GUADEC is held in Istanbul this year, and as has been the custom in 2006 and 2007, I again came there to discuss making the Linux desktop location aware.

This year I gave the "GeoClue and Gypsy - geo-information frameworks for mobile Linux desktops" talk together with Jussi Kukkonen and Iain Holmes.

With Linux devices hitting more and more pockets time was finally ripe for the talk, and hopefully soon we shall see GeoClue in places like the GNOME Panel Clock and Telepathy.

Slides are available from both Google Docs and Slideshare.

Other things to take out from this conference:

• GLib now has new introspection and testing infrastructure which will hopefully help in making and maintaining Midgard language bindings more easily
• Silverback is an usability testing application for OS X that records user's actions and expressions (via the computer's camera) for study. Once it is released it should really help with user experience design. Before that, Jing can be a good alternative
• Miguel de Icaza advocated abandoning the traditional toolkits and desktop application metaphor in favor of Rich Internet Applications served via HTTP and run on multimedia-rich toolkits like Silverlight or AIR. Something like HaXe could help here
• Telepathy's Tubes application data transfer system over instant messaging network could be used for many things we planned to do with the big-and-heavy DBE
• Turkish ice cream is a bit weird but good
• Red wine and white suits don't mix, even if it is a cocktail party :-)

Latest information about where GUADEC and aKademy will be held in 2009 is that it is still open. Apparently KDE's vote ended in draw between Gran Canaria and Tampere, and now the boards of both foundations are considering the options.

Tonight we will go to a cruise on the Bosphorus...