A Bigger Better Text Editor

Okay so this isn't related to the application at all, but I have found a new text editor which is better than text wrangler.

It's called sublime and is actually available for Mac! I've struggled finding a decent alternative to Notepad++ since going Mac, but this one I am really enjoying!

Music Player Research

After spending some time thinking about how I want the app to look, I've looked into other music players.

Spotify now have a web player, although this isn't quite an application it still plays music online.

Since the update the web app has nice feel to it, it is also easy to use and navigate around.

My knowledge and timescale wouldn't allow me to create anything like this however, I do like the look of Spotify.

I am unsure which language this web application was written in, however it does intrigue me to learn.

Pandora, an American company have a music player also, different to Spotify and not available in the UK due to licensing laws.

Pandora is built using CSS and JavaScript, it uses smart technology and will build playlists based on what you are listening too.

For Example if you wanted to listen to something by Paramore, which are a sort of pop rock band, it would then compile a whole playlist of songs like them.




Last FM is something I am less familiar with, I guess it is just another music website, which allows you to search for music, I think what sets Last FM apart is it also allows for videos unlike the other two, much like youtube, except just for music.

I'm not entirely sure what is used to build Last.fm, upfront you can see it obviously uses HTML, HTML5, CSS and CSS3, but there is a lot behind this website.

I am biased towards this website as I haven't used it and would much prefer to use the others. Although it does look like it does a similar job to Pandora.




All of these websites will have a huge backend database full of information.

I don't need to create a huge backend database, nor do I have any inclination to make one. As It would take too much of my time, and I haven't got enough to learn or find enough songs to fill it with.

New Idea

I've taken a week to think of a whole new idea for my app, knowing now that it won't be available on Mobile we are required to make a web application.

I've decided to do a music player, however I don't want to use HTML5 and use the default browser audio tags I want to create my own bespoke music player, which I can upload music into and can be accessed on the web and on a mobile phone.

PhoneGap

Unfortunately due to University restriction, PhoneGap is no longer an option at the moment for compiling this onto a phone.

The reason for this is because PhoneGap uses the command line to allow for a project to be made and rolled out. But because of restrictions, students studying in the School Of Digital Media aren't able to access the command line to do this.

Camera API

Looking at some API's for Camera's I am going to use the one from Phonegap.

It looks simple enough to implement, and does everything that I require the API to do. Also because it runs through PhoneGap, Im not worried when the time comes to implement it onto mobile devices.