Rhythmbox: Improved Last.fm Plugin Weekly Report 9

[Jamie Nicol <jamie thenicols net>]

Hey everyone!

What I've been up to this week:
      * Libre.fm now works alongside Last.fm. You can scrobble to both
        at the same time, or to one and not the other if you choose.
        From the start of this project I've tried to code in such away
        that this would be possible, but didn't for a second expect it
        to be this easy! It simply was a matter of adding a few lines of
        code, suppose this means I must have been doing something right!
        Mike Sheldon deserves far more credit than me for this though.
        He's done loads of work on libre.fm so that it works with my
        plugin. And as a result it now supports most of the features
        that last.fm does.

      * I implemented radio streaming using the old radio API. This will
        mean that you wont have to be a paid Last.fm subscriber to
        stream radio (you do have to be when using the new API). The
        problem with this is that it needs a password to connect, and
        since we're using the new authentication protocol Rhythmbox will
        not know your password. So...

      * When it needs a password, I've made a info bar pop up prompting
        you to enter your password. If built with gnome keyring support
        the password will be saved and you will never be harassed again,
        otherwise you'll have to re-enter your password again next time.
        While not ideal--it would be great if Rhythmbox could
        psychically guess your password--it's not too obtrusive. And it
        enables non-subscribers to continue enjoying radio playback, so
        it's worth it. Hopefully this should be polished and commited by
        the end of the day.

      * Started to very much regret being too lazy to organise going to
        GUADEC. Had a look into the feasibility of me going now, but
        it'll just cost me too much unfortunately. Should have got my
        act together ages ago! Oh well.. hopefully I'll be able to make
        it to future ones: maybe not as a soc student, but just as a
        member of the gnome community.

      * I saw toy story 3. It was without a doubt the best thing I have
        ever seen in my life.

Once I've finished off the password things described above I will have
implemented all the features planned in my proposal. There's quite a few
things I'd like to spend the remaining weeks on, or even future work
after the soc is finished.
      * First and foremost, I want to ensure the code is of a high
        enough standard that it will be accepted and merged upstream as
        soon as possible.
      * There's a few bits and bobs here and there which need changed.
        For example where a certain file is being stored, how debug
        messages are worded, small things like that.
      * I obviously want to make it bug free. There's one UI glitch I'm
        aware of, and a few criticals/warnings I'd like to get rid of.
        There might be (probably are) more, I'd like to find them and
        fix them.
      * Give the user the option to disable/enable Last.fm and Libre.fm
        separately.
      * There's a few extra features that I could add:
              * When submitting a song we can tell Last.fm the source of
                where the song came from (user's choice, last.fm
                recommendation etc)
              * As well as displaying lists of the user's tracks and
                artists, we could also show albums, friends and events.
              * When listening to the radio, some songs (a few on
                last.fm, all on libre.fm) provide download links. It'd
                be great to show some sort of "download" toolbar button.

So I've still got plenty to be getting on with. Hope everyone has a
great time at GUADEC, see you next week!

Jamie