WeBot on Download.com

Ayup, Download.com put us up on their site today. And our servers are feeling the crush. It's a nice crush. ;-) At the moment it's only the Windows version of WeBot that you can snag (for free, of course) with a quick click and 14.3 mb of hd space. But reliable sources tell me you can expect to see the Mac and Linux links put up on Download.com straight away. Please drop by and give us a positive comment and a nice rating, if you'd be so kind. Tell you friends cause within the next few weeks you'll get your Happy Hannukwanzamas present -- sharing content between friends on WeBot. Keep your eyes on this spot and I'll keep you up to the minute informed of the upcoming fun.

ciao,

BT

new release -- kinda stealth-ish

We pushed out a new build last night -- nothing earthshaking, more back-end type stuff and some important foundational nuts and bolts for the upcoming sharing release that is being built as I type and as you read. One most excellent addition however is a fall back reg/sign in screen to go along with a direct download link. that is, you can now download the .exe (.dmg and tar to follow soon) without going to WeBot.com and signing in. clicking on http://s3.webot.com/webot-installer.exe will serve you the windows .exe file and after installation a pop up screen will enable to to sign in with your current account or create a new one. Tre chic. Other new stuff a-coming along with sharing will be password recovery in case your memory is as faulty as mine, newsletter sign up out in/out, a user home page. tons of stuff.

Keep your eyes peeled as Marcus and Seth are working like crazed weasels to get sharing buffed up and ready to go and you're not gonna wanna miss this release.

ciao and happy bird day.

bt

Total love for all things iTunish

From the, "necessary things that are just around the corner" department......

In our testing labs at this very moment is one more major step toward full Mac integration. Auto detection and indexing of your iTune library and playlist. Kaboom. When this is released (which should be very soon as I personally saw it pass the first two tests today) you'll have all your iTunes music (and someday... videos) indexed and searchable as well as the playlists you lovingly put together showing up in the music playlist panel.

This may sound like small potatoes, but boy howdy, I'll do it. I'll admit that although I use my iTunes thangy pretty much every day to listen to podcasts of all the radio shows I'm missing by having to work for a living, I never really looked on my hd to see where the application lives. And now i don't have to. Nice,. One more thing I don't have to think about or commit to memory. I like automatic brain cell saving devices. Yes, indeed, WeBot is making me smarter; not to mention simplifying my life by making it so i don't have to sync my iPod every night to get at my podcasts. Now I can just plug some headphones into my iPhone and everything I need is at hand. Sweet.

New for November --Custom photo albums

Yeppers, we pushed photo collections (albums) live today. Now instead of having to go to your hard drive and copy and move photos around to create custom directories for slide shows, you can do it all from within the WeBot application.

Go to the photo page and call up any folder of photos. drag and drop the images into the album photo list (bottom left). You can open and draw from as many folders as you like and can make your custom album as big as you like. Like?

When you're happy, save the album. then you can display it as a full-screen screensaver or a slideshow within the WeBot application. It's easy as a walk in the park and as simple as pie.















coming up next.... --> sharing these albums with your friends. Todays release is one more foundational layer of what will eventually be the full blown WeBot social media player.

enjoy......

WeBot public blog: Apple adds WeBot to its offical web apps directory

WeBot public blog: Apple adds WeBot to its offical web apps directory

Apple adds WeBot to its offical web apps directory

wo0t, we've been added to the Apple iPhone web applications directory. it was only a matter of time as we built WeBot to work with Macs and iPhones from day one (as well as Linux and windows) and the response from early adapters has been breathtakingly positive.

WeBot adds a "no limits" aspect to streaming music on your iPhone that was undreamed of in the olden days of only having 4 or 8 Gb of storage space. No more picking and choosing which 8 Gb of your 58 GB music collection to upload to your iPhone. Nope, you can have it all and have it now. That's hot.

It's really quite easy. You create a WeBot account and automatically get the proper app download for your platform , be it Mac, Win or Linux (we believe in cross platform free love). Place a separate bot on each machine where you've music or photos stored and associate said music with the bot. Then whip out your iPhone, wherever you may find yourself in your daily travels, open up the web browser and go to WeBot.com Log in to your account and search/browse/access ALL your media. It's like having a couple of gigantic hard drives strapped to your back without the chafing. This is the future, bubba. No more uploading, no more syncing, no more limits.

release notes 10.26.07

beeg site/app/data base push last night. big thanks to the dev team and qa team for staying up well past midnight to push this live at a time when the least amount of users would be effected by possible issues.

new stuff 4 U

download photos: yep download any photo in its full resolution. i know we don't have sharing yet (wait a week or so) but this is the foundational cement for moving forward with social/sharing features.

right click on photo thumbs to a. view full size or b. download

single click audio streaming: mouse-over highlight a song and you'll see a > play button.

indexing status, bot stats and info: look in the config page to see the real time status of newly added directories. on the left, under the bot list you'll see all there is to know about your selected bot.

bunches of bug fixes both visible and behind the scenes. searching/playback/sorting issues. this is our best bet to date!

coming next: create custom photo albums and share em with your friends....

bt

__________________

Release notes 10.25.07 --> Linux

Ayup, you read correctly, we built a version of WeBot for Linux and it's available now.


http://ns2.webot.com/webot.tar.gz

after you DL it, just:

tar zxf webot.tar.gz
cd webot
./webot.sh

A thousand thanks for the outstanding efforts of our entire dev team in putting this together while simultaneously building tons of new features -- these guys flat out rock, baby.

Also, I gotta say: I've been in the software, multi-media game for roughly 10 years and have worked for 3 major players that have had a fairly large impact on the zeitgeist, but none of them, not a one has put out the effort to build out to as many platforms on day one as WeBot has. I'm damned proud to work for a .com that builds for Windows, Macs AND linux. No bs-y, " We'll be releasing something for mac in 6 months -- the receding 6 month horizon that never comes.

Ok, enough of my version of The Sammy Maudlin Show. go out there and snag that Linux, Mac or Windows version of WeBot and start changing your online world for the better.

Release notes 10.9.07

Big push today with some major features and enhancements

Here's what you'll find --

On the config a bot page

• remove old dead bots -- clean up your account and take dead bots off the list
• upgrade a bot -- when we have software upgrades and enhancements it will be easy to stay up to date
• bot status and info -- every thing you need to know about your bot

on the music page

• sort by bot in the search returns panel
• choose amount of search returns to display -- 100 -- 250 -- 500

Photo page

• sort by folder name
• view folders by date
• choose amount of search returns 50 -- 100 --250
• screen saver mode -- well not a real screen saver just yet (requires a click esc to exit, not a mouse or key movement. but it is a lovely looping full screen mode for your photos to make your monitor properly display your photos full size

a hard working week. What's next....

photo album collections
slide show enhancements
download photos
sharing
widgets for music and photos
social networking features,
Linux support

cheers,

team WeBot

apple thinks a little too different, part Deux

from a previous blog post: "Dang it, as of this morning Apple pulled the java 6.02 download off their dev page. Java 6 is shipping with Leopard and is necessary for installing and running WeBot and many people have been using this addition to their current OS to enjoy WeBot. Good for them but not so good for people who don't have the Leopard beta or will not choose to upgrade to Leopard when its released.. This is a crying shame, and makes WeBot unavailable for our Mac temporarily."

Actually, there was something we could do about it and we did. We re-wrote the mac installer package to allow java 5 as well as java 6. Now OSx will run WeBot with no muss or fuss. And when and should you choose to spend the dough to upgrade to Leopard in a month or so, all will be well. No incompatibility problems. this new build contains some tasty UI and bug fixes so I recommend upgrading to this new bot.

Simply exit your bot and then go to the config page and "add a bot" you'll get the new build.

apple thinks a little too different

---

Dang it, as of this morning Apple pulled the java 6.02 download off their dev page. Java 6 is shipping with Leopard and is necessary for installing and running WeBot and many people have been using this addition to their current OS to enjoy WeBot. Good for them but not so good for people who don't have the Leopard beta or will not choose to upgrade to Leopard when its released.. This is a crying shame, and makes WeBot unavailable for our Mac temporarily.

There is nothing we can do about this, unfortunately, but we'll try. While we look for a solution, you can still log in to WeBot on a mac and stream music and view photos that are hosted on a windows machine, but you can't actually install a bot on your mac to access the music and photos shared therein. dang, dang, dang. I realize that Apple wants as many people to buy and upgrade to Leopard, we all gots to make money, but coercing people by means of not allowing them to upgrade their current OS with a higher form of Java is just kinda mean. A lot of my long time Apple using friends are constantly berating me for using Windows (hey, i'm bi-lingual) because of supposed MS strong-arm tactics. In this case they need look no further than their front porch for an example of that kind of meme.

more changes, enhancements and fixits 9.26.07

new photo page magic and an important music page enhancement

What's new in photos:

* new photos page layout
* dropdown for number of thumbnails to display (smaller default of 50)
* photo pagination (sticky for search or folder filter)
* new slide show and controls (black background and fullscreen)
* new "filter" pod to let the user know they are looking at a filtered set of photos, filter pod has clear button to remove filter (searches and pages are within filter)
* folders moved to left panel (selected folder appears as a filter in filter panel)
* added date range search for photos (selected date range appears as a filter in filter panel)
* thumbnails streamlined a bit (white background, no title text, better loading progress text, and maybe even faster...)

music page:

pagination!!!

__________________
"Which is worse, ignorance or indifference?"

More new changes pushed out live last night

We've been working like crazed weasels this week and managed to knock out a bunch more GUI updates and general app polishing today. Enjoy.

9.22 changes pushed out to you.


Seth's mcc changes

* "Playists" instead of collections -- more bettah, eh?

* Moved playlists to left nave, parallel to main song search
returns -- this makes a heckuva lot more sense and figuring out that dropping and dragging creates a playlist is now easy as pie. I like pie

* Moved ad to right nav -- which also puts the current song info right underneath the player controls. a no brainer.

* Added randomizing and alphabetizing to lists -- main and
playlists -- you have the right to be as random as you like.

* Moved stop button on player control to be after play/pause -- another no brainer.


* Search for photos by partial word -- not all of us got an A in spelling bee class. this should make it easier for everyone to find stuff

* Drop down choice of number of songs to display on the main page
after a search. 100/250/500 -- a bunch of ya's asked for this feature and who were we to say no.


Enjoy, boyos. Plenty more coming next week. We'll rest up for a few hours and get back to it.

iPhone -- streaming your playlists

I gotta admit the coolest thing we've built so far has by far been the mobile experience between WeBot and your trusty iPhone. As long as you can get a decent connection you can stream your music or watch your photos anywhere anytime. WeBot has made the choice between a 4 gb or an 8gb phone pointless. Sheesh, i've got 140 gigs of music on my various boxes and i can get to all of it, no uploading, no syncing. This is totally schwank.

The only slight hump in the road we've run into is the Safari browser and its buffering limitations. Depending on the lengths of a playlist or album you're trying to stream, you can occasionally run up against said limits and the whole playlist may not stream. It's a hump in the road, but we'll figure it out.

happy Friday.

BT

fixits, features and more goodness 9.19.07

things added/buffed and polished for today:

• shuffled the play/pause and stop buttons to make things a bit more clear. the music industry has spent decades training your brain to look for the play button first and THEN the stop button. Who are we to argue?
  
• music collections are now properly called playlists.
  
• you can sort your song lists alphabetically
  
• iPhone photo viewing now sorts by date
  
• logging into your WeBot iPhone interface is easier and more understandabe
  
• many heinous bugs destroyed

as always a billion thanks to our beta testers for suggesions, ideas and bug reports. we couldn't do it without you. Well, we could but not nearly as well.

New fixits for a new week.

hot off the presses, new flex client front end changes for you to love:

Fixed/added:

1. - Stop button added - stops playing song and ends download of song
2. - After stopping song clicking play icon resumes currently selected song
3. - Artist/Album/Genre title & count columns sort correctly when clicked
4. - Added track number column to main music list
5. - Amazon art & buy link fixed (will always require good MP3 tags to work correctly)
6. - New cute WeBot preloader

#1 & 2 Intuitive behavior. Now if you'd rather single click/highlight a song then click play, you can do so. A bunch of y'all asked for it and here it is.
#3 Necessary for those of us with 20 gazillion albums on our various machines.
#4 Get those songs in order get way the artist and his/her producer spent countless hours agonizing over. That can be an amazingly important part of a cd presentation......
#5 This works nearly flawlessly now. The only variable is with the interaction with Amazon. if anything between your track's id3 data and Amazon's differs ya gots a no go.
#6 Seth likes cute We had to stop him from putting in a little puppy dog wagging its tail while the mcc player loads. This was a better a choice, hands down.

Enjoy and keep those suggestions coming in, we're working around the clock to keep buffing and polishing.

enhancemnts and polishing

Some major bugs have been fixed over the last week and some major (imm) and minor enhancements and tweaks have hit the ground running.

things we're working on:

• CPU usage and general resource stability. We're actively working to make WeBot's footprint on your computer's available resources lighter and more transparent. Great strides have bee made in the last few days and the latest builds are far superior to those from the olden times (like last week).
• search code has seen a ton of re-write and it's plenty faster, more accurate and efficient than ever. Partial word searching is now active so if I can't remember if it's Metheny, Methany, Metheney or Methaney when I want to listen to my favorite modern jazz gtr player, no worries. I just type in "meth" and get a slew of returns from Pat Metheny to 147 bpm techno. har.
• collections and how they are created and edited have been revamped making organizing, editing and using playlists a whole heckalot easier.

In progress and design are a major buffing and polishing of the photo viewing pages, more clarity in the accessing your stuff from your iPhone, easier upgrade process and a general more manageable guided flow down the path from first visit to streaming music and viewing your photo collections in living color.

Thanks a million to all the kind early testers and users and friends who've generously given of their time to play with this first incarnation of WeBot and pontificate on how to make it mo better. we appreciate and listen to every syllable.

We cant do it without you. Please keep those cards and letters coming.

first weekend in the public eye

...sort of, as yesterday saw WeBot dipping its toe in to the ocean via a lovely article by Om Malik on the most worthy Gigaom.com blog as well as positive pokes on Mashable and bitcurrent by Sean Aune and Alistair Croll

While we are still in private beta mode and keeping user numbers low on purpose, it was good to more than triple our userbase in a day and get some much needed input from the wild on UI/feature set/bugs/effusive praise/etc....

There are a bunch of wild bugs we're working on over the weekend and hope to have a rather effective ugrade/update by early next week -- or even sometime over the weekend if the fellahs in the white coats have a breakthrough. A billion thanks to all our beta test team folks who are communicating UI experienced and bug info to us. The work continues....

WeBot beta 1.0

WeBot private Beta release 1.0

It's finally here after sweating over every square inch of the app all summer. So, what's under the hood?

music music music photos photos photos iPhone iPhone iPhone.

• the WeBot app allows you to access your entire music library and entire photo library no matter how many machines you may have them strung out over. 1.0 has a simple bot that you place each machine that holds music or photos and then when you log in to WeBot from anywhere on the net, you can stream your songs and playlists and view you photos. Tre cool.
• iPhone -- yep, the magic word has been spoken. We built an iPhone interface so you can listen to your tracks and view your photos on the go. no more 4gig or 8 gig limits. no more uploading or syncing. That's so last century.
• playlists and collections. you can build as many playlists from your music libraries as you like. Build them across multiple machines and stream them anywhere.
• photo slide shows. set your photo directories to display as thumbnails or display in a slide show with transitions as short as 3 secs or as long as you like.
• auto-update your content. Yeppers, when you add some additional photos to a directgory or rip some songs from the CD you bought into your music directory, the new media is auto updated. no boring housekeeping of un-sharing then re-sharing folders. We do it for you and make your life easy.

What's next? We'll be rolling out features every week as well as fixing bugs and polishing every corner. Look for features, like TIVO integration, playlist sharing, social networking -- friends and groups of friends to share streaming and viewing content. head on over to the wishlist thread and let us know what you think.

BT

Bugs

yuck we hate em, but if you'll help us find em, we'll snuff em out as quickly as we can. a

I'll start threads around particularly heinous bugs, but this thread will serve as a repository for breaking bug news -- both daylighting and fixit announcements.