oh two
Covered now has it’s own page, a link in the menu (look up) and has reached version 0.2 which brings the ability to change track and playlist from the right click popup menu. Enjoy.
Welcome to Catch
a story of coffee, music and football
surface
Yes please, now where’s my chequebook…
call yourself a music shop
I’m not sure how so many record companies have my email address, but I don’t like it. Every week or so, I’ll get an email introducing me to a new band but while still making it sound like I’ve already signed up to their mailing list. Needless to say that most of the emails get deleted without being read.
A couple of weeks ago I did read one, from a band called ‘the bench connection’ an acoustic folk duo who’ve just released a very summery sounding album, the kind of which I’d buy on a whim simply after listening to the 30 second clips on iTunes. Now most of the time I’d simply order it over the internet but for some reason I decided to wait until I could go shopping and would pick it up over the counter.
On Saturday I went into Poole to buy said cd. Now Poole used to have 3 ‘major’ music stores, now we only have a branch of HMV and what is at the moment a ‘Music Zone’, a sad excuse for a music shop which appears to contain the strangest selection of new and old cds at largely uncompetitive prices. Having been unable to find the cd on the shelves of HMV I asked at the counter, only to be told that they didn’t have any copies in stock and despite only being released the previous month, had never received any.
I realise that my music tastes at the moment could be called obscure, but is it too hard for a major music shop to get at least get 1 copy of each album released? It’s simply bad form in my book. What is worse is that I was then asked whether I wanted them to order a copy at £14 when I can get the same album for £9 from their own website!
covered restart
There are times when you do something then decide that you really want to do it again, but different. This is one of those times and Covered is one of those things. Pay attention please, to Covered 0.1b, noticing that:
- The look is more like the original Coverflow than the first version.
- Like the original, the cover now turns towards your mouse pointer.
- The buttons are gone, replaced by a right click pop-up menu.
I’m going to leave the first download up for a bit longer but this will be the version I’m going to pursue.
Download Covered 0.1b (1.44 MB)
announcing covered
May I therefore introduce Covered, my solution to a problem described earlier. Use it to display what you’re hearing, but not to control it.
To play with Covered, you’ll need:
- Windows (Covered has been ‘tested’ on XP and Vista)
- Java (at least Java 6) from java.sun.com
- iTunes (at least iTunes 7.1) from www.apple.com
Run iTunes, play something, then double click ‘Covered.jar’.
THE IMPORTANT BIT: This version of covered is a demonstration, I can’t and won’t guarantee that it won’t go wrong so you’re downloading and running it at your own risk. I also can’t guarantee that it won’t crash or force you to restart iTunes every now and then. Also, it borrows heavily from both iTunes and the original Coverflow, so please don’t sue me.
Once you’ve downloaded and tried Covered, drop me an email to covered[at]timfry[dot]co[dot]uk and let me know what you think (and more importantly what doesn’t work) and we’ll go forward from there.
Download Covered 0.1
a view from yesterday
But not of Saints making it to the play-offs, Autostitch is still having problems creating the panorama of that one.
searching for a new (cover)flow
When I bought my mac mini I had every intention of using it (as far as possible) as my main computer. Sadly it didn’t quite turn out that way and it now sits as a sort of underused media player, made all the more useful by Coverflow.
There would be many a morning/afternoon when the mac would be on, connected to my widescreen tv and running coverflow in fullscreen. With the mac’s quiet fan and my shiny speakers it would produce brilliant sound, which I could control with the apple remote. Coverflow was everything you expected from an os x app, it looked great, it felt great and it worked like a charm.
Then Apple bought the application and integrated it into iTunes and in a move that is most unlike them, completely ruined it in the process. Now I know there are reasons for this, the original coverflow was written on the mac for a mac so the code wouldn’t simply transfer into the cross platform iTunes, but the way it worked was changed, the way it looked was changed and the full screen mode was (at least on windows) was made really rather ugly.
What made things worse was that just before apple bought the product, the original developer produced a time unlimited version that took control of the remote away from iTunes meaning that I could no longer control the volume remotely.
To this day, I’ve not been able to find a suitable replacement. What I want is a screensaver of sorts, displays the album cover and a couple of little bits of information, possibly with a few controls for the sound. I’ve yet to find a coverflow ‘clone’ that looks and feels like the original, Windows media player looks horrible and Apple frontrow isn’t a lot better. The only thing that comes close is the music screen from the Apple TV, which isn’t an option as I don’t want to buy another box.
So it looks like I’ll have to come up with something myself…