Another update: beaTunes 1.1.4

Since beaTunes 1.1.3 had a couple of issues, especially on Windows, we decided to quickly address them. Additionally, version 1.1.4 brings a couple of other improvements. Here's the short list:

• Re-added artist typo inspection
• Added song matching preferences button to matching songs table
• Switched OS X distribution format to DMG
• Fixed issue with files wrongly reported as missing on OS X, when running inspection multiple times
• Switched to universal 1.5 R5 JavaApplicationStub

So finally beaTunes is distributed in a disk image and not the clumsy zip file anymore. Also, for those people who thought beaTunes was a PowerPC application, Finder now shows correctly that beaTunes is a universal binary. Last but not least - in 1.1.3 the misspelled artist inspection was left out accidently - it's now back in.

As always, you can get the new release from our download page.

All Nike shoes Nike+ shoes soon?

ars technica has an interesting news story about Nike planning to make all Nike shoes Nike+ compatible by the end of 2007.

Obviously beaTunes is an ideal Nike+ companion.

OutOfMemoryError on Windows

We just became aware of an issue in the latest Windows release of your favourite BPM software for iTunes. Large music collections will cause beaTunes to terminate with an OutOfMemoryError. The issue is caused by a name change of a configuration file and can easily be fixed.

Typically, beaTunes is installed at c:\Program Files\tagtraum industries\beaTunes 1.1.3. There should be a file called beaTunes.ini in that directory. Just rename that file to beaTunes.l4j.ini and the issue should be solved.

We apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused. Of course we will fix this issue in the next update.

Disappearing Matches

Recently we received an email from a user who complained about matching songs that simply disappear. What happened?

As you all know, beaTunes matches songs with each other using rules. One of the rules is the Amazon rule: While beaTunes looks for matching songs, it queries the Amazon database for matching albums. Songs that belong to a matching album are ranked higher.

But getting the necessary information from Amazon takes some time. Therefore, beaTunes usually displays an initial result, before it queries Amazon. Then, after the Amazon results are in, the list of matching songs is updated.

The movie shows the effect: A song is selected and a number of matches are displayed. After a little while, most of the songs disappear. This happens, when the Amazon results are applied to the match algorithm.

Now, if you don't like this behavior, you can easily turn it off. Just open the preferences, select the Song Matching pane and uncheck the For faster results, ignore during the initial matching-checkbox. To disable the Amazon rule altogether, move the corresponding slider to 0.

We hope this tip helps you to enjoy beaTunes even more.

beaTunes 1.1.3 is released

As already announced earlier this week, we just updated beaTunes. The update features the following improvements:

• Improved BPM tapper
• Added preferences panel for inspections
• Fixed iTunes version check

What does this mean for you?

Well, the BPM tapper now ignores taps that are obviously off, i.e. aren't even close to previous taps. This allows you to miss a beat without screwing up the overall result. The new preference panel for inspections lets you to turn specific inspections off. For example, you might not always want to check for missing files. And last but not least: The faulty iTunes version check has been fixed.

As always, you can download the new version from our website.

Update iTunes Messagebox

A number of people kindly wrote us to let us know that since the recent iTunes 7.1.1 update, beaTunes asks people to update to iTunes 7.0.2. Of course that's a faulty error message and it can safely be ignored. We will post an update soon that fixes this issue.

The Infamous Lost License Key

So you just got your new box and want to get started with installing beaTunes. After all you bought beaTunes, because you think it's a great piece of software. But where is that darn license key when you need it?

Actually, this already happened quite a bit and we've always been happy to assist people who lost their key. But typically our help wasn't instantaneous - after all someone had to check the database and write an email. From now on, this is not necessary anymore. To have us re-send your key to you, just use our new key recovery form. The key will be sent right away to the email address you used when registering.

Of course, if there are problems with the form, we are still glad to help. Just send us an email to our support address.

Creating beaTunes UI Themes

Most of you know that with beaTunes 1.1 we introduced UI themes. This bit of functionality lets you change the background tile of the main beaTunes window - giving you a little bit of power over the look and feel of beaTunes as a whole.

Now, what most people don't know, is that you can even register your own tile images and have beaTunes load them. This is done through a plugin.

So for the geeks amongst you, this is how you create a background image plugin:

• Create a working directory
• Create a background tile image, save it in PNG format and place it into the working directory
• Create a subdirectory called META-INF
• In META-INF, create a file called plugin.xml
• This is what the content of plugin.xml should look like:

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
  <plugins>
      <plugin class="com.tagtraum.beatunes.plaf.TiledBackgroundTheme">
          <property name="imagePath" value="YOUR_IMAGE.png"/>
          <property name="description" value="YOUR DESCRIPTION"/>
      </plugin>
      <!-- add more plugins here -->
  </plugins>

• Make sure you replace YOUR_IMAGE.png with the actual image name and YOUR DESCRIPTION with a fitting description
• In a terminal or shell window, cd to the working directory and execute the following command:
  

  jar cvf plugin.jar .

  This zips the files up into the file plugin.jar
• Place the newly created file plugin.jar into the plugin directory:
  Windows: c:\Documents and Settings\<username>\.beaTunes\plugins
  OS X: ~/Library/Application Support/beaTunes/Plug-Ins/
  
• Restart beaTunes - the new theme should now show up in the general preferences

Please note that these instructions require the jar command to be properly installed, i.e. you have a Java Development Kit on your system with the PATH environment variable set, so that jar can be found. This is pretty much always the case on OS X - on Windows you might have to add jar manually to the PATH or simply use some Zip software like Winzip instead of jar to zip up the plugin.jar.

Inspired to create your own tile? We'd love to hear from you!

iTunes 7.1 is out

On 3/5/07 Apple released version 7.1 of iTunes. The probably coolest new feature is the full screen Cover Flow. Apple definitely took a step in the right direction. You've got to check it out!

The iTunes update also includes an update of QuickTime to version 7.1.5. If you are using beaTunes on Windows, you might need to re-install beaTunes, should you run into any problems. Mac users should not have any problems.