SoC Media Devices Collection Draft 1

[Alejandro Wainzinger]

Project Topic: Media Devices as a Collection Provider

Summary:

My work on media devices will be two-fold: improving on seamless use of
media devices in Amarok, and adding the ability to add media device files to
the collection.  Good media device support is paramount to the success of
Amarok 2, since these devices are everywhere and sometimes used as the sole
location for a music collection.

Project:

Amarok 1.4 did provide media support, but lacked polish with devices like
the iPod.  First, my work to improve existing support would be to increase
the speed of iPod loading, hide (and appropriately deal with) issues arising
from the lockfile and sysinfo-extended, and adding features that iTunes has
for the iPods which add to their value.  This includes synchronisation of
the iPod with Amarok's existing collection, offloading playcount of songs
for sending updates to last.fm, etc.  These features could be abstracted to
work with other devices as well.

Second, I will integrate the media device framework into Amarok 2.  This
will let users add files from a media device to their collection, as well as
playlists, but should go beyond this.  An example feature would be building
a dynamic playlist of songs with the highest playcount on the media device,
and add this playlist to the media device at the user's agreement.  If there
is remaining time, I want to work on bridging the gap between the abilities
of online media services like last.fm and media devices, e.g. getting the
playcount on songs from last.fm and injecting it into the iPod, which would
help if you had to reset your iPod and would have your playcount at stake.

Expected Results:

- integration of the media device framework into amarok 2
- an intuitive, useful interface for media devices

Background:

I'm a Computer Science undergraduate student at the University of California
Santa Cruz in the western United States, though I am Argentine-born.  Amarok
would be my first big project, but I am familiar with C++.  I'm learning Qt,
and am willing to learn about kdelibs.

I'm an avid user of KDE and Amarok and have been wanting to contribute for a
while.  I feel the most passionate about the iPod since it's a big part of
my daily life, and I know that many others would benefit from good media
device support.
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