by bayasaa

This is a big day for what started out as a small spare time project (and which it still is, in fact). This morning, iTunes Agent passed the milestone of 1 million downloads! That’s quite a lot of downloads!

The popularity of the project has been increasing greatly over the last 12 months, going from an average of 7-8000 downloads a month, to near 50 000 every month. This is a great motivator, and one of the keys to driving the project forward.

I am currently working on version 2.0, and while there’s been talk about the new version for quite a while, it is now on the horizon. Hopefully an alpha will be ready for testing in not too long

Thanks to all who have supported the project, either with contributing code or assisting in the support forums – and not to forget, those of you out there using the application!

I’ve just released version 1.3.4 of iTunes Agent. This is a minor bug fix update which should resolve issues some users have experienced on 64-bit versions of Windows.

The new version is available from http://ita.sourceforge.net/download.html

iTunes Agent is currently looking for a dedicated .NET developer to join the team. You should be an experienced software developer, but years of professional full time experience is not a requirement – talented students are encouraged to get in touch.

Requirements:

• Experience with .NET and C#
• Be familiar with portable media devices in general.
• Be familiar with the iTunes software.
• Open source enthusiast – understand the value of contributing to the community.
• Ability to work independently and organize work through digital communication
• Excellent English language skills, both written and verbal.

iTunes Agent is an open source project, built solely on the efforts and dedication of volunteering open source enthusiasts. The project has seen a big increase in interest over the last couple of months climbing from an average of 8.000 downloads per month till around 15.000 downloads per month during May, June and July 2010. The total downloads since the project’s birth has recently passed 400.000 registered downloads on Sourceforge.

We are now looking for a more continuous resource to help improve the application and deliver quality to our users.

If you are interested, or want more information, please contact sfkarbo@users.sourceforge.net.

Version 1.3.3 of my open source iTunes enhancement, iTunes Agent has just been released.

The new release is a minor bug fix update which solves a couple of issues users have been reporting on multi-device synchronization and constant re-synchronization of certain files.

For more information and download, check out the project web site at http://ita.sourceforge.net.

A new version of iTunes Agent has just been released. The new version is a minor update bringing a couple of enhancements to prevent misconfiguration which has caused problems for some users.

I hope this new version will continue to satisfy your media synchronization needs between iTunes and your portable media players!

Download and more information is as always available over at http://ita.sourceforge.net.

It’s about time I write a post about one of my newest projects, Codemunchies.com, which I started together with a friend of mine, Aleksander, a couple of months back.

Codemunchies.com is a blog focusing on development related topics and so far we’ve had a good coverage of Google Collections and Guava as the first big series of articles.

We wanted to start the blog to have a place to share our ideas and experiences with other developers and hopefully also create a place for fruitful discussions around practices and specific implementation.

Head on over to Codemunchies.com to check it out. Subscribe to our RSS and make sure you follow us on Twitter and Facebook as well

I woke up to an article at Dagbladet.no today, which got my blood boiling. Before I continue on with my ramblings I want to make it clear that, yes, I know Dagbladet.no is an “entertainment newspaper”. Still, the article which appeared on their front page today, made me react.

The title of the article was “1 out of 4 in the world are Muslims”. The article is based on a study made by The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, which by the way is never linked to from the article.

Usually I don’t care about these articles, but this one got me worked up because religion is a touchy subject these days – especially the “fear” of Muslims.

The way this article is presented leaves little room for imagination when it comes to the point of view of the journalist who wrote it – and probably why the coward did not even put his or her name on the article, let alone give anyone the option to comment on it.

Via Twitter, I’ve learned that the article has come directly down the pipeline from NTB, a Norwegian news publishing agency, but in my opinion that still does not justify the publishing of the article in this format.

What strikes me the most is the use of numbers in this article. Here is an example (translated from Norwegian):

Amongst others there are more Muslims in  Germany than in Lebanon, China has more Muslims than Syria, there are more Muslims in Russia than in Jordan and Libya combined.

One does not have to be a rocket scientist to see the flaws here, eh? The population of Germany is approximately 82 million. Lebanon: 4.2 million. How can you even seriously consider such a comparison? And it’s the same pattern with the other comparisons highlighted in the article. This alone should have been enough to discard the article, or at least publish it with a much more critical view on the study. And where does it say that 1 out of 3 in the world are Christians?

Another point which should have raised a red flag at the news desk,  is the fact that this is a study made by an organization in the country which are possibly the most Muslim opposed on this planet.

Anyways, since this got me worked up to this extent I needed to vent and I sent an e-mail to the chief editor at Dagbladet.no with a comment and expressed my concern that such lousy journalistic work could be published in big letters on the front page of one of Norways biggest news papers. Wonder if I’ll ever get an answer…

Jeg har en kommentar til artikkelen “- En av fire i verden er muslimer” (http://www.dagbladet.no/a/8477791/).

Jeg lurer på hvordan en slik artikkel har klart å slippe gjennom ansvarlig redaktør sine fingre. Artikkelen fremstår som en tekst ment for å skape fremmedfrykt og da spesielt for at muslimene er i ferd med å ta over verden. Dette er langt fra sannheten, og artikkelen viser ingenting som skulle tilsi at det er oppsiktsvekkende at 1 av 4 er muslimer. 1 av 3 er kristne! Hvor nevnes det?

Samtidig stiller jeg store spørsmålstegn ved bruk av materialet fra stuiden artikkelen er basert på (hvis nå en slik studie finnes. Trodde det var vanlig i profesjonelle kretser å referere til originalmaterialet – i dette tilfellet studien hvor tallene er hentet fra)? Det er en ensporet artikkel, sydd sammen av tall og “målinger” som man ikke trenger være rakettforsker for å forstå at er kynisk satt sammen. Sammenlikningen mellom antall muslimer i Tyskland og Libanon blir for dum når det bor over 80 millioner innbyggere i Tyskland og kun 4 i Lebanon. Hvor er den journalistiske integriteten som stiller spørsmål ved tallene bak denne studien som kommer fra en organisasjon i et land som langt fra er kjent for å ha et bedre øye til den muslimske verden.

I tillegg er det ikke publisert noe navn og epost på journalisten som har publisert artikkelen, ei heller mulighet for folk å kommentere. Alt dette gjør at det lukter svidd gris av hele artikkelen og jeg stiller meg kritisk til den journalistiske jobben som ligger bak…

Sorry for the Norwegian, I might post a translated version later

Will keep you updated!

This morning I woke up to the announcement that my beloved music streaming service, Spotify, is finally available on my Android phone! What better news to start off the week?

The application is available for iPhone, iPod Touch and Android handhelds and gives you the complete catalogue right in your hand. You can also make your playlists available offline, which means they are downloaded to your phone (or iPod Touch) and enables you to play the music wherever you are. Looking forward to testing it at the gym and the bus this week. The release was actually perfecly timed with my trip to Oslo and JavaZone this week!

I’ve tested the playback and also downloaded a couple of my playlists and it’s all working perfectly so far You should be aware that the mobile version of Spotify requires you to have an active Premium subscription, but with this solid mobile application in addition to the desktop version you now have to make an effort to not have your favourite music with you anywhere. In my opinion, 99 NOK (16.5 USD) per month is hardly a painful bill to pay for that.

I decided to fresh up the ol’ blog a little this afternoon and went out theme hunting. I came across this free theme by WooThemes through Arnt Eriksen’s blog and found it looking pretty good. Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good. Oh, by the way, Curb Your Enthusiasm is back on September 21st! Love that show.

Anyways, the logo is home made, with my extraordinary  design skills and my never ending love for the Apple/Web 2.0/Shinyshiny reflection effect.

So, what do you think? Your comments are welcome – here on the blog, on Twitter and on Facebook.

For over a year now I’ve had a page on Facebook for my open source project, iTunes Agent – a Windows utility enabling you to use non-iPod media devices with iTunes and easily transfer music to them. It has been very low activity on the page, and I’ve mainly used it to send updates about new versions of the application.

However, last week I decided to increase my posting frequency and I started posting a couple of links to news articles related to iTunes, mobile devices etc. One of the articles was about the story which has been flooding the internet lately – that iPhone is spying on it’s users.

Yesteday morning I went on Facebook to check my iTunes Agent page, and was quite surprised to find that the whole page was gone! Nothing left! It still show’s up in the drop down below the search box whenever you search for it, but trying to visit it, or the URL http://facebook.com/itunesagent only takes you to the front page. Now, I did not delete the page, so where has it gone off to?

Not to be paranoid, but I am starting to wonder; have I just been  censored by Facebook? Did Apple not like that someone criticised one of their products and told Facebook to do something about it? They’re known for having silenced critical sources in the past.

If Apple is unhappy with the fact that an application which only brings more users to their iTunes Music Store has “iTunes” in it’s name – I would expect a professional, decent letter asking me to please change the name. If they did not like the fact that I informed my fans by posting the news article – fine! But that’s no reason for Facebook to simply delete the page of the face of the…. book?

I’ll keep you updated over the weekend.