Canola is a media center like application for Nokia Tablets. It intends to be a very simple and fast way of consuming media from the device or the Internet. Canola2 wants to be a simple and exciting way to listen to your music, immerse yourself in the world of your pictures, watch high quality videos and download, stream and play your favorite podcasts shows.

Canola started back in 2005 in the OpenBossa Lab at INdT focused primarily for thumbs usage on the amazing high resolution widescreen touch sensitive display available on the Nokia 770. In November 2006, after 2 unreleased prototypes, Canola1 beta was released.

While there was a warm welcome from the users, there was still a lot of things to be done. There was a clear demand for things that our tool of choice for the UI was not good enough or just too painful to get it done. So after the release for the Nokia N800 we decided that in order to provide the users with the features they were requesting, we needed a better, more flexible tool. We chose a new tool for the job (EFL) and we do not regret our decision.

After several months of making EFL a reality on the device with the incredible help of the EFL community, a couple of months ago we really started to bring the UI designs for Canola2 to life. The goals were quite simple:

Make it simpler.
Make it very very visually compelling.
Enable fast development of new features.
Allow third party plugins that could serve the ever increasing needs of Canola2 user community.

So, now we finally have a usable version. It still not quite there but it's ready for real users. Of course there will be issues, and we hope to fix them as fast as they surface. We are again with our emails ready to receive bug reports, suggestions and tips for improving Canola2.

Once we manage to fix the main issues that will appear, we will implement some of the features that are not included in this beta version, in Q1 2008 there will be a release of the final version of Canola2, where all the promised features will be made available.

Canola1 was left behind so we could focus on the new version as much as possible. Our goal for Canola2 is really to keep it alive, updating it almost every month and adding new features from time to time.

We will again be listening to the user communities requests, also implementing some of our ideas that are currently out of scope. This will help maintain our vision:

Release at least a monthly version of it with updates and when possible include new features.
Publish the roadmap for the following versions on the website.
Help developers with developing new features for specific uses.
Continue improving the core for an even bigger update later, the Canola3.

The second update:Show me the features! coming in March

Our primary plan is the following and is already under heavy work:

+ Lot's of bug fixes
+ Youtube plugin (streams video, search, featured, bookmark your favorite videos)
+ Last.fm plugin (Audioscrobble support)
+ Zooming on Image (under evaluation) but is in the plans
+ Podcast improvements
+ More file formats Supported

Also, we will make whatever is possible to release the 2 biggest features in our opinion:

+ Upnp (Using Brisa)
+ Third Party Plugin Support + docs

We think this is crucial to give us one sprint more of development on those important features.
But of course this is a "plan" and we are sharing because you all can influence the priorities.

The first roadmap: bug hunting : Done!

The first roadmap will be mainly focused on solving all issues reported by the users. Once we finish it we will be aware of how much work we have and what features will be implemented in which of the following releases. But some of the most requested features are already in the making: Last.fm scrobbler support, Individual Album art selection, Youtube video feeds and more!