Reintroducing sb_core
Hey, it’s been over a year since we announced it, so Andrew Leucke thought that some of you developers might need reminding that you can get free stuff for fixing bugs. Some past winners have been announced on the blog, but it’s safe to say this program could use some revitalizing and there’s no shortage of bugs to choose from in Bugzilla. Fix stuff, get free stuff…it’s that simple.
Megaphone, please!
We had a call out on Get Satisfaction for some community love on an idea that’s been a tad slow to catch on earlier this week and I was more than happy to oblige. In lieu of suggestions, I tend to pick out stuff that I think is cool and needs some attention or conversely I direct the traffic to the topics already rich with feedback. I like to think of myself as your megaphone, so don’t ever be shy about telling me what you’d like to hear about or have promoted within the community.
Famous and Famouser
We talked about the new Get Satisfaction last week, and this week they talked about us. I’m not saying we’re the gold standard or anything, but check out the video and you’ll see our whole community on display. Recognize anyone? How about everyone!
Pretty cool right? Still, we know our application as well as our support is a work in progress. We hack away and try to make improvements on all fronts everyday. Some days we do victory laps around the office and other days we feel like we’re fighting a never ending battle. Still we keep plugging away. I came across this post today and identified completely with the users frustration. I wish I could say it was a one time fluke that their issue went unanswered by an “official rep”, but really there are thousands of topics in Get Satisfaction community and hundreds of them do not have replies. When it comes down to it we just can’t always answer each post, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t watching or we don’t care. In a sense, it is true that we do expect our users to do some of “the legwork” for us. We try to provide some tools to make it easier but we do rely on you to help each other, and for now, I hope that’s ok. Some of you are uber helpers also known as Songbird Champions, and for you fine feathered friends, we are excited to announce that as of tonight’s nightly (to go live in our next official release) the Songbird Champions have been included in the credits. I can think of no better way to honor all the indispensable support you have provided…well, that and a t-shirt.
12 Comments
Subscribewell, that and a t-shirt… and a Laura Thomas CD!! duh!
Was just about to ask our ‘megaphone’ Laura, why the wireframes for the CD rip feature seem to suggest that CD playback won’t be possible. But just spotted the answer in the “non goals” section on the same page ( http://wiki.songbirdnest.com/Releases/Kanye/CD_Rip )!!
I fully appreciate the answer for Kanye, but my question is will playback be added shortly after? e.g. to Led Zep as this release is all about more playback support. Being able to play the CD before ripping helps ensure the CD lookup worked.
Thanks
Laura,
Thanks a lot for your support concerning this:
http://gsfn.us/t/p4e
It’s really great to get your “love” and especially to know you listen to what people are saying.
Now, I’ll be crossing my fingers, hoping there can also be some community love.
Ooh, I spied my GetSatisfaction icon for a split second in the video when they zoomed across the “people” page. It felt like seeing yourself walking down the street in the background of a news clip or something.
And thank you so much for including the champs in the credits; it isn’t tough posting so often because it is the only community I feel at home at.
Thats all great, but what’s for lunch?
Good to see the announcement about developer freebies make it, hopefully a lot of tiny bugs will disappear
Any idea on what will be happening with FLAC ripping/transcoding though? Its royalty and licencing free, and since no info is loss, people can always convert to MP3 later if they want it on their media device. However, if they rip as lossy, they can’t later convert it to anything else. Lossless usage is REALLY taking off now that harddisk space is so cheap
PS. Looks like everyone, even an editorial on the front page of OSNews is hoping Palm starts supporting Songbird instead of iTunes. Maybe Palm will listen: http://www.osnews.com/story/21893/Editorial_What_Palm_Should_Have_Done
Nice link Andrew! I think that would be pretty sweet if Palm and Songbird got in bed together
That would definitively be a great way for the bird to increase market share and be more successful…
I can’t wait to see those “Sings with Songbird” logos on packages in stores!!!!
Wow, loving the recognition! Well exciting
So do we get T-shirts then?!
Total oversight that you don’t have one already Tim! Shoot me your address and shirt size and I’ll take care of you. laura@songbirdnest.com
@ Andrew
It was pizza that we let sit and get cold…not worth a mention really.
The OSNews article made the rounds here and all I can say is we’re with you, and them! Biz Dev is trying to make some meets happen, so ya know, fingers crossed!
As for FLAC ripping/transcoding you’ll likely know about before or as soon as me, same to RobJN regarding CD playback. I watch the feature planning like you do to see what’s up next and it hasn’t progressed past Kanye yet.
@Laura
Will the older sb_core fixers also be rewarded? I think i fixed some bugs in feb or mar, but i never got a shirt
@Lukas_Skywalker
Absolutely. Ping me at laura@songbirdnest.com with your address and your size and I’ll get it out to you right away!
I’m having trouble getting songbird to work well, perhaps this is because I am not tech savvy enough like so many of the other good peeps here. I’m such a dumba$$ that I can’t even figure out where to post my feedback.
My issues are:
1. In windows explorer, can’t play a folder like I can w/ Winamp or Win media player, so this would be a cool option.
2. I just dragged my files from Win explorer into Songbird (I shouldn’t have to have two windows open for this, should be able to import them directly with songbird itself, but that’s what the directions said online).
3. Songbird took the contents of my folders and homogenized them so now I have to spend time putting albums back together if I want a particular artist’s songs grouped together. And that’s the point where I gave up on using it just yet.
I want to like Songbird and adopt it, but not at a huge time cost & learning curve to myself. I don’t want to spend a ton of time searching on the internet for information on how to use it. If I didn’t have to do that for other music players, I shouldn’t have to for this.
The little bird is so cute that I really want this app to succeed and am hoping that my feedback will help in future improvements. Sorry for my negative comments, I really just wanted to post positive ones here but because of my limited proficiency, I’m not very good at figuring things out. If Songbird were easy to use by idiots like myself, adoption would spread like wildfire, just like the iPhone which stands as an excellent example of usability research condensed into a device second to none.
You have the adorable graphics, awesome customer support and interested community, you’re half the way to world domination. Solve that last little bit and y’all will be rich b*tch!