Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Hiatus

Thursday, September 28th, 2023

Dear Pedia Users,

I hope this post finds you all well and thriving. As can easily be noticed, from the last post being from 2019 and presence from forum missing since also 2019, much has changed in my life in the last few years. My time for the Pedias has slowly become more and more limited, to the point where I don’t bene get around to emails but every other week. After much consideration, I have decided to take a hiatus from programming to prioritize family life and spend more quality time with my kids. Striking a balance in life can be challenging, and in introspection, family emerged as a domain calling for my omnipresent devotion for a little while.

During this hiatus, sales of the applications will be halted, it will always be available for all current owners. Ans please be assured that they will continue to be maintained with the limited time I have. Updates will be fewer and centered around maintaining the essential functionality, compatibility, and security, rather than expanding features.

Over the past twenty years, I’ve had the incredible fortune to be a part of the ever-supportive and vibrant Mac community. The journey has been rewarding and immensely satisfying. Interacting with you all, as we passionately worked on crafting the Pedias, has been the highlight of my career and allowed me the freedom to be where I am today. I deeply appreciate all the love, support, and constructive feedback I’ve received over the years and the financial support to make it all happen.

Although sales for Pedia applications are on hold, I still hold an untamed enthusiasm about future possibilities. I hear from older parents, there is a time when kids become teenagers and then you are free again devote more time to loved projects. The promise of future innovation is, after all, a cornerstone of what made me so attracted to programming in the first place. Therefore, when the time is right, I genuinely hope to come back to MacOS and iOS, whether to work on new renditions of the beloved Pedia projects or to introduce something new and exciting.

It’s a transition phase, mostly a ‘catch you on the others side’ than a ‘goodbye.’ Who knows, a few years down the line, we might be diving into another incredible project together! I do have ideas for the Pedias and new apps, just not the time I wish I had.

Until then, I wish each one of you success in your endeavors and happiness in all walks of life. Stay safe and keep being the amazing community you are. I’ll be looking forward to the time when we cross paths again in the future.

Warmest of regards,

Conor (TopDog)

Pocketpedia 3.6

Friday, January 18th, 2019

The new Pocketpedia 3.6 is out with a number of small fixes. The big change is, it looks better for the latest iPhones. On that note, there are still a few more updates to do for the latest iPhones resolutions, but those require to drop support for the old iOS. So this will be the last version supporting iOS 8. The next version will be iOS 11 and above only so that we can take advantage of the new APIs for supporting the notch and other new features.

The original iOS 1.0 release.

Since the next version will be 4.0, it was time to change the name from Pocketpedia3 to avoid confusion. We are owners of the original name belonging to the above icon attached to the original debut of the App Store. We finally gathered the courage to say goodbye to the original app and freed the name to use again. From now on Pocketpedia will simply be known as Pocketpedia no matter what version. Next step is to add PocketpediaTV into it and make it universal.

Pocketpedia 4.0 has been on parallel development and works well with Pedias 6.0 that are also coming soon. The Pedias 6.0 will be released first and then I will be able to put the final touches on 4.0 to release that version and get everybody on the future and drop support for older OSs that have been slowing us down these last few years. For those of you stuck on an older Mac, iPhone or iPad, the old version is still going strong and will stay around for download.

Pedia Versions 5.6.1

Saturday, June 9th, 2018

This will be the final release of the Pedias that support MacOS 10.5 through to 10.11. If you have the latest MacOS feel free to jump on the now public beta of version 6.0 which we’ll release in a couple of months (fingers crossed!). Version 6.0 is 64-bit only and supports only the latest 10.12 and 10.13 MacOS systems. Depending on testing with 10.14, might actually only support 10.13, but that is yet to be determined.

Due to many regressions in 10.13, we highly recommended the beta to those on the latest MacOS. It will also let us widen the beta pool now that the release date for 6.0 gets closer.

The UI changes will be minimal and the update free so that we can properly drop support for the older MacOS. We do apologize for those running the older OS, but hopefully version 5.6.1 will serve you well for some years to come although we will not maintain it, expect for crucial fixes. On the flip side, we’ll be able to concentrate on the latest MacOS and develop features quicker and with less hassle. It currently takes Xcode 8 to build the previous version of the programs and we are on the cusp of the Xcode 10 release, so it is high time to drop support for 10.5.

I hope you enjoy this small bug fix update. Links to the beta versions for those interested:

Bookpedia Beta
CDpedia Beta
Gamepedia Beta
DVDpedia Beta

Happy Pedia Giving: Beta for Sierra and High Sierra

Thursday, November 23rd, 2017

The first beta (5.9) for what will then be version 6.0 is here. We will be rolling out changes slowly throughout the beta to better isolate where bugs still need fixing. The most important thing to know about this beta is that it only supports Sierra 10.12 and High Sierra 10.13 MacOS. If you have an older MacOS, the old version 5.7 will still be available for download, but will only get security fixes if necessary.

This first beta is mainly about changes for the details view, including fixes for those experincing issues with the links in High Sierra turning the program unresponsive.

 




Even if you are already running a beta, you must manually download one of the betas above, being the beginning of a 10.12 version only. Please jump on board the beta train if you wish to help out getting the next version ready. The beta programs will self update as we go along. If you run into any issues don’t hesitate to send me an email, so that we can roll the fixes into the next beta.

For those of you in America, Happy Thanksgiving! Let some beta tryouts be the best way to digest that turkey.

Heartbleed bug

Saturday, April 19th, 2014

By now, you might have heard of this thing called the Heartbleed bug, which is making the rounds on most Internet news sites.

The truth is, it’s not as bad as it sounds. The vunerability was pretty bad, but in practice, for any of our users the risk was minimal.

First, the bad news: some of your data might have been exposed to anyone sniffing our traffic. The operative word here is might. Chances are very, very slim that any sniffing took place, plus this was not a breach in our database, they didn’t have access to any of the data we keep there (user name and email address, if you provided one) they would only been able to grab your password if they were sniffing online at the actual time you logged in. Think about it, with the trillions of web pages out there, the chances of someone actively sniffing Doghouse pages are what? A quadrillion to one?  An Octodecillion to one? Something crazy anyway.

As I say, extremely unlikely.

The good news:

  1. We have patched all our systems so the Heartbleed bug is no longer an issue.
  2. If you are worried about this bug, change your password in Doghouse. Here’s a link explaining how.

Which services were affected?

Only Doghouse, and only when you contribute any data from the Pedias or when you logged in to admin.bruji.com or doghouse.bruji.com (they’re the same page). If you only use Doghouse for searches and have never contributed any entries you have nothing to worry about.

What data do you store?

We only store your user name and your email address if you provided one so we can communicate with you if the need arises. We never sell or expose your data to anyone, ever, under any circumstances. You can view our privacy policy right here.

What about my password?

Your password is stored with high-grade encryption and looks like this:

e8afdd90d1dec343128b090e39e77eb08f859d4d78ce88262db6fb8f3d9a314ab7a486508567c21ded896bf3c32048fa6abd8987b5d57a1f46fcf6441a30d59a

That doesn’t mean that even if someone got a hold of it they could use it to login with your username because we also use an added security measure appropriate called a salt and there is no way to reverse this encryption to figure out what the password really is.

But, I repeat, nobody but us has access to this data not even through the Heartbleed bug.

OK, this sounds good, but I’m still worried, what should I do?

Just change your password if you use it elsewhere and are worried someone might have caught it as you were logging in and you’ll be fine.

Fancy User Templates

Saturday, February 13th, 2010

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.

Happy Macworld Everyone!

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

This year Macworld is a brand new event. It’s no longer in January, tied to an Apple keynote and sadly there is no longer an Apple booth. Although some mourn the loss it, confers some advantages, more of your time will now be available for all the other smaller Macworld exhibits. Macworld is even providing a special pavilion for small indie developers without the cash flow for a booth or those wanting help with the whirlwind world that is marketing. Stop by and discover software made with love (we are unable to attend so do let us know what you find).

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.

Comic expansion for Bookpedia

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

logoIf you have a large comic book library, particularly with French comics, be sure to check out iBédé, a new comic book search plug-in for the BDGest’ site. Installing the plug-in in Bookpedia will automatically change your custom fields to match those needed for comic book information and also add a special iBédé info view. The iBédé plug-in is available for 18EUR via the BDGest’ store.

Did you know? Splitting tracks into multiple discs in CDpedia

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

The tracks tab in CDpedia can hold more than one disc worth of tracks. To show that another disc is starting, the numbering begins at 1 again. But what if you have all the tracks listed as one big disc instead of the two/three/four discs the tracks are on in reality?

Split the tracks into one or more discs. Select all the tracks that belong to one disc and ctrl-click (right-click) the selection. A contextual menu will appear where you can choose to ‘Split Selection To New Disc’ and a new disc will be added, meaning the track numbering starts at 1 again. Split Disc menu

The same is true for the opposite as well of course. To merge tracks from several discs into one, select all, ctrl-click and choose ‘Join Selection to Previous Disc’.