Now, iPeng has some cool fans and one of them has put together this on using and iPhone to control a Squeezebox:
Coolio is really impressed with this and thanks a lot to James.
iPeng 0.2 is out
As of today, iPeng 0.2 “WinterIce” is available. Read more on the Blog and Release Notes Pages. From 0.2 on iPeng also has a documentation for Developers, which is not complete but will be gradually updated. The User’s Manual is not yet updated but will be gradually improved…
Changes in iPeng 0.2
- Reworked Main Menu andShortcut Buttons
- Added Internet Radio and Music Services (not fully tested!)
- Added Playlist Browsing and Management
- Added Generic Plugin Support
- Added Search Functionality
- Added Alphabet Section Headings to Browse by Artist and Browse by Album Menus
- Added Jump-to-Time in PlayingNow
- Added Plugin Development Functionality (see here)
- Some Speed Improvements on Long List Browsing (especially Scrolling)
- Added Displaying of Favorites (no management yet)
- “WinterIce” color scheme
Thanks to Erland Isaksson for help and suggestions
Thanks to everybody else who contributed
Penguins don’t live alone…
Or: where’s this going to go.
So, week 1 is almost over and iPeng got quite a few downloads and one update. I keep hearing “I told you so” from a certain penguin and I get questions on where this is supposed to lead to from everybody else. So, this is about the vision thing.
1. Coolio loves simple. This is supposed to become the most simple means of controlling a home stereo setup. Including music database, live streaming and everything. Vision: everything is buried on some server you don’t need to touch. Music is played through a streaming client. Everything is managed on your iPhone/iTouch. No walking to the stereo to see a display, no clumsy remote, no PCs that have to run all day. Just sitting on the sofa, listening to music.
2. Coolio likes to travel. He’s not always at home, so streaming to the iPod/iPhone will be great as well.
3. Coolio is demanding. So the performance of iPeng will be improved, the functionality increased to support more of SqueezeCenter’s options and eventually, we want to see a native app looking even better on iPhone/iTouch.
4. Coolio loves cool. We want to get music databases out of the nerd corner. Cool and simple devices are the key to this. That’s the vision.
And no, Coolio got nothing to do with Linux, he’s a gadget freak, he’s got everything…
How it all began…
This is Coolio. He’s a little penguin, and he lives with me. Coolio loves Music. In fact, he’s a real rapper, like his idol lending his name. He can really get on one’s nerves with that… But he loves other stuff as well and he collected tons of music on my home server. He put all of my CDs there plus tons of his own stuff. Real cool.
Then he likes to play this stuff through my Stereo and my streaming clients. Now problems started. Coolio is rather small, even for a penguin. So he really hates to climb up the desk to get access to my PC to browse the music library. I also hate him doing that since it really doesn’t help with working, browsing and all the other stuff I do on my PC. And he also hates to have to run to the stereo to look at the display to browse the music library. And then the browsing itself! 7,200 songs. On a text display. 5 lines at a time! And the remote… Penguin ain’t got fingers, Penguin got wings!
So, not, that’s not the right stuff for my little penguin. So he really gets nervous when Apple brings out this cool new gadget called ‘iPhone’. Coolio is really into gadgets. Always got to have the latest ones. Although… He doesn’t really want a phone, got better phones here. But the User interface! That’s real sleek. You can even use it with a wing! So Coolio get’s himself one of the first iPod Touch’s around. Really excited to use it with his music library…
But then… Ye’know.. He’s using SqueezeCenter and Squeezebox and that’s quite versatile, but the user interfaces… Fine for a PC, but an iTouch, with WINGS? That’s where I enter the story. I mentioned it before: He can REALLY get on one’s nerves! So (sigh) I sit down and start to write a little iPhone/iTouch skin for his SqueezeCenter. Can’t be THAT difficult…
Months later… My fingers start to feel like wings themselves. From coding (nights of it) as well as from testing the stuff, but, hey, this really starts to look cool…
