Conversely, 2008 is going to be the year of learning to let go, one of the hardest things in the world. I have problems letting go— too bad I’m going to have to do so much of it. I need to let go of the school I love, I’m going to college. Let go of living at home, with your parents who do more than they probably should for you. Let go of a comfortable pseudo-life for one in the real world. Let go of the ones we love, for our own good or theirs, even if it’s just so they can fall on their ass and realize what life really is. Let go of the Bad Stuff. Welcome the new Good… and definitely appreciate the old Good more than I have. I’m gonna’ miss you guys. I really, really am. This year’s going to be exciting, but it isn’t going to be an easy one. Let’s all try to keep our heads on straight, shall we?

That was my “Ode to ‘08” from the blog post I wrote last year. You know, it really was funny looking back on my perception of ‘07, and my prediction of what ‘08 would be like.

As it turns out, my prediction for ‘08 was a little bit more pessimistic than it needed to be. In fact, as I was thinking earlier today, if I had to pick, 2008 is what I would choose as the best year of my life thus far. I formed great friendships, both at the beginning of the year with the members of my class, and nearer the end with new people at Brown. Old social drama finally settled down, and life is once again calm. I graduated from high school among people I love, and enrolled in a college that I never would have dreamed I’d be accepted to. I’ve had the opportunity to work on new projects with a team of amazing people, and even found time to work on a few things on the side. School work could have gone a bit better than it did, but… all-in-all, what does it matter in the course of a lifetime? 2008 was my year, our year, and 2008 was excellent. I’ll be sad to see it go.

Now what will become of 2009. I fear that 2008 went far too well for 2009 to possibly be good. Plus, we’ve got that other batch of students graduating this year — you know, the “8th graders?” God, what a scary thought that is.

Nevertheless, in spite of the group of people our high school is unleashing upon the world (), I’m optimistic for 2009. 2008 was not great just because of what happened during the year, but also because of the possibilities it set up for the year ahead. Just today Johnny, co-founder of Slightly Pretentious, received our complimentary engraved binders reading “Slightly Pretentious Software, LLC.” Yup, that’s right, we’re incorporated! School I’m sure will go much better now that I’ve adjusted, and I think I’ve finally fixed those few friendships that needed fixing.

As for my friends, I can only hope your 2008 was also phenomenal, and that your outlook for the year to come is as good as mine. I love you all, and once again it is time for me to say…

Happy New Year, friends.

Alright, I’ll admit it: I’m working on a book.

Nothing all that exciting, more of a mini-book, and only to be distributed (for free) online, but I felt that I finally understand Cocoa well enough to take a stab at explaining it to others. Laurent will be doing all the print design for it, and we’ll be releasing it under our new {13bold} label.

Anyway, I finished some excellent memory usage enhancements on Architect tonight, and it inspired me to write Chapter 3: Memory Management in Cocoa. I was so proud of the thorough job I did on it that I felt like releasing it.

Be on the lookout for more on this mini-book later in the year!

EDIT: After an interesting conversation with Bill Bumgarner (@bbum) of PyObjC via Twitter, I may have to rethink, or at least qualify, my position on Garbage Collection, and also fix a few things in my discussion of autorelease. An errata will be posted shortly. Thanks, Bill!

Bowtie’s search feature has only been demonstrated via video thus far — few people have actually had the opportunity to use it. But just about everyone who’s seen it has had one question: how is it so fast?

Every major iTunes controller on the market does searching essentially the same way, and they’re all bloated, buggy, and most importantly, SLOW. In fact, this was one of the reasons I originally decided to omit searching from Bowtie entirely. Then I came up with an idea, based on what I’d done for fast searching over the network with TuneConnect. It’s called PowerSearch: it’s fast, powerful, and it blows everyone else’s search out of the water. And here’s why.

How Everyone Else Does It

iTunes has a great built-in search feature — it’s fast and easy-to-use, much like Bowtie’s. It’s no surprise that most other iTunes controllers rely on iTunes to do the searching for them. It makes sense. But there’s a problem.

Apple Event objects are chunky little buggers, and they take a lot of work to decode. If you start searching for something in an iTunes controller, and it attempts to do live updating, you very well may end up in a scenario where you’re getting 2,000 tracks back from iTunes after typing your first letter. If these were native objects, it wouldn’t be a huge problem for an app to process, but since we’ve already established that Apple Event objects are relatively heavy lifting…

A few applications take an alternate, though similar, route, and pull all of the tracks from iTunes beforehand, and then do their own searching. Slightly more effective at increasing search speed? Sure. Increases memory consumption and bloat? Oh hell yeah.

How Bowtie Does It

Bowtie PowerSearch is truly unique: not only is it lightning fast, but it’s also more powerful. You can easily filter by different types of content using quick modifier keystrokes. For instance, if I type “U2” into my search field, I’ll get every track that has a title, album, or artist that contains “U2”. But if I type “@U2” into my search field, I’ll only get tracks with an artist that contains “U2”. Not too shabby, eh?

The secret behind PowerSearch’s power are two technologies that are deeply ingrained in Mac OS X, and therefore, very fast: plists and predicates.

Plists are something with which many of us are already familiar: they’re the canonical, mostly-human-readable way of storing data on Mac OS X. Every Mac application uses one to describe its metadata, and many system-wide configuration files are stored in this format. As such, the code that OS X uses to read and write these files is very fast, as it has to happen quite frequently.

It just so happens that iTunes likes to keep a copy of your music library around stored in plist format in a file called, cryptically, “iTunes Music Library.xml”. The first step in making searching faster is harnessing the power of this file. When Bowtie launches, and every time you go to search and it notices this file has been changed, it opens it, and creates an internal representation of every track in the file. Granted, my library isn’t very large (about 1,400 tracks), but on my MacBook Pro this process completes in less than half a second (compared to about 10 seconds using the latter Apple Events method). Step 1: accomplished.

Here’s where predicates come in. Predicates in Mac OS X are a convenient way of storing search specifiers based on multiple parameters. For instance, a predicate string for the search criteria shown in the graphic at the top might look like this: (artist contains[cd] "u2") AND (name contains[cd] "where the stre"). Easy enough to understand.

The beauty of this, though, is the internal predicate compiler that turns this human-readable string into something small and lightweight that the computer understands. From here, it’s a single line of code to apply whatever predicate I’ve created to an array or a dictionary. Like an array of tracks, for instance. And did I mention it’s lightning fast?

From the top…

When Bowtie launches, or whenever it notices your music library has changed, Bowtie pulls your library and creates an internal representation of all of your tracks (yes I already said that, I’m reiterating). Next, the instant you start typing in the Bowtie search box, Bowtie goes to work creating predicates out of what you type, based on how you type it and what modifiers you add to it. Every step along the way, it applies the most recent predicate to the master list of tracks, and displays the result. Because this is all happening using native, internal objects built upon a very fast filtering platform, the result is what appears to be instantaneous (and very powerful!) search.

And that’s how we do it. So be on the lookout for Bowtie beta 2, coming out very soon.

Oh and by the way, you’ll notice that there are two different search interfaces at the top of this post. When I first started implementing the search, I opted to design a HUD-style interface (the one pictured on the right). When it was done, I showed it to Laurent, who decided he wasn’t a big fan and promptly commenced designing the sexylicious aqua-and-metal interface pictured to the left. Ultimately, we both decided that the aqua interface looked better, so it’s what Bowtie uses. We did, however, leave the HUD interace in for sentimental reasons. If you want to use it, just run this command in Terminal, and relaunch Bowtie:

defaults write net.mattpat.Bowtie searchMode HUD

To change it back, just use this:

defaults write net.mattpat.Bowtie searchMode Aqua

Enjoy!

On a whim yesterday, in order to satisfy the numerous people who kept on asking me for a beta copy of Bowtie, I posted my latest build to the Bowtie website, with a link on the running MacThemes thread about the app.

You can imagine that I was a little surprised when I looked at the stats as they started rolling in via Mint. I’ve had some pretty decent download turnouts before, but never approaching 2,000 downloads and 4,000 website hits in well under the first 24 hours.

So needless to say, the app, though still in first beta, has been a relative success, especially thanks to Laurent’s Bowtie Theme Starter Pack, which contains some very sexy starter themes. Beyond that, several artists have already started releasing themes for Bowtie.

I see big things for this app, and can’t wait to continue working on it! As soon as Façade is done, of course.

So I’ve been kicking around a few ideas for apps that I’ve always kind of wanted. Thought I’d take this opportunity to share my thoughts, see if anyone would be interested in any of them.

• Bowtie: this one sort of doesn’t count, since I’m already working on it, though I would like to devote more time to it.
• Imagine: an actually usable Cocoa disk image creation app. This would be a replacement for FileStorm by MindVision, which is pitifully outdated and expensive.
• MobileYou: the state of webmail depresses me. I’d love a sexy webmail client, that plays nicely with iPhone. Maybe throw in iCal support, but mail would be enough for me.
• WebGUI: needs a better name, but I just don’t think any of the GUI frameworks for the web are quite sexy enough. I’d like to put something together that resembles the gorgeous set of MobileMe controls Apple created (for use with or without SproutCore).
• TuneConnect 3: I’ve got some pretty big plans for this one… just hope I can find the time to get it off the ground.
• Notes: this one’s a little iPhone/desktop combo— a simple note box that syncs with iPhones, other Macs, and enables easy sharing of snippets of text. Think an online pastie, only much more convenient.
• R42: kicked this one around a bit but never got far. It isn’t so much an app as a framework to make web integration easier. I would like to be able to write a blog updating app in less than 20 minutes— a framework like this would make it easier.

Just a few ideas, let me know if any of them appeal to you. If you like it, maybe I’ll develop it. If you like it a lot, and you’re a developer, talk to me, and maybe I’ll give you permission to use my idea.

Just thought I’d let you all know that our company, Slightly Pretentious Software, has just published a teaser page for one of our upcoming products, Architect, with a beta to follow next week. Check it out, be impressed.

UPDATE: Added some more pictures.

UPDATE: The app is now known as Bowtie.

Over the past couple of days, I’ve been working in collaboration with my favorite graphic artist Laurent Baumann to create something neither of us has ever been able to find: the perfect iTunes controller.

The goal is simple: create an iTunes controller that’s both incredibly simple, and incredibly flexible. The result is Tunes, a small EyeTunes-using local iTunes controller that creates its interface entirely from HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Anyone can create their own theme, it’s surprisingly easy if I do say so myself. Shown above is Tunes running with the default “iPhoney” theme Bowtie running with an assortment of included themes (designed, of course, by Laurent Baumann).

It isn’t ready for public consumption yet, and is (of course) Mac-only, but expect this handy (and free) little app to be out in the near future! Oh, and also keep an eye out for some of the other projects I just might be working on. (*ehem*).

Take a deep breath — smell that? That’s the smell of higher education. Yes, it is a little moldy. Most colleges have been around for awhile.

Regardless of what school you’re going to, there is a certain essential set of tools that every college student needs in order to survive. These are the “college gadgets,” and nobody who’s anybody should be without them. These gadgets are:

• The Laptop
• The Printer
• The Flash Drive
• The Router (if your college doesn’t have WiFi)
• The External Hard Drive
• The Portable Media Player (aka, iPod )
• The Speakers
• The Headphones
• The Phone

Ready to go? Let’s get started!

The Laptop

If you can bring no other gadget with you, the laptop is the ultimate must-have as a college student. Most colleges require that you have one, or else provide you with one themselves. If you have an option, don’t take the college laptop — get your own, you’ll prefer it, I promise.

What kind of laptop you purchase depends on what you plan to use it for — not all laptops are created equal, don’t just assume they are. Generally, there are three types of computing students, and as such I’ve provided three laptop recommendations, all from Apple (I’ll deal with you Windows folks in a sec’.

The casual computing user uses his or her laptop for web browsing, email, staying in touch with his or her friends, organizing photos, storing their tunes, and other simple, consumer-oriented uses. This user needs a peppy computer, but it would be stupid to overdo it — not a lot of processing power is needed for this user. For this person, I hands-down recommend the 2.4GHz MacBook. While the 2.1GHz model (the cheapest base model) is a little underpowered, both the second-tier white model and the top-tier black model should be sufficient for this class of user’s needs. If you choose the white model, you might consider upgrading the hard drive to something in a slightly larger variety — this thing needs to last four years, better give it plenty of room for photos and such. You can buy a MacBook at any Apple store, or online at store.apple.com 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The science or arts student will want something a little more powerful. This class of user frequently uses power-hungry applications, like Mathematica or other scientific research tools, or any member of the Adobe Creative Suite (perhaps multiple simultaneously). This user not only needs a powerful Mac, but may also need to be able to quickly and efficiently boot into Windows on occasion, so a faster processor will help. Whether developing a complex algorithm, or juggling 15 RAW files for your photography class, your computer needs to perform when you need it. For this, I recommend my own laptop of choice: the 2.4GHz 15-inch MacBook Pro. Complete with backlit keyboard, powerful graphics card, and a decent portion of RAM by default, this laptop can handle anything you can throw at it without blinking — trust me, I know, I use one every day. Like the MacBook, the MacBook Pro can be purchased at any Apple store, or online at store.apple.com. I highly recommend it.

The third type of user is a tricky person to fit — he or she is the student-on-the-go, or the commuter. This person needs a laptop that they can toss in a bag and take with them everywhere, that will neither be wimpy, nor slow them down due to its sheer weight. For this unique class of user, I recommend the 1.6GHz MacBook Air. Thin as a pencil at its thickest point, and weighing a mere three pounds, this is perfect for anyone who needs a decent dollop of power, without the costly baggage. Hit up the Apple store, or once again, the online store at store.apple.com. Keep in mind, though, that while this is an excellent laptop, it doesn’t have all of the power of the MacBook or the MacBook Pro. If you don’t need the portability, go with something a little more powerful.

Now for you darn Windows users. Some colleges absolutely require that you have a laptop that runs Windows. In this situation, my solution is simple: my recommendations don’t change. All three of my Mac selections are capable of running Windows next to OS X — just pick up a full copy of Windows XP Pro (w/SP2) from your favorite online retailer and you’ll be good to go, Apple’s Boot Camp utility can walk you through getting it installed and operational.

Unfortunately, some colleges require you to use their laptop. If you are given a choice of laptops by your college, and one of them is an IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad, take that one — the ThinkPad is one of the most rugged and durable laptops on the market, and will be sure to serve you well, at the slight expense of a less-than-wonderful operating system.

The Printer

You’re going to need to print stuff. Most likely often. You want your own printer.

Before you go out and invest, though, talk to your roommate(s): while you definitely will want a printer in your dorm room (don’t rely on campus printing, you should always have a device under your control that you know you can print to), they can get pricey if you get a good one, so you may be able to share the cost.

Many people are tempted to get a laser printer, thanks to the declining cost of color phasers — some black and white lasers are now dirt cheap. My advice: if you want to get a laser for black and white assignments, go for it, but do not make it your primary printer, you’ll also want a small color printer for photos and those assignments that need to “pop.” As appealing as the thought of the color laser can be, the quality is sub-that of a good inkjet, and you don’t want to know how much it costs to replace the toner. If you still want to do a laser and a small color, go for the Dell Laser Printer 1720: it’s cheap, fast, and is incredibly sharp when it comes to text, along with being very reliable. To supplement this printer with a small color inkjet, I recommend the HP Deskjet D1455, for the same reasons: it’s cheap, does a good job with color documents, and (being an HP) is very reliable.

For everybody else in the room, I would like to recommend the HP Photosmart C7180 All-in-One, the printer that I use: it’s an excellent device, and so far has served me well. Of course, HP is quick to phase out products, and my model has already been replaced by the comparable HP Photosmart C8180 All-in-One. Unfortunately, it’s a little pricey, so you may find yourself at home with its somewhat less expensive sibling: the HP Photosmart C7280 All-in-One. This printer supports scanning, faxing, color/black copying — oh, and printing too. The print quality is excellent, and it uses six dye-based Vivera inks, so you can replace individual colors (about $9 each) as they run out, rather than shelling out big bucks for a whole tri-color cartridge. Most importantly, it’s both wired and wireless network capable, so it’s easy to share with everyone in your dorm room — just be careful you don’t accidentally share it with everyone on campus.

The Flash Drive

Your flash drive will likely become your best friend in college: it’s the quickest and easiest way to get a file from one on-campus computer to another without emailing. As such, many of the times you interact with your flash drive, you’ll be in a rush: you need something a) fast, that b) won’t get in your way, and c) is big enough so you don’t have to remember to remove files you put on it in a frantic frenzy.

For these reasons, I highly recommend my personal choice of flash drive, the OCZ 4GB Rally 2. I’ve purchased two of them (one for me, one for my dad), and both of them have performed absolutely superbly even under the most extreme conditions. Plus, it’s incredibly cheap! Generally, NewEgg reviews are the best indicator of device quality — in this case, they were, and now are not. This flash drive won multiple consecutive Users’ Choice Awards (very prestigious among NewEgg users), but recently the reviews have taken a bit of a decline. Trust me, they’re just whiners that don’t know not to remove a flash drive when the light is blinking — this drive is exceptional.

The Router

Chances are your college will be wireless. If it is, this isn’t something you need to worry about — you may want to pick up an inexpensive switch so you can share the ethernet jack in your dorm room with multiple computers, but a wireless router will be unnecessary, and perhaps even forbidden. Check with your college’s acceptable use policy before you install one of these in your room, and then try to get off by blaming me.

If your college or dorms are not wireless, however, and you are permitted to use a wireless router (which enables you to share the Internet signal in your dorm with wireless laptops and devices), I recommend the Apple AirPort Extreme. It’s fast, powerful, and stylish, too. That is of course, unless you did end up getting a Mac as a laptop like I recommended. Then you might want to wait to click the order button on your AirPort Extreme until you read the section on external hard drives. You’ll see why in a minute.

The External Hard Drive

Few people overlook this simple, yet incredibly useful, piece of technology: the external hard drive. For those who aren’t familiar with the concept, an external hard drive is like the hard drive inside your computer, except it sits on your desk and generally doesn’t have an operating system in it: think of it as a small virtual filing cabinet — portable, detachable additional storage for your system. An external hard drive is not only good for backups, but it’s great for storing photos and tunes without clogging up the precious space on your laptop’s internal hard drive.

If you’re using a Windows laptop, or a Mac on a college network that does not allow you to bring your own wireless router, you’ll want to take a look at this Toshiba 320GB external hard drive. This sexy drive is decently large (in terms of storage capacity), small (in terms of desktop footprint), quiet, and draws all of its power from a USB port — no chunky wall adapter required. In the spirit of full disclosure, I’ve never actually tried this drive myself, but Toshiba is among the technology companies for which I have the most respect: they almost always make a good product, and the few reviews I’ve read on this drive seem to support that. It should definitely serve you well.

If, however, you’re using a Mac with your own wireless router (see previous section), you really ought to take a look at the Apple Time Capsule. The Time Capsule comes with a built-in AirPort Extreme (as mentioned above), but is also a 500GB or 1TB (1000GB) network-ready external hard drive that can automatically receive instant back-ups from Time Machine (the automatic back-up feature of Mac OS X). If you’re using a Mac, and are allowed to use this product by your college, Time Capsule will absolutely make your life easier — and less prone to accidental data loss.

The Portable Media Player

Music is an important part of the life of any college student; if you disagree, you really shouldn’t be going to college yet.

It should come as no surprise to you that I recommend the iPod as the best media player for the college student — if you haven’t noticed, I’m a bit of an Apple fan. Which iPod is right for you, though, is perhaps a more difficult question.

It is for this reason that Apple created its Which iPod Are You? website. I recommend you start with this, which puts all of Apple’s iPod line side-by-side, so you can choose which features you most value. Keep in mind that all of the iPods (except the Shuffle, which I recommend you stay away from) now play video, so don’t let that be a pseudo-factor in your decision.

For the sake of simplicity, I recommend the new iPod Nano for the majority of college students who just want a no-frills media player that’ll get the job done, and is easy to throw in a pocket or purse when you’re on the go. For students who appreciate a little advanced technology, however, I say, be daring: get the iPod Touch. You’ll be rewarded with the possibility of adding new applications and getting new features in the very near future. And please, don’t call it the iTouch. Apple didn’t name it the iTouch for a reason. It sounds stupid.

Of course, if you plan on going for an iPhone (cell phone section later on), the iPod point is in a way moot, unless you want a device that can hold all of your tunes (an iPhone may not be able to) simultaneously.

The only exception to this general iPod guide is if you have a large library, and want to carry it all with you at once: for you, my friend, there is nothing better but the iPod Classic, the original. Before you go for the Classic, though, check and see if the 32GB iPod Touch will be enough for you (use the comparison chart on the Which iPod Are You? page). Nice as the Classic is, the Touch is definitely sexier.

The Speakers

Now that you’ve got all of your wonderful music, you need something to play it over. Apple’s notebooks’ speakers aren’t horrible — but seriously, we can do better than that.

I recommend you go the route I did, and be a little adventurous: get yourself a relatively inexpensive mini-hifi system, and rig it to your laptop with a mini-RCA to RCA cable. The sound quality is phenomenal, and you get a CD player and AM/FM radio out of the deal as well. Just be aware you may need to turn up the volume on the stereo pretty loud to hear your laptop — it isn’t broken!

If you’re not of a mind to be so adventurous, however, and just want a normal set of computer speakers, I cannot more highly recommend the JBL Creature II Speakers. Not only do they look awesome next to a Mac, but the sound quality is surprisingly awesome for such tiny drivers. Give it a shot, you won’t be disappointed.

The Headphones

For those times when your roommate is attempting to study, you’re going to need some good, noise-canceling headphones. Nice as the Apple earbuds are, they just don’t quite cut it for real high-quality audio.

If you’re willing to spend the big bucks, I highly recommend the Bose QuietComfort 2 or QuietComfort 3 (depending on your preferred style) headphones for the ultimate in audio quality. They’re expensive, but they last, and you will be blown away by the musical party that begins inside your head when you use them.

If you’re in the mood for something a touch cheaper, I recommend anything by SENNHEISER, particularly the SENNHEISER PX100’s: great tonal clarity, and an excellent range for such an inexpensive pair of headphones. Read the NewEgg reviews — they speak the truth. They aren’t noise-canceling, unfortunately, but they should serve well for most casual use.

The Phone

If you’re getting a new phone for college, I really only have one piece of advice: stay away from the RAZR. The incredible craze that became the RAZR ultimately led to its demise as an excellent cell phone. It’s now almost an utter piece of crap. Trust me, if you get a RAZR, you will eventually end up suffering for it.

In terms of carriers, all I can say is that AT&T is my carrier of choice: generally better customer service than Verizon, their phones don’t come with an annoying proprietary operating system (*cough* Verizon), and the network is GSM, which means your phone will be more likely to work internationally should you choose to study abroad (GSM networks are more prevalent in Europe than CDMA networks).

In terms of phones, Research in Motion offers a wide variety of products that are great for college students — that would be the BlackBerry line, especially the BlackBerry Pearl. However, if I were to make a true recommendation, it should be obvious what I would say: go for the iPhone 3G. The data plan may run a little pricey, but you most likely won’t also need to buy an iPod, and you’ll be amazed at the convenience such a small device (now with a built-in GPS) can bring to your life. If you haven’t looked at the iPhone since its birth last year, look again, the price has come down considerably and it’s got some great new features.

Closing Thoughts

In the end, what you get isn’t as important as what you do with it. Take good care of whatever technology you get: be sure to get your laptop a quality case, like one from Incase if you end up getting a Mac, I cannot more highly recommend their products. Remember to keep things clean (check out iKlear for all of your Apple electronics), and make sure you get a quality surge protector connected to a grounded outlet (don’t just use an adapter, make sure you screw the little green tab to your outlet box if your outlets for some reason aren’t three-prong).

Oh, and you will need cables, don’t forget that. I highly recommend NewEgg for all of your USB and Ethernet cable needs, their prices are usually the cheapest, and their user reviews are reliable.

Good luck next year, and happy shopping!

After much deliberation and decision-making, I finally took the plunge and sent in my confirmation card — to Brown University.

Yes, it’s a complete about-face from my original decision; I really did think I would end up at WPI. But the more I thought, and the more I researched, and the more I walked around Providence, the more appealing Brown became, until it was finally too hard to say no.

I shall spend the next few months preparing myself for the workload an Ivy League school can dish out. Somebody help me.

Right now, I’m in Spain, probably loving it. Wanna’ see what we’re doing? Check the official Spain blog!

The Mounties are back on top. Congratulations on a great season, going out in style! I wasn’t able to get much with my phone, but I do have a few pictures from the very end.

I’m just putting the finishing touches on the first fully-working (and actually useful) TuneConnect 2 plug-in: a Last.fm interface. For those not familiar with it, Last.fm is a music-based social networking site, that uses the music you listen to (automatically submitted to the site by various players, a process called “scrobbling” ) to make recommendations, and also connect you with people who have similar tastes. You can see some of the stuff TuneConnect has already posted to my profile during normal use.

Thanks to Laurent Baumann, the designer of both of TuneConnect’s new icons, for the Last.fm sidebar design. Credit where credit is due.

And for those of you who were wondering, I will be releasing LFScrobbler, the framework I wrote to communicate with Last.fm, as open source to the community.

Just yesterday, TuneConnect 2 Beta 1 was released to my loyal and wonderful beta testers. It was indeed an exciting moment.

With the release on OS X just a little over a month away, it’s time to start some serious marketing. Word on the street is () that the best way to market is by word on the street.

That is, get the Mac bloggers talking—get anyone talking, for that mater. The more people get excited about a product, the more people will want to find out more. I’ve sent emails to all of the major Mac blogs (complete with beta access ), and I’m even talking it up with a couple of big names in the industry.

I still need help though, and I’m counting on you. If you’re reading this, and use a Mac, let me know, and I’ll let you try out TuneConnect. If you like it, talk it up! That’s the only way it can really become popular.

TuneConnect 2, my little pet iTunes remote control project, has been coming along very well over the past few months, and I wanted to share with you a bit of information on its progress. With a video.

TuneConnect in a Nutshell

Enjoy!