Bruji News

The search window is one of the features that has received a major make over with this new version, both in form and function. Let’s start by talking about the new UI a bit.

The biggest change for most users will probably be the way the search sites are accessed now. Instead of a drop-down menu at the bottom of the window, the search options are now integrated into the search field itself via the little magnifying glass. Click on it and you’ll be presented with the list of search sites.

From the screen shot you’ll also notice there are two new features connected to the search options: the option for recent searches (so you don’t have to retype titles or keywords) and the fact that only those sites you select in the Preferences/Sites show up in your list now so you can turn off any sites you’re not interested in seeing.
Previously, unchecked sites in the Preferences/Sites would not be included in the ‘Cascade’ search – which is now called ‘All’ – but they would still appear in the search site list.

The other big change is that the limiter menus at the bottom – Limit to, etc. – only show up when they are actually applicable now. So you always know what your search options are for a specific site. (This is also why when you choose the ‘All’ search no limiters appear since every site has different options. We might try and make the programs smarter about that in the future so that if one or more menu options match for the selected sites, they will appear for the ‘All’ search.)

The number of search sites has gone up considerably with this version. Each program now has access to at least 8 international search sites. This includes the Pedias’ own new database, Doghouse (we will write a separate and more in-depth blog post about that soon) as well as great open databases: Wikipedia and Freebase. There are also new program-specific sites: MusicBrainz and Discogs for CDpedia, BoardGameGeek for Gamepedia, OpenLibrary for Bookpedia, TMDb and the TVDB for DVDpedia. (And of course Amazon is still an option as well. Learn more about that in this post .)

Some of these new sites offer special search options geared towards their strength. We will dive into details for each site in subsequent posts, but for example MusicBrainz in CDpedia offers a great search by album title but no search by artist yet; we hope to include that in the future. OpenLibrary in Bookpedia lets you search using ISBNs (as the limiter says) but secretly if you enter the exact title of a book, including correct capitalization and punctuation, it can also perform a title search. Freebase has a very broad range of information for all media and offers search limiters by title as well as director/actor and you can distinguish between searching movies or TV shows.

Searching for TV episode information on TVRage or TVDB, you can open an ‘add manual’ window (Command-Shift-F), enter information into the Series, Season and Episode fields and use the window’s gear button to get a specific episode from either one of those sites. Alternatively you can also search for TV episodes by entering the series followed by the season and episode into the search field, like this:

This search will return: "Dexter" Season 2, Episode 3

Spend some time with these new sites to get to know their strengths and match which ones work best for you and your collection. Many of these new sites work better with keyword searches than UPCs so give that a try as well.

A few users have reported trouble with the new Amazon sign up process. It’s explained in the Help files but maybe we didn’t include enough details. While we remedy that, here’s an illustrated walk-through for getting your Access and Secret key as well as an Associate ID. (For a larger version of each image below, click on it.)

Start by going to the AWS (Amazon Web Services) website.

If you already have an Amazon account (the email and password you use to purchase goods on Amazon), use that same account to sign in here. If you don’t have an Amazon account yet, sign up for one by selecting the ‘I’m a new user’ option. You’ll be taken to another page where you have to enter a few personal details and choose a password.

The next page you’ll see should be the AWS homepage. (If you land on a payment page instead, please take a look at this section before proceeding.)

Scrolling down the page a little, you’ll see an area called “Access Credentials”, about half-way down the page. That is where you get your Access key and Secret key. The Access Key is listed under the ‘Access Key ID’ header. To see your Secret Key, click on the ‘Show’ link.

Now armed with your two keys, open the Amazon Settings window in your Pedia program (click on the Amazon Settings button in the Preferences/Sites). Copy paste the two keys into the appropriate fields of the Amazon Settings window like this:

For the third field, the Associate Tag, either follow the steps below to sign up for your own associate ID or use the default Bruji one provided by the program when you leave the field blank.

(Whenever you click on a link in the Pedias that takes you back to Amazon it has that associate ID attached to it. The commission for any sales generated during that ‘session’ on the Amazon website gets paid to the ID attached. This can happen through direct links in the program or if you export your database to the web and someone clicks on your link to Amazon.)

To sign up for your own free associate account, open the Amazon Affiliate Program website, which looks like this:

Click on the ‘Join now for free’ button on the right hand side to create an associate account. Sign up with an email address and password and you’ll be taken to the next page where you enter payment information so Amazon can send you your commission.

On the next page, Amazon will ask a few questions about your website since this service is mainly used by people advertising Amazon links on their site. If you don’t have a personal website a Twitter account will do too.

Enter the information as needed and press the ‘Finish’ button. On the next page you’ll be presented with your Associate ID and if you choose you may also enter your payment method at that point (how Amazon should pay you the commission).

Now return to your Pedia program and copy paste that Associate ID into the Amazon Settings window of the Preferences, click the Sign Up button and the Amazon sites will appear in your search sites of the Preferences for you to arrange and turn on or off as you like.

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AWS provides many different services, including the free search that the Pedias let you access. Some other AWS services are paid. The AWS search feature is 100% FREE, regardless of how many searches a day you do, but since it is part of the greater AWS feature, Amazon may ask for your credit card information. In that case you will see the following page asking for credit card information during the sign up process:

The response to the new version 5 has been incredible awesome. We are thrilled that users are sharing our excitement and showing it in the Mac App Store to boot. Three of our apps have taken 1, 2, and 4 top paid app spot under reference category:

For the all encompassing global category we are at 64 (DVDpedia) and 78 (Bookpedia). There is no competing with Angry Birds, not even on the Mac. The screenshot below is 5 minutes old and we are still gaining

Some users noticed that the About Box from the Mac App Store version number is 4.9.3, just a display glitch (It’s actually the 5.0 you have) and will be fixed in version 5.0.1 that we are preparing right now with a few tiny fixes.

Don’t let me distract you though. Continue your shopping spree, let’s see if we can we break the top 50 paid apps!

With version 5.0 of the Pedias several more fields have been turned into multi value fields. These are values displayed by a surrounding blue bubble. It makes it clear what is a distinct value and allows the program to leverage this information, an example is providing a better statistics count.

The character that creates a separation between items is the comma. In most cases the comma fits naturally, such as when it separates names (Joel Coen, Ethan Coen) or small word groups as in genres and subjects (Drama, Thriller). The artist field in CDpedia is one of the few fields that has a few edge cases where a comma should be part of the group. Such as the band name “Crosby‚ Stills & Nash”. The easiest solution is to leave out the comma when entering the band name. But for those looking for accuracy there is an alternative to the comma, called the single low quotation mark – ‚ – that is identical to a comma and will not trigger a separation.

Sadly, there is no special shortcut on the Mac that will enter the single low quotation mark. You must open the character palette and double click the character to insert it. The character palette can be found in the main edit menu, under “Special Characters…”.

In the search field of the character palette type “Single Low” to reveal the character that can stand in for the comma. Double click the character displayed in the middle panel to have it inserted into your currently edited artist field.

Should you have this page open you can’t copy and paste the character as there is, what we consider to be, a bug in the token field editor (the name Apple gives the blue bubbles) where all paste commands form a new distinct bubble, regardless if a user is currently editing a bubble and has an insertion point visible.

After adding an artist with a comma the autofill will avoid the need to visit the special character palette when entering the same band name. If submitting entries to Doghouse please use the single low quotation for the few times that a comma is really needed and not to replace a common use of comma such as “Rolling Stones, The”, as this is not the format that the artist is meant to be when contributing to Doghouse. Should you come across any cut up artist in Doghouse, let us know or become a moderator and give them the single low quotation treatment.

It’s really happening – version 5 is out! This update has been in the making for over a year and there are lots and lots of release notes to peruse for your pleasure: DVDpedia, Bookpedia, CDpedia and Gamepedia.

If you want to read about some of the highlights first, check them out on our Version 5 page.

Version 5 is a free update for all users who purchased the programs after October 1, 2010. All other users are eligible for an update discount. To receive that, download the new version and try it out. When you’re ready to purchase the update, go into the program menu and select the “Register” command. In the window that appears, click on the ‘Upgrade’ button. That’ll take you to our store with your cart pre-filled and the update coupon applied. (This will also fill in your email address from our system automatically. If you don’t have access to that email address anymore, please let us know so we can update our database before you proceed.)
Update prices are as follows:

• US$12 for one program
• US$24 for two programs
• US$29 for three programs
• US$36 for the complete suite

If you’ve been thinking about switching to the Mac App Store then this is the perfect time to do it. All four programs are going to be on offer for just US$12.99 at the MAS for one week: DVDpedia, Bookpedia, CDpedia and Gamepedia.

(Celebratory launch prices are also going to be available in the regular Bruji store for all of this week so if you have a friend who’s interested in the Pedias, share the good news!)

We’ve just released a new version of the Pedias, 4.6.8. It’s mostly for Lion-related bug fixes but if you’re running DVDpedia then you will also want this for the fixed IMDb search plug-in. There have been a few changes on their site lately and fields such as Duration and Rating weren’t being imported along with the other data.
Use the programs’ “Check for Update” command found under the program menu to download the latest version.

App Store users – 4.6.8 has been submitted and should be released soon. Thanks for your patience!

Update 2/9/11: The App Store updates have been reviewed and released.

In case you’re wondering how the Pedias will fare when Lion comes roaring into the Apple world, they are all 100% ready. We’ve been testing the latest version of the programs on the latest Lion developer release and everything is running smoothly.

We have yet to work out how we’re going to tackle Lion-specific features such as the new Full Screen View and how it’ll work with the already existing Full Screen View in the Pedias but we’re very excited about all the new possibilities. Now all we need is 10.7 released!

Update: Just fixed two small bugs related to Lion compatibility so make sure you download the latest version (4.6.7) for the programs if you’re on Lion.

Version 4.6.5 is just a small update but it fixes some nagging bugs, especially for the RTF text export (which didn’t encode correctly for diacritics and languages with characters not found in ASCII). The search plug-in architecture has also been completely revamped along with fixes to most of the plug-ins for retrieving more data, in particular larger cover images where available.

To get the update just run your current Pedias and use the ‘Check for Updates’ command found under the program name.

For Mac App Store users – the update has been submitted for DVDpedia, Bookpedia and CDpedia and hopefully they’ll be approved soon.

DVDpedia user Chas has written an info view template, with the help of Forum user Jonas, that includes some nifty links to Wikipedia and IMDb.

Just click on the little icons next to a name and the relevant page will open. Of course the possibilities here are endless – icons like these could be used for links to Metacritic, Rotten Tomatoes, Hulu… (Reminds me of the LeoTab info view template which incorporates a trailer and cover image search.)

You can download the template from our Extras page. I hope you enjoy it; thanks Chas!

Our first few weeks on the App Store have gone well and even though there have been some minor confusions both on our part and the users’, all in all it seems to be a good addition to our distribution channels.

The one niggle I have is about demo versions. We can send users from the App Store to our website to download the demo and try out the programs for free but then they have to delete the demo in order to purchase the full version from the App Store. This is not the best user experience, especially if users think that their data will be affected by the deletion of the program (it won’t – the Pedias keep their data separately from the applications for exactly this reason).

Of course the time-lag between submitting an update and getting it approved is also a bit of a stumbling stone because we never know how fast the process will be. With our latest update (4.6.4) now in review, the first one we’ve done since the release of the App Store, that’s not critical because there weren’t any major bug fixes included. But I can understand that it might be frustrating for Mac App Store customers to have to wait for an update when they know that it’s out and available on other channels. We’ll have to see how this plays out in the future.