Month: January 2010

Ayatana Project

The other day, I ran across the Ayatana Project.  I guess that is the parent project for some of the applets at the top of the Ubuntu desktop.  The home for the project is here.

I noticed that they have a Evolution indicator.  A Thunderbird version might be nice, and a GMail version would be even better for me.

The indicator applet is what got me started looking at this project.  I currently have Empathy (allows me Google-Talk access) and Evolution in this applet.  I saw a question about Skype, which looked really great.  I would love to see what else they can put in here, like GMail, Skype, Facebook, etc.

Google Voice Latency Problem

I have been using Google Voice with Skype for a little while now, but I have been having quality problems.  There is a 1 to 2 second delay between the time a say something and the person on the other line hears it.  I thought maybe it was the Linux, PulseAudio, Skype combination, but I have since found the same thing happens when I use my home phone or my cell phone.

I found that I am not the only one who has the problem:

Google Voice Help Forum

As “Papa Bear” suggested, I sent feedback on my problem with this link.  I am trying to raise awarness of the problem now, but I am not sure what else I can do other than quit using it for the time being.  If anyone has any ideas for extra information, please let me know!

Workaround for Posting Pictures to Facebook

I have tried the Facebook export tool for F-Spot, but I couldn’t get it to work.  Thanks to rvf0068, I have a bug report link, and hopefully the bug gets fixed soon.  In the meantime, this is what I have found that works:

  1. Select in F-Spot the photos you want to upload.  I have been creating a Facebook tag and applying that to the pictures I want to share via Facebook.  Then, I can search for that tag and highlight all of them with the tag.
  2. Go to Photo > Export to > Folder …
  3. Choose a temporary folder as the destination
  4. Choose “Save the files only” for the Export Method
  5. Log into the Facebook
  6. Go to Profile, then Photos
  7. Create a new Album
  8. Using the Java Applet, browse to the temporary folder and upload those pictures.

More F-Spot/Facebook Troubleshooting

I tried today to get the F-Spot export to Facebook working again(continuing from the other day).  I changed the default browser to Firefox, and I took my laptop to a different network.  When I came back, it asked me to login to Facebook and everything looked right.  But, the export tools just quits at this point:

facebook-export-bug.png

I have left the tool like this for hours, and still nothing happens.

When I run from the command line:

f-spot --debug

I get:

[Debug 22:43:28.010] Authorizing Session
[Debug 22:43:28.546] Session established, fetching user info...
[Debug 22:43:28.811] Session established, fetching friend list...
[Debug 22:43:28.984] Session established, fetching friend details...
[Debug 22:43:29.663] Session established, fetching photo albums...

On a different note, I was able to get the zooomr export tool to work.  I used it to put the screenshot for this post in.

Annoyances with Uploading Photos to Facebook

I have been trying to get my photo programs to upload to Facebook, but they just don’t want to work.  There are no solutions here yet, but if anyone has any tips, I’d be glad to hear about them.  Does Facebook not like Linux?  Is it the Chrome that is conflicting?

I could always just upload the photos one by one the manual way.  But, what programmer or Linux geek wants to do that?  We would rather spend more time hacking the automatic tools than it would take to do it manually!

F-Spot to Facebook

Since upgrading to Ubuntu 9.10, I decided to give F-Spot a try.  For a while, Ubuntu has been offering to import photos every time I plug the camera in.  So far, I like all the features, and it has been working great.

The Facebook export doesn’t work though.  I am kind of disappointed because that could be really nice.  First, I found that I had to enable it.  For some reason, it won’t log in once enabled.  It just stops at “Session established, fetching photo albums…”.  I have Chrome as my default browser, and I wondered if that had something to do with it.

G1 to Facebook

I was able to take a picture using the Facebook application and post it on Facebook.  But, I have tried several times to share a picture from the Gallery application.  When I installed the Facebook application, the Gallery added a new sharing option to share with Facebook.  When I share a picture, it asks me to add a caption, and allows me to upload.  The problem is that it just sits there at 0% and never finishes.

With both problems, I can’t find any error messages or any log that would help with searching for answers.  So, for now, I am stuck.  I guess I am up to the manual upload methods.