Notices

Linguine is an app that downloads the RSS data from a collection of news services and provides a list of their latest podcasts. You can then choose one of these podcasts to be streamed and played in Linguine's own media player.

You should be able to find this app in the "Extras-Devel" repository.

Some screenshots:





I've set up a website for the app at

http://jpietrzak8.github.io/Linguine/


The grubby details:

I have been slowly, slowly working my way back to updating the Orecciette app; in particular, I've been trying to give myself more of an education into the mysteries of the GStreamer library. So, I've been putting together all sorts of sources & sinks & bus watchers & callbacks and so forth.

One of my little projects involved downloading some podcasts; I kind of liked the idea of just streaming podcasts, without bothering to ever save them to the SD card. So, I built a little RSS reader into the project and started pulling down some news podcasts.

Well, with the just awful and always-getting-worse international news this week, I've been running the poor app practically nonstop. As such, I figured I should go ahead and polish it up a bit and release it.

As of version 0.1.1, the video player is working much better, but only because I'm locking the phone into landscape orientation whenever a video is being played. (I take comfort in knowing that this is the same mechanism used by Open Media Player, so it is probably the best solution available...)

I should also note that my N900 gets a bit warm after streaming for a half-hour or more. But it never gets really hot, even after streaming for hours on end, so I don't think this is a serious issue. (And yeah, I've been listening to way too much news this week...)

I've provided a selection of podcasts mostly from the US, but also a few from the UK, Canada, and Japan. I'm not all that familiar with non-US broadcasters, but I'll hopefully be able to add more in the future. And as usual, I've set up an XML file mechanism, so you can add your own podcasts without having to wait on me. An example Linguine XML file can be found at the website:

http://jpietrzak8.github.io/Linguine/newsfeeds.xml

(And yeah, I don't have a DTD set up for this one yet, either...)

I hope you enjoy this app!

Man, You've made my night, and my week-end too, and my next week, and the next months! You are just awesome. Thanks a billion....!!!

PS: ZIP ? tar.gz ?how can I handle with those files ?

ZIP ? tar.gz ?how can I handle with those files ?

Linguine is designed to stream podcasts off the net; it isn't really designed to do anything with files. (Except, of course, it can read an XML file to pull in a new list of podcasts.) Can you give me a little more information about what you want it to do?

I think they're referring to the download links on GitHub.

Ah! Yeah, those won't be too useful to anyone who doesn't like to compile their own code, I guess.

Yep, I found the App in the repositories. Man your apps are always clean, clear and simple to use. This app was one I waited for a moment.

PS 1: I have an idea about an other app like this, but which streams video news podcasts (maybe 3gp or mp4) instead of audio.

PS 2: Any idea for French news podcasts ?

PS 3: @Marxian: FARGO avatar ????

Thanks a billion again!!!

Actually, Linguine can already handle video podcasts (although with some caveats, as noted above). I've got the CBS evening news as well as Anderson Cooper 360 video podcasts already in the list (under "daily" and "news"). I think the most interesting video podcast I've found so far is the Reuter's one (listed under "other" frequency and "news" category); they randomly update that feed with raw videos they've taken from various hot spots around the world.

The biggest problem I've found so far, though, is that most broadcasters have abandoned the standard podcast format for video; instead, they've been switching to more controlled, closed formats that allow them to add advertising or demand upfront payment. I'm not sure I could add support for such closed systems into Linguine...

(But yeah, if you do run a video in Linguine, remember to keep the phone horizontal for now. I will try to get a better video player implemented...)

I know absolutely nothing about French news services, but I'll give it a shot.

Well, I spent a few minutes this afternoon browsing through the Open Media Player sources to see how they deal with managing video playback in portrait orientation, and discovered that they use an extremely simple (if somewhat disheartening) method: they don't. Instead, they just lock the phone into landscape orientation whenever a video is playing.

So, I went ahead and did that as well. This does "fix" most of the problems with video playback, as I can now lock the GStreamer output into a single, unchanging, horizontal box. And so, version 0.1.1 of Linguine is now heading up to extras-devel.

Also in this update, I fixed a handful of bugs, including one that caused the app to forget any user-loaded podcasts every time it restarted...

And, I've added a handful of new podcasts. I've got political shows from the Guardian and TruthDig, a weekly news wrap-up from On Point with Tom Ashbrook, a couple of French-language news dailies from Radio France Internationale, a Spanish program called "24 Horas", a German news brief from Tagesschau, and the BBC Russian Service. As I only speak English, I can't really vouch for the quality of the podcasts in other languages... Also, I've added another video podcast, the left-leaning news program "Democracy Now!". I'll try to add some more video podcasts now that I have more confidence in the video player. (It is still choking on some types of video that it really should be able to play, so there is still more improvement needed...)

Enjoy!

Fine! Thanks in advance! I will try to find some french news podcasts too.
Thanks again for this great app!!!!