Binary Elysium

Last week I mentioned a secret project involving Last.fm. Well today it was finally announced! Since late last November I, and several other open source android developers, have been working together with the official last.fm developers on an Android application that would leverage the full suite of Last.fm features. Today this app was officially released to the Android Market.

Not only does the application bring the full power of last.fm radio to the Android platform, but it also demonstrates the power of open source development in a commercial setting. When last.fm expressed interest around late November in developing an android application to be featured in the Marketplace, Google responded with an enthusiastic thumbs up but included a deadline of mid-January. A month and a half is an incredibly short turnaround time for a fully featured mobile application.

Last.fm contacted several 3rd-party developers who had already began work on their own last.fm android clients, and suggested that we work together and pool our resources. You can take a peek at the results below. I am proud of our product after such a short development cycle, even though there exist several outstanding bugs at launch time. We already have a slew of bug-fixes and feature additions in the tubes for another release.

Keep an eye out for posts announcing the opening of the site where the source code can be found, as well as bugs and feature requests submitted. Due to licensing issues the source code repository and issue tracker will be delayed several days.

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Things have been busy around here! First, there was the end-of-semester rush that occurs right before exams, then there was exams themselves. After the 3-day cross country drive home, I’ve spent the last couple weeks playing Settlers of Cataan with old friends, and hitting the ski slopes a couple times a week.

In between all that I haven’t had much time for development. Actually, I told a small lie. I’ve been pretty busy with a secret project ™, but I can’t post anything about that until the 19th.

Amarok wise, things are looking up. I’ve started to completely refactor the last.fm service in Amarok 2. Expect a more explanatory post (plus screenshots!) soon.

Finally, Camp KDE is a few short days away. During the conference Leo Franchi and I plan to knock out some huge improvmeents to Amarok 2′s Context View.

Gah, Gah, Go, that’s all folks!