In the continued mission to inspire and encourage opportunistic developers to write cool little apps that scratch an itch, no matter how specific and niche, I have started work on App Of Jaq: a desktop app that scratches my itch to build the Shot Of Jaq experience right into the desktop. The first cut of the app will:
- Provide simple and easy access to listening to the latest shot, using GStreamer to play back the shot.
- Have the ability to tweet/dent/Facebook the latest shot with one-click using the Gwibber API.
- List latest shots for one-click playback.
- Show recent comments where you can click them to display them inside App Of Jaq and reply – this is shown using GtkMozEmbed.
- Keep right up to date with the latest comments as App Of Jaq shows latest comments in a pop-up bubble using notify-osd.
- Get one-click access to all the latest shots and other Shot Of Jaq resources with an application indicator menu.
Let’s take a look at a couple of screenshots:
The main window.
The application indicator: I don’t have the Shot Of Jaq icons yet, so I used the distributor-logo (hence the Ubuntu logo).
I am still working on the first release but hope to have it ready in the next few weeks and added to a PPA. Ultimately, I am keen to replace the web view of the comments and have a native GTK-driven commenting interface, bypassing the website entirely. I am also keen to build our new Shot Of Jaq karma system into the desktop app too. I am going to leave these features for the second release though.
