I heard via Handful of INdt this evening that the Canola 2 Beta, will be with us within 10 short days!
I was pointed in the direction of a freshly prepared teaser web site, to promote the count down to what I consider will be a great event in the history of the Nokia Wi-Fi Internet Tablets progression into the consciousness of not just Geeks, but the general public.
For those who don't already know Canola is a media playing application. Apparently a roadmap for Beta 2 will be published, where I understand that the initial release in 10 days time will contain
Music, Photo and Video Playback, via Local, Network (UPnP) and the Internet. (Photocast & Podcast) It will have an improved configuration capability built into the application (Not the web based configuration that came with Canola beta 1) For months we have been listening, reading and digesting news about how good the iPod Touch and the iPhone are. Well listen up all Apple fans, there is a quiet revolution taking place with the help of Nokia and it's Internet Tablets and a Linux based mobile operating system called Maemo.
Canola is just one of many great applications that can be downloaded onto the Nokia Internet Tablet devices. We are not tied like Apple to only install applications that Apple wish us to use on their devices, but are positively encouraged by Nokia to Port and or Develop New applications from/on the Linux desktop environment.
Handful has a post about the new "Canola 2 Beta" web site in his personal Blog "Handful of Nothing"
Examples of Interesting sites to visit and read up on the Nokia Internet Tablet revolution and the applications that can run on these great devices can be found at:-
InternetTabletTalk
Maemo
Maemo Downloads
Keep a watchful eye out for Canola Beta 2´s release, not so long to wait now :-)
7 comments:
Given the existence of numerous Free Software media players for Maemo, why should I use a proprietary one?
What reason does Canola have for remaining proprietary? If you wanted to charge for each copy, I would at least understand the reasoning. But I don't understand the point of a freely downloadable proprietary program in this case.
How well does Canola handle music without an associated album, or with an album that it doesn't know about? Most Maemo media players handle such music badly, such as by putting each song in a self-named album (indistinguishable because it lacks an album picture).
Answering the first question: take a look at this comments http://www.marceloeduardo.com/blog/design/user-interface-design/canola2-beta-teaser-site-online#comments
The second question: Canola has a lot of possible views. If you choose to go to an album view, you'll only see music that has an album related to it. If it doesn't you go to songs/artists view. Just like iPod does.
Q: Given the existence of numerous Free Software media players for Maemo, why should I use a proprietary one?
A: In my opinion Canola is the best of the bunch from the "visual media player" look perspective, which it also equals in the behind the scenes capabilities. Although it is proprietary, there are elements of Canola that have been freely provided to the competition.
Q: I don't understand the point of a freely downloadable proprietary program in this case.
A: I believe that the free but proprietary relates to the way Canola is being utilised by Nokia to help sell the Internet Tablet Devices, Perhaps Handful from the Canola team could add a comment?
Q: How well does Canola handle music without an associated album, or with an album that it doesn't know about?
A: Canola handles the music very well in the sense that it reads the id3 tagging of the music stored on the device and/or provided by a UPnP server and sorts in numerous ways based on this information. With regard to Album Art I can confirm that Canola V1 reads the album art from the folder of the album or from directly within the mp3 file if stored correctly.
I understand that a road mapped release of Canola Beta 2, is going to offer an elegant way to go and find missing Album Art from the Internet with user interaction to ensure rubbish is not added automatically, ignoring what is already stored in our media. Now thats a feature that is thought out ;-)
MoRpHeUz was trying to provide the link below (Tip: Select all the text in bold and rebuild to get to the correct web page)
http://www.marceloeduardo.com/blog
/design/user-interface-design/
canola2-beta-teaser-site-online#comments
Thanks MoRpHeUz
Hey anonymous =)
"Given the existence....etc"
Well, it's the power of choice. Actually if this is the motivation of your choice you shouldnt use canola. It's really not a full opensource project, and doesn't matter as much opensource project our team does (python, all the bindings to the platform, llvm, the evas 16 bit, bindings to all efl, games, porting gnumeric, abiword, patches, the upnp server of canola, the media scanner, maemomyth, mamona and more...) people still focus on canola only.
"What reason does Canola have for remaining proprietary? "
Actually we have been answering this since the first release, and while we don't have the obligation to explain, we do explain that it's a company decision, and it's not the point about Canola itself, but the framework Canola is built on. This is the guy that we are deciding the licensing model, and studing because we are not only individuals, there's a company and needs to make money.
So, we really don't want to charge for a copy of canola, because we don't consider "canola" a product that we would charge for. Canola is a proof of our framework, and it really pays off just by having users using it and reporting problems. So It's a exchange, users reports problems, canola media player stays free.
So, in a sense we do charge people, we charge their feedback, to improve our software, and we do have other projects not related that uses the same code that can benefits us, so that's why it's closed.
But again, the goal is also to make the platform great. So having more than one application is actually great, brings the attention gives different users choice, and I wish other applications also had more and more "choice".
the point is to have a great platform, that is not limitating in a sense of creating nice experiences. A open platform is the important thing, the applications on top will benefit if the platform goes well, and it will go well if it has adopters, and most of them now should be end users, not linux - open source minded people, but the users that really don't care too licenses, they care to great experiences, easy of use and simple softwares.
Anonymous :
We follow the browse by metadata pattern. so if you don't have it you should be able (if not in the first release pretty soon) to browse by folder, by song name and so on. So we would not place a song without album in a self named album, but instead grouped in a "no album defined" group.
Hope this clarifies something =)
marcelo: Thank you for the clarification. My apologies for apparently asking a question that you've answered before, but I could not find any instance of that answer when I searched.
Your explanation of "promotional program for a proprietary framework" makes sense; thank you for providing it. While I still wish Canola would go FOSS, at least now I know the reason it won't, and I also know that this probably will not change in the future.
One request, though: could you please move canola (specifically the "canola2" package) out of the "free" section of the maemo repository, and into the "non-free" section? OS2008 has both enabled by default, so this will not affect canola's visibility for users, but it will mean that editing the source to remove the "non-free" section will filter out the proprietary programs from the package manager. (I find it surprising that so little checking occurs before adding a program to the maemo repository.)
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