Compiling a Network app (Android) out now...!

(Sorry - but beforehand I'd like to warn you that this post might be - in the beginning - running somewhat down a runway before getting to the point and start taking off, but there is some explanation needed ...)

Although it's been over 5 years since it's start, and over three years ago since the latest installment, the "Compiling a Network"-series ten sets are still seeing more than a fair number of downloads happening out there on the web (written in all modesty, mind)!

Some of the conceptual keywords behind this series were (and still are) "availability" and "accessibility", thus resulting in a promo mix series that not only offered it's listeners all of the sets to be downloaded either in lossless- or lossy-formats, but go even further in meeting the listeners "on their terms" by making these sets available "where the users are at"!
Meaning not only having the sets being available at all of the (appropriate) major services (i.e.: archive.org, Soundcloud, Mixcloud, Official.fm, SonicSquirrel, last.fm etc.) as direct downloads or streams, but also by having the sets readily available for the listeners via podcasts (iTMS, PodcastAlley, podcastblaster, PodNova etc.), RSS-feeds and various torrent-sharing services, too!

As an end-result, the combined number of downloads the series' ten sets have been subject to, have a while ago exceeded more than one million downloads - and are still downloaded by the scores on a daily basis...(again - written in all modesty, mind)!

Since this podsafe, promo mix series went online, the internet-landscape has undeniably changed, and apparently within the next (now) three years "...more users will connect to the internet over mobile devices than desktops pc" (sic.).

Acknowledging the fact that the listeners out there (probably) are turning more and more "mobile" and since I still want the "Compiling a Network"-series to be "available" and "accessible", on the users' own terms and where they might (also) to be at, I've decided to create and now (finally) release the "Compiling a Network App ver. 1.0 BETA"-app ("Android-only" for now - due to hardware-reasons at my end)!

The free "Compiling a Network"-app - containing all of the series' ten sets - can now be downloaded from here: http://compilinganetwork.freehostia.com/app/

If this app turns out to be a success AND/OR there is a massive demand for an iOS-equivalent of this app, I'll see what I can do to get a iPhone-version of this app put together, as soon as it's technically possible...!

On an end-note, I'd like to take the opportunity to thank Carina M. Boese, Bill Causer, Enda Rochford and last but not least Hasan H. Samanci for helping out with the alpha-, beta- and UX-testing of this app - and for going beyond the call of duty, in general...!

Thanks for reading this...
d.

We are now 5 - Thank you! (The Compiling a Network promo mix series)

And with a weeks delay ("Boooooo...!"), the "Compiling a Network" promo mix series has just celebrated it's 5-year anniversary of being online!

YAY....!

Conceived as being a pod-safe promo mix series with the submitting artists' and (net-) labels' permission and blessing to use the tracks involved - and with a budget of 0 (insert whatever currency) plus little - or no - support from the established blogs and sites out there (except from some of the submitting artists and labels) - the ten sets of this series have currently racked up way over 1 million downloads combined, and to this day all of the sets from this series are still being downloaded on a daily-basis!

TBH, this series as exceeded my wildest hopes and expectations regarding the interest shown - as for numbers of downloads, too; furthermore, I'm still grateful for the continuing interest there is out there for this series!

And although this series hasn't seen much love from my side - and has virtually been dormant for the past three years (due to various reasons) - this just might soon change...

But in the meantime, if you haven't checked out any of the sets from this series, then either visit the official "Compiling a Network"-site here: http://compilinganetwork.blogspot.com/

...or just subscribe to this mix series by one of the following ways:

Podcast | iTunes Music Store

Podcast | "On-Click"-subscription

Podcast | Google Reader

Podcast | RSS 2.0 XML-feed

Once again, I'd like to thank all of the contributing artists and net-labels for their initial and continuing support - and to all of you, whom have taken the interest and time to download and check out theses sets during the past five years!

Thanks for reading this...!
d.

Atomic Jam: 01-28-12 (Wish that I could have been there...!)

Obviously, I sometimes get a little bit all burned up 'bout I can't go to gigs such as the closing Atomic Jam at the Q Club - but thank God for be-at.tv!
So to share some of the magic from this event - here's some of the sets:

Enjoy - and thanks for reading & viewing this...
d.

"Right on the money..." (regarding Simon Cowell's DJ X-Factor)

No, I haven't been showing this blog a lot of love during the first month of the new year,
but this can be attributed to "Life and work got in the way"!

That being said/written, last Wednesday Music Week posted a story that Simon Cowell
might start a new global X-Factor show focusing on finding DJ-talent!

Needless to say, this has more or less stirred up shit-storm in certain circles and even in my own small Facebook-network there's been a lot of (heated) thread-postings regarding this - even from your's truly!

Now it could be tempting for me to get up on a soap-box and throw a rant or two about
$imon Cowe££'s new X-Factor concept from this blog, but instead I'd rather post this link to http://bedmodisco.com, where SELL BY DAVE, has posted an excellent piece regarding
$imon Cowe££'s new, pending X-Factor concept, which you can read here:

http://bedmodisco.com/2012/01/26/sell-by-daves-rant-cowell-you-plonker/

For the record, I wholeheartedly agree with what SELL BY DAVE's written in his piece -
and this is all that I'll be posting about $imon Cowe££'s new - albeit conceptually still-born - X-Factor concept on this blog.

Thanks for reading this...
d.

Detroit Techno - The Creation of Techno Music (HighTechSoul)

Well, here's one historical perspective of the story...



Thanks for reading - and viewing - this...
d.

P.S. Thanks goes to a certain Mr. Massey for initially finding and sharing this one...

More already soon to come...

Hoping sincerely that all of you visitors and readers have had a really merry X-mas
and a Happy New Year, I've just returned back from my own holidays and now back at work!

(Picture taken from: http://www.kraftfuttermischwerk.de/blogg/?p=32596)

But rest assured - there's already lined a lot of geeky stuff and musical-mayhem
coming to this blog very, very soon - so stay tuned...

Thanks for reading this...
d.

Merry Christmas and a happy New Year to all of you...!

I'd like to take the opportunity to wish all of you visitors and readers of this blog a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!
Thanks for reading this...

d.

P.S. Once again, Merry Christmas and a happy New Year to all of you - see you all in 2012...!

Hero still going strong: Gary Numan's mix for The Quietus...

This might be old news, but it has first come to my attention that one of my still-active music heroes since my teens has just recently made a set (along with Ade Fenton) for The Quietus!

And when it's as good and eclectic as this (IMHO), then I'd gladly like to give it some blog-acreage!

Thanks for reading (and listening to) this...

d.

Falling forward (in HTML5) with html5media...

After writing my previous blog-post regarding the Yahoo! Web Player, I thought that I could just as well follow up on the aforementioned post by mentioning another equally easy-to-implement solution by Dave Hall, called html5media.

As you probably already know, I've previously posted about html5-based fallback solutions for Soundcloud's, Mixcloud's and Google's Flash-based embedded players - i.e.: if the flash-plugin isn't supported by the browser (read: "i-Whatevers and other mobile devices"), the html5 audio-tag would (sort of speak) step in instead.  
html5media does actually the opposite, and will normally only use a Flash-based fallback, if and when a browser cannot use a native, HTML5-based player (a.k.a.: a fallforward solution).

But why is Dave Hall's htm5media-solution intereseting then?

Well apart from it's easy to implement (which will revealed shortly), unfortunately there are still a number of older browsers being still used out there (such as IE7 and IE8), which don't support html5 video- and audio-tags!
And just to make things even more tricky, virtually all of the (more) modern browsers don't support a consistent set of audio and video-codecs, thus making embedding audio and/or video somewhat difficult, if one whats things to work for any user that graces one's site with a visit.

So if one wants to make html5 video- and audio-tags work in all major browsers, Dave Hall's html5media is solution worth considering, as all it takes is just a single line of code to make HTML5 video and audio tags to work. And if one's browser doesn't either support html5-tags or the used media file's codecs, it'll then revert to a Flash-based player insted!

Getting things to work by using html5media is simply done by adding the following line of code somewhere in the <head> of your document - and preferably just before the closing </head>-tag:

<html>
<head>
<title>My Website</title>

<script src="http://api.html5media.info/1.1.5/html5media.min.js"></script>
</head>
<body> 
-
-
-

...and that's it!

If you're (audio-wise) using mp3's and/or (video-wise) using H-264 encoded mp4's for your website, then you won't experience html5media kick in, if you view your website with IE-9, Safari or Google Chrome; the media-files will be played by these browsers' native, html5-player!

However, if you're using Firefox, IE-7 or -8, or Opera, then you will experience html5media work in full-effect, and play your mp3- and/or mp4-files using a Flash-based player (actually: a Flash-based solution from FlowPlayer)
Firefox-, IE-7 -, IE-8 - or Opera-users can see html5media work by clicking on the screen-shot below:

"O.K., so this all seems pretty cool, but are there any drawbacks or pitfalls in using html5media?", you might ask, and the answer is: "Yeah - sorta..."; just like the Yahoo! Web Player, which I previously posted about, html5media relies on javascript to work!

And again: according to the latest stats from http://riastats.com/, almost 37% of the World's Internet population could be considered as either not having Javascript enabled - or flat out do not have it installed; which in turn means that html5media will NOT work for these users out there!
And again: Something worth keeping in mind, IMHO...)

Otherwise, if you're already using/coding in html5 and do not want to save and upload your media-files in various formats (for example: mpeg AND ogg) to ensure all of your bases are covered regarding having your files played in any of the newer browsers out there - and/or you want all of the IE-7/IE-8-users to hear/see your embedded media-content, then html5media is a viable solution to take into consideration.

On an end-note: yes, I'm well-aware that there is an similar (javascript-based) solution out there by John Dyer, called mediaelement.js, which more or less does the same thing and works equally fine!
"Unfortunately" though, one has to download all - and host yourself - of the necessary files in the mediaelements.js-package to get it to work; a factor which might not appealing for blogspot-users, for example! 
But before anyone gets the notion that I'm poo-poo'ing mediaelements.js in this blog-post (which is NOT the case), I'd like to add that mediaelements.js also boasts of having plugins for Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, jQuery, and BlogEngine.NET, ruby gem, plone, which be of some interest for some of you readers out there that have your own hosting-opportunities and are already using one of these solutions/platforms already!

For the rest of you, try and give html5media a shot...

Thanks for reading this...
d.

Introducing the Yahoo! Web Player - a cool evolution...!

TBH, the topic regarding this blog-post might not be breaking news per-say, and I'm probably (more-likely: "definitely") not the first to mention the following in a blog-post - but for a couple months back (last August, to be exact), the people at Yahoo! have given their Yahoo! Media Player a major overhaul!

Their player has now evolved into the Yahoo! Web Player, and not only can it now also handle playing videos, Yahoo also claims that it's: "The easiest way to add video and audio to your site"...!

First of all, "i-Whatever"- and Android-developers can stop reading this posting now, as this player does NOT work on handheld-units (explaination follows), but otherwise will work on virtually all browsers - that is if certain requirements are met!

First of all, the Yahoo! Web Player needs JavaScript to be installed and enabled to function.
PERIOD!

And be advised that according to the latest stats from http://riastats.com/, almost 37% of the World's Internet population could be considered as either not having Javascript enabled - or flat out do not have it installed! (Something worth keeping in mind, IMHO...)

So in other words, if JavaScript is disabled (or not installed) on a user's browser, the Yahoo! Web Player will not appear (obviously); furthermore, the Yahoo! Web Player currently employs some Flash to work (which explain the lacking "i-Whatever"-support) - thus requiring the users have to have Flash installed for the player to work, too.
However, Yahoo! claim to be working on removing this limitation in a very foreseeable future.

But is it really "The easiest way to add video and audio to your site", as Yahoo! claims? Well, if we're dealing with adding and integrating media to a site or blog with one line of code, then the answer is: "Yes"!

All you have to do is add one line code like this:

<html>
<head>
<title>My Website</title>
</head>
<body>
 .
 .
 .
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://webplayer.yahooapis.com/player.js">

</script>
</body>
</html>

What happens then is when a page loads, the Yahoo! Web Player scans the webpage's contents and adds play buttons next to ‘playable’ items (for example links to mp3-files or links to YouTube videos).

Once clicked, a play button will open an in-page player in the lower left-hand corner that will stream all the detected playable items in one unified playlist - just like it's predecessor, the Yahoo! Media Player (except the Yahoo Web Player now also supports videos, too).

You can try and see it work in full-effect by clicking on the screen-shot below:

As an added "bonus", it can also easily be added to some of the already existing blog-services out there, such as WordPress, Blogspot and Tumblr, too!

There might be some readers out there that might be already asking themselves, if this blog-poster would use the Yahoo! Web Player himself?

And the answer to that would be a "Yes" and "No" - as it "...depends", where I'd use it and if there are any design- and other technical considerations involved!

For the record, I think the Yahoo! Web Player is a vast improvement compared to their previous endeavor, the Yahoo! Media Player, on all accounts; and yes - admitted - it is a v-e-r-y easy affair to implement!
And it works immediately out-of-the-box, too...!

However, I'm personally not too keen on a solution´that relies on a plugin-topology, which statistically isn't supported by up to approx. 37% of the everyday web-users out there (BTW, I am NOT a Javascript-hater); nor does the Yahoo! Web Player work on mobile devices (as of yet)...

And design-wise I'm not too sure about placing things down in the lower left-hand corner of things, neither; although this reservation that I might have got could change, as the Yahoo! Web Player is to evolve, based on user-input and -suggestions!
 
That being said, if one needs an easy to implement, quick-and-dirty media integration solution that works out-of-the-box, than look no further; the Yahoo! Web Player is definitely better than it's predecessor, and should seriously be taking into consideration - regardless of my own minor hangups with (potentially) using it!

Thanks for reading this...

d.