Linspire Lsongs and Lphoto
Lsongs and Lphoto
Date Published: Apr 19, 2004
This Thursday and Friday (April 22-23) Lindows, Inc. will be busy hosting the Desktop Linux Summit here in San Diego -- the premier event dedicated to using Linux on the desktop. I've mentioned the top notch speakers that will be at the event, but many attendees will probably be interested in new Linux programs debuting at the show. I know that many of you won't be able to make it to the show but are still interested in the latest news, so I'm sending you this special Michael's Minute with a sneak preview of a couple products that will be announced and shown at the Summit.
One of the few remaining criticisms of desktop Linux is that there aren't enough polished applications out there. We agree that there is room for improvement, and on Friday I'll be demonstrating some new products which we have been working on in our labs, and some of our Insiders have been testing for us.
Since the advent of MP3, computers have become popular for use as music machines. You can rip your favorite songs from your CD collection, then put them on your MP3 player and have music on-the-go. Computers are great for organizing your entire music collection, and you can even make mix CDs from your computer for use in your car. With Linux you've traditionally needed one program for digitizing CDs, another for playing them, and yet another for burning playlists to CD. Lsongs combines the best Linux components into a powerful music manager that will play your CDs, MP3s, organize your music collection and even stream Internet radio, all with an elegant drag and drop interface. It also brings cross media format support to Linux by playing MP3, Ogg, Windows Media, QuickTime and Real media, ensuring that Linux users can play the most popular formats they might encounter on the Internet.
A text description probably can't accurately convey the convenience and power of the Lsongs music manager. You'll want to experience this program for yourself. We'll be giving hands-on demonstrations of Lsongs at a booth at the Desktop Linux Summit. Linspire users will find Lsongs available in the Warehouse beginning on Friday, and can add it to their computer with a single click using CNR. The source code is also being published.
Much like we are filling the audio gap with Lsongs, we have been working on a superb photo manager program also debuting at the Summit. Lphoto is intuitive software that makes it easy to work with digital photos on Linux. First, it allows for easy connection and downloading of images from hundreds of digital cameras. Blazingly quick thumbnail browsing and resizing on-the-fly, make organizing albums a snap. Rating and sorting features will help to catalog your best photos.
There's an array of advanced functionality to improve individual photos and publish them all with one-click ease. Enhancing color, cropping, and reducing red-eye, is as easy as hitting a button. Plus there's a brilliant zoom-in with the scroll wheel wherever the cursor arrow is pointing feature which is sure to become an industry standard. Once your pictures are perfected, Lphoto can help e-mail pictures to friends or create web pages. It will even compress images to make them email and web-publishing-friendly sizes. Lphoto will be available in the Warehouse sometime soon, and like Lsongs, it will be open source.
My hope is that Lsongs and Lphoto will help fill some needs of desktop Linux users and illuminate the expanding library of quality programs making desktop Linux a more practical computing platform. Lindows has some other surprises at the Summit, and I know other companies are planning their own announcements. If you haven't signed up yet, now is your last chance. Online registration closes today (Monday), so if you'd like to come, head over to desktoplinuxsummit.org. You can register at the door, but it will be double the cost of registering online. So sign up now, then come see Lsongs, Lphoto and more at the Summit!
Lsongs
Lphoto
They look eerily familiar, don't they?
http://www.linspire.com/lindows_mich...ves.php?id=113
Date Published: Apr 19, 2004
This Thursday and Friday (April 22-23) Lindows, Inc. will be busy hosting the Desktop Linux Summit here in San Diego -- the premier event dedicated to using Linux on the desktop. I've mentioned the top notch speakers that will be at the event, but many attendees will probably be interested in new Linux programs debuting at the show. I know that many of you won't be able to make it to the show but are still interested in the latest news, so I'm sending you this special Michael's Minute with a sneak preview of a couple products that will be announced and shown at the Summit.
One of the few remaining criticisms of desktop Linux is that there aren't enough polished applications out there. We agree that there is room for improvement, and on Friday I'll be demonstrating some new products which we have been working on in our labs, and some of our Insiders have been testing for us.
Since the advent of MP3, computers have become popular for use as music machines. You can rip your favorite songs from your CD collection, then put them on your MP3 player and have music on-the-go. Computers are great for organizing your entire music collection, and you can even make mix CDs from your computer for use in your car. With Linux you've traditionally needed one program for digitizing CDs, another for playing them, and yet another for burning playlists to CD. Lsongs combines the best Linux components into a powerful music manager that will play your CDs, MP3s, organize your music collection and even stream Internet radio, all with an elegant drag and drop interface. It also brings cross media format support to Linux by playing MP3, Ogg, Windows Media, QuickTime and Real media, ensuring that Linux users can play the most popular formats they might encounter on the Internet.
A text description probably can't accurately convey the convenience and power of the Lsongs music manager. You'll want to experience this program for yourself. We'll be giving hands-on demonstrations of Lsongs at a booth at the Desktop Linux Summit. Linspire users will find Lsongs available in the Warehouse beginning on Friday, and can add it to their computer with a single click using CNR. The source code is also being published.
Much like we are filling the audio gap with Lsongs, we have been working on a superb photo manager program also debuting at the Summit. Lphoto is intuitive software that makes it easy to work with digital photos on Linux. First, it allows for easy connection and downloading of images from hundreds of digital cameras. Blazingly quick thumbnail browsing and resizing on-the-fly, make organizing albums a snap. Rating and sorting features will help to catalog your best photos.
There's an array of advanced functionality to improve individual photos and publish them all with one-click ease. Enhancing color, cropping, and reducing red-eye, is as easy as hitting a button. Plus there's a brilliant zoom-in with the scroll wheel wherever the cursor arrow is pointing feature which is sure to become an industry standard. Once your pictures are perfected, Lphoto can help e-mail pictures to friends or create web pages. It will even compress images to make them email and web-publishing-friendly sizes. Lphoto will be available in the Warehouse sometime soon, and like Lsongs, it will be open source.
My hope is that Lsongs and Lphoto will help fill some needs of desktop Linux users and illuminate the expanding library of quality programs making desktop Linux a more practical computing platform. Lindows has some other surprises at the Summit, and I know other companies are planning their own announcements. If you haven't signed up yet, now is your last chance. Online registration closes today (Monday), so if you'd like to come, head over to desktoplinuxsummit.org. You can register at the door, but it will be double the cost of registering online. So sign up now, then come see Lsongs, Lphoto and more at the Summit!
Lsongs
Lphoto
They look eerily familiar, don't they?
http://www.linspire.com/lindows_mich...ves.php?id=113
Comments
Sooo????
Does your program have to have an ass ugly UI to work on Linux? I mean, that's the only reasonable explanation for copying something and then making it ugly.
Most of the programs that Linspire (Lindows) re-brands are turned ugly anyway.
Besides being hit with the ugly stick a few times, these are blatant wholesale rip offs of Apple's IP and I doubt that Lindows, Linspire, Lincrap, Linwhatever, gets away with it. MS isn't this obvious anymore, but I forgot that Linshit's business plan is to copy other people's IP and claim Open Source "innovation".
Originally posted by HOM
I forgot that Linshit's business plan is to copy other people's IP and claim Open Source "innovation".
Designing stuff that ugly requires LOTS of R&D in its own right. People just aren't normally equipped to come up with such crap on their own. It's hard work.
Originally posted by torifile
Designing stuff that ugly requires LOTS of R&D in its own right. People just aren't normally equipped to come up with such crap on their own. It's hard work.
And it's a real amoral/demoralizing effort.
I basically got fired for doing too good a job, making things too nice looking and not rushing it out the door before it was ready (but that was web development).
I need to be physically flogged and intimidated to do something that ugly.
Actually, another time I was unemployed I turned down a job doing crappy windows error message impersonation banner ads for some scummy company (to trick users into thinking they had viruses - you know the ads).
I needed rent, had no options. But at the last second I bailed and cancelled. I could never do something that ugly. I just can't.
Poor Linux/X11...so ugly.
The first question when designing new UI for a Linux app is now almost always "how does Apple do it?". Anyone aware of how user-interface-dyslexic the Linux/Open Source community as a whole was just a few short years ago should see this as an impressive change.
Note that the charge against Linux has always been that it is *unusable*, see for example the classic rant by jwz (quote: "Resizing the window changes the aspect ratio of the video! Yeah, I'm sure someone has ever wanted that."). Now that they are taking cues from the acknowledged leader in usability (time will tell how close they are to the original) the criticism changes to it being *ugly*, an entirely different problem and one far easier to fix.
Remember that Linux/X11/Gnome/KDE, i.e. the linux desktop, is *extremely* skinnable. These skins (like most skins on Windows or Mac) are often ugly, but they don't have to be: Gnome 2.6 screenshots
Originally posted by Ari
One of the few remaining criticisms of desktop Linux is that there aren't enough polished applications out there. We agree that there is room for improvement...
"room for improvement" ... and apparently getting roomier by the second.
It seems that unpolished GUIs like these are the problem... certainly not the solution to said problem.
Does the author believe his own hype?
Originally posted by Placebo
Lsongs looks a lot more complicated and badly designed than iTunes,
How so? Except for the oversized elements and the play buttons and track shifted to the bottom, it's almost exactly the same as the Windows version of iTunes.
unbalanced. Instead of acting as subconcious cues, they
instead function as visual and mental distractions. User
attention is constantly squandered on heavy-weight bevels
and misleading use of "white space".