Kindly they have both agreed to share the plug-in with other DVDpedia owners, so our Italian users can jump right in by downloading the plug-in. We really appreciate Andrea’s work and DVD-store for providing access. This is Andrea’s second plug-in for DVDpedia (his first plug-in, included with DVDpedia, is for Terminal Video).

Since we’ll be a little occupied with non-Bruji things in the coming days, please don’t be upset if we don’t answer your email straight away. We promise to be back to our normal routine shortly.

For a full list of what’s new, check out the release notes: DVDpedia, Bookpedia, CDpedia, Gamepedia. To download version 4.6, use the ‘Check for Updates’ menu command found under the program menus or use these direct download links: DVDpedia, Bookpedia, CDpedia, Gamepedia.

A little more about the open movie database (TMDb): this is a very exciting new project put together by Travis Bell and as the name says, it is a movie database along the lines of the IMDb but even better it is open for users to edit and add to, much like Wikipedia.

Anyone can enter new information, improve listings and thus make it better for everyone. And now DVDpedia can tap into that movie goodness thanks to the included API that makes it easy to access the site and download information.

Travis and others have been working on the API for many months now and with version 2 (just released), it’s become a very powerful search engine indeed. At the moment the search works only on titles but we’re hoping that this will be expanded in the future to include broader search options such as actors and directors and the option to mix keywords.

Enjoy version 4.6!

One of our fellow developers, Chris Karr, decided to improve the situation and spent Christmas building a new recognition engine from the ground up.

His new code is built with the idea of incorporating my old version as well as new solutions in a structure that allows the insertion of different scanners for the same image and then pick from the best results. Chris is using OpenCV, an extensive image processing library, to handle his video and prepare the frames for scanning. I’ve been trying to improve on his results but have had little success in bettering his already impressive work using OpenCV to which I am not accustomed.

My original scanner works directly by accessing the incoming QuickTime buffer and I am no expert on video but working with QuickTime I’ve come to learn its ways as well as the UYVY native format. So I decided to blend the new and the old. I did this by taking some structure ideas from Chris (in order to clean up my code that’s looking a bit messy due to all the optimizations) as well as the new excellent barcode scanning library called ZBar that Chris is using as one of the scanners and keeping my Quicktime capture. With these changes I was able to improve the current version.

The result of all this mixing is for the moment a new impressive scanning engine for the Pedias. In the long run hopefully we’ll be able to bring all these improvements together with Chris’ version of the framework that is better structured for future improvement and make even further advancements. In the meantime if you’re looking for a scanning engine take a look at Zbar as it even has an iPhone project included in the source (the old barcode scanner code has been very popular with users wishing to port it to the iPhone, this new project will save developers a lot of work).

I want to thank both Chris Karr and Jeff Brown, the creator ZBar, for their work in building great tools for the Cocoa community.
Go ahead  and play with the latest Pedias and let us know if the iSight’s even more magical than before (now scans upside down codes as well).

As the titles imply, one design is dark (sleek greys and black) while the other one integrates with the light and crisp Safari theme (cool blues and grey).

Both templates include a large number of fields in a neat collapsed form so as not to take up valuable real estate on your screen. Cover images get a shiny jewel-case look that works especially well with the Dark template, in my humble opinion.

These versions on our Extras page are the ‘midi’ versions of the template which include most but not all fields. If you want them all or just the basics, head over to Burkhard’s website to download the ‘mini’ and ‘maxi’ versions as well. (They’re all included in the download on his site.) He’s also got loads of screenshots of the templates there, in their various sizes.

The game play is smooth and intuitive. Just click on the shape in time with the music. Sometimes it seems to miss a few taps and drags but to be fair this is more likely my bad rhythm. In the beginner levels muBlip uses chill tracks to teach the player to relax and follow the music. It was not until the medium levels that I ran into trouble. Here the game gets more visually oriented and the controls jump around, a bit like “Simon Says” on steroids. I enjoyed the higher levels more, where the layout stays the same and new notes are added. Levels like “Drummer Boy” are great fun as it gives you time to familiarize yourself with the current blip layout as well as the song rhythm.

I am not thrilled about the title’s first letter lowercase and subsequent camel–case. But in this day and age where all plural game names end with Z (I’m looking at you “Tigerz” and “Horsez”), creative grammar is a marketing must; after all we are already playing it on a device that starts with the one letter your English teacher fought to have always capitalized.

The game comes with few levels (11), including the tutorials, but for $1.99 it’s a fair offering. The game also scores you on accuracy, giving the levels a big replay value as you try to improve your score. This being the first release, I am looking forward to more levels as well as variety in music styles. I would love to have some blues and jazz rhythms. There is also a hardcore mode but so far I am having too much fun with the causal mode to dare venture into hardcore.

Check out the prerequisite YouTube video before you head on over to the App Store to start tapping.

April, a passionate Pedia user and HTML wizard has completed her new DVDpedia export template. It’s based on the Gamepedia template so it has al the same great features, including reordering and live searching. If you are into HTML yourself the template code is worth a look at. It’s well commented and has some handy open source Javascript classes that could be used in your own projects. Without further delay the important information is that you can download both of them from our extras page and if you have any feedback, leave her a post on this forum thread.

Even more exciting is that their great indie spotlight idea is not limited to the physical expo. They have also orchestrated a virtual indie spotlight this year. For the next three days (February 11-13) developers are providing their wares at a 20% discount. So if you have been eyeing a Pedia but where hesitant about spending $18 dollars be sure to take advantage of this opportunity and snag one at the low price of $14.40. The Macworld 20% coupon is MACWORLD2010, but be sure to visit the indie developer spotlight list for other great value software.

1 – HTML export

Use one of the iPhone optimized templates such as “iPhone” or “iPhone Grouped” from the HTML export feature to export your collection from the Pedias. Upload the export to a server and access your collection through Safari on the iPhone and iPod Touch.

These iPhone export templates have an index, for quick searches, and are optimized for the smaller screen. You can find another iPhone-optimized export template on our Extras page for download as well or if you have some HTML experience, write your own. Take a look at the Help file under ‘Export > Customizing HTML templates’ for more information.

2 – PDF sync

Use the Print or export feature in the Pedias and then create a PDF of that print or export.
For the Print feature, press the ‘Print’ button on the first dialogue and then press ‘PDF’ on the second window. Save the preview as PDF.
For the Export feature, export the collection and when the preview opens in your preferred browser, choose ‘Print’ and save as PDF as described above.
Then use a free program such as Evernote to sync the PDF over to your iPhone.

SmallCovers print template, in PDF format viewed in Evernote on the iPhone

ListThick print template, in PDF format viewed in Evernote on the iPhone

Of course, if all you want is a list of your titles as a quick reference then a simple text export from the Pedias will suffice. Just use any free notes app for the iPhone/iPod touch to import the text file and you’ll be good to go.

In order to put Pocketpedia2 back up we would have to block all information from Amazon. Entries would need to appear as “?” or not at all on the iPhone. This would not only cause a terrible confusion but also make Pocketpedia2 useless for most users. Since the Pedias do have a number of data sources we understand that Pocketpedia2 would still work for users who gather their information elsewhere or enter it manually. However, given the popularity of Amazon as a search and the support issues we would encounter with users unaware of the restrictions we have chosen to keep Pocketpedia2 off the App Store until the time when we can produce, without limits, an iPhone app we can be proud of. So for those of you that were able to acquire a copy of Pocketpedia2 during its short life at the App Store, be sure to keep it safe.

As expected, the reasoning behind the exclusion could not be discussed. The likelihood of a change in the terms that would allow Pocketpedia2 to exist could also not be discussed.

Tomorrow is an exciting day for Apple followers and likely all computer enthusiast. We have no doubt that tomorrow’s announcement will also be classified as a mobile device by Amazon. The devices of the future are being built by Apple and Amazon doesn’t want to be the provider of data for those devices. All we’re lacking now is an open, rich and international data service.