We turned our sights towards improving device support in this release. Our end goal was to break out of the old erase-and-sync model to create a compelling, intuitive two-way sync experience between your portable device and any number of desktop computers running Songbird. Existing Songbird users will notice there is no longer a distinction between “manually manage” and “automatically sync” — you can choose to use a one-button mechanism to sync playlists or your entire library if you wish, but that does not block you from dragging and dropping individual items between your device and your library, and vice versa.  You can now use your portable device to bring a song to your work computer that you downloaded from home, or even to load up something new and awesome from a friend’s laptop to take with you.

We’re excited to get this into everyone’s hands! Let us know how you end up using it.  :)

We were feeling so good about being done with the release that we had the actual final build done and were probably headed towards the beer fridge. “Good times,” we said to one another, “Let’s congratulate ourselves for doing such awesome work to finish this release, which is definitely completely done. Phew! It feels great to finish things!” We then collectively failed to knock on wood, despite having an abundance of it in our office, and here we are today.

“Yo, um, that’s not a very funny story,” you say. Upon rereading it, we concede that it actually is not at all funny.

You may be asking yourself, “What on earth could have possibly happened that would take so long to fix?” Well, we basically had to rewrite how the entire application looks for and reads files off the filesystem. Our existing methods for reading files were not playing nicely with our new device synchronization behavior in one certain instance on Mac which ended up being very important. Nerds, you may want to check out bug 24478 and its friend bugs for the gross details, patches, reviews, hand-wringing, soggy kleenexes, and broken dreams that this bug caused.

So. Here we are. We have a build for you. We’re calling it a beta because we had to make so many invasive changes, but we hope that it ends up being our final 1.10 build. We were so completely sure we were done with 1.10.0 that we had to bump our version numbers up to 1.10.1, so don’t freak out that you missed a 1.10.0 release. There wasn’t one! *sob*

The beta downloads are available on our nightly downloads page for Windows, Mac, and yes, Linux. We will be pushing Mac and Windows updates for those of you who have the 1.10.0b3 version installed on your machines. If you find something grody, please log a bug!

We’re tackling this in a couple of separate stages. We just rolled out stage one, which is to temporarily disable commenting on the add-ons site. Add-ons can still be uploaded, downloaded, and rated — the only functionality we’ve removed is the ability to comment. This is not an ideal solution, nor is it a long-term solution. It was, however, a very quick and direct way to immediately stop the problem.

A few of you have asked us why we don’t just use a captcha. Funny story: we’ve had one for years! It appears during our account signup process, and all of the spam we’re seeing is coming from newly generated accounts who successfully make it through the captcha as part of signing up. We use Google’s reCAPTCHA. A little bit of searching tells us that reCAPTCHA isn’t as mighty as it once was, so we’re going to investigate alternatives.  Once we identify a route forward, we’ll roll that out as stage two and get comments re-enabled.

Again, we’re sorry for the mess! It bums us out, too.

Developers: documentation on the new Playlist Commands interface is available and posted here on our wiki: http://wiki.songbirdnest.com/Developer/Recipe_Book/Extensions_and_Core/Playlist_Buttons_(aka_Playlist_Commands). Let us know if you run into questions or concerns.

Let’s communicate! Bugzilla! Get Satisfaction! Yay!

You can download beta 2 from our Nightly Builds page.  If you’re already running Songbird 1.10.0b1, just go to your Help menu and run “Check for Updates.”  Take a look at the Release Notes if you’d like to see what’s left open and what we’ve fixed since the last beta.

Bug reports can be submitted via Bugzilla, or if it’s easier, just get in touch with us on Get Satisfaction.

The huge project we’ve been working on for the past few months is two-way synchronization for devices. We decided that, since we were making some significant changes already, we’d take the opportunity to address some of the usability issues in our previous device sync implementation. To that end, our infinitely skilled team of bird surgeons have successfully completed a full transplant of Songbird’s device sync infrastructure. This was a major organ transplant for our little guy, but he’s sutured up and ready to roll.

Download the beta and consider checking out some release notes before you get started. Perhaps you’d also like to take this opportunity to back up your profile!

The biggest change that many of you will notice right away is that we’ve stripped the product of the auto/manual sync distinction.  You can now manage the media on your device using both drag-and-drop actions *and* the sync button. The sync button will no longer delete media from your device, and the bird’s smart enough to ward off duplicates when you start mixing and matching your device transfer methods.

The other huge change is, of course, the addition of two-way sync. You can now easily pull tracks off your portable device and into your main Songbird library. Those tracks will get copied to your local machine in the process, where they will be organized by Artist and Album in your default Music directory.

One of our chief goals in this redesign was to make a simple, intuitive interface, one that gives you total control of what music you take with you on your device and what music to keep in your Songbird library. Your music is probably scattered around and sourced from a lot of different places: your home machine, your work machine, blogs, music stores, your friend’s machine, or even your friend’s phone. Our goal was to give you a way to get all of that music into one central location on your desktop and to give you the tools you need to carry some or all of that music with you wherever you go.

Having said all of that, this is still a beta! Back up your data, consider starting out with a new profile, and don’t be surprised if things go a little sideways.  Do let us know about your problems, though! We have two delightful opportunities for doing so:

• Bugzilla!
• Get Satisfaction!

Happy syncing!

We have a shiny new release for you! There are four major highlights in our 1.9 release:

Play Queue

Open up the display pane on the right side of the application and choose the Play Queue option from the drop-down icon to see it.  Once opened, you can drag and drop music from anywhere in your library to the Play Queue to create a new on-the-fly playlist.

Performance Improvements

Many of you mentioned that your large libraries were getting a bit sluggish, so we spent some time tightening things up. Extra thanks to those of you who downloaded the blessed build to test this out.

New 7digital Store

We have a brand new integration with our friends over at 7digital and we’re thrilled with how well it turned out. Happy shopping!

CD Rip for Mac

Mac users: you can now rip CDs directly into Songbird.  Existing Songbird users, you’ll be notified of this new add-on during the update process.

Downloads for Windows and Mac users are available at http://getsongbird.com. Linux users, we have builds posted on our Contributed Builds page for you.

We’re still hanging out on Get Satisfaction, reading your comments on twitter, and actively monitoring all of your input in Bugzilla — let us know if you have questions or problems with this release.

Bird fans,

We have a bit of maintenance work to do on the web infrastructure that supports the Songbird application. It’ll be taking place tomorrow, October 26th, from 10 AM to 6 PM Pacific Daylight Time (we’re UTC -0700).

Affected sites:

• profiles.songbirdnest.com
• addons.songbirdnest.com
• translate.songbirdnest.com

Affected services:

• Songbird application downloads and updates
• Add-on downloads and updates
• Language pack downloads and updates
• First run bundles and add-ons
• mashTape video playback
• Badges
• Launch services for songbird:// URLs

These sites and services will be completely unavailable during the maintenance outage.

Thanks in advance for your patience!  We’ll do everything we can to speed it along.

It’s 1.8.0b3. You can download it off the nightly builds page. It has release notes. You should log bugs in Bugzilla.  We fixed a bug that caused a deadlock on Mac when you were playing a video and clicked Next or Back a whole bunch.  This is our last planned beta for 1.8.0.  Call your mother.  She misses you.

I refrained from dropping a #2-themed post on you guys for the last beta, so to make up for it, here’s a #3-themed commercial.  I can’t hear the words “number three” without thinking of it. You’re welcome.

• Blackberry Storm 9500
• HTC Magic and Tattoo
• LG KU990i Viewty
• Nokia N85, N96, and N97
• Sony Ericsson W980

The nightlies page contains links to downloads for the Windows, Mac, and Linux builds.  Check the release notes for outstanding bugs, and log a new bug in Bugzilla if you find something we should know about.

Automatic updates are set up for this beta.  Beta 1 users: you can use the Check for Updates function to update to beta 2.