Re: [Banshee-List] Fwd: ipod support

[groups-yahoo-com mmeiser com]

On 7/25/07, Aaron Bockover <abockover novell com> wrote:
> Hi Mike,
>
> Thanks for the wonderful detailed feedback. I'm going to reply inline to
> your summary points. Let me know if I've left something unanswered!
>
> >
> > In summary.
> >
> > Banshee is a great podcast client, extremely simple, yet does exactly
> > what i need it to do.  It interfaces well with podcast websites, and
> > allows for flexible aggregation and listening habits.  It has only the
> > following issues that I can see
> >
> > 1) needs a minor update to work with iPods that have been updated by
> iTunes 7.2
>
> I forget which iTunes release versions correspond to months of a year,
> but I think the last major update we did was to fix whatever iTunes was
> released a few months ago. I thought this was 7.2, but maybe it was just
> 7.1. Either way, we have to constantly stay on top of Apple who, without
> fail, in every release, manages to change something with the iTunes/iPod
> database formats. Rest assured, we'll have updates out usually within a
> few weeks after iTunes releases.

I appologize... the latest release that  just came out with the
release of the iPhone was 7.3.1... that appears to have broken syncing
with the ipod as it appears to change the ipod database / data
format... that according to what banshee tells me when I plug in my
ipod.

> If in fact we did update to reflect the 7.2 changes, then we may have
> missed something, which is also common given that we have nothing to go
> when fixing our stack (like a spec to follow). Yay proprietary software!
> If we did miss something, it would be helpful to figure out exactly what
> is failing so we can address it.
>
> > 2) needs OPML import/export to allow iTunes user to switch easily to
> Banshee
>
> The author of the podcast plugin has been working on OPML support. It
> should land within the next couple of months.

Excellent.. that's the big thing...  the thing to Banshee being an
iTunes killer for podcasting. Since iTunes saves it's subscriptions in
opml and can export to opml this would essentially allow one very
simple step for iTunes to banshee switchers. A very good thing for
banshee indeed.

> > 3) the grey text for non-downloaded podcast episodes is to light and
> > thus hard to read in the podcast pane of banshee.
>
> This really depends on your GTK+ theme, but perhaps we could do
> something different here entirely. Mind posting a screenshot of what is
> "too light"? I don't have a problem viewing it.

Sure... Will have to post in another email, haven't screen snapped
anything in ubuntu yet which is very odd for me... but I'm sure it's
no problem. I think it's a standalone app.

> > Also this is not something I personally am interested in, but I've
> > followed the popularity of Last.fm, and more recently a great
> > newcommer called iLike.com.  Perhaps I've overlooked it but i haven't
> > seen any plugins for these services in Banshee.
>
> There are no official plugins for either of these services regarding
> streaming. We are debating adding a simple last.fm streaming client in
> the future, but honestly I am somewhat against the idea as I think the
> last-exit client is really superb. I would recommend trying that.
> Perhaps just some tighter integration between our two applications is in
> order.

It's about more than streaming... both so far as I can tell track what
you're listening to to recommend and help you find people with like
interests... it looks like both to me are even starting to track
podcast listening preferences... which is pretty amazing.  ilike is
the new kid on the block I don't know if they have any plugins for
amarok, rythmbox or any of the linux software, but I know last.fm
does. I really hope there's some sort of standard plugin architecture
that all the open source audio players can tap into, because this is
going to become a huge thing moving forward for new media... in fact
it's already a huge thing.

> Again, thanks for the great feedback!

Seriously it is my pleasure... I really actually enjoy getting to talk
to the people who develop the applications I love... As far as time
spent goes I'd be hard pressed to find a better ROI than open source.
I'm not really a programmer I'm a designer / ia, but I really enjoy
the dialogue almost as much as I enjoy the software.

Thanks again!  And keep up the great work!

-Mike

> Best,
> Aaron
>
>
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