Welcome the new player

I just uploaded a new version of tunesBag including a new player design - the player bar is now always at the bottom and we have a new background image. Check it out!

Meet the tunesBag team @ Internet world / 30 apr - 1 may 08 in London

Blundstone and me are attending the Internet World taking place next week in London - if you're interesting in meeting us and have a talk about tunesBag and other stuff just drop us a line at office (a/t) tunesBag.com!

Database redesign = performance booster

We slightly modified our database design under the hood and now you might see huge performance gains especially if you have more than 700 items in your library. The update has just been delivered to the live servers.

Moving player bar to bottom ...

After some discussions with Alexander, founder of Readburner, I decided to play around with moving the player bar to the bottom instead of leaving it on top ... impressed by the results and I think this new layout will be available to all users the next few days (hope to bring it out before going to London).

Say hello to our new servers

Two days ago we've moved our servers to a new location and unexpected problems made it a nightmare. All systems should be running fine now again, however.
In case you're interested on which hardware system tunesBag is running on, take a look at the picture on the right - we're sharing resources with InBox.cc/openTeamware.com, a Mobile CRM system so not all servers are handling your data ;-)
Some details about the hardware:

• HP and Dell 19" servers
• Intel Xeon & AMD Opteron CPUs
• Up to 4 GB RAM
• Gigabit Ethernet
• Some TB of storage ;-)
• All systems running on Linux

Update: Done. Server moved + still some problems

We've moved our servers to a new rack and while most of the stuff is already working properly some issues still remain. We're working on these problems and the service should be back with all features by the end of this day.
Update 3pm GMT: Finished, everything should be working properly now again.

You asked for it: Autologin.

You asked for it: Autologin. So here we are: Just open the preferences, click on "More ..." and copy the link from the textarea. You can set this link as homepage or store it as bookmark - no more entering of username / password necessary.

Scheduled downtime: Tuesday (04/15/08) during night-hours (US-timezones)

Next week we're replacing a network component (switch) so the service might not be available for some time.

The expected timeframe for the replacement is Tuesday (04/15/07) between 10am and 1pm GMT (so it's during the night for our US customers).

Uploading queue: Where are my tracks?!

Yeasterday we've sent out a batch of invites and people started uploading tons of MP3s and WMAs (oh my god, some people have access to a lot of upload bandwith ;-)). As a result our processing queue for incoming data was filled up very quickly and we still have some hundred items waiting to be added to the library.
The good news: We've updated some of our processes and now we're able to handle the incoming load much better, so keep using the product and adding your media!

zero budget heros: How to promote a startup without millions

marketing & pr on a zero budget. an (almost) daily report on successes and failures of promoting a startup - tunesBag.com!
Read all about it here.

Choose the right upload strategy

tunesBag is your music hub in the internet - you can access your music using any browser without a running PC / Mac at home. To achieve this comfortable way of accessing your data you need to upload your music library to our service (This will automatically be a backup of your music collection!).
The problem is that the upload (sending data to a server) bandwidth is often very slow compared to the download speed. You can see DSL offers where the download bandwidth is 16 MBit the upload bandwidth just 0,5 MBit however.

Here are some tips for a better uploading experience

Start with the playlists / files most important to you
Our Windows uploader has a native support for iTunes - select just the top rated playlist to begin or drop your favourite albums on the uploader in the beginning.
Let your computer do the work over night
Watching the program doing the upload is not necessary - just start the upload and let the program do the work. Without any running downloads or browsing the upload will run significantly faster as well.
Use a faster connection for the master upload
After the first master upload, only changes (=new files) will have to be uploaded. Try to perform your first upload e.g. at work or university. Make sure that you do not break the rules of your network provider when uploading a massive amount of data.

Beta #2 with an improved interface and new features released

We've updated the software on our live servers - a brand new version is available ready to be tested by you!

The new main screen - updated and much cleaner
We've listened to the feedback of our beta users and cleaned up the interface, made the functions easier to find and added some new cool features.

• Improved performance when using the Internet Explorer (much lower CPU usage)
• Sorting is now working properly
• The Track # is now displayed
• Library is automatically refreshed when new items are added
• New volume controller on top

New user profile page
When searching for an user or browsing through your friend list, you can see the new profile page. We list now all public playlists of a user, the tag cloud and a cleaned up friends list.


New playlist features: Easier to use and find
In the new footer you can always see the lately added playlists - great to start browsing through the growing amount of playlists created by our users.
Adding tracks to a playlist is now very easy as well - just click on "Add to playlist" when playing an item or use the icon next to each item in the list.

We're sending out invitations for this new version today!

New version of uploader available

We've updated our uploader application for windows - please download the latest version from the website as this version is NOT automatically updated.
The changes include a brighter look and some minor bugfixes (error on parsing MP3s, missing tab in the status bar).

Upcoming Beta #2 changes, features & bug fixes

The first list of upcoming changes and fixed:

• A new and improved look of the whole website and service. Number of icons reduced, new background color/image, clean structure and a more "glossy" look.
• Volume controller + previous/next button always on top
• Much better user profile page. The user profile contains now the playlists of the user
• Search for users is working now
• Playlists of all users can be shown, playlists of friend played with one click
• The application checks for new tracks each minute - so no reload is necessary. If a new track if found (e.g. upload done), the library is marked with a star.
• Adding / Removing playlists works without a reload
• Sorting works now properly (and will be saved as preference)
• A new column for the track number
• Upload application does not upload 0 byte files any more
• Fixed problem with missing uploaded tracks
• Title display in browser window fixed
• last.fm AudioScrobbler is working now properly
• "Welcome" link always opens first tab
• Fixed various minor bugs
• New playlist listing in the footer
• Property "year" of tracks will be stored correctly
• Removed Podcast service (nobody was using this service)

Beta #2 should go live within the next few days! Stay tuned!

New free music added (Pop, Rock & Ambient)

We're adding more and more free music to the system which you can use for your own playlists or compilations. All you need to do is to add the user "free.music" to your friend list - you can do that by clicking on the link in the right box after the login. After that, you can browse through the free tracks by clicking on your new friend "free.music".

Today we've added some albums of the following genres:

• Ambient (including very cool tracks by Zeropage)
  
• Rock
• Pop
  

Most of the albums can be found at jamendo, a directory for good music licenced for a simple distribution over the net.

What is meant by the term "free"? We're talking about music which is licenced under the "Creative Commons" - style licence, which allows a new way of distribution without the hassles of the other licences. For more information, just visit creativecommons.org.

Our man in London: Blundstone Osterberger

We are glad to accounce that Blundstone Osterberger has teamed up with us in order to popularize tunesBag in the United Kingdom! If you've located in the UK and you are interested in writing about tunesBag in a blog or press article, feel free to contact him.

Blundstone has 7+ years experience managing web platforms and building brands online for blue-chip clients and telecommunications companies. He currently lives and works in London.