Hi friends of Coolio!

The long awaited iPeng 1.1 version is currently in beta testing and to make the wait a bit more exciting, here’s a little update on what it will do.

We have received a tremendous amount of suggestions and feature requests during the last months and we really want to thank you all for these. Really! This is what will make iPeng better. Now iPeng 1.1 is probably the single most important update to make these things happen since a lot has changed under the hood which will enable iPeng to be much more flexible and allow for more functionality.

As a little “teaser” I want to give you an outlook on two of the more prominent results of these changes:

iPeng with plugin support

iPeng 1.1 will support plugins that provide menus for the Squeezebox(TM) Controller. This includes basic functionality like Alarms, Random Play etc., additional ones like CD Player and Biography but also really complex plugins like Custom Browse.

So iPeng’s functionality will not grow by one or two features but potentially dozens! Cool, isn’t it?

iPeng goes SqueezeNetwork

The other big change (awaited by lots of you) will be support for SqueezeNetwork. You no longer need a SqueezeCenter server to use iPeng with your Squeezebox.

See some screen shots of both functionalities below.

Now if you want to add your own feature requests to make iPeng even better and probably get that one functionality you’ve really been missing, please file a ticket with our trac ticketing system:

https://trac.penguinlovesmusic.de/trac/ipengnat/newticket

(don’t let yourself turn off by an error message, you have to log in/register and then you can use it)

Have fun!

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iPeng and PenguinLovesMusic.com is growing in features and functions so the poor penguin can’t keep up doing everything on his own.

So he’s looking for help in the following areas:

Webmaster

~10 h a week.

Responsibilities: Maintain PenguinLovesMusic.com’s blog and trac site, answer support requests.

Graphics Artists

per assignment.

As some have noted before, Coolio’s not the greatest Artist on this planet, so he would need help doing in-application artwork and site design.

If you are interested in one of these openings, please contact coolio(at)penguinlovesmusic.com

iPeng 1.0.4 is now released on the App Store as a free upgrade following the somewhat ill-fated 1.0.3 release. Since we did not write an update then, here’s a summary of the new features:

What’s new?

• Music Folder Browsing. You can now browse your folder structure through the respective SqueezeCenter function. (1.0.3)
• Long lists are now sorted in a separate thread. This strongly improves performance during the loading of large libraries. iPeng will now stay reactive and the load time for a 3,000 album library improves from approx. 4 min to approx. 2 min until the cache is fully synchronized. (1.0.3)
• There is now an experimental Wake-On-LAN funtionality that may or may not work. You have to manually set the MAC for this under Settings. (1.0.3 and 1.0.4).

What’s fixed?

• The “The The” bug is fixed (see Known Issues), so you can put your “ignored articles” back in if you used the workaround in 1.0.3. (1.0.4)
• Albums will now fully load and artwork will show up (1.0.4)
• No more crashes due to SqueezeCenter Bug 10242 (empty album records). You might see empty albums now in the list of albums but they should do no harm. (1.0.3 and 1.0.4)
• Artwork scaling in the list should finally work in cases where the server doesn’t scale (e.g. bmp artwork). It’s still strongly discouraged to use embedded .bmp artwork in your files since you will transmit lots and lots of data and fill your iPhone’s flash disk quite a bit. A full scale .bmp Artwork as delivered by iTunes will take around 1 MB, if you’ve got 1,000 albums that makes… (1.0.4)
• Sorting of Album and Artist lists should now be as expected (1.0.3)

We apologize for any inconvenience you may have had with the 1.0.3 version.

Have Fun!

You liked the iPeng skin? Just thought a WebApp is too slow? Well, then we’ve got something for you:

Explore iPeng usability and iPhone speed with the iPeng 1.0 now on the iPhone App Store.

It’s the ultimate remote control software for Logitech® Squeezebox™ players and the SqueezeCenter server. Have full control over the music all over your home with your iPhone or iPod touch.

We told you it would come and we told you it would have limited functionality but Coolio has been an insisting Penguin, so now it does already give you a bit more than originally expected. Here are the highlights:

• Explore your music library at unprecedented ease: Browse your library categories at our wingtips and select one of “play”, “add” or “add next”. And do that on any level that has playable content with the “touch-and-hold” gesture. Available Categories are
  • Albums, Artists, Genres, Playlists, Favorites

• NowPlaying screen with multi-page controls: Let’s you do all player related activities in one place
• Play Internet Radio, Music Services and Podcasts: Everything that can be accessed through SqueezeCenter can be accessed through iPeng. Including Search, Artwork and all the other goodies. With the same playback functionality as for the library (as available for streaming content)

• Manage, simultaneously control and synchronize all your Squeezebox™ players and servers with iPeng’s MultiPlayer control: iPeng’s MultiPlayer control now is the main dashboard to select , manage and control your players. And Servers.
  

• Manage your playlist: Re-order and directly play the Tracks on the current playlist.

• Have full control over your player features: shuffle, repeat, rate songs, love and ban tracks for music services and much more. On the overlay of the artwork screen. Just as you know it from iPeng.

• Full localization through SqueezeCenter: iPeng itself is currently English only, but most menu items and texts are fully localized as of your server setting.

Now on the iPhone App Store for $9.99.

Download and have fun!

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For more information and detailed usage instructions see help.penguinlovesmusic.de
iPeng requires a SqueezeCenter server from version 7.0 on, available for free from Logitech® at www.slimdevices.com and one or more Squeezebox™ or Transporter® or any compatible hard- or software player.
Squeezebox™ is a trademark of Logitech.

iPhone, iPod and iPhone App Store are trademarks of Apple Inc.

iPeng 0.5.3 is a maintenance release.

Originally it was meant to support the new Alarm feature of SC 7.2 but that functionality is not ready yet. Sorry. I need it, too 🙂

Here’s what’s new:

• 0.5.3 is zipped under Windows instead of on a Mac. Vista users were experiencing issues with Mac zip-files.
• it comes with support for the XM Radio plugin
• the Podcast plugin is now supported
• there’s a toolbar shortcut icon for Pandora

Oh, and some cool but useless stuff, too:

• 0.5.3 has the smooth main-menu transition of the failed 0.6
• plus some bling-bling on Now Playing
• the MultiPlayer control is now a bit more reduced. It doesn’t show the track title, album and artist anymore. This takes down server and client load a bit and makes the control smaller, fitting more players on a screen. Should anybody miss the text items, please let me know.

Have fun 🙂