Hey kids, time for a new toy! This week I finished production work on a new widget for Mac OS X. If you’re using a Mac (10.4.3 Tiger or later, including Leopard), and live in the South Central Wisconsin area (or anywhere in the midwest region I suppose!) you can download and install the Madtown Lounge RSS Widget! I developed this guy for my friend who owns and operates www.madtownlounge.com, a social network for venues, artists and fans of local music.

You can check it out by clicking here or clicking on “Downloads” in the top menu bar of the site.

That’s NOT what I meant… (sicko)

What I meant was that now Jabloggy offers a little something extra for iPod Touch and iPhone owners. When (and IF) you bookmark Jabloggy on your home screen, you’ll get our new custom icon automatically! This is much prettier than just the generic screenshot of the site that it would make by default.

Note that this only works if you have the latest and greatest software upgrades that were released last week at Macworld. That means your iPhone should be on version 1.1.3 or your iPod Touch should have the $20 upgrade that’s available through the iTunes Store.

So yeah I posted a couple hours ago with my new year’s resolutions.  One was giving Jabloggy a new design.  Ta-da!  :)  Not bad huh?  Introducing the first “real n personalized” Jabloggy theme.  The new design allows me to change out the header / masthead image and the right column background images and columns quickly so I can change the basic look and feel based on season, mood, or whatever.

Note that some things are still being tweaked, so please bear with me over the next couple of days (or weeks) as I get things ironed out.  Feel free though to post your thoughts and feedback about the new look in the comments.

One resolution down, and it isn’t even 2008 yet!  Damnit!

…which is why I put together the Gruvsonic Dance Radio Widget for Mac OS X!

That’s right folks. By combining the power of the OS X Dashboard and the Flip4Mac plugin, we’ve made it easy to listen to the Windows Media streams of Gruvsonic Dance Radio.

Gruvsonic Dance Radio (www.gruvsonic.com) is owned and operated by a friend of mine and located in Chicago, IL. They have seven (7) Internet radio streams pumping out mainstream dance, hard dance, goa-psy trance, top 40 remixes, and more 24/7/365.

And best of all, the widget is fully compatible with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger AND the all new Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard!

You can find the widget and installation instructions on the Gruvsonic Radio Widget page.

So it’s been the usual crazy busy around here since I last posted. As you can see by my photo (courtesy of my iPhone) I have put up a few Halloween decorations, marking the first holiday we’ve decorated for at our new place. I admit it’s a little lame, but I’m also short on Halloween decorations, but far from short on Christmas decorations. I will probably post a photo of that when the time comes (which isn’t too far off, woo hoo!).

In the world of development, Local Sounds has been taking top priority as we are getting closer and closer to releasing the wiki, the store, a new Local Sounds site, and an updated MadCityTube.com! All before Christmas (and Thanksgiving hopefully!)!! So if you were wondering about any progress on the widget (oh you know where this is going..hmmmhmm), I regret to say it hasn’t seen any change. November or December should see some progress though, and an updated version.

Also, the best and biggest news of the week: Mac OS X Leopard comes out tomorrow! It looks to be great, and there’s been plenty (and all) good reviews this week from critics who received advanced copies. Now the only thing I want to double check is, will the Gruvsonic widget work on it??? We’ll find out!

Lastly, I’ve finally found the time to update my Portfolio page! Check it out for a handful of other client sites that I’ve done. Enjoy.

Happy Halloween!

I don’t know about you, but the beginning of October marks the start of probably my most favorite time of year: the season of holidays.  Halloween is my second favorite holiday, and Christmas is my first.  I’m sure I’m not the only one to say this, but I still enjoy being a kid at this time of year, regardless of what they say about the holidays being all commercial and crap.  I’m especially a sucker for holiday decorating.  I took over for my parents’ house at an early age and I continue that tradition on to my own place now (plus I STILL do my parents’ house… must have spoiled the heck outta them). **

Anyway, I suppose that’s enough walking down personal holiday-loving lane (what?!  I can’t call it memory lane can I?).  Development update!  As much as I wish I could report some widget advancements, I’m sad to say I have bigger fish to fry at the moment.  As previously noted in past posts and the screenshot hint in my Portfolio page (I need to add more to that soon!), my start-up company Local Sounds is doing better recently, and we’re scrambling right now to get a couple of items done and ready to go for the beginning of November.  Even though that takes precedence right now, I will continue to promise that I’ll try and get some more widgey-woo time in so I can get some updates out. 

In the meantime, I invite you to submit ideas and suggestions of maybe some things you’d like to see added to or improved upon on the widget.  I realize it’s only the first version, but I believe it’s never too early to start collecting a list of things that could potentially make it even more awesome-o down the road.  You can leave your suggestions / ideas / feedback in the comments of this post.

Well, I always seem to find the need or desire to write posts at 1:00am, so I suppose I should run for now.  I hope to see some feedback about the widget, or just my posts in general.  Until next time…

(** NOTE: By the way, if you haven’t already noticed, I blog with a pinch of dry humor, sarcasm, and “parenthesis flashbacks”.  It’s my nature, I’m pretty laid back, and I talk the same way in person.  If you feel something offends you, spill your guts to me.  I’ll try and watch my mouth, otherwise enjoy my intentional nuttiness. )

Holy crap have these last couple of weeks been nuts!  Things are actually looking up for Local Sounds.  Things are starting to be put into motion, making our efforts appear as if they might actually be paying off!

The wiki is due for release at the beginning of October.  Right now it’s in beta testing with some of our faithful newsletter subscribers.  But what no one knows (until now in this blog post) is that we have another newbie right around the corner at the beginning of November too!  This new service will definitely will be a nice addition to the wiki, plus it will be perfect timing for its first Christmas season, but that’s all I’m going to tell you now.  (I know, you’re probably yelling $@#& at me right now!!)

Also, I will be helping a friend of mine publish a guitar lesson and theory book that he put together a couple years ago.  We finally found the perfect resource to help make it happen.  More on this as it develops at a later time.

And finally, the radio widget hasn’t seen a lot of updating lately, but once I get back to it I know it won’t be long before we release version 1.1!  I’m looking to get this up and ready to go during mid-October, so you’ll be able to listen to your Halloween dance tracks on the new version. :)  That’s the goal for now, but I’ll keep my fingers crossed until it happens for sure!  Also, if you have any suggestions or feedback for areas of improvement or additions to the widget, please list them in the comments of this post.

Until next time.

I hope everyone had a great and relaxing Labor Day weekend.  I wish I had done a little more for the holiday, but it was relaxing, yet productive.  When I was growing up the Labor Day weekend was always the last weekend that we got to go camping.  I suppose that seems like the norm here in the Midwest; especially in Central Wisconsin where I grew up.  :)  At least this year we got a couple hours Monday evening to sit down on Lake Mendota and grill out and watch the sailboats in front of an amazing backdrop made up of the setting sun and the Madison downtown skyline.

Even though I wish the holiday hadn’t ended so quickly, it’s nice to know that the weekend is almost here again.  I vote that we need more Mondays off during the year!  Between that and a pretty lax week at the day job, it’s been an overall peaceful work week.

Speaking of work week (no day job stories today to bore you with, don’t worry!), had some good progress on my new found interest in Internet radio widget development.  Got the “legal” licensing stuff cleared up with the guy behind the widget that the Gruvsonic widget is based off of.  Nice guy, easy to work with.  He runs www.nzmac.com, a Mac community in New Zealand.  Check it out.

Well, I suppose I should wrap this up and get to work.  Have some widget work and paperwork to do.  Plus I blew the first part of my evening watching the keynote from the Apple / Steve Jobs event earlier today.  An awesome and much needed refresh to the iPod line, let me tell ya!  Although after that iPhone price drop, why oh why didn’t I wait?!  I guess I really had no way of knowing, just like the other 800,000 iPhone owners from the past 2 months.  D’oh!