Bookshelf Apps

Using Playlists in iPhone SongBook

March 26th, 2009 0

SongBook lets you save your current playlist from your DS to a local list on your iPhone/iPod.

Saving a playlist

When you have a set of tracks that you want to save you can press the ‘Save’ button at the top of the playlist in the Play tab. SongBook will then ask you to name your playlist and the playlist will be saved on your iPhone.

Be careful when saving a playlist to give it a unique name. SongBook will not prevent you from saving more than one playlist with the same name.

Playing a playlist

In the Library tab there is now a new section at the top level called Playlists. In the playlists section are all of your saved playlists. You can browse and play playlists just like other music in your music library.

To add an entire playlist to the track listing on your active DS you can press the play all button (looks like this >>>).

To add an entire playlist to the track listing in random order press the shuffle button (two crossing arrows).

To add an individual track just tap on the track that you want to add.

Playlists are added to the existing track listing, this is not always what you want, you may want to have only the playlist in your track listing. To do this go to the Play tab and press the ‘Clear’ button before adding the playlist.

Deleting a playlist

In the playlist listing you can press the ‘Edit’ button to enable deleting of a playlist item.

To delete a playlist press the red – icon and then press the ‘Delete’ button. Currently SongBook will delete all playlists with the selected name when you do this.

Sorting in a playlist

Playlists can be sorted like any other library listing. Press the sort button to change the sort order. ‘123′ sorting will sort by album and then track, ‘Abc’ sorting will sort alphabetically. Make sure that you select the correct sorting before adding the playlist to your track listing.

Some more advanced options

You cannot rename or edit a playlist, but there is a way around this. First clear the current tracks on your DS. Now select the playlist you want to edit and press the Play All button (>>>), this will transfer the playlist to your DS. Now in the Play tab you can press the ‘Edit’ button to delete tracks, or you can add tracks through the Library. When you are done editing you need to save the playlist. First go to the Library and delete the existing version of the playlist. Then in the Play tab save the playlist again, either with the same name as before (if you deleted the existing version) or with a new name.

Transferring your playlist off your iPhone

If you have SongBook Mac you can transfer a playlist to an m3u file suitable for adding to your Media Server. To do this add the playlist to the track listing on your DS, and then on SongBook Mac select the ‘Export playlist…’ command from the File menu.

SongBook Mac 1.0 is out!

March 18th, 2009 4

Finally we have made it to version 1.0 of SongBook Mac. You can download 1.0 directly from bookshelfapps.com.

So, how much does it cost? This version is a free release, but it is time limited. The time limit should see you though until Linn’s Cara firmware is out. The update to SongBook that supports Cara will not be free, it’ll cost £49 (US$65). Licenses include up to three installs within the same house, so if you have more than one Mac you only need to pay once.

The web site has not been updated yet with all of the new features in 1.0, this will happen over the next few days.

There’s a lot still to add to SongBook Mac, this release was focused on building a stable platform to add features to later, and in the coming months we plan on adding all sorts of things. The first update of course will be to support Cara. A couple of features missed the 1.0 release, they are shuffle and playlist saving. We left shuffle out as this is a supported feature of the Cara release, so instead of writing it twice we thought it best to leave it for the next release. Playlist saving will come too, for now you can save playlists as m3u files and store them on your MediaServer so everyone can access them.

Some cool things that are in SongBook Mac…

iTunes library access

You can browse your local iTunes library directly in SongBook (including playlists). If your music is in a format that is compatible with your DS you can play it directly through SongBook too (just don’t exit SongBook while listening). No need for Twonky server at all.

Apple Remote Support

If you’ve got one of those tiny Apple remote controls you can use it to control volume, track selection and Play/Pause.

Lots of Album Art

The album art in the playlist view is resizable (small slider on the bottom left). There’s a resizable image for the current trach, and theres both an Album Art view and a CoverFlow view in the Library. All views are filterable too.



And of course your music library is browsable like it never was before. You can sort and filter tracks as well as view by image or text.

So let us know what you think of this release so we can incorporate your suggestions in the next release.

SecretBook becomes SecretBox

March 1st, 2009 3

As of today SecretBook is for sale no more. A short while ago app4mac started work on an updated version that goes on sale today. They’ve called it SecretBox, it has a much improved look, some bug fixes and some new features, so it is a worthwhile upgrade.

When I made the agreement with app4mac, one of the most important things for me was to ensure that existing users were looked after. The big issue for me was that I did not have time to update SecretBook as it needed. I think users expect an application to be growing over time, otherwise it is dieing. I also did not have time for marketing SecretBook. Any successful Mac app these days needs a lot of work to get heard above the masses of other apps, and that requires a lot of work to acheive. With the resources of app4mac behind SecretBox we will see a steady stream of updates and improvements, they’ve already put more resources behind SecretBox than I could have.

One word of caution for existing users though. app4mac have not released the updated iPhone version yet, so if you use SecretBook on your iPhone you may want to wait until the update is out before upgrading your Mac to SecretBox. The code I passed on to them has some good upgrades, so the new release will be a good one.

And finally, in any business deal like this there is potential for difficulty, but app4mac have been really good to deal with on this transition. They’ve been easy to work with on the terms of the sale, and their developers have done a great job of updating the code in a short period of time. It’s all looking good so far.