iScrobbler

Damn, I just got boingboinged! I’d say it was the happiest day of my life, but you’d think I was ridiculous (hint: I’m ridiculous).

I suppose that obligates me to make an update on the progress… Its totally functional at the moment, its just got a few main problems:

The password is stored locally in plaintext. Thats not good. If anyone can point me to a good tutorial on storing passwords in the keychain, or in the very least, storing them in the preferences as an encrypted hash or something, I would be very appreciative.

The algorithm for querying iTunes isn’t very efficient. It basically uses a timer to periodically check iTunes to see what its up to. If the song playing is different from the last time the timer saw an update, it prepares and fires off a submission. I’ve got some plans on how to make this more ‘intelligent’. The current plan works, but isn’t as well behaved as it should be.

Some features from the Winamp plugin are missing. Namely the ability to wait a period of time before firing off a submission to verify that you are actually listening to the song, and not just scrolling through songs. Also, the ability to store submissions for sending later if a connection can’t be established is missing.

BUT there is good news! Support for Audion (in addition to iTunes) is in the works already. Applescript is super. If anyone knows of another mp3 player for OS X that is scriptable, let me know, and I’ll probably be able to work it in.

I’ve gotten a few emails from people wanting to beta test. If I don’t respond right away, don’t worry. Unless I get a bazillion requests, everyone who mails me can be a beta tester. Qualifications at the moment would be that you are using iTunes (until Audion support is final), and have a persistent internet connection (since error handling for when a connection can’t be established hasn’t been worked out yet). As soon as I get the password issue worked out, I’ll send out some beta copies for testing, and then once I make sure there aren’t any fatal bugs, I’ll release a public beta.

Also, in case anyone has noticed, audioscrobbler.com is down as of this moment, because RJ is having some issues with his host. “Too much traffic” they call it. I call it a great start for a project. I watched it go from 200 members to close to 1000 in the span of a few days. Anyway, RJ has all his data, and the site will be back up in a day or so, once he works out the host issues.

5 comments Thursday 13 Feb 2003 | | Code

5 Responses to “iScrobbler”

  1. on 13 Feb 2003 at 2:49 pm   jeremy

    looks excellent! I am lookin’ forward to the opportunity to try it out. good luck with the development.

  2. on 14 Feb 2003 at 2:50 pm   Tom Morris

    Really excited about this. iTunes rules, and what I’ve seen of Audioscrobbler.com really rocks. I’m excited about this possibility.

    Thanks for starting work on this…

  3. on 15 Feb 2003 at 7:37 pm   RJ

    Hey Sam,
    nice one, expect new Audioscrobbler servers in a few days. you’ll be the first to know :)

    Damn i’m gonna have to get a Mac now :P

    RJ

  4. on 18 Feb 2003 at 10:17 pm   james

    Have you looked at Kung-Tunes at all? I use it to keep my weblog updated with my “currently playing” song in iTunes. The developer must have some experience with some of the issues you’ve been having. Find it here: http://www.kung-foo.tv/itti.php

  5. on 18 Feb 2003 at 10:25 pm   sam

    I actually posted this very entry from Kung-Log, and I’ve looked over the source for Kung-Tunes. I haven’t really used kung-tunes, because to be perfectly frank, I don’t like iTunes that much. I play all my music off of my PC, due to the fact that it contains my entire library, so I don’t do as much network traffic, its got a nice soundcard, and it leaves all my processing power on the mac available for my uses :)

    One of the fundemental differences between kungtunes and and iscrobbler is that kungtunes uploads files, and iscrobbler uses POST queries.. However, both applications connect to iTunes through applescript. Grabbing the song and connecting are the easy parts of the whole thing. My biggest issues so far have been authentication with the keychain (solved now) and more sophisticated error handling for the POST query response. Kungtunes doesn’t have anything to handle return responses from the server really.

    Its definately a nice piece of software though. Most of the Kung-stuff I hold high in my respect. I hope that one day I can make a program as handy and useful as Kung-log.