Bed's Blog

Last.fm: 12 Ways to Scrobble

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 21:35:20 GMT

Originally published at abednarz.net. Please leave any comments there.

“Audio Scrobbling,” as defined by Last.fm, is the act of submitting to a central database the details of what songs you’ve been listening to (what album, by who and when you listened). Scrobbling to Last.fm is the main reason I use the service these days, especially since it made the internet radio part of it a paid subscription only service for Australia. I think that being able to easily track and visualise my listening history and share that with friends is a great example of the social internet revolution.

There are a number of ways to have your music scrobbled to Last.fm from your Mac. Which one you chose depends on which fits into your music workflow the best. Read more at The Apple Blog

One time… at bandcamp…

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 21:12:12 GMT

Originally published at abednarz.net. Please leave any comments there.

A friend brought to my attention the site bandcamp, which is really quite an awesome site for musicians of all sizes, easy to set up tracks and maintain a clean looking page with streaming and downloading capacities. While my really older stuff is just too low quality to put up there, I’ve created an account put my more recent stuff up in an album. More will follow; for the last six months I’ve been getting itchy feet with regards to developing some more music, I have some ideas and some new tools, the pressing issue is always time. Time is something that needs to be allocated and just done. Motivation is the key and this is rising. To be continued….

abednarz.bandcamp.com

Cut the Drama: Private APIs, the App Store & You

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:26:02 GMT

Originally published at abednarz.net. Please leave any comments there.

I’ve had a rant building up for a few weeks. A rant about developer’s treatment at the hands of the App Store submission procedure. However unlike many rants on the topic, mine is not directed towards Apple. It is directed towards the iPhone developers who complain about the poor, unfair treatment they get, carrying their bleeding hearts in their palms while claiming Apple is bludgeoning the life out of them.

Two recent news headlines, seemingly separate, are intrinsically tied together and the synergy of them have made my eyes dislocated from the continued rolling they involuntarily perform.

EyeTV on the iPhone: In-Depth

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:22:49 GMT

Originally published at abednarz.net. Please leave any comments there.

Recently, Elgato released EyeTV for the iPhone (AppStore Link). At a cost of $4.99, its marketing blurb offers the following functionality:

With the EyeTV app, you can watch, record, and enjoy live and recorded TV on your iPhone or iPod touch. At last, you don‘t have to leave all your great TV shows at home; the EyeTV app puts the power of award-winning EyeTV in the palm of your hand.

The EyeTV app accesses EyeTV running on your Mac at home to deliver these great features to your iPhone:

Watch live TV and change channels anywhere (Wi-Fi connection required)

Watch your EyeTV recordings

Browse the comprehensive Program Guide

Start recordings back home on your Mac immediately or schedule them for later

View and edit your recording schedules

Now that we know the promises, how does the functionality work in practise and does it live up to the hype? To set the picture accurately; my set up is a 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo Mac mini with 2GB of RAM and two Elgato Digital USB Tuner sticks. This is hooked up to an Airport Express, which extends my existing wireless connection from another room. Between myself and my wife, we have an iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS and iPod touch 2nd Gen, so I will be testing EyeTV on all three looking for differences.

Read more at The Apple Blog

Retro Gaming Roundup: 40 iPhone Games to Take You Back in Time

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 21:11:36 GMT

Originally published at abednarz.net. Please leave any comments there.

There are few iPhone games that I will immediately buy. Most of the ones I do, however, are the classic games I played as a teenager.

The iPhone/iPod touch is more than powerful enough to handle these games and it seems that there are many people like me who are keen to experience these classics again. So, here’s a roundup of modern ports of classic games. Only official ports of classic games are detailed here — clones and the like do exist but I had to draw a line in the sand. I’ve also included links to Wikipedia for those interested in the history of the games

See the list at The Apple Blog

iTunes 9: Smart Playlists Are Now Smarter

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 21:01:29 GMT

Originally published at abednarz.net. Please leave any comments there.

Smart Playlists in iTunes have always been a powerful way to create specific playlists to meet your needs, from creating a rotating fresh playlist for syncing to an iDevice to creating a specific playlist for a party. Being able to say “give me my music that hasn’t been played in the last month, that is of at least 320kbps and is rated 5 stars” is pretty sweet.

In iTunes 8 and earlier you could create all of these multiple rules and have them applied with a ‘match operator,’ which could be ALL (all rules have to match for a track to be included) or ANY (if any of the single rules apply the track will be included).

iTunes 9 has quietly and substantially expanded the level of complexity that you can create in these rules by allowing you to create nested rules. This lets you build up substantial logic with multiple ANY and ALL match operators being applied.

Read more at The Apple Blog

Apple Open-Sources Grand Central Dispatch

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 21:38:52 GMT

Originally published at abednarz.net. Please leave any comments there.

One of the most compelling new feature in Snow Leopard is Grand Central Dispatch, which can make it easier for developers to write software taking advantage of the multiple cores in our computers. On Sept., 10 Apple released the user library component of Grand Central to the open source community.

Read more at The Apple Blog

Sequel Pro 0.96 Released

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 21:39:29 GMT

Originally published at abednarz.net. Please leave any comments there.

The open-source project team that released Sequel Pro 0.95 three months ago has just released 0.96. The update adds polish to the application, making working with it more pleasurable — if you can ever call working with databases pleasurable.

They’ve also added some new core functionality and optimized the backend. To me, this feels like more than a 0.01 update. With every update of Sequel Pro, the open-source project continues to close the gap between itself and commercial competitors such as Querious.

Read more at The Apple Blog

How-To: Making The Most Of Apple TV With XBMC And Boxee

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 21:41:34 GMT

Originally published at abednarz.net. Please leave any comments there.

The Apple TV, as envisioned by Apple, is truly a very niche market device. You’re basically paying money for something that lets you pay more money to buy or rent music, movies and TV shows from the iTunes store. Sure, you can also stream content from iTunes on a computer, but when trying to stream from a central generic media device, the out of the box software just doesn’t cut it.

It is, however, possible to customize your Apple TV with unauthorized third party software (much like a jailbreak for iPhones/iPod touches) to transform it into a fantastic cheap media player (with certain limitations).

Read how at The Apple Blog

Smultron and Lingon Developer Hangs Up Hat

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 21:30:27 GMT

Originally published at abednarz.net. Please leave any comments there.

If you were to navigate to lingon.sourceforge.net or smultron.sourceforge.net today, you would see the following text on your screen:

“Hi!

First of all I’d like to thank you for your interest in my applications. But I have now come to a point where I don’t have the time to spend on the applications that they deserve so I have decided to not release any more versions for the foreseeable future.

Cheers,

Peter Borg”

Read more at The Apple Blog

Rumor Has It: iTunes 9 Coming Next Month With Blu-ray Support

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 21:34:18 GMT

Originally published at abednarz.net. Please leave any comments there.

The Boy Genius Report is claiming to have received a tip that Blu-ray support will be coming to iTunes 9, which may be arriving as soon as next month. Also reportedly in iTunes 9 is the long sought after ability to arrange iPhone/iPod touch icon positions from within iTunes, instead of having to do it on the device itself. In addition there will be some kind of integration with Twitter/Facebook and Last.FM — presumably this would allow sending the currently playing song to the social networking sites, removing the need to run a separate application to do this.

Read more at The Apple Blog

CoRD: Remote Desktop 0.5 Released

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 21:14:39 GMT

Originally published at abednarz.net. Please leave any comments there.

As much as we all love our Macs, we still generally live in a Microsoft business world and need to connect and work with Windows boxes. While Microsoft does release its own Remote Desktop application to facilitate Mac users connecting to Windows machine, I’ve never been impressed with the interface for it (on either Mac or Windows). I’ve much preferred using the open source CoRD project.

Two years since the last release of CoRD, its development team have finally released version 0.5 bringing a whole heap of polish to an already excellent software package. For me the killer feature that CoRD has over Microsoft’s official client is the ability to have multiple connections going at once, all selectable from a list. The work flow becomes similar to a tabbed interface (although its not actually tabs).

Read more at The Apple Blog

NetNewsWire 3.2 Beta: Google Reader Replaces NewsGator

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 15:06:25 GMT

Originally published at abednarz.net. Please leave any comments there.

The folks over at NewsGator have seemingly given up on consumer news feed syncing and have seceded to the superiority of Google Reader.

First it was NewsGator’s Windows syncing feed reader Feed Demon that got the switch from NewsGator syncing to Google Reader syncing. Now its the Mac client’s turn and the esteemed reader NetNewsWire has now switched syncing services too. Yeterday’s announcement by NewsGator states that its will be taking its NewsGator Online news feed reading and syncing service offline by the end of August. This leaves little time for NetNewsWire to fast track a stable switch to Google Reader syncing, but yesterday the first public beta of NetNewsWire 3.2 was made available.

Read more at The Apple Blog

Photo Rotate is in Garibion’s top five paid apps!

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 02:32:07 GMT

Originally published at abednarz.net. Please leave any comments there.

Over at Garibion.com is a post by Ryosuke Takeoka about his top five paid iPhone apps. Photo Rotate is number five. This gives me warm’n'fuzzy feelings. Thanks Ryosuke!

Where is Photo Rotate 1.6?

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 21:42:33 GMT

Originally published at abednarz.net. Please leave any comments there.

Its nearly been a full month since I submitted Photo Rotate 1.6 to Apple, but fear not, it has not been lost in the void. Last week I received a call from Apple and there was a small issue with some of the application’s iTunes App Store descriptive text that references limitations in the SDK which they wanted me to remove. I promptly did as they asked and now I suspect the update has been ‘released’ from purgatory back to the end of the approval queue.

In the meantime I have been working on Photo Rotate 1.7 focusing on memory usage and low memory handling, which at this rate might be submitted before 1.6 even gets cleared. We’ll see how it goes.

27 Bluetooth-enabled Multiplayer iPhone Games

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 21:25:20 GMT

Originally published at abednarz.net. Please leave any comments there.

The iPhone/iPod 3.0 OS allows third-party applications to utilize the device’s Bluetooth capabilities for two-player games. The first (and only) application I had that supported this in an update was Flight Control, and since then, whenever my wife and I are on a train, we occupy our time playing this.

The huge advantage of multiplayer Bluetooth compared with Wi-Fi is that you just need the two devices, no Wi-Fi access points or Internet connectivity is required. This is truly awesome, although as we cry, “Arrrgh sooo close!” loudly on public transport we can get some strange looks. We’ve loved playing Flight Control, but I thought that by now there must be a good number of other Bluetooth-enabled games. So I’ve searched the App Store and found the following games are the only ones that support multiplayer gameplay over Bluetooth. This list will hopefully grow soon with more complex quality titles.

Check out what I found at The Apple Blog

App Review: Phaze — Futuristic Racing Action

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 00:21:38 GMT

Originally published at abednarz.net. Please leave any comments there.

Years ago I discovered a little futuristic hovercraft racing game on the PlayStation called Wipeout. The concept was simple, and in many ways it was pretty much the same gameplay as Mario Kart or Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart. What set it apart was that there were no cartoon graphics, and no toy weapons, just stunning futuristic graphics, unique craft handling (being hovercrafts) and the most important element: speed. These crafts could go really fast.

So as an avid fan of the Wipeout series, when I found out about Phaze I immediately had to try it. Phaze is pretty much a Wipeout clone for the iPhone. There’s nothing new added, it just takes the concept and translates it. This suits me fine. The question is how good the implementation is. Does it capture the magic that got me hooked to Wipeout all those years ago?

Read my review at The Apple Blog

Photo Rotate 1.6 Submitted to Apple

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 21:29:38 GMT

Originally published at abednarz.net. Please leave any comments there.

Photo Rotate 1.6 has been submitted to Apple for approval. This version has the following changes:
* Fixes positioning offset bug in the Crop function.
* The crop area is now always clearly highlighted in a transparent blue for proper framing.
Version 1.5 took two weeks to clear the approval process (previously versions only took about one week), Apple seems to be overloaded with updates at the moment, so I would expect a two week wait or so.

Interview: Steve Gehrman of Path Finder/CocoaTech

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 22:31:14 GMT

Originally published at abednarz.net. Please leave any comments there.

I love reading interviews with developers, finding out some of the behind the scenes information on the makings of their products. Even more so when they’re my favorite products, the ones I use every day. Being able to put a personal face and story behind an end-user application puts a human story on the technology that I find fascinating. So, in the first of hopefully many such interviews, I caught up with Steve Gehrman, founder of CocoaTech, maker of the esteemed Path Finder application — a super charged alternative to Apple’s own Finder.

Read my interview with Steve over at The Apple Blog

First Look: Spanning Tools Public Beta

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 02:10:03 GMT

Originally published at abednarz.net. Please leave any comments there.

I’ve never been as organized as I am with the combination of my MacBook Pro, iPhone, and Google Calendar. Sure, before I crossed the line to Apple, I had tried to use Thunderbird (with Lightning’s Calendar plugin) to keep organized, syncing to my Windows Mobile phone, but it was always clunky and slow and not worth the effort when things didn’t “Just Work.” Since tasting the sweet Apple pie, I now have multiple Google calendars shared with my wife and synced to both of our Macs and iPod touch/iPhones with Spanning Sync. We are now totally organized and its awesome.

However, like any data system, it’s a case of garbage in, garbage out. The combination of data corruption and synchronization is one that can wreak total and utter havoc on the most organized of people, rendering us as useless as a fish out of water. To combat the potential of this scenario, the folks over at Spanning Sync have released a public beta of its new utility, Spanning Tools.

Read more at The Apple Blog

SBSettings: Why I Still Jailbreak With 3.0

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:02:05 GMT

Originally published at abednarz.net. Please leave any comments there.

Back in the Dark Ages (iPhone 2.0 firmware) jailbreaking your iPhone had many points of merit. It could give you MMS, Copy & Paste, tethering, video recording, info on your lock screen and more. However, for me the reasons I jailbroke were for MMS, Copy & Paste, and internet tethering.

So when the much awaited 3.0 release was finally here, I thought to myself “Great, no need to jailbreak anymore.” I installed my developer’s copy of the beta firmware and there was much rejoicing with smooth, Apple home-cooked MMS, copy & paste, and internet tethering.

But then, as I watched episodes of Arrested Development via XBMC using my iPhone as the remote, or lay in bed on my side trying to read news feeds without the screen rotating when I didn’t want it to, I really really missed SBSettings. So it came to be that the day the jailbreak devteam released their official PwnageTool for 3.0 I immediate jailbroke my 3.0 iPhone. Just for one application: SBSettings. It really does bring that much convenience to the table.

Read why I still Jailbreak with 3.0 for SBSettings over at The Apple Blog

Photo Rotate 1.5 released

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 23:01:33 GMT

Originally published at abednarz.net. Please leave any comments there.

Photo Rotate 1.5 has finally been approved by Apple (after longer than normal delays, no doubt related to the OS 3.0 release today). It should be available from the AppStore anytime now.

* This adds a powerful “Crop” button – this lets you do arbitrary rotation, scaling and positioning using single and two finger gestures.
* Full OS 3.0 Support (but not required, works with OS 2.2.1).

10 Clipboard Managers for OS X

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 21:27:27 GMT

Originally published at abednarz.net. Please leave any comments there.

The clipboard in a modern operating system is one of the most useful and practical tools available. Being able to select some text or images, copy them to the clipboard, and then paste them in other places is indispensable (look at the uproar over the fact that the iPhone OS 1.0 & 2.0 did not support a clipboard to see how valuable it is). You most likely use it without giving it another thought.

The standard clipboard behavior is that when you copy a new item, it replaces the existing item. You can’t go back to the previous item as there is no history of items copied. This is what a Clipboard Manager does, providing a memory and browsing history so you can paste something, and then find it later, even after using the clipboard multiple times.

There are quite a few Clipboard Managers available for OS X, some free, some not. Check out 10 of them over at The Apple Blog.

Photo Rotate 1.5 on its way

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:15:21 GMT

Originally published at abednarz.net. Please leave any comments there.

Photo Rotate 1.5 has been submitted to Apple for approval. This adds a nifty Crop function, that lets you do arbitrary rotation, scaling and positioning using single and two finger gestures.. Its also iPhone OS 3.0 ready. Hopefully this will be approved within the next week.

In other Photo Rotate news, there’s a bit of competition in the simple iphone photo rotating category now, hence me making Photo Rotate the easiest and most powerful while still focusing on rotation.

To see how good Photo Rotate is, take a look at this review over at Tim Obrien Photos.

How to Fix OS X 10.5.7 DVI-HDMI Screen Resolution Issues

Fri, 15 May 2009 14:35:05 GMT

Originally published at abednarz.net. Please leave any comments there.

Apple had finally released OS X 10.5.7, so I downloaded the combo updater in preparation to install on my three Macs. After installing the update on my MacBook Pro and my wife’s iMac without any issues, I ran the combo updater on my Mac mini that is hooked up to my TV.

My TV’s native resolution is 1360×768 and ever since I got the Mac mini, this has worked flawlessly and with an extremely crisp picture when using a DVI-HDMI cable. So it was to my dismay when, after installing OS X 10.5.7 and the mini rebooted, the resolution displayed was completely wrong. “Ah, it must have reset, I’ll go change it back,” I thought to myself. So I went to the Display preference pane in System Preferences and looked for 1360×768; but it wasn’t there. I blinked and looked again; It still wasn’t there. Read the rest of this article at The Apple Blog.