Basic Streaming App

[FourEyedMongoose]

Hello all...

So I am a first year CS student and I am looking for a little help seeing as I'm new to the whole programing gig.

I love listening to Pandora while I'm messing around on the comp, but I'm a little sick of having to keep Firefox open to have it running.
The Idea: I plan on starting a project that the end goal is to have a desktop application that streams Pandora. [Letting you log in, thumb up/down, etc.] I plan on writing this for the gnome desktop environment [Not too sure if that matters.. more on that later.]

Anyways.

The help I am seeking is quite simple.. Where to start?
-Does anyone have a suggestion for a sold language that I can write a simple GUI that can house the Pandora flash.
-Any special requirements or libraries I need? [If so, Where to get them/Install]
-I'd like to make this cross platform compatible. [Ex: Runs on Linux and Windows.] But if I could get it to just run on linux, that would be fantastic.
-Lastly, I plan on packaging it into an installer [I don't remember the format Ubuntu uses, but thats what I would like to use.]
-Try and keep it simple. I know basic Java and thats about it. :P

If it makes any difference I am running Linux Mint [Ubuntu 9.04]

Thanks for any help!

[bigtomrodney]

I don't know if this is helpful at all but I just thought I'd mention it. Flash in Linux also has a standalone player called gflashplayer. It's official Adobe software. I'm not sure if Pandora has other requirements such as cookie support etc, but it might be worth a look.

Adobe - Adobe Flash Player)

Now with that out of the way, Amarok has support for Last.fm. I know the two services are very different but I'm just wondering if anything in their code would be of any help? I know they integrate the love/ban stuff into Amarok so maybe it'd be possible to write a script/plugin for Pandora to work in a similar way?

[FourEyedMongoose]

It doesn't even have to be that complicated. I'm not looking for it to be integrated into a player or anything, just a standalone player for it.

I'll play around with the flash deal, but I still need a starting point for this.
I'm almost seeing it like a browser with no browsing or anything, just stuck to the Pandora flash.

[FourEyedMongoose]

Well, I just received an email back from Pandora saying the development of a desktop app is phohibited. So I guess this is solved. Thanks anyway.

[MikeTbob]

Well, I just received an email back from Pandora saying the development of a desktop app is phohibited. So I guess this is solved. Thanks anyway.

OR
Like bigtom said, look into Amarok, it's all open source so you can do what ever you like as long as you give it back to the community.

[FourEyedMongoose]

OR
Like bigtom said, look into Amarok, it's all open source so you can do what ever you like as long as you give it back to the community.

Yeah I'll take a look into that. See what I can do.