Tomis’ Software Blog

Today I’m releasing Billboard 0.9.6, an iTunes controller and status display (for Intel and PowerPC Macs running Tiger or better)

This version brings all-new Shuffle and Repeat controls, as well as several bug fixes and improvements for Star Ratings, the Browser, the Control Bar, and transitions. The complete change log is available in the Links section in the upper right.

And don’t forget; as a thank-you to everyone who has sent in feedback, during this public beta period you can pre-purchase Billboard 1.0 for USD $9.95, that’s 50% off the final price of $19.95!

Today I’m releasing Billboard 0.9.5, an iTunes controller and status display (for Intel and PowerPC Macs running Tiger or better)

This release brings two major new features; window view, and the Browser. Now you can easily toggle Billboard out of fullscreen, throw it in a corner of your monitor and get some work done while still seeing your album art beautifully displayed. The new Browser lets you search your music library, add tracks to a target playlist (”iTunes DJ”, for example), switch the current playlist, and more. Additionally, it features enhanced support for iTunes’ built-in “Radio Tuner”, allowing you to easily peruse the many great stations provided, and mark favorites. Also, when pulling album art for radio streams, Billboard will now try to locate the correct song duration as well, which makes for an even more seamless internet radio experience. (Album art and song durations are courtesy of Amazon.com)

The Browser, in combination with Kiosk mode, turns your mac into the perfect digital jukebox. Users can search your music library, find the song they like, and add it to the playlist (of your choosing), all without having full access to your computer.

There are a number of smaller improvements in this release which add up to create a more polished experience. Album art is now displayed in the dock icon by default. You can now edit star ratings directly from Billboard. The iTunes and Amazon store buttons have now been consolidated into a contextual “links” button which includes searches of Wikipedia, MySpace, and more. And that new links button is displayed as part of the new control bar, which provides a cleaner interface for scrubbing through songs, as well as volume and other playback controls.

And in addition to all of that, there are several new features that were spurred on by user suggestions. Some of these I had already been considering and decided to ultimately implement because people asked for them. These new features include: Smarter use of the space on vertically oriented monitors, ratings for the different angles album-art is displayed at, various improvements to the VirtualDJ, and lastly, the ability to select a font for the main Billboard status display. So remember, if you have a suggestion, don’t hesitate to send it my way. It just might make it into the next release!

Screenshots of Billboard in fullscreen, with the Browser Open, on vertically and horizontally oriented monitors:

And don’t forget; as a thank-you to everyone who has sent in feedback, during this public beta period you can pre-purchase Billboard 1.0 for USD $9.95, that’s 50% off the final price of $19.95!

Today I’m releasing Billboard 0.9.1, a fullscreen iTunes status display (for Intel and PowerPC Macs running Tiger or better)

This release is mainly made up of bug fixes, with increased support for iTunes Shares, iTunes Store content, and radio streams. There are also a few new options in the preferences, including automatic removal of borders on album art. Also, visual feedback is now provided for keyboard shortcuts such as play/pause, volume up/down, etc.

With the goal of increasing iTunes integration, there is now an option (Preferences>Advanced) to forward unhandled keyboard shortcuts to iTunes, and a Billboard launch script which can be installed in iTunes’ Scripts menu. You can easily instal it from within Billboard.

As a thank-you to everyone who has sent in feedback, during this public beta period you can pre-purchase Billboard 1.0 for USD $9.95, that’s 50% off the final price of $19.95!

Today I’m releasing Billboard 0.9, a fullscreen iTunes status display (for Intel and PowerPC Macs running Tiger or better)

There are a number of new things in this release; Kiosk Mode to keep people from exiting Billboard (perfect for parties), the Virtual DJ to announce song changes using MacOS X Text-to-Speech, options to auto-hide various interface elements (such as playback control), and a slew of new transition types for both MacOS X 10.4 and 10.5. There are also a few new settings for tweaking the performance of Billboard, including iTunes update frequency and transition FPS control.

I listen to a lot of internet radio. Unfortunately some stations provide iTunes with poorly formatted tags, or include various announcements along with the song tags. To that end, there is a new “Clean Up Tags for Displays” option that attempts to alleviate this problem. And speaking of tags, Billboard will now attempt to fit long tags entirely on screen by reducing the text size.

As a thank-you to everyone who has sent in feedback, during this public beta period you can pre-purchase Billboard 1.0 for USD $9.95, that’s 50% off the final price of $19.95!

With that in mind, here’s a few features planned for future releases*:

• Visual feedback for keyboard shortcuts
• Playlist control/editing/searching
• Remote control iTunes over the network.

Today I’m releasing Billboard 0.8.6, a fullscreen iTunes status display (for Intel and PowerPC Macs running Tiger or better)

This update fixes an issue which prevented Billboard from launching on MacOS X 10.4 machines. It also fixes a number of display/performance issues.

New in this release is the ability to download album art for CDs, the option to display album art straight-on instead of at a randomly selected tilt, a nice new icon, and the ability to select the transition duration.

I posted a poll on the Billboard download page for a few feature ideas I have. You can help me prioritize which to implement by heading over and voting for your favorite. Been thinking it would be nice to put some of that empty screen space (above the track names) to use. Maybe allow for displaying personalized content like web pages or something.

Take the poll.

Again, thank you to everyone leaving feedback.

Today I’m releasing Billboard 0.8.5, a fullscreen iTunes status display (for Intel and PowerPC Macs running Tiger or better)

I’ve been getting some excellent feedback on Billboard 0.8.1. Thanks to everyone who let me know about problems and left suggestions! I really appreciate it.

Here’s a quick run-down of the changes:

* Fix: reduced CPU usage
* Fix: no more screen blanking on transition
* New: control over auto-flip delay and transitions
* New: improved support for RadioParadise.com internet radio station (play time, additional tags, link to song page and amazon page)
* New Advanced Options: prevent display sleep, show on all Spaces, and more

Starting things off, there are two major bug fixes to reduce the CPU usage and fix a problem introduced in 0.8.1 where the main screen would temporarily blank out during transitions if you had Billboard running on a second monitor. I’ve noticed a similar blanking issue happening when expose/spaces are open during transition and I’m looking at how to work around that issue. I also have a couple ideas for ways to reduce CPU usage even further.

There’s now an entire section of the preferences window dedicated to transitions. You can control the delay between them, set ratings to control frequency, and preview each one. Personally, I prefer the page flip, with a few others popping up every now and then for variety. You’ll need MacOS X 10.5 or higher to get all those nifty transitions listed (there’s a couple built-in fallbacks for Tiger users).

I’m particularly happy with the improved RadioParadise support. RP is a professionally mixed internet radio station I recommend everyone check out. If you’re listening to their stream in iTunes, Billboard will now go to their server and request an XML feed with additional information about the current song. And if you turn on Player Controls in Billboard’s preferences it will display the playtime and duration of the track. Pretty sweet! If you know of any other radio streams that publish song information like this then let me know.

So go check out Billboard 0.8.5 and leave a comment, or drop me an email. I’m mainly developing this to my own satisfaction, but I’m open to hearing any crazy-out-there feature requests.

Today I’m releasing Billboard 0.8. It’s a fullscreen iTunes song display designed to run on a second monitor, though you can run it on any available display. I wanted something simple and elegant that was readable at a distance. Perfect when DJing parties, hanging out with friends, or just lounging around the house. Put on Party Shuffle and open Billboard.

This started as just a quick personal project, the version number reflects that it may still have some rough edges. I’m open to any feedback and feature requests.

Get Billboard 0.8

Just wanted to do a quick little status update on ImagePlay to let people know the delay in release isn’t due to lack of development, but an abundance of it. There are a number of major new features going into this next release (you can look back through the blog to read about them) and they all need to get stabilized.

Here’s just a short list of new features with bug zapping to be done:
* Undo/Redo
* “Packaged” project format
* Filter Layer drag handles

To add to the growing list of features, I’ve finally got the basics of a freeform Draw effect working. This will make custom masking much easier.

I realized the old host for Wacky Jabber was down, so I decided to do a minor update and have MacUpdate.com host the download this time. Source code included. It’s a fun little project which creates non-sense english-like phrases and reads them to you via Text-to-Speech. Check it out:

Wacky Jabber hosted at MacUpdate