Flickr uploaders for Linux

Well, I guess you are aware of Flickr. Unfortunately, Flickr does not have a Linux photo uploader. So here are 3 applications that are able to upload photos from your Linux desktop. Pick the one which suites you the most:

• Flock - This a full web browser but its Flickr-integrated photo uploader simply works! But if you are using Firefox, having another one doesn’t make much sense.
• jUploadr - A Java-based photo uploader that supports Flickr and Zooomr, runs on any platform with a Java SE virtual machine.
• kFlickr - A Linux-only photo uploader for KDE, a preferred for KDE users, such as myself.

Use your iPod in Linux

Really good article for those having iPods (as I do not and do not require it … my HTC Artemis with WM6 does the job) and wanting to manage the collection using Linux.

Many people have Linux installed on their computers, but they are afraid of using their iPod on it. Perhaps corrupt files, or damage detour them from using the myriad programs that currently exist for the Linux operating system.

There is good news, you can use your iPod in Linux, and get away from the control of iTunes. I have assembled the very best programs that will sync, edit photos and copy files onto your iPod.

Complete Article

Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit

The first Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit takes place mid June, featuring the fourth Desktop Architects Meeting, an LSB face to face meeting and various council meetings.

The Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, taking place form June 13-15 at Google’s Mountain View Campus in the Bay Area, is supposed to bring company and enterprise orientated minds around Linux together. The invitation-only event combines several previously singular events together, among them also the Desktop Architects Meeting which took place last time in december 2006 and the LSB face2face meeting which also took place last time in that December.

The schedule and agenda of this combined event give an overview over the main talks which will be given:

• State of Linux Kernel Roundtable Discussion — What’s New with Core Development
• State of Linux Roundtable discussion — Where are We Going? Where Have We Been? An Industry Perspective
• Cross Industry/Cross Distro Software Development: The Ubuntu Perspective
• How Do We Get More Apps on Linux? What are the Issues Facing Linux Application Development and How do we Solve Them? (Ha, I can answer that one )
• The Legal Protection of Linux - Patents and Licensing, GPLv3 and the Future
• End Users and Linux: What Works, What Doesn’t?
• How Do We Work Together as a Collaborative Community?
• LF Collaboration Summit Reception
• Joint Meeting of the Vendor, User and Developer Advisory Councils

Besides these talks the sub-events also feature their own talks, which adds up to quite a lot. Here is a list of the sub-events, called tracks:

• Desktop Architect’s Meeting 4, the only track which goes two days long
• User Advisory Council Meeting: Device Drivers
• Vendor Advisory Council Meeting
• LSB Face-To-Face Meeting
• Printing On Linux
• Carrier Grade Linux (CGL) Breakout Meeting
• Mobile Linux
• Kernel messaging
• IPv6
• Testing on Linux
• Multimedia/Audio

Ha, find a topic which is missing. To me it looks like almost everything is covered - and I wonder how many people will attend? It is more or less a conference on its own.

The list of speakers is also a nice read: almost every bigger company and distribution is represented there. Also other companies like Adobe or Real which provide Linux apps have speakers there. If you miss the more community centered groups there, they do appear as attendees.

Actually, the list of attendees reads like a who-is-who of the Linux ecosystem - especially the more business centered part. Interesting here are the numbers (although they probably don’t mean much): the distributions (Novell, Red Hat/Fedora and Ubuntu) has each a fistful of people in the game. But there are companies which send more: Nokia and HP send each 6 people, Google 7, Ricoh and IBM each 9 and Intel even 11 people!
While I can understand IBM, HP and Google and definitely appreciate Intel I wonder why other companies like Ricoh send so many people. And Adobe only has the Flash player and Adobe Reader for Linux, why do they send 4 people? And what about Cisco’s 4 members? Do they sell devices with Linux on them? And what is DreamWorks doing there with three attendees? And where is Trolltech?

Anyway, as I said at the beginning, the meeting is focusing on the topics which are important for companies working in the Linux ecosystem. The important non-company community parts are also represented, but clearly are a minority.
This is not bad (yes, for me even companies are part of the community), but knowing that avoids wondering.

I’m looking forward to the outcome of the meeting. I haven’t found any information about where results will be posted/reported.

HelixPlayer news

After almost two years the HelixCommunity updated their pages and gives information about the current development state. The next release can be expected after June this year, but it will not feature AMD64 builds. Still, WMA and WMV seems to work…

Half a year ago I wondered if the HelixCommunity is still alive - the homepage was in large parts outdated and the development seemed to concentrate on other parts than on the players itself.I
I joined the lists and figured out that there was development in place, but without a release schedule at that moment.
Today I checked again the home page and was pleasantly surprised to see a reworked design and new information.

The first impressive information is also a sign that the HelixCommunity does has other priorities than someone might expect: the base technology is more important than the PC players because the base technology is used in more than 125 million devices - mobile phones. Pretty impressive, I think. But: the player for the Symbian OS already features the third generation of the Helix DNA client while even the second generation based HelixPlayer/RealPlayer for the PC is still in development.

But the player development was also straightened and now has a detailed roadmap. The roadmap shows that the work is currently at stage M11. Stage M13 will be reached in June, afterwards we will see the first Beta/RC1 releases which means that we might see a new RealPlayer/HelixPlayer combo this summer.
The roadmap also points out which features have been implemented/tested yet and which not. Among the tested and working features you find WMA and WMV support - I wonder how this works with the Free Software licence the HelixPlayer is released under…

But there are bad news as well: there will be no AMD64 version of the player. These users have to wait for the next generation of the player.
This is sad somehow because I had great hopes with HelixPlayer. I once hoped that it could become *the* multimedia backend for Linux. It would have been nice to have a multimedia backend supported by such a large community and with such a corporate backup. However, this chance has gone by: gstreamer conquered the gnome desktop (and has some corporate backup as well), and as it looks like xine won the hearts of the KDE people silently (amarok, kaffeine, phonon-xine).
And without functional AMD64 builds there will be no way to gain more market share again.