New screenshots of Transmission GUI
Stephen B. - December 10th, 2005
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Archive for the ‘News’ Category Bryan Varner recently posted an update on his GUI for the Transmission BitTorrent client, and it looks like he’s made some nice progress since announcing that work was underway a few week ago. In two new screenshots posted to his blog, the looney bin, he shows off a working version of the GUI running multiple torrent files. He says there is still a fair amount of work to be done, including finishing the preferences and various cleanups / optimizations, but that he should be able to make it available for general use before long. Great work, I’m personally looking forward to this app enthusiastically. In other Transmission-related news, the poster ljr in the BeBits Talkback area spotted a build of version 0.4 (latest on BeBits is 0.3) on a French blog.
While browsing BeBits today, I came across some interesting postings in the comments area for the Mail Daemon Replacement. Posted by mmadia, the comments include the address of an unofficial build of MDR with SSL support, instructions on configuring MDR for use with GMail (which uses SSL), and instructions on obtaining and compiling the MDR source from the Haiku SVN server. Read on for the instructions on setting up a GMail account in MDR.
– Open MDR’s preferences. Incoming: Outgoing: NOTE: the username/password input fields will become enabled after setting the Auth. Method.
TuneTracker Systems recently launched a new site, LearnZeta.Com (and LearnBeOS.Com), that offers Zeta / BeOS training videos on CD. I was curious about the LearnZeta videos, so I asked the man himself, Dane Scott. Read on for my mini-interview with him.
BeOSNews: What prompted the idea for making BeOS / Zeta training videos? Dane Scott: As you might be aware, I have the company TuneTracker Systems, which sells radio automation software and supplemental tools all based around BeOS/ZETA. Our TuneTracker radio customers voiced a desire to have an easy way to train new staffers…Faster and less tediously than having them study manuals. So we started out doing training CDs for our three main accessory products: TunePrepper music preparation and ripping software, Lightning audio search engine and playlist builder/editor, and TT Anywhere remote administration software. We made the CDs available individually and as a cluster of three, and they were instantly a hit with our users. When we surveyed our users, one of the most common requests was that we also do a training CD on the ins and outs of BeOS/ZETA itself. We started teaching and taping, and what we wound up with was a three-disk set.. Since this particular set of disks is so useful to the general public, we decided to sell them outright on their own learnzeta.Com and learnbeos.Com domains (both lead to the same site). BN: That’s interesting, have you found that many TuneTracker users from outside the BeOS community have been “bitten by the BeOS / Zeta bug” DS: Almost none of our customers were previously BeOS/ZETA users. We are able to attract them over because of their dire need for stability when broadcasting, combined with a set of features in our software that nobody else can touch in our price range. BN: How long did it take to create the videos? DS: The CDs were created over about four months. BN: What software was used to make the training videos? DS: We used Sony Vegas due to its offering probably the most powerful professional features for the money. BN: How much of their creation was done in BeOS / Zeta? DS: You could say that all of it and none of it was done in BeOS/ZETA. All of the demonstrating and teaching was done using BeOS/ZETA, while the filming was done using a Panasonic DVC-30 camcorder and the editing was done in Vegas, under Windows. BN: Were the videos filmed by pointing the camera at a monitor, or did you directly record the video output? DS: We looked at both approaches, and ultimately went with a flat panel LCD display and a high quality video camera. BN: Can you give us some technical details on the videos, like the resolution and audio codec used? DS: The resolution is at 720 x 480 at 30 fps, using DIVX format. BN: Were there any bizarre bugs/problems you had to work around while creating them? DS: The biggest hoop to jump through was the format hoop. There are so many different video formats to choose from, as well as different CD and DVD formats. Ultimately after quite a bit of experimentation, we chose DIVX as our encoding format for its compactness, and burned the videos to standard CDs. That gives us really good universal playability on all operating system platforms, including the three most likely; BeOS, ZETA, and Windows. BN: Do the videos contain onscreen text instructions, or are they narrated? DS: They are fully narrated, by me. In my other life, I’m a professional voice-over guy. They’re not stilted or overly-commercial sounding though. I kept everything friendly and casual and conversational. BN: Are the videos aimed at self-teachers, or at being course material for instructors? DS: Both. These will be equally appropriate for administrators/management, their staff, and of course, individual “end users” who just own BeOS or ZETA and want to get the most out of it. BN: Do you have any plans to release the videos in other formats, E.G. DVD or video-embedded-in-Flash? DS: Right now, our plans are to continue using the same format, keeping things as simple and standardized as possible so people don’t have trouble trying to view the contents. BN: Are there plans to make downloadable versions available for purchase, or would the necessary bandwidth make that impractical? DS: Right, it’d be pretty impractical due to the size of the files. The other nice thing about CDs is that in a company environment, you can pass them around easily for training purposes. BN: And lastly, are there any screenshots/samples of the videos that you could share? DS: Not yet, but very very soon! We’re planning on releasing some clips on the learnzeta.Com web site in the next few days. You might also be interested to know we plan to do a multi-disk bundle of training CDs on using TuneTracker itself. We’ve held off on doing that one because we’re coming out with a huge upgrade/update to it soon and we want to release it at or around the time it comes out. BN: Thanks again, Dane! We appreciate you taking the time to answer our questions.
yellowTab recently announced the release of an update to their VideoEditor application and they’ve made it freely available for download. The new version of VideoEditor reportedly includes many more transitions, filters, and other effects as well as more intuitive icons for the various effects than the previous version. The updated VideoEditor can be obtained from yellowTab’s Downloads page.
The BeBox Zone has posted an interesting interview with Joseph Palmer, the former director of hardware engineering at Be Inc, and Guillaume Desmarets, who was in charge of building the never-released 200MHz BeBox. The interview is a great read and Palmer relates some neat bits of information, especially the technical hurdles they had to overcome while building a prototype quad-CPU BeBox. He doesn’t mention the most intriguing question, though – where would they have put four rows of blinken-lights?
Michael Phipps of the Haiku Project has posted an update detailing what they’ve been up to for the past few months. The update also mentions that Axel D??rfler’s employment will be continued through December and it sounds like he’s already made significant progress in his month as Haiku’s first paid employee. So far he has “only” worked on multiprocessor support, CD booting support, and the app_kit.
Dockbert, an application launcher/switcher similar to the MacOS X dock, may see revived development in the near future. IsComputerOn has reported that TeamMaui are looking for a C++ coder to continue Dockbert’s development. From the details posted, they plan to clean up the settings and existing features, as well as implement some new features such as a replicant drop area and support for 128px icons. It works quite well as both a launcher and a Deskbar replacement (I’ve used it alongside Deskbar for a few years now) but it doesn’t seem to compile with newer versions of OpenTracker, so an older version appears to be required to use Dockbert on R5. Hopefully, Team Maui will be successful in finding an interested coder to update Dockbert.
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