Bruji News

TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog) has just posted an entry about Pocketpedia. They already knew our users love the Pedias and now they have discovered Pocketpedia and kindly linked to it on the App Store. They mention the interesting possibility of scanning barcodes on the iPhone instead of typing in the number for a search. We are looking into that possibility. We hope to be able to translate our video open source barcode scanning code for use with stills on the iPhone. In fact so are a few other developers who have contacted us about using our code on the iPhone. The iPhone SDK is a not even a year old and we are already seeing exciting applications on the App Store. Once the development community is allowed to grow I think we will begin to see even more exciting apps on the iPhone.

We sent Pocketpedia 1.1 to the App Store a few days ago, trying to time it with our 4.3.1 release of the Pedias. Today it’s been approved for release so check for the update on your iPhone/iPod touch! There are a whole slew of new features in version 1.1, including the most popular requests: internal search and different sorting options. For a complete list of new features and improvements, check out Pocketpedia’s What’s New? page.

There is still a lot to do for version 1.2. For those who sync Pocketpedia from a Mac, it’s a natural extension and a portable version of the Pedias but there are a lot of Windows users now with Pocketpedia. It seems the initial release was strong enough to stand on its own without the desktop programs, something we did not expect given the limitation of not being able to edit items. For those users, Pocketpedia needs to include the ability to edit in order to add personal comments and enter items manually that might not be found online. So that feature along with several others is on the horizon.

Pocketpedia has been an incredible success. In a single month from its July 11th launch to August 11th, it has been downloaded 84,580 times in the US store alone. At the other end is Peru with 12 downloads - not bad for a country where the official iPhone launch happened after August 11th.

A lot of users wrote about a missing feature - not being able to delete. It’s not that 1.0 did not have this feature (swiping your finger across an item presents a delete button) but this gesture is not intuitive yet for iPhone users. Since the iPhone OS allows new ways to interact with applications, we have a dream of physically interacting with the screen. Why have a delete button when you can simply strike an item off your list? But from the feedback for 1.0 we learned that we need to provide a regular button too. Just as Mac OS X applications have 4 ways of doing something (a menu bar, a contextual menu, a button and a shortcut key) the iPhone should have two – a gesture and a button.
Still, we haven’t given up hope on our dream: 1.1 has no “select random entry” button but shaking your iPhone will do the trick.

Dan at RowdyPixel.com has created a plug-in for TV Rage for those with a lot of TV season episodes. The plug-in has been crafted in order to download information specific to each single episode. In fact you have to include the season and episode number as part of the search to be able to determine the exact episode. “Burn Notice 02×01″ would download information for season two, episode one of Burn Notice. This is incredible useful for those keeping linked video files for each episode inside DVDpedia.

It’s not just a simple search plug-in, it also includes a level of flexibility unprecedented in any other plug-in. Under the plug-in menu you will find the “TVRage Options…” command that will let you change a number of settings on how to store the information, including the order of title-season-episode information. Head on over to rowdypixel.com to download and install the plug-in as well as to learn more about it. Please post any feedback in our forum and do not hesitate to donate to rowdypixel.com if you find the plug-in useful.

Mathieu just sent us version 2.0 of the Front Row plug-in. You can download the new version here from our Extras page. Make sure you read the instructions on that page on how to install the plug-in on your AppleTV. Yes, you read that right, AppleTV support is now included, along with a collection view. Great update all around!
In fact, if you’re using the Front Row plug-in and find it useful, head on over to the para9 site and click on the donation button for some good karma and a happy Mathieu. (We just sent some money his way as a thank you for the continued updates.)

Any comments, suggestions and feedback about the plug-in, please post them in this thread in the Bruji Forum.

Maybe some of you saw the ’secret feature’ release note included in the last version update of the Pedias (4.3). Today we can finally reveal what we’ve been working on feverishly for the past two months: Pocketpedia.

Pocketpedia lets you keep your media library right where you need it when you’re out and about: in your pocket. Sync your data over your wireless network from the Pedias to your iPhone and iPod touch so you always know what you wanted to buy, what you already have or who borrowed what. Pocketpedia also gives you access to all the Amazon sites to read reviews about products and do price comparisons.

You don’t even need to own the Pedias to use Pocketpedia because you can create collections right on your iPhone and iPod touch. Pocketpedia is free so download it right now and tell all your friends about it too, both Mac and PC owners. Pocketpedia is for everyone!

The App Store is just as new for us as it is for you (today is the first day we’re seeing Pocketpedia live) and we have to admit that we were a bit worried about this set up at first. Apple is the gatekeeper that can make or break an app now. When our first submission of Pocketpedia was rejected - without further commentary - we thought it had to do with our icon since it doesn’t follow the conventional design with a square background but instead has a transparent top. But it turned out to be just a little bug in the code and once that was fixed, Pocketpedia was ready to go ‘on sale’.

Speaking of the transparency on our icon, unfortunately the App Store adds the default shine, even though the documentation promised they would respect the shine parameter (a key inside the application info file called UIPrerenderedIcon that asks for the shine not to be applied). Hopefully it’s just a launch kink and we won’t have to update the icon to fit in with the app store but rest assured: it looks stylish on your iPhone.

Pocketpedia is one of 134 free apps now available on the App Store. We are excited to be in so early in the launch with only 551 other applications. Of which interestingly enough 43 are public domain books (if the trend continues they will need their own category), each one released in its own individual application in order to charge per book as opposed to BookZ Text Reader which downloads books from the internet without having to re-purchase each one. Sadly I am unable to buy the latter as I have a strict rule about names that include a Z at the end of their names, just like the myriad animal games: Dolphinz, Tigerz, Horsez and friendz. Not withstanding the strangely named applications this is just the beginning for the App Store as well as for Pocketpedia, so send us your feedback for the next update and let us know what you think! 

We are lucky to have a number of talented and passionate users who expand on our programs. Mathieu Guindon has dived into the internals of Front Row and come out with a DVDpedia plug-in for Front Row. DVDpedia has its own internal full screen interface but for those preferring to stay inside Front Row this plug-in is not only good looking but adds some features, such as browsing movies by actor. The browsing is fun and launching a linked movie is seamless. As with most things, it’s better seen and experienced, so check out the video and download the plug-in.

This is a solid 1.0 release that is almost perfect for my use. I only wish it had a category for browsing the movies via my collections in DVDpedia. We started a forum thread if you have any other feedback.

We are pleased to add Front Row to the long list of Apple technologies that DVDpedia integrates with; thank you Mathieu!

Video might have killed the radio star but that doesn’t mean radio is gone. At College Radio you can find and listen to college radio stations from all around the US, find out about new music and get updated on tech info as well. And since the folks at College Radio are Mac users, they’re using CDpedia to keep their CD collection organized, naturally. 

If you’re using DVDpedia to launch your movies then Washable Dry Ink has the post for you - how to launch VLC Full Screen with no windows/controller.

Washable Dry Ink is a blog about (mostly) building a home theater around Leopard. And of course, they use DVDpedia as part of their set up. If this is up your alley, make sure you take a look at our HT Guys post as well.

All gamers looking for cheap deals (and really, who isn’t?) - the site you’re looking for is Cheap Ass Gamer. CheapyD and his crew host some great forums for sharing deals, trading games and talking about gaming (especially for those of you feeling nostalgic for the games of yore). Wouldn’t you know it, they’re also fans of Gamepedia! So if you’re into gaming and stretching your dollar a bit further for MORE games, check out their site.

The newest version of the Pedias includes a Cover Flow view. Lucky for us, Apple’s Core Animation framework is excellent and so intuitive that it made Cover Flow possible. Apple even provides a sample application from which we copied our implementation; saving us lots of time. Not only does it provide the Core Animation code but also threading to load only the covers that are needed in the background thus keeping the Pedias responsive and light.

It’s not until I started programming with Core Animation that I realized how convenient it truly is. It takes care of everything no matter what happens in between. For example if a user clicks the forward arrow and then the back arrow, core animation reverses the animation without a stutter. It lets me take advantage of the graphic card in your computer without having to learn OpenGL; which is quite complex.

We are really excited how movies, books, games and CDs fade, fall in, pop, slide, scroll and twist in our new Cover Flow view and all without much code. If you are a Cocoa programmer, dive into Core Animation; if you are a Pedia user take our new version out for a spin. Either way, head on over to our videos page for a quick glimpse of the new Cover Flow view.