May 2006

Folks, we had many applications from you in the past days for the closed beta access. We got more than we can have at the moment, so please refrain from applying for some time from now on. I’ll keep you posted when we need more. Thank you all ;)

Okay, X11 IPC started working. I need to finish session support (registering and notifying clients) but that should be relatively easy now that I have message passing working.

New closed beta is out, but there doesn’t seem to be any sound improvement, which is a major PITA. But we now have a config file switch to alternate between OSS and ALSA support, so there’s a fallback at least. If you’re a closed beta tester - go download the latest beta and test it with your ALSA, I am really grateful for any and all feedback (just a simple “works/doesn’t work” will be great, post either here or in the forum).

I also want to thank all our beta testers for their patience and their invaluable help while we beat the crap out of ALSA. Thanks guys, you rock!

I asked this question in my LiveJournal for Russian-enabled readers. And I also ask this question (may be a bit ahead of time) here:

• How would you like to see the new Skype UI?
• How should it function?
• How should it look?
• What features should it provide, what should be immediately visible and what should be hidden from sight initially?
• How to make the UI “smooth”, “silk-like” and extremely handy, transparent and easy for daily use?

Post your craziest ideas about it, “spatial interfaces” and whatever else you could come up with. Take the track off the usual UI and peek into some wildest experiments with user interface design.

I really want to hear what you think.

Today was… quiet in development. Instead we had a Mac team dinner, where I was in absolute minority :)

I’ll post the photos on flickr one day (once I get the USB cable :)) There were many pics of Vi, but you won’t see them online hehehe.

Since X11 goes really bad I think I switch my focus and implement mood messages instead. Good way to think about something else (the other good way is pea cider, which shifts focus to …mmmm… alternate states of mind).

Oh, and “good” news — the latest voice engine doesn’t work at all. All attempts end with “Problem with sound device”. I don’t have any idea of what is going on yet, but I’ll give it a look today and try to figure a solution. Really don’t want to put this one out into closed beta without investigating first.

I’m revolving around couple of bugs to fix and some tests to do before we can actually do a release. I can feel compression. Events, time, life itself press against that wall - deadline, step on each other’s toes, scream and push elbows.

I really hope we fixed more than we broke during these months and upcoming release will be a relief for our users.

I’m really doing something wrong with this X11 IPC, because I cannot make it work for Linux’s sake. Gotta flush the brain and start once again.

Other than that we’re doing well. I was once told that it is a good idea to blog about something daily — what you did, what you did not, what were successes and what were failures. Daily. Every evening. Without procrastination. Maybe it will be more detailed than you would want it to make, but I think it’s worth it. It really helps to clean up the mess in my head — talking to my “cardboard fellow” or to my blog readers, doesn’t actually make much difference. I’ll try to go along this line and kick me if there’s no post tomorrow.