I was pretty excited about upgrading to iTunes 9.  My main reasons to be excited were the updated iTunes Store and the management of the iPod Touch/iPhone pages.  Truth is that I wasn’t really expecting much from iTunes 9.  It wasn’t until I watched Steve Jobs’ keynote about the release that I learned about things like Home Sharing and Genius Mixes.  That’s when I got really excited.

Here’s the good news, especially for me: the Store and the iPod page management are all they were hyped up to be.  The Store has received a facelift that makes sense, like the toolbar at the top of the page, and things like the Top Song lists got major UI improvements.  It is such an advantage to be able to preview songs right in the list and to see all 200.  I also like the ability to add to a wishlist, post to Twitter, or gift the song again, right in the list.  Page management is as simple as it should be.  No real surprise it was just missing for a long time.  I’d still like to be able to password-protect pages so that I could keep some apps away from my kids.

The bad news is that the other two features I looked forward to have some bugs to work out.  I’ll start with Home Sharing.  It sounds like an awesome idea for anyone with more than one computer in the house.  You’re tired of having to transfer tunes from one machine to another and then having to reauthorize.  Well, Home Sharing purports to allow anyone using the same iTunes account, on the same network, to simply access the others library.  And it sort of works.  My first attempt went off without a hitch.  I enabled HS on both machines and the libraries showed up.  I could play tunes and even copy them into the other’s library (this costs you an authorized machine but I’m assuming everyone here has less than 5 machines in the house).  The second time I tried it the Home Sharing section in iTunes was completely absent.  I noticed that the other machine was asleep so I woke it up but the link didn’t reappear.  I disabled and reenabled HS on both machines and the link reappeared.  But seconds later it disappeared again.  It hasn’t worked right since.  Boo.

Genius Mixes on the other hand is an extension of the Genius Playlists which I’ve been touting since their arrival.  The Genius Playlist is, well, genius.  You’re playing a song and you’re really into the vibe so you hit the Genius icon.  Instantly a list of 25 ‘like’ songs appear in a playlist with the current song at the top.  I’ve found that these playlists are 99% right on.  I’m never disappointed with the playlist.  Genius Mixes, on the other hand, are 12 ‘endless’ playlists of supposed like artists and songs.  In theory it would work the same as the Genius Playlists.  On the surface it does, but I wasn’t 4 tracks into my mixes when really disjointed tracks started appearing.  About 10 tracks in it was clear that the mix wasn’t contained at all to like tracks.  I’ve tried it several times and been disappointed every time.  (And yes, I have updated my genius database several times since upgrading.)

So there you have it, the things I was looking forward to initially have been done well.  The things I was surprised by but looking forward to need a lot of work.  That’s too bad because normally things don’t come out of Apple until they’re really working well.  And for the Mac-lovers out there who will blame my PC, I tried this on my Macbook too – same result.  I still love iTunes, regardless of the bloat and bugs.

Yesterday I put the finishing touches on a website for photographer Caitlin den Boer.  Her company is called Adelita Rose and the website features some neat tricks using Wordpress.

Along with her most recent Twitter tweet, we also automatically show an excerpt from her most recent blog post.  On the home page there is also a slideshow going on in the background.  I wanted the site content to be completely controlled by Caitlin so that meant using only standard Wordpress tools for the post and page editing.  Well, in the newer versions of Wordpress images can be displayed in galleries.  A gallery normally shows up as a series of thumbnails on a page which, while a neat way of showing a collection of images at one time, is not nearly as visually impressive as an auto-advancing, full-framed slideshow.  What I did was I hid the thumbnailed gallery and used Mootools to read in all of the links to the medium-sized images, used AJAX to follow the links and grab the images, stored them in local, hidden divs, and then created a cross-fading array loop of those divs. The effect is seamless and fairly quick.  The bonus is that each of the images is clickable to the full blown image (copyright Adelita Rose, of course).  The portfolio pages use the same tricks.

The contact page is a modified plugin and the music player is a free, Flash-based mp3 player that I have randomly selecting a loop of Caitlin’s chosen music.

The look and feel went through a couple of revisions with Rene Dick at Scout Design to nail down Caitlin’s vision but the end result is awesome.  I’m so glad we were able to deliver a non-Flash product that she can administer that still has that polished look a photographer wants.

Cheers to Caitlin and Rene on a very successful project!

J

We were on our way to Science North this morning and decided to caffinate at Timmy’s.  We skipped the local Tim’s in favour of a drive-through, assuming it would be quicker.  We stopped at the Tim Horton’s in Nobel, Ontario because it was on the way and in a high traffic area.  Usually these types of locations are faster because they’re more experienced.  Not this time.

Our first dilema was whether to run in or drive-through.  Looking at the lineup in the drive-through I decided that running in would be quicker.  As I was parking I noticed that the line inside the place was to the front doors – drive-through it is.

There were about 5 cars ahead of us in line which, at my normal Tim’s in Belleville on Cannifton and College, should take about 5-6 minutes.  I knew we were in trouble when we didn’t move at all in 5 minutes.  When we finally got to the ordering wicket the conversation went as follows:

“Do you serve English Toffee?”  (I have to ask because not every location does, for some reason.)
“No, we don’t.”
“OK, a large French Vanilla will be fine then.”
“Actually, we’re out of cappuccinos.” (Now I’m annoyed because you shouldn’t be out of anything at a Tim Horton’s.  Period.  I’m now not getting anything for myself because I’m P-O’d.)
“Fine.  A large double cream, one sugar, a peach juice and a blueberry doughnut.” (I meant the one that was on the big poster by the ordering window since it’s a featured product.)
“OK, $4.12.”  (This is when my wife guesses that we’ll get the wrong type of doughnut.)
We get to the window and I check the doughnut.  Sure enough, it’s some kind of glazed blueberry thing.
“I’m sorry, I wanted the blueberry doughnut you have on the poster by the ordering window.”
“Oh, you mean a blueberry jam filled doughnut?”
“No.” (My wife then remembers they’re called ‘blooms’ and calls it out.) “A blueberry bloom.”
“We’re all out of those.”
“Ok, fine, a strawberry bloom then.”
“We don’t have any of the blooms left.” (WTF? Now I’m just plain mad.)
“Ok, fine, any blueberry filled doughnut then.” (We’ve now been at the window for a good 5-7 minutes.)
She goes to get the doughnut and is clearly not having fun, has no helpers, and will not receive anything close to something resembling a tip.  I take the doughnut and decide that it is the last time I ever visit that location.  I’ve tried, several times, to be patient at this location but I’ve had enough.  And I’m a patient guy.

I feel bad for the girl at the window.  I’m sure she hates having no help and not having any product to deliver.  At the same time, a little help when I’m ordering would have gone a long way to soothe the pain (when I asked for an E.T. she could have then told me they had no cappuccinos instead of making me go down the list).  Let this be a lesson to customer service reps everywhere, there’s always a chance to save the sale.  A smile and a kind word do wonders.  Up until the doughnut I was still a possible “be-back.”  Not anymore.

If you’re from Tim Horton’s and reading this, that Nobel location has been a disgrace for several years and while I’ve only been there maybe twice a year it has consistently underperformed.  They’ve lost sales from me, screwed up orders, been short of stock, and been quite simply too slow for the brand Canadians have come to know, love and trust.  Do something.

So I was poking around on my MacBook and noticed that there was a chess game (aptly named “Chess”).  I decided to give it a go even though I last played chess in, oh, probably elementary school.  After a few humiliating games I tried to get semi-serious and actually put some thought into my moves.  I was just starting to think that I’d gained the upper hand when the Mac cheated!  I thought it was a fluke so I “undid” my move and tried it again but the darn thing cheated again!  It’s hard to really show it without video but I promise you, it happened.  Below are my screenshots to prove it:

Before moving my pawn into F4:

After moving my pawn and before the computer’s retaliation:

Now here’s where the computer cheats.  Pawns may only take pieces moving diagonally and here he takes my pawn, sitting in F4, by moving to F3!  Even if it was checkers this jump wouldn’t count for anything.

No more Chess for me.  The game’s hard enough without the computer cheating to beat me.  Good night, Irene.

This is a general call for help.  An APB if you wish.  I’ve got a client who has requested Google Maps.  No problem.  They want a CMS.  No problem.  They want to be able to get directions between the articles, which are points of interest, in the order in which the user defines.  No problem.  Now they want to bundle the whole thing in a single zip file, including the articles which should be pdfs.  No, er, what’s that?

I can put the attachments in a single zip file.  I can make the articles into pdfs.  What I can’t seem to do, for the life of me, is get the Google Map into a dynamically created pdf.  I’m sure there’s a way, I just haven’t come across it yet.  Anyone?

Anyone?

I’ll post the answer here and give credit where it’s due. promise.

Anyone?