iTunes Agent is seeking .NET developer

iTunes Agent is currently looking for a dedicated .NET developer to join the team. You should be an experienced software developer, but years of professional full time experience is not a requirement – talented students are encouraged to get in touch.

Requirements:

• Experience with .NET and C#
• Be familiar with portable media devices in general.
• Be familiar with the iTunes software.
• Open source enthusiast – understand the value of contributing to the community.
• Ability to work independently and organize work through digital communication
• Excellent English language skills, both written and verbal.

iTunes Agent is an open source project, built solely on the efforts and dedication of volunteering open source enthusiasts. The project has seen a big increase in interest over the last couple of months climbing from an average of 8.000 downloads per month till around 15.000 downloads per month during May, June and July 2010. The total downloads since the project’s birth has recently passed 400.000 registered downloads on Sourceforge.

We are now looking for a more continuous resource to help improve the application and deliver quality to our users.

If you are interested, or want more information, please contact sfkarbo@users.sourceforge.net.

Traveling

It’s been a busy Spring for me, but luckily it has partly been caused by several great travels! This time the destinations were New York and 2x Prague.

In April me and a colleague traveled to New York for the Sentiment Analysis Symposium. What a wonderful city New York is! I had extremely high expectations before traveling across the sea and I can honestly say that they were all satisfied. From the “Admitted” stamp landed in my passport until I stepped on the plane to go home, it was all a great adventure.

Stepping off the train at Penn Station in the middle of Manhattan, is like stepping into a dozen of movies and TV series. You feel you’ve been there before, but at the same time it’s all a completely new city and you can just feel all the discoveries waiting around the corner.

We had taken a couple of days extra in addition to the days for conference preparation and we got to see most of the typical tourist sights, and got to walk our feet sore through Central Park and an endless number of kilometers through the streets and avenues of Manhattan.

On Saturday night we also got to see a comedy show at Dangerfields which was a great experience – except for when the comedians learned that we were from Norway and of course would not let that go for the whole show…!

We also got 5 days extra of forced vacation due to the ash clouds which were causing problems for the air traffic in Europe. Even though we had to get some work done during those days we also got to see a little more of the city.

New York is definitively a city I am going back to.

Then it was off to Prague. During May I have been there twice, once for pleasure and once for business. From April 30th till May 3rd me and five friends spent the weekend, but unfortunately I got sick the second we arrived and spent a major part of the weekend in my hotel bed with a fever. But the rest of the guys seemed to enjoy themselves and luckily I felt well enough to enjoy a meal and a beer or two with them during the day.

Luckily I have been to Prague before, so I did not miss a lot of sight seeing.

During my second visit, last week, I was feeling much better and got to enjoy the city in between Apache Lucene EuroCon. The conference was full of good talks and it was very inspiring. Definitively hope the conference will be coming back next year – hopefully in another great European city.

So this Spring has been great for traveling, and hopefully I manage to find the time for at least one more trip somewhere abroad before the year ends – would not mind some beach and warmth when the dark days are starting to creep up on us here up here…

iTunes Agent 1.3.3 just released

Version 1.3.3 of my open source iTunes enhancement, iTunes Agent has just been released.

The new release is a minor bug fix update which solves a couple of issues users have been reporting on multi-device synchronization and constant re-synchronization of certain files.

For more information and download, check out the project web site at http://ita.sourceforge.net.

iTunes Agent 1.3.2 available

A new version of iTunes Agent has just been released. The new version is a minor update bringing a couple of enhancements to prevent misconfiguration which has caused problems for some users.

I hope this new version will continue to satisfy your media synchronization needs between iTunes and your portable media players!

Download and more information is as always available over at http://ita.sourceforge.net.

Happy holidays!

Happy holidays, everyone!

I’ve found my way home to my parents for a couple of days to relax, eat great food and enjoy the holiday

I hope you will all have some good days and a good New Year’s celebration, before coming back to work in January with a few kilos extra and energy for a new exciting 2010!

Now I am just waiting for dinner and Santa to show up later!

It’s Christmas time!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/powi/ / CC BY 2.0

Well, not quite yet – but we’re getting there! And meanwhile, I always love to trawl through the Internet on December 1st to find all the goodies hidden in the forest of Advent calendars out there

I usually focus on the Norwegian ones, but if you’ve got tips about any international calendars, feel free to post the address in a comment. Here’s the list of calendars I’ve come across and found worthy so far

Norwegian:

• Elkøp
• Gamer.no
• Bokklubben
• Filmweb
• Komplett.no
• PS.no (special offers only)
• Spill.no
• Gjerrigknark.no
• Stormberg (special offers only)
• NSB (Norwegian National Railways) – Possibly the best at getting me in the Christmas mood so far

Codemunchies.com

It’s about time I write a post about one of my newest projects, Codemunchies.com, which I started together with a friend of mine, Aleksander, a couple of months back.

Codemunchies.com is a blog focusing on development related topics and so far we’ve had a good coverage of Google Collections and Guava as the first big series of articles.

We wanted to start the blog to have a place to share our ideas and experiences with other developers and hopefully also create a place for fruitful discussions around practices and specific implementation.

Head on over to Codemunchies.com to check it out. Subscribe to our RSS and make sure you follow us on Twitter and Facebook as well

Google Wave

I’ve got 20+ Google Wave invites to hand out, and if you haven’t already gotten one you should drop a comment with your e-mail address and I’ll send one your way.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/liako/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Google Wave is Google’s new communication and collaboration platform, where everything is organized in “waves”. It shows a lot of promised and I’ve already put it to good use for announcing events and communicating with friends.

It’s not quite there yet, where it will take over the majority of other social media, IM and e-mal – and it might never get there, but it shows great potential and you should be a part of it

If you’re already surfing, add me: jaran.nilsen@ and add googlewave.com

Weekend in Amsterdam

I spent the weekend in Amsterdam, attending a workshop for the Norwegian Java User Group, and it was a blast! What a city!

A major part of the weekend was spent working – as that was much of the purpose of the trip, but I got a couple of hours to walk around and enjoy the nice streets and canals. We also got an hour in the Madam Tussauds museum, and since I’ve never been to any of them before it was an interesting experience! Some of those wax dolls are creepily realistic…!

Friday evening we went out eating at Toro Dorado. Great atmosphere and the food was delicious. Might have been because we waited for at least an hour before we got tables (it should be noted that we were 30 people though…), but we were guided to the bar next door where we got drinks on the house while we waited. Not bad!

“It takes two to tango”, said the waiter after he had paid the €120 for drinks and we were seated. That’s what I call service

Later in the evening we went for drinks, and Aleksander and I got to meet up with Emma and Denise who we met on our Interrail trip this summer. It was great to see you girls again – even though we waited for quite a while Seems all good things came very late that evening… That’s what she said.

Wait. What?

Saturday morning we were up early to have breakfast before the workshop started at 9. We worked till 6:30 pm and although it was a long day, forcing the hangover from last night away with creative thinking, we got quite a lot done and got a good pile of ideas on the table for next year’s JavaZone conference.

In the evening we had booked a private canal dinner cruise which took us around the canals of Amsterdam while we were eating a way on a good – not delicious – buffet. It was a great way to enjoy dinner after a long day, but I must admit I had expected a little more of quality food for the rather stiff price we paid. I’d still recommend the experience, though. It’s a great way to see Amsterdam by night.

After dinner we headed for a bar, which we assimilated and took over the whole place. I heard rumors one of our members were actually behind the bar serving drinks at one moment. Got to love Norwegians abroad

Saturday night ended at a club where we danced until the early morning. Loved it!

Sunday was spent walking around a little, and Madam Tussauds as I mentioned. I would have liked to have more time for sightseeing, but it just means I have to go back another time to see the rest of the city. One of the better cities I’ve visited in Europe and it goes high on the re-visiting list.

I’ve put up the few photos I took on my Flickr account, and you should keep an eye on Aleksander’s account for uploads as well.

Amsterdam, baby!

I’m off to Amsterdam next weekend! It won’t just be for leisure, as we’re 30+ people going for a workshop with the Norwegian Java User Group. Although a geater part of the weekend will be spent planning the future of the user group as well as the JavaZone conference, I’m hoping to get some time to visit the city.

We’ll be arriving on Friday in the evening and will be heading back home Sunday evening. Saturday will be spent working, but hopefully Sunday will bring great weather and show Amsterdam from it’s best side

The plan is also to meet up with some friends who Aleksander and I met on our trip this summer, and hoping they’ll help compress Amsterdam’s sights into a neat package of the essential

Anyways, it will be great to get away for a couple of days and see something else than the regular small town of Grimstad!