Archive for June, 2014

New Users Online Library

Wednesday, June 25th, 2014

We here at Bruji are always looking for ways to make our user’s lives easier, it’s what we do. So we’re very happy to announce the new User’s Online Library feature.

What is this, you might ask?

It’s a seamless way to view and share you pedia libraries with anyone in the world without any extra effort on your part.

We’ll give you a unique link to our doghouse website and your pedia libraries will be displayed there automatically, like magic.

Sound awesome, where do I sign up?

There is no sign up form or anything dreary like that. All you need to do is access your unique link for any web browser and that’s it.

Libraries are private by default, only the original user can view them. If you want your library to be public you have to explicitly make it so.

You will need the latest beta of the pedias.

The only thing you have to do to send the initial sync to our servers is open the Pedia Doghouse -> Settings window, check the box that says Sync my Library to Doghouse and click Log in. You need to do this only once, even if you’re logged in, it tells the pedia to send your library to our servers. From then on, the Pedia knows to keep your library up to date in Doghouse.

Instructions for everything can be found here.

How much does it cost?

Nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

You’re welcome.

Parting thoughts

This is version 0.9 (beta) of this feature so we very much welcome your feedback on it. Please use the Forum instead of email to make it easier for everyone to follow along.

New DiscoGS Authentication Requirement

Monday, June 23rd, 2014

Discogs
Discogs will start requiring authentication for searches starting August 15th. Unlike the previous image download authentication requirement that was implemented without announcement, this change has been announced via email to developers. This gave us plenty of time to work the needed changes into the upcoming releases. Especially important since the review time on the Mac App Store slows down immediate fixes. The latest CDpedia beta already has the new code in place for authentication.

The Discogs API already implemented a technology called OAuth for user authentication to private data such as collections and want list access. Although this is the wrong technology for the general search API, because it requires too much user interaction, it’s easier to integrate for developers. Taking this in mind it seems the Discogs developers have been generous enough to leave the search API without any limits on a per account basis, allowing for a single account sign on and the API to continue to operate without friction. So the new plugin is authenticating automatically with a CDpedia Discogs account and will continue to be as ease to use.

Should you for any reason want to authenticate with your own account, this can be done in the Preferences -> Sites by double clicking the gear button to the right of Discogs in the list of sites. It will expand the details view to full screen and load the Discogs site. Here you need to login, if not already logged in, and then approve CDpedia for access. From then on your own generated tokens for CDpedia will be used to authenticate into Discogs.

Also integrated into the update is a small change to beef up the genres. The styles information now goes into genre field if there is no custom field named “Styles”.

For big fans of Discogs, do take the CDpedia beta for a spin and if you find any issues with the new authentication please me us know.

Bruji on Facebook

Tuesday, June 17th, 2014

We don’t do much advertising here at Bruji. Every once in a while we run a Google AdWords campaign or sponsor a blog like Daring Fireball. Our main advertising “campaign” has always been word of mouth from our users but nowadays word of mouth doesn’t necessarily mean that people talk to each other by the water cooler, instead they exchange links on Twitter and Facebook.

We’ve been on Twitter for a while (you’re following us, right?!) but for some reason we never made it onto Facebook. That has finally changed and we’re ready for friending, liking and posting lots of cat videos and baby pictures. (We don’t have any cats here at Bruji, so we’ll post dog pictures instead.) Here is our new Facebook page now you can tell your friends you ‘like’ us.

We’re still figuring out how it all works, including Facebook Ads, but hopefully this new step will help us reach even more Mac users and spread the Pedia love. Thanks for your help and support!

Family Sharing

Friday, June 6th, 2014

Along with all the other new goodies that Apple recently announced at WWDC, they also included family sharing which lets members of a family easily share photos, calendars and purchased apps from the App Store and iTunes Store through the cloud.

This is great news for the Pedia programs because our regular serial numbers (the ones you get when you purchase the programs from us directly as opposed to the Mac App Store) are already family licenses which allow everyone in the same household to use the same serial number. Now we can offer that same freedom to our customers on the Mac App Store and iTunes as well.

Apple has also announced that they will bring bundle sales into the App Store and iTunes Store as well so hopefully we’ll be able to offer that our customers soon too.

We’re still playing around with all the other new features Apple has revealed but once we get to know them and see what fits well with our programs we will work on integrating more of them into the Pedias.