I would like to limit my article to 
features that have matured enough so that they very likely will be in 
Amarok 2.


Ok, I guess thats enough for starters. Got to remember that I it is just 
to become an article, not a book and that I better leave you some time to 
develop on Amarok ;-).

Regards,
-- 
Martin 'Helios' Steigerwald - http://www.Lichtvoll.de
GPG: 03B0 0D6C 0040 0710 4AFA  B82F 991B EAAC A599 84C7
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