News Reader

News Reader This activity was core SVN sources in sourceforge.net TST News Reader Tickets all - active - new svn.sourceforge.net - POT | pt  Others pt_BR, sv Owen Williams see more templates or propose new

The feeds screen showing several feeds.

The downloads screen showing one mp3 being downloaded.

Summary

• The NewsReader activity provides an interface for viewing news feeds (RSS feeds).
• This allows you to keep track of a wide variety of news and current affairs stories, from multiple websites on a single screen.
• It can also download audio, video, and bittorrent files. So it can be used to keep track of podcasts.
• The NewsReader activity is based on [Penguin TV].

Limitations

The majority of podcasts are made available as mp3 files, which cannot be viewed by the OLPC by default. To enable mp3 playback, an extra codec has to be installed.

Development

Development is hosted on sourceforge, at http://sourceforge.net/projects/penguintv/.

Source

Code is hosted in Sourceforge SVN

RPMs

• none available

Functional Test

Open the NewsReader activity.

If connected to the internet, click on Planet OLPC and ensure that the news items get updated. Ensure that the scroll bar works. Click on the news text and ensure the up/down arrows, and the game pad buttons for scrolling through an article.

Close the activity; ensure that it closes properly.

The news reader is not working for me, and when I joined a OLPC yahoo group, they said it was a known bug and that OLPC is working on fixing it. Is this true?

As of March 24, 2008, some of the Newsreader Activity features are working:

BBC World News, Commons Picture of the day, Earth Science PoD, and Wikipedia Picture of the Day are all working!

However, the functional test described above fails. Planet OLPC is still "Waiting for first poll".

BBC Learning English opens with files from 4 days ago. All features can be accessed, but sound files require either Windows Media Player or Real Player to listen online. The crossword tries to load but can't because it needs Flash.

Activity Summary

Icon:	Sugar icon::Image:Newsfeed.png
Genre:	Activity genre::General Search and Discovery
Activity group:	,|x|Activity group::x}}
Short description:	Short description::An interface for viewing news feeds (RSS feeds).
Description:
Maintainers:	,|x|Contact person::x}}
Repository URL:	Source code::http://sourceforge.net/svn/?group_id=144780
Available languages:	,|x|Available languages::x}}
Available languages (codes):	,|x|Language code::x}}
Pootle URL:
Related projects:	Related projects,|x|Related projects::x}}
Contributors:	,|x|Team member::x}}
URL from which to download the latest .xo bundle	Activity bundle::http://dev.laptop.org/~morgan/bundles/other/NewsReader-24.xo
Last tested version number:	Activity version::24
The releases with which this version of the activity has been tested.	,|x|Software release::x}}
Development status:
Ready for testing (development has progressed to the point where testers should try it out):	,|x|Ready for testing::x}}
smoke tested :
test plan available :
test plan executed :
developer response to testing :