Dates 0.1 is go!

After a lot of hard work, the first release of Dates is now ready – Source tarballs, Ubuntu packages, Debian packages and Nokia 770 packages are all available, check out the OpenedHand project page for details.

Many thanks go to Tomas Frydrych for work on the Maemo port, Mark Florian for extensive testing, Ulisse Perusin for work on an icon (that wasn’t used, unfortunately), Ross Burton for work/help on the debian packaging and finally my boss, Matthew Allum for employing me and guiding me towards making what I think is a pretty awesome app ๐Ÿ™‚

Finally, some screenshots:

Enjoy, and remember there’s a bugzilla for any bugs you find!

Zero 7 – This Fine Social Scene
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Dates approaching release

Dates is fast approaching a release – I’d provide some screenshots, but I don’t have wifi at the moment and made the mistake of updating my 770 to the final 2006 image (which still won’t pair with my phone :(). Big updates since my last post are completely re-written event fitting (instant and bug-free on every calendar I’ve tried so far), a few code changes to make webcals not block at all (hopefully) and a few memory/speed optimisations. If you haven’t tried it before, do check it out, and remember that there’s a bugzilla ๐Ÿ™‚

Nokia 770 packages coming soon…

The Dandy Warhols – We Used To Be Friends
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My First Guadec

Well, been home a couple of days now, so I suppose it’s about time to write up my Guadec experience. In short, it was awesome. It was very cool to meet some of the people that make GNOME what it is, along with the people that will make GNOME what it will be in the coming years. Many thanks goes to OpenedHand for flying me out and paying for accommodation, it was an excellent experience and one I’m very glad I didn’t miss out on.

Lots of cool things were talked about/demoed at Guadec. In particular, Gimmie was a huge hit – I’ve been using it for a while now and I think it’s definitely deserved. For those who haven’t tried it, I highly recommend it; I can’t imagine how I ever used my computer without it now. Hopefully I’ll have some time this summer to contribute more to it. GTK+ 2.10 also looks like it will rock, with the new recent files/bookmarks system, the printing stuff and GtkNotebook tab dragging (which is definitely the coolest implementation of it I’ve seen). I do wish some other GTK problems were fixed (scrolling an over-populated GtkNotebook is still a chore, GtkLabel’s still can’t wrap properly, and is the GtkTreeView bug that Rhythmbox exposes still there?), but all in all, it should be a great release.

I got quite a lot of interest in Dates while I was there, which was very cool. Tommi Komulainen in particular gave me a lot of suggestions for improvements (with his opening statement being “It sucks” :)), some of which I’ll be implementing before the 0.1 release. The primary concern at the moment is its speed, which I’m fixing now and should hopefully be ready to commit on Wednesday. A 0.1 release (for both desktop and 770) should be available real soon now™.

I have some ideas related to improving personal information management application integration and functionality that I’ll try to blog about next week.

p.s. Thanks tigert for the new hackergotchi, it’s really cool!
p.p.s. To anyone that saw Ross’s talk, that was a very old and buggy version of Dates and the 0.1 release will be a lot better ๐Ÿ™‚

Electric Six – Vibrator
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