diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index 4fcd2f6f..e8ba4472 100644
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -1,3 +1,4 @@
+* #2909: Make python activities more tolerant to missing metadata properties. (tomeu)
 * #2653: Add audio/wav and audio/x-wav as Audio objects. (tomeu)
 * Support moving of data files written to the datastore using standard Activity
   write_file() API (dcbw)
diff --git a/sugar/activity/activity.py b/sugar/activity/activity.py
index a5661cd8..f734c61b 100644
--- a/sugar/activity/activity.py
+++ b/sugar/activity/activity.py
@@ -284,6 +284,9 @@ class Activity(Window, gtk.Container):
             #del self._jobject.metadata['ctime']
             del self._jobject.metadata['mtime']
 
+            if not self._jobject.metadata.has_key('title'):
+                self._jobject.metadata['title'] = ''
+
             try:
                 share_scope = self._jobject.metadata['share-scope']
                 title = self._jobject.metadata['title']