iTunesTweet V2.5 beta!

Yesterdays post depicted that todays release would be beta only. It still stands. There are a few things (mainly iScan) which are so unfinished, I just wouldn’t be happy releasing them as full versions.

What’s new?

This release has so many new features, looking back I’m amazed how much work has been done!

1. iScan (beta) – this beast scans through your library for duplicate songs and then offers you the choice to delete or remove from library. Be aware that this feature is completely unreliable and I advise to make a backup of your playlist before you do anything. Apart from the flakeyness of the feature the design of it is also terrible, it’s got a whole bunch of random whitespace I’ve left in.
2. Command line arguments – don’t you hate it when you open iTunesTweet and the embarrassing song you’re listening to is tweeted? Start iTunesTweet in silent mode by adding /SILENT as a command parameter. Fancy seeing what data is being sent by iTunesTweet? Add /DEBUG as a command argument.
3. DataMgr – although nothing for users to care about, this new feature will enable me to send out scripts/fixes/registry files without sending out the whole download package! The start of a sexy auto-updater
4. Genre logging – the genre of a song is now also to be logged in the database. This will soon become the building blocks of recommended songs to you

So many code changes it hurts my head thinking about them

The amount of function re-writes I’ve done is silly. I’ve compiled over 50 alpha versions whilst testing them all out – may not sound a lot, but for one person in a full time job, that’s some cool code

Download!

This time the beta version is not available in the /beta directory but instead the root. It’s stable enough to use as a full version so go ahead and try it out!

DOWNLOAD

Friday Beta Features

On Friday 27th August we plan to release a new beta version of our baby, iTunesTweet! This new release will include a whole bunch of new features and re-written code that will make iTunesTweet even better

So what can you look forward to?

1. Command line arguments! All though this sounds geeky, these new startup parameters can do several things: /DBG (fun debug output console for seeing what’s happening in the background); /SILENT (automatically stops iTunesTweet from tweeting on startup)
2. Library cleanup! Project iScan is a fully integrated feature implemented into iTunesTweet which will scan your library for duplicate songs and give you the choice to remove or permanently delete them.
3. New icon! Yep, we’re now using the blue bird logo we sport
4. Debug output file for those times when serious errors occur.

The hundreds of code changes we made will also be leading up to several new web-based applications that we intend to be releasing as part of the iTunesTweet website in the upcoming months.

As of now, I’m not able to say what these applications will be (except one (see below)) but they’re coming!

Suggest

As you may have noticed, iTunesTweet will currently append the bands/artists Twitter username if it’s able to find one.

As of now, this database only consists of around 300 usernames which can match several variations of names the band/artist are recognised by. To help this database grow, I’ve setup a suggestion page.

Simply enter the band/artist name followed by their Twitter name, e.g.; Creed @creed and then click Submit!

If you don’t have anyone to suggest, vote other bands up or down by pressing the corresponding arrows! When a suggestion gets enough votes, it will be added to the database. It’s that simple.

Check out the suggestion site here.

The same format will also be used for several of our other web applications – more information on these will be available as development progresses.

Mention the song artist

Our research shows that people use iTunesTweet to share their favourite bands/songs with the world – rightly so, I personally listen to a few unknown bands and I since I love their music, I want to help their band grow!

These days a lot of artists and bands have their own Twitter pages to help advertise their music, sharing promotional offers and sneak peaks into new music – it’s awesome! Wouldn’t it be so cool if you could share their Twitter page along with the song you are listening to?

In our next update you’ll be able to!

We’ve recently been building a list of artists/bands and their Twitter pages. When you setup iTunesTweet you’ll be asked where possible if you’d like to mention the twitter username.

Keep in mind that we work every day to expand this database as it is extremely difficult to find a good list anywhere! We do however have over 300 twitter bands.

I may decide to turn this feature automatically on across every user to test how accurate the system is. The next update will however give you the option to turn this off!

Version 1 to cease working within a couple of weeks

Version 1, the currently available version of iTunesTweet will cease to work in a couple of weeks. This is a decision I’ve thought hard about, and now that my final decision has been made, I’m letting our users know that you will need to update when the release becomes available.

Although it is possible for me to make the new version work differently, I feel that this is such an important upgrade that any previous versions should be immediately upgraded when available. The reasons that account for such harsh action:

• Version 2 has explicit oAuth integration - there is only one REST API called (at least so far), that will soon be changed anyway.
• It’s so much securer – oAuth provides security on so many levels and we want our users to feel secure when using our application.
• Version 2 will collect the basic information:
  • Song you’re listening to
  • Timestamp

  Although more data will be collected if you opt in for it.

No date is set for the system to stop working, however a full weeks notice will be provided.

iTunesTweet 1.2 supports oAuth integration!

This is something I’ve been planning on adding for a while, but every time I feel like doing it, I remember why I gave up the last time. Now I’ve finally conquered the beast!

oAuth is an API authorization protocol standard, which basically makes sending data to websites such as Twitter and Google for example, secure. For those interested in the protocol, check out the oAuth website.

With my recent experience in implementing oAuth via PHP and cURL into one of my other projects, I decided to attempt the integration with iTunesTweet again. Twitter supports two types of integrations, web and application based. Although iTT is an application, I’ve found that it is easier to work with web output than start writing more functions to handle application based queries.

As you can see from the picture earlier, two things have changed when iTT posts to Twitter. Firstly, no more hashtags! I personally found it annoying when even I, myself was posting what I was listening to, to see the hashtags. These have now gone! The second is the “via iTunesTweet” link at the bottom – real professional looking, don’t you think?

1.2 will also see the likes of a brand new options window, which will be the home to all of the options iTT now has, or will soon. Proposed options include:

• Lyrics – like the song, but don’t know the lyrics? That’s fine! Sing-a-long with the lyrics player!
• Got something to share? Tweet directly from iTT!
• Don’t want to share a song? Add the song/folder to the blacklist and it wont be shared!

I cannot guarantee that even all three features will be implemented, but I’m doing my best!

Website is back up!

Firstly, we’re really sorry! Our website has been down for a while now, we’ve sadly not had enough time to fix it. Data collection and statistics have still been going and we’ve reached over a thousand collected song tweets!

I’ve already been able to sift through the songs, and seen that nine countries have used our application and some popular songs! Soon you’ll be able to see the most played song in our database and the top country using iTunesTweet!

Apart from trend analysing and website fixing, I’ve also been working on some updates to the application itself! Some important fixes have been made and even a new toast popup for the now playing song! We hope to be releasing an update soon – sadly no update feature is available, I’ll be working on that for inclusion in the next couple of releases

Its Here!!!

Dudes…. its the 24th.. and you know what that means?

ITS RELEASE DAY!!!

So download it here

Our new design and a general ramble

So you may have noticed the new design we’re currently sporting! We hope you like it!

There are a couple of things we still need to fix and add but a solid look is here and will be staying! Over the next couple of days these will be implemented and the website will continue to be improved!

If you have any suggestions for things we should add to our site, which would help you in using it then please tell us! We love to support our users!

Now to a little ramble.. Couple of thoughts I’ve been having over the past couple of days!

1. Common Trending Topics on Twitter is #musicmonday, #musictuesday etc… I think we could add a feature which would implement these based on the current day. This would add support to the topics and make it easier for other Twitter services to categorize the #iTunesTweet tag we currently use.
2. Perhaps a rename of our tag, something shorter which will gives us more room to add other features such as the one mentioned above.
3. Automatic updating – although this will be hard, it will be a worth while feature later on. It will also stop the need from you having to do any more hard work! The idea of iTunesTweet is for it all to be easy right? So… This is a good way to go!
4. Removing the Windows security dialog box – this annoys me.. It annoys me so much! Who wants to re-enter their details twice even three times!

And now on to some of the more improved features of iTunesTweet that both Keylee and I are very proud of!

The readme and FAQ files are now compiled directly into the application itself, this makes it a lot easier to install our application, no extra files!

I’ve also been working on a more efficient way of encoding foreign symbols that can be used in artists and song names. We’ll see how it goes!

Anyway, we can’t wait for the release day! Not long now!

Update from Keylee!

Hi dudes. So i know we only just posted an update… 15 hours ago. but i cant sleep & my mind is still ticking. so i thought id write a little. Today… has been an awesome day to be honest! I went to work then come home spent some quality time with my mum then worked on iTunesTweet with James. Interesting? No? Well… heres something that is… today i did something that I’m really proud of. It really made me smile! I created the new logo for iTunesTweet. Yarrrsh i did! Check it out here. And if you  press next and search through the images there’s a few more in there too! A good evening well spend i think! Continue reading »

Become an iTunesTweet OSX beta tester!

Although not officially in development, we are hoping to start coding the OSX version of iTunesTweet within the next couple of weeks. Because we need to know if it is worth the time investment in developing a port of iTT, we’re looking to find out how many people are interested in an OSX version.

If you are interested, then please leave a comment below (be sure to use the email address you wish us to contact us you on) and we’ll contact you when we’re ready to start beta testing it.

As neither Keylee or I are Mac users, we’re not sure as which features should be included into the port and how it should run. We’re able to code everything you throw at us, but we’re unsure as to how it should be implemented. So again, if you have some ideas please leave them below!