Archive for the 'Playdar' Category

I noticed a while back that Spiffdar website had gone, and sometime soon after the domain was dropped, and I picked it up. I didn’t really have a plan to resurrect the Spiffdar website then. It was just rather that than allow it to be taken up by some advertisers – you never know. It is in fact linked to a couple of other sites, though I don’t think there is much traffic to it.

Some while before, I had asked if I could use the source-code, via email to the original Spiffdar developer, Steven Gravell, who promptly and kindly allowed the Spiffdar source-code to be available for any purpose and without warranty, explicity, to anyone.

I really like Spiffdar. I really like Playgrub as well. I really like how Playgrub links to Spiffdar. These things seem to have gathered some dust despite being very cool. I grow to appreciate these more now and feeling a bit nostalgic and wishing Playdar had become more the game-changer it looked like it could be. In any case I soldier on. It still shows potential, and it interests me a lot. I will keep developing Playnode and have incorporated some of Spiffdar in it already. Since I had done that it seemed to make sense to update Spiffdar.

The point of this article was really to note that I am still working towards Spiffdar being as good as it was, and ironing out the kinks with the conversion to jQuery right now. The next track in the playlist should now be automatically played, as it did before, so it’s getting there. That was a Prototype to jQuery conversion issue I introduced.

I note that it doesn’t play the next available track skipping any unresolved items, so I’d like to fix that soon and I intend to make it persist playlists and allow playlists to be edited also, shortly.

The logo artwork for Playdar was created by Matthew Irvine Brown and “is freely available for use, sharing and adaptation under a Creative Commons License” [web.archive.org 2010-09-21]. You can download the source artwork here or here.

Playdar Colour Palette

Download: Windar 0.2.6

Changes in this release:

• Removed the expired demo resolver for Spotify.
• Fixed an issue with non-standard install paths for re-install.
• Using more approproiate weight and target time for resolver pipeline.
• Restored original time allowed for HTTP headers in playdar-core.
• Restored earlier versions of Erlang and Mochiweb in case they were better supported.
• Napster, MP3tunes, and Magnatune now installed in default options.

Download: Windar 0.2.5

Changes in this release:

• Added a resolver for Spotify.

This product uses SPOTIFY(R) CORE but is not endorsed, certified or otherwise approved in any way by Spotify. Spotify is the registered trade mark of the Spotify Group.

A premium Spotify account is required for the Spotify resolver to work.

The terms & conditions for the libspotify API suggest this resolver is in a grey area. Therefore, the Spotify resolver is presented here in its current form as an expiring demo. It is believed that the application more or less conforms to the terms, but clarification of the terms may be required.

This resolver for Spotify is implemented in C# using libspotify and libspotify-sharp. It is compatible with Mono on Mac OS X and Linux, and .NET 2.0 on Windows.

Note: Demo expired 1st December. There is no plan to extend the demo at this time, so the following links are no longer available, but you can find the source-code on my GitHub page.

• Spotify resolver for Playdar on Mac OS X
• Spotify resolver for Playdar on Linux (x86)

Read the rest of this entry »

Download: Windar 0.2.4

Changes in this release:

• Fixed missing UAC elevation required for uninstaller in Vista & Windows 7.

Download: Windar 0.2.3

Changes in this release:

• Re-bundling the Napster resolver, using a new API key.
• Hiding the stat heart-beat log in the log panel.
• Stat heart-beat check period increased (3s).
• Increased the time allowed for HTTP headers to (1s) and streams (2s).
• Increased the time allowed for resolver results (20s).
• Using more recent Python 2.7 for py2exe compiled resolvers.
• Including test player and audioscrobbler plugins again.
• Re-tweaked some resolver weights.

Download: Windar 0.2.2

Changes in this release:

• Better process handling in the installer.
• NSIS UAC plugin used in installer to run on finish, as user not admin.
• Updated the 16×16 icons used in tray and title bar.
• Using 32-bit compile options.

Download: Windar 0.2.1

Changes in this release:

• Changed licence from GPL to LGPL.
• Improved installer, with option to remove Application Data.
• Reduced the total file-size of the installer.
• Improved the Playdar state detection using the stat method.
• Updated to Erlang R014A, and reduced to bare essentials.
• Removed the Napster resolver and plugin. There is potential that this will be re-introduced in the next Windar release.
• Removed the MPlayer-powered test player to reduce installer size. It will require better error handling for failed web requests which might be recovered by MPlayer automatically.
• Removed the Scrobbler plugin as it required an auth hack. This had been intended to work with the test player, and may instead be made to work independently in a future release.
• Removed the Startup folder shortcut from the installer.

It has not been easy to build Windar from source, until now.

• Pre-compiled binaries required have been compressed with 7-zip and added to GitHub.
• The main Windar solution is compatible with Visual Studio 2008 Express (free download).
• The page “Build and develop” has been added to the project wiki.

Since adding a test player and additional resolvers to the Windar download it grew from around 13.3mb to 20.4mb which seems a bit on the large side. The included Erlang core has been cut down further, removing redundant files, and the py2exe compiled Python resolver scripts are now done together, reducing the size too. The resulting installer file-size is 16.3mb and since the test player plugin might be provided as a separate download, this could bring the Windar download file-size back down to around 11.2mb.