ASPY Player Beta 4 released - S60 Player with Last.fm scrobbling built-in. Open signed online now possible!

I've just released the beta 4 version of the ASPY Player. Currently I have only few hours (~3h) a week to work on it, so that's the reason for few enhancements in this release, however I think some of them are very important.

The changes in this release are:

• Possible to sign the sis file through open signed online;
• Blinking "now playing" screen bug fixed;
• Better handled id3v2 only files (id3v2 not supported yet);
• Track number info being used in the app;
• Better tracks ordering handling;
• Better handling of non-US ASCII characters in directories names;
• Application code design improved;

As usual, all kinds of feedbacks are welcome. They have been essential to improve the player quality, thank you guys!

ASPY Player Beta 3 released - S60 Player with Last.fm scrobbling built-in

After coming back to work from vacations, it has been hard to find time to work on the player. Currently I'm leading 5 projects in my work! However I got some time (most of it while traveling) and released the beta 3 of my player. Bellow is a list of the major changes:

• Non-US ASCII bug fixed, now files path and id3 content can have é, è, ã, etc..
• Now it's possible to view the current music history, ie, tracks not sent to last.fm yet
• After selecting an artist, now it's possible to select all tracks of that artist as before or drill-down by artist album, just like the native player
• AudioScrobbler protocol hard error handled correctly
• Application icon added
• Correct version number set (major/minor)
• Now it's possible to play tracks in random mode
• Several bugs fixed

As usual, the source are here and here there's a step-by-step tutorial on how to run it without signing using the python shell (thanks Brixton).

The python snake image I found using Google Images so I don't know who created it. Any information about it, please, tell me so that I can ask the creator the usage authorization.

I also have to find a more beautiful image for the "Now playing screen", preferentially a dark one to help with the energy consumption. I have also to make the now playing screen stop blinking too. I'll try to stabilize the current feature set (fix bugs and refine the design) then start adding more features.

Ahh, BTW, because of my efforts to build this player, the guys from Build Last.fm gave me 12 months of subscription!! Great incentive! Thank you guys again!

I'd like to thank the guys who are using the player and sending me feedbacks.

Douglas

Some new pics from this version:

Second release of my Last.fm S60 Client - aspyplayer

Today I released the second beta version of my last.fm client for S60 devices (although only tested in my N95-1). I rewrote the whole UI, now it's a little less ugly and it kinda looks like the native player. Now it's also possible to play/stop/forward/back/volume up/volume down using the keyboard in the "Now playing" screen like the native player.

The major bug in the moment is that it cannot handle well files with path or title that contain special characters, such as 'é', 'è', 'ç', 'ã'. I'm Brazilian, so it's a problem for me because in portuguese, words with that kind of characters are so common. However, for me it's strange how the pyS60 handles unicode, I didn't get it yet. It pissed me off and I gave up for the moment, so the bug is there. I have to correct some spelling errors too and now, I don't know why, the sis only works on C:

For those who can't sign the sis files and want to try the player, here can be found a good tutorial explaining how to sign sis files. Besides that way, it's possible to run the application using the sources. To do so, get the aspylayer.py and now_playing_bg.jpg files from the repository and copy them to c:\python or e:\python. After that, run it using the Python Shell like in the image bellow.

Thank you guys for the feedbacks (I'm waiting for more :)). I think soon a more stable/usable version will be released...

Some screeenshots for this release:

My Last.fm S60 Client - aspyplayer

In the last few days I've been working on a S60 music player with Last.fm scrobbling capabilities because most of time I listen to musics in my N95. I'd the idea to build this application months ago, but only now, in my last week of vacation I had time and today I released the first beta version (ugly UI and barely working) at: http://code.google.com/p/aspyplayer/

Some screenshots for this first beta release are available at: http://code.google.com/p/aspyplayer/wiki/screenshots

I'm writing the application in python (pyS60), which for me, currently is the best development platform for Symbian devices. However, it has a lot of limitations compared to C++ on S60 devices.

The application architecture kinda follows DDD, with a basic MVP for the presentation layer. The last time I did some development in python was about 5 years ago, so the code is not that good yet. The sources can be seen at: http://code.google.com/p/aspyplayer/source/browse. Code reviews are welcome.

Now I'll work on the UI, which currently is very ugly and I have to refactor some code to decouple the file system libraries from the model putting it in the infrastructure layer. Besides that, I have to create more unit tests.

Any kind of feedback is welcome.

BTW, yesterday I found an amazing last.fm client for iPhone/iPod Touch, it's called MobileScrobbler. It's too bad that the S60 interfaces sucks when compared to iPhone interface which is fantastic.

My current "must read" technical readings

Although I read more than one hundred of blogs (~4500 posts in the last 30 days) using the kickass Google Reader and be a member of several mailing lists, I don't read everything with the same priority. I read ASAP only few blogs/lists that I consider important/cool, others sometimes I read months after I noticed them in my google reader or gmail.

The following items are my current "must read" technical readings:

Top 10 Feeds (no specific order):

• Ayende @ Rahien => http://ayende.com/Blog/Default.aspx
• Did it with .NET => http://diditwith.net/
• Martin Fowler's Bliki => http://martinfowler.com/bliki/
• Jeremy D. Miller => http://codebetter.com/blogs/jeremy.miller/default.aspx
• Planet ThoughtWorks => http://blogs.thoughtworks.com/
• Coding Horror => http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/
• Object Mentor => http://blog.objectmentor.com/
• InfoQ => http://www.infoq.com/
• {Codesqueeze} => http://www.codesqueeze.com/
• LeadingAnswers => http://leadinganswers.typepad.com/leading_answers/
  

Brazilian bloggers

• Fragmental => http://blog.fragmental.com.br/
• Daniel Sato => http://www.dtsato.com/blog/default/
• Guilherme Chapiewski => http://gc.blog.br/
• A Maldita Comédia => http://malditacomedia.blogspot.com/
  

Mailing lists

• Castle Project Users => http://groups.google.com/group/castle-project-users
• Alt.Net => http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/altdotnet/
• Domain Driven Design => http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/domaindrivendesign/
  

BTW, the address of my google reader shared items is: http://www.google.com/reader/shared/11574825750058829373.

In paper I usually read non-technical (computer) stuff, currently I'm reading the applied psychology books from "The Personal MBA", the current one it's my third and till now all were great readings.

Douglas