Published on December 9, 2007
Sam Steele is at it again. He has just updated his MobileScrobbler iPhone/Touch app (that I talked about earlier) to version 1.1.0 in his http://dev.c99.org/iphone/ installer source, while the Community installer source still shows version 1.0.4. Version 1.1.0 now includes streaming music from last.fm! You can search based on artist name or tag, as well as play your last.fm recommendations.
The app still logs any music you play in the iPod app. If you open MobileScrobbler while playing music stored on your device, the app will load all of the last.fm info for the current track, also giving you the option to “Love” or “Ban” the track, helping Last.fm learn your listening habits even more. Hitting “Skip” will move to the next song in your iPod playlist, without having to bring up the iPod controls or go to the iPod app. As far as logging options, you can now select whether you want tracks to be submitted over Edge (handy for anyone without a data plan).
My only issue with the app so far is that streaming music has a very low volume, but I’m sure that will get fixed in no time. Sam has added a Donate button on the Mobilescrobbler website, so be sure to throw a little love his way.
Published on December 3, 2007
Mobile OS X software development continues to impress me. These developers are doing some really amazing things with absolutely no support from Apple. iPhoneDave posted on Hackint0sh.com about the Lyrics application, a Japanese developed app that searches for lyrics to songs playing on the iPhone/Touch in real time. If it finds lyrics it displays them in real time, and saves them to a local library on the device. The application current pulls from three sites: KashiGet, Utamap, and Sing365.com. I’m not sure how difficult it is to expand the search to more sites, but hopefully the list will grow.
The application also has the ability to tie into a Mac Desktop Dashboard widget, but I haven’t investigated that functionality at all. I’m happy with using the application over-the-air on my iPhone. Check out the Google Code Project Page and the Hackint0sh thread for more information and installation instructions (some terminal commands need to be run before the application will run).
Published on November 29, 2007
I was alerted about MobileScrobbler in a Twitter post by Wayne Sutton tonight. Ever since the day I got my iPhone, I felt like the always-on data connection could be put to some great music logging use. I’ve been using Last.fm to track my music listening habits for almost three years now, but whenever I leave the house my music goes unmonitored. I thought, could someone write an application to monitor music played on the iPhone and then report it to Last.fm with Edge or Wifi?
This is exactly what Sam Steele has done with MobileScrobbler. In my initial testing (just a few songs so far) the application reports songs instantly over both Wifi and Edge. The app will even work great for Touch users, as it currently stores 250 songs in the submission queue, so your play counts will be updated whenever you get to an open Wifi connection.
I don’t know if Last.fm tracking software exists for other media-centric phones, PalmOS, Windows Mobile, or Symbian systems. If not, I hope MobileScrobbler encourages the development of some. I love the fact that now my Last.fm profile is going to be so much more representational of what I’m listening to while away from home. Unfortunately, though, it’s another reason to leave my 60gig iPod at home and instead carry an 8gig sub-set of my music library. Audioscrobbler has the ability to log music listened to on your iPod using ‘Recently Played’, but it never works for me… must be something about how I mix computer listening and iPod listening time before syncing.
Published on November 28, 2007
AFPd has been added to the main installer.app repository from what I can tell. AFPd lets you connect to your device through the AFP file sharing protocol, meaning it will show up in your “Shared” places in Finder on a Mac. You “Connect As” the root account, so if you’re running firmware 1.1.1 and you haven’t changed it already, your password is alpine. I have only used this on the iPhone, but I’m assuming that it will work just the same on the Touch.
There was an implementation of this available as a manual install, but it seemed to require quite a bit of work to get things functional. This newly distributed version also gives you a GUI for configuring a few settings, such as whether the AFP sharing is active, and what the name of your device will show up as to other computers.
Using AFP doesn’t give you much more functionality than SSH+SFTP, but it makes it ridiculously easy to connect and move files around, since you can just use Finder. This also means you can connect with other people’s computers without installing any software, and you don’t have to worry about what your IP address actually is on your device, as long as you’re on the same local network as the computer you’re trying to connect from.
Published on October 17, 2007
This stuff moves fast… just yesterday I was talking about speculation that Apple would make a move to enable native third-party application development. I also feel like it’s bound to happen, and Apple would be killing the platform of the iPhone/Touch if it didn’t happen.
On Apple’s “Hot News” page, Steve Jobs has posted a note (a fantastic note) explaining that Apple developers are working on an official SDK (Software Development Kit) that they expect to have ready around February 2008. This SDK will apply to both the iPhone and the Touch. Right now, they plan to take an approach that mimic’s a move recently made by Nokia, to require applications to carry a digital authorization signature saying that they have come from a trusted developer. This is going to keep a lot of small developers off of the platform, which is a shame, but it will increase security and quality of the applications distributed. I’m sure the authorization can be hacked eventually as well. I see a two-level development community. One level of official developers like EA and Goolge creating sanctioned applications, and then the hacker community like we have now, struggling to crack every firmware update to allow unauthorized code to run. Should be fun!
I’m thrilled, as I know everyone else is. I can’t wait to buy the apps I used to use on the Palm and Windows Mobile.
The entire message from Steve Jobs is posted below:
Continue reading ‘Apple Officially Developing iPhone / Touch SDK’
