Andrea Grandi

I left from Firenze with my friend Marco Trevisan, to go to Ubuntu Developer Summit in Budapest. We changed flight in Rome where we met also Andrea Azzarone. Unluckly Alitalia losts Marco's baggage, so he's still waiting for it.

We arrived at the hotel at 20:00 more or less where we met other people of the community. There are lot of italians at UDS. Most work for Canonical, other were sponsored by.

I met Marianna Raffaele (one of the UDS organizer... yeah, she's italian too!), I had to explain her a little problem I had with my booking (nothing bad) and she managed to help me. She also gave me a very nice guitar plettre with Ubuntu logo. Thank you Marianna for this!

We went out with Jorge Castro to drink some beers (he offered me one, thanks Jorge!!!) and we met lot of other Ubuntu people. A really amazing start!

Few days ago I received an email from Jorge O. Castro of the Ubuntu Community, announcing me that my request of sponsorization for Ubuntu Developer Summit has been accepted. I have never attended an UDS before, so I must admit I feel a bit disoriented at the moment and maybe I'm missing some important informations, but at least I'm a good test for the situation of a community member approaching it for the first time. Since I would like to actively help the organization of the Summit, I started looking for the right place to do it. I've a good experience about events organization and during these years I helped, for example, in the organization of Maemo Summit and MeeGo Conference, so I'd like to share my experience with the Ubuntu Community too.

USD Website

The Ubuntu Developer Summit website is http://uds.ubuntu.com/. It looks nice at first view, but it's missing a lot of important informations and it contains some errors. The Travel section, for example should be named "Travel and Accomodation" and should contains not only information about the main hotel where the Summit will take place, but also useful informations about cheap hotels/hostels for Community people who are not sponsored. The Tracks section is still empty. Is it possible that when less than 1 month is missing, official tracks are not available yet? I don't mean categories, I mean tracks inside them. The Schedule is still empty too. Clicking any track take to a page containing an error: I would like to submit this bug, but where? Even worse, clicking on Schedule takes the visitor to a different website and there is no ways to navigate back (except clicking the back button on browser).

Forum

I wasn't able to find any section in the official Ubuntu forum where to talk about Ubuntu Developer Summit. I think it would be useful to have a dedicated section to talk about UDS or about generic Ubuntu related events. It would be useful for people to be able to meet/know each other before attending. I was lucky to meet Marco Trevisan, from the Ubuntu Italian Community, so we will travel together (thanks to a Twitter message I sent!).

IRC

The #ubuntu-uds channel on FreeNode is not much populated and a couple of times I visited it nobody wrote anything. We should keep at least 2-3 people, in turns, always available to answer any question about UDS, it would be easier for people to find the informations they look for.

Wiki

It would be nice to have a page on the wiki to organize better the event. We could write a list of tasks to do and each Community member could pick one and help with it. In this way we could divide the jobs. I know there is a lot to do when we organize these kind of events and the help of the Community is something we cannot risk to miss.

Media

We should give some informations to people who will attend UDS to be sure they will use proper tags when they will publish pictures, tweets, blog entries ecc... Do we have a tag to use on Flickr? What is the right tag to use on Twitter? What keywords should we use when we will blog about the Summit? All these informations are important if we want to be sure other people will find our posts in an easy way.

Mailing List

Ubuntu has a lot of mailing lists, but it looks like none dedicated to events discussion. There is one called ubuntu-events-planners but nobody is using it since months ago. We should use a mailing list to discuss about events organization and/or create a dedicated one for UDS.

MeeGo Conference Updates

We have 315 registrants as of today for the conference, so numbers are looking good without having any agenda published yet! A good portion of sessions should be approved by April 8th, this Friday and you will receive an email when/if your session has been approved yet. Not all the sessions will be approved by Friday though so if you do not hear from the committee then do not worry they are probably just working through it. The program committee is tenatively planning to have a first draft of the Agenda up by April 15th. Sponsored Travel attendees should start receiving approvals during next week and approvals will continue through April 25th.

Warm-up

You can follow the updates and planning on the Warm-up at http://wiki.meego.com/MeeGo_Conference_Spring_2011#MeeGo_Conference_Warm-Up

T-shirt design contest

For anyone who didn't see it on the mailing list this morning from Brian the winner of the T-shirt contest will receive sponsored airfare and hotel for the event in San Francisco. The contest closes next Friday, so get drawing!

MeeGo Summit FI update

MeeGo Summit FI (15-16th Apr). Summit will be 2-day developer oriented event as planned. Program contains keynotes, three tracks, meegathon competition, AR.Drone fun, evening party, Intel AppUp Lab, BoFs and more. http://summit.meegonetwork.fi
Interest towards summit has been huge, beyond our expectations. We were fully booked after one week. We have ~350 participants (limited by facilities and other details), over 140 are (still) in queue for cancellation seat.

MeeGo Corporate Guidelines and Regional and Local Assets and Guidelines

We in conjunction with Jarkko and the Finland team, the many contributors from the community, the Linux foundation, the events team, and the Caffelli design team have pulled together the guidelines for MeeGo Events. Thank you all for your contributions in putting these together! The Guidelines and Collateral Assets are posted on the Event's page at http://wiki.meego.com/Events#MeeGo_Conferences we would like your feedback and input so please email me amy.l.leeland@intel.com please send us things that you think we missed or things we could change to make the guidelines better.

Note: you can find the original log here http://trac.tspre.org/meetbot/meego-meeting/2011/meego-meeting.2011-04-05-17.00.html

In questo periodo le regioni stanno inviando a casa di ogni cittadino la nuova versione della Carta Sanitaria Europea, simile a quella che potete vedere nella foto. Questa nuova carta, oltre a conservare gli stessi utilizzi di quella vecchia, comprende anche un micro chip che permette di utilizzarla con i comuni lettori di smartcard.

Ma a cosa serve poter utilizzare la CSE con un lettore di smartcard? Ad esempio ad accedere al proprio fascicolo sanitario tramite il sito della regione, che ci permetterà di vedere alcuni nostri dati come ad esempio: medicine prese, esenzioni, ricoveri in ospedale, ricoveri al pronto soccorso, risultati delle analisi ecc...

Per accedere all'area riservata non viene utilizzato il classico metodo di username/password, ma bensì l'autenticazione tramite smartcard.

Installazione del lettore di smartcard

Prima di utilizzare la carta su Ubuntu Linux è necessario intanto procurarsi un lettore di smartcard (vi consiglio di acquistare il kit che vendono dove siete andati ad attivare la vostra CSE, poichè viene venduto ad un prezzo vantaggioso di 4,20€ mentre se provate a comprare il lettore altrove non lo troverete a meno di 15-20€) e poi installare sul proprio sistema alcuni pacchetti necessari al suo funzionamento.

Il lettore, una volta inserito nel proprio PC dovrebbe essere identificabile tramite la seguente stringa:

andrea@centurion:~$ lsusb
Bus 002 Device 004: ID 072f:90cc Advanced Card Systems, Ltd ACR38 SmartCard Reader

Per installare il software necessario, occorre eseguire il seguente comando da terminale:

sudo apt-get install pcsc-tools pcscd libccid

dopo di che dovrete procurarvi il driver del lettore, che potete trovare a questo indirizzo ed installarlo con il seguente comando (dopo aver scompattato l'archivio in una cartella a piacimento):

sudo dpkg -i libminilector38u-bit4id.deb

Se tutto è stato eseguito correttamente, utilizzando il programma pcsc_scan da terminale, dovreste ottenere un output simile a questo:

andrea@centurion:~$ pcsc_scan
PC/SC device scanner
V 1.4.16 (c) 2001-2009, Ludovic Rousseau <ludovic.rousseau@free.fr>
Compiled with PC/SC lite version: 1.5.3
Scanning present readers...
0: ACS ACR 38U-CCID 00 00

Thu Nov 11 14:08:37 2010
 Reader 0: ACS ACR 38U-CCID 00 00
  Card state: Card inserted,
  ATR: 3B DF 18 00 81 31 FE 7D 00 6B 15 0C 01 81 01 11 01 43 4E 53 10 31 80 E8

Configurazione di Firefox

Prima di poter configurare Firefox è necessario installare un'ultima libreria che permetterà al browser di poter interagire con il lettore di smartcard. Dobbiamo scaricare l'archivio presente a questo indirizzo, scompattarlo e poi copiare uno dei due file presenti (a seconda che si utilizzi un sistema a 32 o 64 bit) all'interno della cartella /usr/lib ed infine digitare il comando sudo ldconfig per aggiornare l'elenco delle librerie.

A questo punto bisogna aprire Firefox ed andare su Modifica-->Preferenze-->Avanzate-->Cifratura-->Dispositivi di Sicurezza cliccare su Carica e specificare come descrizione "CSE" e come percorso quello dove avete copiato la libreria installata nel passo precedente (che ad esempio potrà trovarsi in /usr/lib/libaseCnsP11.so ).

Per verificare che tutto funzioni correttamente è sufficiente fare click su Accedi e se ci verrà chiesto di inserire la "password" (che nel nostro caso sarà il PIN della smartcard) vorrà dire che tutto sta funzionando nel modo corretto.

Per avere maggiori informazioni sulla Carta Sanitaria Europea e per conoscere tutti i servizi disponibili, vi consiglio di visitare la seguente pagina presente sul sito della Regione Toscana: http://www.regione.toscana.it/cartasanitaria/cse/cose/index.html

Introduction

It would be nice to organize a weekend like the Barcelona Long Weekend we (the Maemo Community) organized on October 2009. These two days should be completly organized by the community and for the community. No formal conferences or talks, but interactive activities and hacking sessions where you, the participant, are the main actor.

What about the content of these two days? We could have (for example) programming tutorials, Qt tutorials, hacking sessions on a specific task, round tables where a developer explains his difficoulties implementing a feature and the others help him, ecc...

The first thing to do is spreading this and asking people (users, developers ecc...) what they would like to find during these two days. Once we've gathered some nice ideas we can organize them better.

When and Where

The basic idea is to organize these two days on November 13th, 14th. About the location that will host us we still have no idea. Probably it will be possible to use the same hotel used for the MeeGo Conference, but this must be confirmed yet.

Ideas for the program structure

• Active participation in the event - less talk, more code. No powerpoints - just you, the editor and the compiler. Be productive!
• A two-day Hackathon: Start putting your ideas into fresh code, or finish a project that has been on the back burner for some time
• Participants are encouraged to share their progress at the end of each day - what they accomplished, where they need further help, etc.
• A short but intensive indroduction to Qt/C++ (something like 3-4 hours course, offered by some expert developer)
• Round tables to discuss about UI improvements or features implementation: a developer could have found some difficoult implementing the UI for his application or to provide a particular feature. Other expert developers could try to help him with his problem.
• A workshop for x86 developers on getting started with MeeGo development for ARM - end goal: By the end of the session, everyone has a sample application running in an emulator on their laptop
• Developer tools training - a half day on using git, valgrind, oprofile

Discussion resources

The official place where I would like to take this discussion forward is the MeeGo Forum. The official thread is available here: http://forum.meego.com/showthread.php?t=1342
We also have started a discussion on Maemo Forum and you can find it here: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=61708

The official page with all informations available is on MeeGo Wiki: http://wiki.meego.com/MeeGo_Conference_2010/Early_Bird_Events

I've decided to candidate myself again (yes, I wasn't elected last time) for the Maemo Council elections. During these months I've tried to help more the Maemo Community and I've started working to two Qt/C++ projects. Here you can find something more about me.

Name: Andrea Grandi
maemo.org profile: Andy80 - http://maemo.org/profile/view/andy80/
Corporate affiliation: none

Introduction: My name is Andrea Grandi, I live in Italy and I'm a Computer Science student. I've worked for some years as a software developer, then I started university. I'm part of the Maemo Community since 2007. Since then I like to help new users, organizing events, developing applications for Maemo. During this year I've started developing applications using Qt/C++ for N900, to be ready when MeeGo for handled devices will be out. I really like to collaborate with other community members to build together the best product ever.

My life in the Community:

- May 2008: PyMaemo: Python for Nokia Internet Tablet @ PyCon Italia 2 - http://www.pycon.it/conference/talks/pymaemo-python-i-nokia-internet-tablet

- September 2008: ESBox and Pluthon Eclipse plugins: how to use Eclipse to develop Maemo applications @ Maemo Summit 2008 - http://wiki.maemo.org/Maemo_Summit_2008

- Summer 2009: I worked to python-mafw bindings, during a stage in Igalia.

- October 2009: python-mafw: MAFW framework for Python developers @ Maemo Summit 2009 - http://wiki.maemo.org/Maemo_Summit_2009

- May 2010: PySide: Python Bindings for the Qt Framework @ PyCon Italia 4 - http://www.pycon.it/conference/talks/qt-mobile-pyside-bindings

Current Activities: I'm currently working to two Maemo/MeeGo projects. The first one is mSoma, a Soma.Fm client that I'm developing with Lorenzo Bettini. The other one is LastGo, a Last.fm client. Both applications are written in Qt/C++ and are using QtMobility as multimedia libraries.

mSoma: http://gitorious.org/msoma - http://maemo.org/packages/view/msoma
LastGo: http://gitorious.org/lastgo - http://maemo.org/packages/view/lastgo

Motivations: I really would like to be able to do more for the community and one of the best way could be to be part of the council, to help both users/developers to explain their requests to Nokia and Nokia to understand the requests from the community. There are a lot of fantastic ideas coming from the community that could improve what we are doing: the key is to organize them and giving them more attention. This is what I've always looked for: working together to build something great! This will be probably the last Maemo Council, since now we (Maemo) and them (Moblin) are all part of the same community: MeeGo, and I'd like to help Maemo people to feel the most comfortable possible in our new Community.

What is Maemo Coding Competition?

This competition has been organized by Maemo Community for the Maemo Community. Developer can work to an application and submit it for one of the six categories available: Desktop, System & Utilities, Games, Graphics & Multimedia, Location & Navigation, Other. Another category is available too, and it's for beginner developers. The competition entry has now ended, but voting is open. You can find more information about the competition, in the official wiki page: http://wiki.maemo.org/Maemo_Coding_Competition_1

How can I vote?

Voting is available using a forum's poll for each category. Every t.m.o. user can give one vote for each category. Here's the complete list of polls:

• Desktop: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=760304
• System & Utilities: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=764039
• Games: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=58990
• Graphics & Multimedia: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=763679
• Location & Navigation: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=58964
• Other: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=59038
• Beginners: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=59074

p.s: I partecipate in the Graphics & Multimedia category with two applications: LastGo and mSoma. Please at least test them and let me know what do you think about!

While I'm still working to mSoma with Lorenzo Bettini, I decided to start writing another application. I needed to write something from scratch to learn better how to use C++ and Qt libraries, so I decided to write a client for Last.fm service. The application is still in full development, but you can already taste it if you have extras-devel repository enabled on your N900. At the moment it only supports basic radio features: tuning user's radio, playing a song, skipping a song and displaying song informations.

Other basic Last.fm features like scrobbling, marking a song as loved or banned ecc.. are not supported yet, but of course they're planned for the stable release. Please not that the application is still a bit unstable even if it works for normal tasks.

If you are a Last.fm subscriber and you want to test it, please install it from extras-devel repository and send me your feedback.

Note: since it's not allowed to use Last.fm API from a mobile phone (due to API license restrictions) I cannot distribute a valid api key with the application. I'm writing this software mainly to learn C++ and Qt and for the future tablets and netbooks that will be based on MeeGo. If you feel to assume the responsability, you can download the api key file and import it using "Import Api Key" that you can find in the application menu.

SomaFM is a streaming radio with near 16 different channels, available for free. Even if it's possible to copy-paste their streaming URLs to N900 Media Player, we (me and Lorenzo Bettini) decided to create a custom application, to make channels switching easier for the end user and to be able to add more features. We decided to take advantage of the new Nokia SDK and write the application in Qt/C++. Source code is available on Gitorious and it's always updated with latest version we're working on. If someone want to test the application, it's available in extras-devel repository  ("msoma" under Multimedia section) of N900.

mSoma

The UI is still in development as you can see. The application is already usable, but of course we have to work hard on the user interface. Feel free to test/use it and send us any feedback. If you want to contribute to our project (coders are welcome) please send us a patch with your code or ask us to be added to mSoma development team in Gitorious.

Introduction

My name's Andrea Grandi, I'm italian and I'm a Maemo user/lover/contributor since the Nokia 770. I love Python as development language and few months ago I also gave some contributions to the PyMaemo project.

In these days I had the idea to start writing a Twitter client for Maemo with a precise direction in my mind. I'll try to explain all my reasons here. First of all I've to thank the author of Mauku client. I use it since its first version and I'm quite happy with it. Then, why do I want to write another one?

1. Maemo (MeeGo) is moving to Qt and for this reason I'm going to use Qt, while Mauku uses Gtk.
2. I'm learning Qt and what is better than writing a complete (but not too complex) application to learn better?
3. Mauku is not free as lot of people could think. Reading the source codeyou find this "You are NOT allowed to modify or redistribute the source code.", while I want to write a client and release it under GPL2 or GPL3 license.
4. Mauku is not updated since some months and we have no news about it.
5. I love Python and I like to write free software in this language.
6. I want to give to Maemo a stronger contribute.

My request for help

Before lot of people start writing their own client resulting in 4-5 twitter clients for Maemo, why don't we join our strength and work to a common project? I'm not a Python expert nor a Qt one, but I've some experience as project/team leader and since this is not a complex project, I would be glad to lead it. So, I'm looking for Python developers, Qt developers, UI designers and whoever want to contribute to this project. I still have to find a good name and logo for this application.

Who want to help me?