Module Player
After bringing the Sid Player (and its siblings Pro and Lite) into the AppStore, we just delivered a new production, the Module Player (and its sibling Lite). The market-situation will be quite different this time, as there are already two other Module Players. We believe we have the highest quality play routine though and a proven user interface. 70000 mods at your fingertips! See the video for a short demo:
Please Vote!
I'm refraining from any concrete political statements in this blog, since blogs are very lacking as discussion platforms. What I do want to say though is, please vote this sunday! Every missing vote is a bullet in the guns of the radical parties, no matter whether they're positioned left or right. Please take your chance, voice your opinion and vote!
P.S. Klarmachen zum Ändern? :)
GSM Palm Pre on the horizon
As mentioned, the freesmartphone.org team and community has taken the challenge to put the FSO stack on the Palm Pre which is out next month. The goal is to manage a voice call with the FSO stack within four weeks.
The idea behind this is a very important one. With only the Openmoko FreeRunner as a platform, the FSO stack is doomed into oblivion sooner or later, since its a very limited hardware platform -- in quantity, but considering the closed alternatives also in quality. Hence, we need to proof that FSO can run on current, competitive hardware -- to embrace companies that want to adopt FSO in their niche.
The Palm Pre is currently our major hope -- all other hardware being either too closed (yes, this includes the Nokia N900) or already outdated.
Vala gains support for server-side async dbus
Something wonderful has happened! Jürg Billeter -- mastermind of Vala -- pushed support for server-side async dbus into Vala. I hope I didn't annoy him too much (having continuesly pestered for almost a year now), but the net effect is that we can now continue working on fsogsmd, the Vala implementation of our dbus GSM server (see http://docs.freesmartphone.org for an overview of the API). Yay!
Too much broken hardware
Let me announce the 3rd piece of broken hardware in 3 months. This is definitely too much :( First my Dreambox 7025, then a Denon AV receiver, and now my Linux workstation decided to die. It looks like (hopefully) just the PSU is to blame though -- doesn't react to incoming power any more.
As if I had time for such things *sigh* ...
Update: It looks like there was a power surge during a thunderstorm. My Dreambox and AppleTV halted as well... aaargh
Update 2: A new PSU brings the workstation back to live *phew*. Dreambox and AppleTV did not have permanent damages either.
Field Recording Again
As mentioned in a previous installment of this column, I'm spending more time with music (and related tasks) again. To get some raw material for new samples, I started recording in the field. The best device I can recommend in the mid-budget region is the Tascam DR100 recorder -- this device comes with an aura of “work, not play”; unlike the famous Zoom devices which I found to be very plastic and unreliable. The killer features of the Tascam DR100 for me are:
- Built-in rechargable Li battery
- 2 XLR inputs w/ 48V phantom power
- 4 built-in microphones, two uni-, two omnidirectional.
- Simple UI, lots of dedicated buttons.
One week in Paris
Sabine and me spent a week in Paris to celebrate our 8th wedding anniversary. It's pretty amazing that the ICE train takes only 4h from Frankfurt/Main to Paris, Gare de l'est -- this is almost the same amount of time it takes me to get to Berlin...
Besides walking all around the city and visiting some sites, I took the chance to visit the Bearstech office and chat a bit with the guys there. Unfortunately only few bears were there at that time, but with only 4h to Paris, I'll be surely coming back more often. On the last day, we had a (yummy) dinner with some guys and their gals from SHR and openBmap fame. It was a great evening and a very nice conclusion to our small vacation, thanks guys!
{width=“320”}FSO founds BGB company
We just released the following statement to various mailing lists:
Braunschweig, Germany, 2009-07-29. For immediate release.
The freesmartphone.org core-team founds a BGB company to facilitate the further development of free and open source middleware for Linux-based mobile systems: "Lauer, Lübbe, Schmidt, Willmann, freesmartphone.org GbR".
The core-team members of the freesmartphone.org project today announced the founding of a legal entity offering consulting, training, and implementation services around the freesmartphone.org middleware platform, also known as FSO.
"We now have a single point of contact for both commercial and non-commercial parties who want to use our services to create compelling solutions. This is of interest for groups or individuals creating new devices or freeing existing devices ("anti-vendor-ports") and who decided to incorporate the FSO middleware", says Dr. Michael Lauer, founder of the FSO project. "If you care about the further development of this platform or if you need guidance for tailoring or customizing the FSO middleware, contact us via E-Mail at coreteam\@freesmartphone.org".
With todays' smartphones evolving into ubiquituous companions, a gap has emerged between widely used FOSS components like the Linux kernel and core system libraries on one side, and end-user applications on the other side. The lack of a complete free mobile software stack hinders innovation and leads to reinventing proprietary solutions for services middleware.
FSO's mission is to close this gap by designing and developing solid middleware for mobile systems in an open fashion; this refers to not only publishing source code under open source licenses, but also to sharing the whole design and development process with the community and giving both commercial and non-commercial entities a way to co-drive and steer the process.
Built on top of the Linux kernel, FSO implements high level services for mobile application development, accessible via the DBus interprocess communication standard. Leveraging the FSO APIs allows the developer to concentrate on solving application domain problems, such as business logic and presentation of data, without having to worry about the device specifics and low level details, such as how to access resources, telephony, location awareness, data storage, etc.
*About freesmartphone.org: Previously funded by Openmoko Inc, freesmartphone.org is a collaboration platform for open source and open discussion software projects working on interoperability and shared technology for Linux-based smartphones. freesmartphone.org operates on the services layer (middleware) and offers APIs and reference implementations that support modern interconnected mobile devices. To provide reference solutions, freesmartphone.org works closely together with various device-specific communities such as the Openmoko, OpenEZX, and HTC-Linux groups. The FSO team honours and bases on specifications and software created by the freedesktop.org community.
- This means you can hire us (or donate money), if you want to support the FSO middleware development.
Updating the Recording Studio
Although I kept working on my instrument skills, I neglected my recording studio for about a decade now. I guess the root of the problem is that I never got the hang of the modern computer based sequencers. The moment when I sold my KORG 01/W workstation (almost a decade ago) was the moment I more or less quit recording anything.
While I'm working with computers for a living, I don't like software instruments much -- with one exception which is the reason for this post. I just acquired a Native Instruments MASCHINE -- which is a dedicated hardware controller for a software instruments (a groovebox, actually). This is slowly bringing back my motivation to do some recordings.
As part of this motivation, I sold some of the gear that only gathered dust, namely an Akai MPC 2500, a Roland JD990 w/ VintageKeys extensions, and a BitStream WaveIdea controller. Less is more and keyboardwise, I'm feeling very confident with only a Roland V-Synth GT and a Roland V-Piano now.
Stay tuned for some releases... after so many years :)