OKay guys you've all been very patient with me on this one so after going two rounds of Turkey Dinner for Thanksgiving this weekend I finally managed to sit down and wrap things up to the point where it's at least somewhat ready for a "sneak peak" and some feedback on the new version! So without further adue:
https://garage.maemo.org/frs/downloa....0-1_armel.deb

A few notes about installation first:
- Getting this into extras-devel is going to be more of a hassle because it means I have to write configure and proper make files, which I've never done before, so for now I'm just letting you guys have a preview through garage. This however means that dependencies are NOT AUTOMATICALLY PULLED IN, and must be installed manually!!
Make sure you have "Extras" repo enabled, and if you run into any dependency problems while trying to install Flip ensure that you've got the required packages in place already. For reference Flip depends on:
libglib2.0-0,libgconf2-6,libosso1,libalarm0,libgtk2.0-0,libgstreamer0.10-0,libhildonfm2,libsdl1.2, libsdl-image1.2,libsdl-gfx1.2-4,libsdl-ttf2.0-0
- This version WILL CONFLICT with the old Flipclock, so don't expect them to be able to run side by side... I recommend disabling all alarms and uninstalling the old Flip before installing this!

And now for the good stuff... here's the current features
- HUGE stability and speed improvements over old version (thank you C)
- Complete theme support; I'm not talking skins here, but rather complete themes... check out the "night" theme (which is my crude demo... see the "needs your help" notes below). Themes are completely customizable and can independently be packaged to allow others to create new themes and have them available as "Add on" packages.
- AlarmD integration has been vastly improved. All alarmD processing is now handled by a separate DBus process (that means no more "please wait" screens!) which synchronizes all of your alarm settings automatically (you should see a little "AlarmD Sync'd" message pop up from time to time when this happens). This should also help eliminate those old "phantom alarms" that people were running into in the past.
- Flip now automatically turns up your tablet volume when an alarm plays, so you don't have to worry about forgetting anymore!
- "Insomniac mode" has been improved to try to ensure that it won't get "left on" by accident; this really has more to do with the improved stability of the app than anything else though...
- Oh, did I mention the improved visual effects on the alarm settings pages? ;-)
- Lots of other cool stuff?...

Remember this is a Beta/Preview release for you guys who have been so dedicated and enthusiastic about this project (I got tired of working on this without being able to get real feedback from you guys!). As such there are some important things to note here (I need your help with!):
- The graphics are NOT finalized yet... ESPECIALLY the "night mode" which I kind of threw together yesterday in a desperate attempt to get this thing ready for you today. As you can see, I'm a CODER, not a DESIGNER... So hopefully before the first official release Ciro has some time to help get the mess sorted out ;-)
Specifically I think the "switch theme" button is missing on the "night theme"... don't worry, it's in exactly the same place as on the day screen, I just forgot to put the label there for it...
- The file-chooser dialog box for selecting your alarm sound is a bit slow to show up the first time... I only noticed this the other day, but I'll try to get a waiting screen or something going on in the mean time... anyways, if you press "choose file", just wait for the chooser to show up k? It works, it's just slow the first time...
- There's no "clock settings" screen yet... I wanted to get it done, but after the horrible mess I made of the "night theme" alarm screen I just couldn't bring myself to torture you guys any more with my own graphics... so once Ciro gives me a hand with that, it'll be done and expose all the nice options for you (including the Amazing new mood picker!)
- There's no LED flashing code or anything yet. For me that wasn't a hugely important feature since I can't test it on my N800's anyway, but I will try to add it back in later if people want it... also, different alarm playback modes WILL be possible in the future, but probably not in the first release...i.e. FM radio, media player, etc...
- I'm sure there's a few other things to mention, but I've forgotten them in the excitement, so...

The point of this release is to give you a basic working copy of the new version of the app so you guys can test, give feedback and enjoy! Let me know what you think, let me know if the thing crashes, heck let me know if you can't get it to install and we'll get things sorted out! But I've been working on this for far too long by myself here and I wanted to get you guys up to speed as that last "Nixie" release we had was just terrible stuff...

(And yes, there will be a Nixie theme, along with another one or two that I have in mind... along with whatever you guys come up with! Documentation will be another big task that I'll ask for help with, especially related to theme development).

(Ooh almost forgot, Flip will be able to run on X86 linux (not just tablets), I just didn't bother making up a test-release for it yet as the tablets are really the target audience here... but should compile and run on Maemo 5 no worries, though I haven't got an N900 to try with... hopefully nice and speedy too!)

Thanks all!