James Cornell wrote: > Stephen Lau wrote: >> Dick Hoogendijk wrote: >> >>> On Sun, 23 Mar 2008 12:49:19 -0700 (PDT) >>> ken mays <maybird1776 at yahoo.com> wrote: >>> >>> >>>>> Steve Lau said: >>>>> We're planning to push Songbird 0.5 out on Monday or >>>>> Tuesday of next week - probably easiest to wait for 0.5 final and >>>>> then make a build based off of that. >>>>> >>>> Great! SongBird 0.5RC2 is simply awesome. Let's make >>>> this rock on OpenSolaris distros. >>>> >>> And why is songbird so much better than rhythmbox that is provided by >>> gnome already on opensolaris? >>> >>> >> One benefit is that because of the exception we add to the GPL, >> Songbird can be distributed alongaside binary GStreamer plugins like >> the MP3 codec Sun has licensed for Solaris. >> >> <snarky> >> plus we embedded a web browser! >> </snarky> >> >> ;-) >> in all seriousness, there are other benefits. I'd encourage you to >> take a look at songbirdnest.com for a more detailed list. Here's a >> couple of points of distinguishing features: >> * Mozilla extension system allows for easy extensions & theming. See >> my mashTape extension for example: >> http://addons.songbirdnest.com/extensions/download/780 (download and >> then install it into Songbird) >> This is a bunch of retardedly simple and easy Javascript that hits up >> a bunch of various websites for contextual information surrounding >> the artist and track you're listening to. Namely it pulls in >> upcoming concerts, Flickr footage, YouTube videos, lyrics, bio, etc. >> This was so easy to write, it's absurd. (seriously look at the code - >> it's ugly since it was my first Songbird extension, but you can see >> it's pretty simple) >> >> * Has a Webpage API, which allows the media player to be addressed >> via websites. Why is this interesting? Because it allows websites >> to integrate and enumerate your media player. e.g., go to my blog >> here: http://whacked.net/explore >> Start playing a track and you'll see it pulls up cover art, tags, & >> similar artists from last.fm on the left hand side. On the right >> hand side, it's building a tag cloud of your library's artists. This >> is all done via the webpage API. What makes this interesting is that >> websites like music stores can build in the same level of integration >> that places like iTunes + iTunes Store have.... Apple has built a >> really smooth experience if you: >> a) Use an iPod >> b) Use iTunes >> c) Buy from Apple's iTunes Store >> Change any of those 3 variables, and you lose the experience. >> Songbird's strength of talking to any device, and any website and >> allowing that same level of integration is certainly one thing I find >> compelling. >> >> cheers, >> steve >> >> > Songbird work with Podcasts? I use UC Berkeley, MIT, and a few misc > tech podcasts with iTunes. (ITMS URL is just authenticated HTTP with > a null session I think... there's no login for these) We don't currently have a UI exposed for subscribing to podcasts (all the underlying FF/Mozilla support is there - we just haven't integrated it into the UI). I expect we'll probably have this around the 0.7 version or so. (We release new versions every 6-8 weeks)
cheers, steve -- stephen lau | stevel at opensolaris.org | www.whacked.net
