Home theater PC owners only just recovering from their turkey or tofu comas will have some updating to do — MediaPortal has been busy. The experimenters among us will most likely want to jump straight into the promised MediaPortal 2.0 Alpha Autumn, which carries new visual layouts and video backgrounds, a news plug-in and a party-friendly music player. New versions of remote tools like aMPdroid, MPExtended, WebMediaPortal and WifiRemote bring their own slew of upgrades, such as HTTP Live Streaming in MPExtended or a “what’s new” interface in aMPdroid. We’ll readily admit that our eye is most drawn to the yet-to-be-launched MediaPortal 1.3 beta’s addition of the Titan skin you see up above: going beyond what we saw in October, the extra-polished look goes a long way towards accommodating newcomers and the style-conscious. We’re still waiting on publicly accessible 1.3 beta code, but everything else is waiting for open-source media hubs at the included links.
MeeGo refugee Jolla has demonstrated its new Sailfish OS today, as well as announcing a deal with ST-Ericsson to run the platform on its mobile chips, and a carrier deal with Finland’s DNA. Revealed back in October, Sailfish focuses on “effortless multitasking” with the ability to run multiple apps simultaneously and even interact with them directly from the homescreen view. It also attempts to cut down on the taps, swipes, and pulls involved in checking status updates and notifications, and promises easy compatibility with Android apps.
The homescreen-level interaction, Jolla suggests, means Sailfish will be the most streamlined and speedy OS for users to navigate through. For instance, they’ll be able to pause a song or end an ongoing call without having to open the respective apps themselves: you can swipe a finger across the music player app thumbnail to the left to pause playback, or to the right to skip to the next track.
Sailfish also has a so-called “Pulley Menu” for “fast and effortless interaction” and the open-source SDK is already being fleshed out. It consists of components including Qt, the Mer Core, and the Linux kernel, and can turn its hand to duties on smartphones, tablet, smart TVs, in-car systems, and other applications. Jolla will have a copy of the version shown off today “very soon.”
According to Jolla, many Android apps will run on Jolla devices with no modifications. However, there’ll need to be tweaks made if best use of Sailfish is desired “If you want to take advantage of all UI and other features of Sailfish OS and make yourapplications fast,” the Sailfish SDK wiki explains, ”you can port your applications to native QT/QML.” That’s the full version of Qt, too, along with HTML5, though there won’t be DRM support.
Jolla also has its first carrier onboard, with DNA set to get the first Sailfish-based devices and be part of what the company says will be “a network of partners” around the OS “during the coming year.”
Jolla isn’t content with just one chipset partner, however. “ST-Ericsson’s NovaThor platform combined with Sailfish OS will enable vendors to bring highly competitive mobile products to the market. We welcome other players in the mobile industry to join and contribute to this game changing movement” Jolla CEO Marc Dillon said today. “We also target to announce other chipset provider partnerships soon.”
In an effort to streamline the process of scanning hundreds of millions of titles, Google Books engineer Dany Qumsiyeh has designed a $1,500 automated scanner from sheet metal, dissected electronics, and a household vacuum. It can chew through a 1,000 page odyssey in about 90 minutes, and you’re welcome to build your own since Qumsiyeh has made his Linear Book Scanner open source. More »
HP has become a platinum member of the The Linux Foundation, part of what is described as the PC manufacturers “prioritizing” of the open-source OS for future devices. HP, who was previously a gold member of the Foundation, now joins Intel, Qualcomm, Samsung, and others as a platinum sponsor, and in return gains a seat on the board of directors and more input into group activities.
That input is described as being “directly involved in advancing Linux-based initiatives, workgroups, Labs, events, and more that support its business goals” by The Linux Foundation, though specifics of what HP hopes to achieve are conspicuous by their absence. The company itself name-checks Linux as “a strategic asset” but gives little more in the way of insight into exactly what strategy that might be.
Nonetheless, Linux has a place across HP’s range, with servers, printers, networking kit, and other hardware all using the open-source platform. Open webOS, meanwhile – the open-source version of webOS – is also based on the Linux kernel, though as yet has been little used in any consumer-facing way.
News from the OUYA team has been relatively low-key since the project’s $8.5m Kickstarter closed, but the company has been quietly working on an Android update and early developer hardware. Google’s OS waits for no man (or Rubik’s Cube-sized games console) and so OUYA has been updated to run Jelly Bean, not Ice Cream Sandwich as originally promised.
It’s not clear whether that’s Jelly Bean 4.1, as has been out for a while now, or Jelly Bean 4.2 which was made official on Monday; of the features in the latter, it’s the multi-user logins which strike us as being most useful. That could mean different gamers could easily switch between their own highscore profiles, as well as keeping age-inappropriate titles out of the reach of younger players.
As for the hardware, the board shown up in the top photo – looking dwarfed by a Coke can – is from the first development run, and apparently worked with no hardware problems. OUYA is now tinkering with graphics, wireless, and user-experience performance on the quadcore processor.
Next on the roadmap are developer units, which should be ready by December the team re-confirms. They’ll be produced in limited numbers – and have aesthetic differences from the production versions – though won’t have games or the final UI, instead only being intended for developers to bring their apps up to speed.
There’s more for developers keen to get on board here, while those gamers who still want to preorder an OUYA can find more here.
When using Linux, or just about any open source operating system out there for that matter, there’s a proverbial Santa’s knapsack of graphical user interfaces (GUIs) available. When you boil this topic down on the basic level, you’ve got two choices: Use a fully featured Desktop Environment (DE) with tons of bells and whistles, or alternatively you can use a slimmed-down and streamlined Window Manager (WM). We’re going to get you up to speed on what each of these actually are, some reasons why you’d want to choose a WM over a DE, as well as some of the options you have among the Window Managers out there. Catch us after the break to join the age-old battle of choosing your GUI.
If you were wondering what was next for webOS now that it’s gone all open source on us, webOS Nation chimes in with word that Gram is working with LG to bring it to connected HDTVs. Several names from the HP / Gram team are dropped as being involved in the effort, which reportedly was under way even before HP revealed it would spin the project off as an independent. Of course, when we actually saw Open webOS 1.0 it was already stretching to fill the space of an HP TouchSmart computer screen (project architect Steve Winston specifically mentioned hotel kiosks as a possibility, a market LG is all over) so it makes sense that larger displays have been a target. With LG supposedly both looking to replace its existing NetCast smart TV platform and unhappy with Google TV based on its rate of adoption and Google’s terms, engineers have been working to port the software to its dual-core L9 chipset. In the past LG has pursued voice and motion control, the aforementioned Google TV integration and even Plex support to make its smart TVs more appealing, and has founded the Smart TV Alliance for cross platform apps. We only have to wait until CES 2013 to see if webOS is next up to power its efforts, stay tuned.
Between old Paro the robo seal and the original iteration of Keepon, we’ve seen plenty of adorable robots designed for therapeutic purposes. Romibo’s creators have no qualms admitting that their own creation is following in those cuddly footsteps, but what sets their furry ‘bot apart from much of the competition is a focus on (relative) affordability. For starters, there’s the fact that Romibo is being offered up as an open-source project online, letting do-it-yourselfers build their own versions and contribute custom designs.
The company’s also hoping families will get into the act, making sure that Romibo is “able to be assembled by a neurotypical child 10+ and a parent” — and then there are the plans to offer up workshops to let folks build robots to be donated to special needs facilities. Once built, Romibo can drive around, blink its eyes, speak and move its antennae. Crack it open and you’ll find WiFi, bluetooth, light sensors, an IR Proximity sensor, accelerometers and a big ‘ole Arduino Mega. There’s a certain amount of autonomous functionality (watch in the video below as Romibo’s handler warns about it driving off the edge of the table), or you can control the robot via an iPad app. You can also use an SD card to help teach it some new words.
Yes, we’ll admit that we borrowed that pun in the title. MooresCloud founder Mark Pesce’s Xzibit reference is still a very apt description of the Light, his company’s Linux-based LED lamp. The Australian team’s box-shaped illumination runs the open OS (including a LAMP web server stack) on an integrated mini PC with an accelerometer and WiFi. The relative power and networking provide obvious advantages for home automation that we’ve seen elsewhere, but it’s the sheer flexibility of a generalized, web-oriented platform that makes the difference: the Light can change colors based on photos or movement, sync light pulses to music and exploit a myriad of other tricks that should result from a future, web-based app store. When and how the Light launches will depend on a Kickstarter campaign to raise $700,000 AUD ($717,621 US) starting on October 16th, although the $99 AUD ($101 US) cost is just low enough that we could see ourselves open-sourcing a little more of the living room. At least, as long as we don’t have to recompile our lamp kernel before some evening reading.
Product 3 LLC, the company behind the original iControlPad, has successfully funded a successor: folks, meet the iControlPad 2. While there isn’t much to its name, the sequel boasts a handy QWERTY keypad along with an optional swivel-mount that you can attach to any smartphone. It works over either microUSB or Bluetooth, and true to its open-source roots, is said to support the Ouya, the Raspberry Pi and pretty much any other device you can throw at it. What’s more, it can be programmed to control almost any app via its support for touchscreen mapping. There’s still room for additional backers, so you could try to get a raw version for $69 or a boxed edition for $75 if you manage to pre-order in time. Let’s just hope the sequel doesn’t experience the same delays as its older sibling, especially given the $150,000-plus the company earned in its Kickstarter campaign.
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