[maemo-developers] Announcing PenguinTV, rss reader and podcast downloader

[From: Owen Williams]

I've finally finished the port of my RSS/Podcast software, PenguinTV, to
hildon and maemo.  The big sticking point was how to package
python-gtkmozembed support, but I figured that out and now PenguinTV is
on extras-devel for testing and comments.  If it seems to work for
people, then I'll promote it to extras.

Where to find it:
extras-devel

Here's a quick feature list:

* 5-year development history, with workarounds for all sorts of
malformed feeds
* responsive on maemo even with 100 feeds
* local image caching, for viewing feeds even when you don't have an
internet connection
* support for enclosed media, including video and audio
* built-in gstreamer media player that remembers playback position so
you can exit and restart where you left off
* tagging support for quick access to subsets of your feeds
* mostly finger-friendly interface, although I could use some help with
this
* power-management Good Citizen -- no ticking clocks or running threads
unless needed -- leave it running all day


Here are some problems:

* startup time is really slow right now, and I'm trying to improve it.
Since PenguinTV is python-based, most of the time is just starting up
python and loading all the modules it needs (which is a lot).  Another
big chunk of time is loading the glade UI.  I would appreciate any help
fixing this.
* feed updating is very slow, but it is steady and it won't peg the CPU.
Feed updates are done at priority 15 to ensure that the device remains
responsive and doesn't pop up "not responding" messages.
* penguintv eats a lot of RAM.  not much I can do about this.
* gtkmozembed doesn't support finger-scrolling.  I don't know how to fix
this.

Please give it a go and let me know what you think!

Owen Williams