Supernifty - nifty stuff

Audio Tuner 2.0 for Android

peter — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 13:21:50 +0000

Audio Tuner for Android is a mobile application that enables you to tune a wide range of musical instruments, using spectrum analysis and pitch generation.

Audio Tuner for Android has, at last, been updated to version 2.0. Some major updates in this new release:

Spectrum Analysis! This is the big one. Play your musical instrument into your Android handset, and it will tell you the pitch that it’s at.
More instruments – a number of new instruments, and alternate tunings have been added. Alternate guitar, banjo and ukulele tunings have been added, along with a number of new instruments, such as Viola, Autoharp and Dulcimer.
Better power management – this version takes advantage of Android’s power management and backgrounding capabilities to ensure that Android can properly optimize battery life.
More accurate tone generation – the app generates tones at the most accurate possible pitch, using the full capabilities of your handset.

The list of available instruments now includes the autoharp, banjo, bass guitar, cello, Chapman stick, guitar, mandolin, mountain dulcimer, piano, ukulele, viola and the violin! Phew!

To try out Audio Tuner, find it on Android Market. For further information, contact us!

Speed Scrabble Safari Extension

peter — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 09:16:15 +0000

If you’re using Safari as your web browser (Apple users, this means you!) you may be interested in the Speed Scrabble Safari Extension.

Speed Scrabble is a fast, fun word game, suitable for single player, but often more fun as multiplayer.

This Safari extension enables you to see when there are players waiting to play on the Speed Scrabble server, so you can join them for a game.

If you use the extension, remember to play the occasional game – otherwise anyone else waiting for a game through the extension won’t know that you are available!

50 Songs on Playalong

peter — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 08:18:56 +0000

Supernifty’s Playalong has reached the milestone of 50 songs.

Playalong started out as a way to play along to Elvis on your ukulele. Nowadays, Playalong offers quite a bit more.

We now support

chords for the guitar,
chords for the banjo,
an iPhone app, and
50 songs!

Supernifty’s Playalong has songs from each of the last seven decades.

Here’s a selection of tag counts from Supernifty’s first fifty songs.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to Playalong… it’s fitting that the 50th song to be added is Israel Kamakawiwoʻole’s ukulele classic Over the rainbow – Enjoy!

Google Chrome Extension for Speed Scrabble

peter — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 01:46:11 +0000

If you’re a Speed Scrabble player, and you use Google Chrome, you may be interested in the Speed Scrabble Chrome Extension.

Sometimes it’s difficult to know when your playing partner is going to be online, or how much activity there is at the site, without having to stay on the site all day. This extension solves that by showing at a glance how many players are on the site.

Here’s the extension in action:

If you’d like to try it out, you can install it at the Chrome Extensions Gallery.

Just remember that if you’re always watching from Chrome, your friend might be too, so you won’t see each other! Make sure you pop in for the occasional game!

py2exe, python 2.6 and wxPython – hack it #7

peter — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 09:20:25 +0000

If you’ve tried to build a client application with Python 2.6 and wxPython, you might hit a problem.

Python 2.6 no longer includes the Visual Studio dependencies required by wxPython. These dependencies may not be present, either on your build machine, or the target user’s machine.

When building with py2exe, you may encounter an error similar to:

error: MSVCP90.dll: No such file or directory

The solution!

To successfully build your executable, you need the Visual Studio 2008 redistributable package, which can be obtained from Microsoft. Run this on your build machine to install the appropriate DLLs.

If your build still fails, you may need to copy the DLLs into your build directory. Locate msvcp90.dll, msvcm90.dll and msvcr90.dll on your machine and copy them to the build directory.

Once you have a successful Python build, you also want your executable to run on the target machine. To do this, your install script needs to install the vcredist package as part of the installation.

The command you need to run as part of your client installation is:

vcredist_x86.exe /q:a

If you are using NSIS as your installer, the appropriate code is:

File /r vcredist_x86.exe ;to copy the file
ExecWait ‘”$INSTDIR\vcredist_x86.exe” /q:a”‘ ;to install

With the Visual Studio redistributable installed, it will now execute successfully on the target machine. Hurrah!

Tune your banjo with alternate tunings

peter — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 06:51:07 +0000

Good news, Banjo players!

A number of new Banjo tunings have been added to
Audio Tuner and Audio Tuner mobile.

To quickly and easily tune your Banjo to any of the common tunings, check out the latest version of Audio Tuner.

We’ve added the following new Banjo tunings:

Standard
A tuning
G modal
A modal
C tuning
Double C
Double D
Open C

All versions of Audio Tuner will be updated with these changes over the coming weeks. To comment on these updates, or to request a particular version be prioritized, please contact us.

Note that Audio Tuner is not only available for PC and Mac, but most mobile platforms as well, including iPhone, Android and BlackBerry – keep your Banjo in tune no matter where you are.

To learn more, check out Audio Tuner home.

OpenID available on Supernifty

peter — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 02:08:17 +0000

Supernifty is pleased to announce OpenID as a login mechanism on its website.

OpenID is a scheme that allows users to login to Supernifty, by entering their login details at another site.

So if you already have an account with Google, Yahoo, AOL, or any other OpenID provider, you can now log in to Supernifty without having to set up yet another account, or create yet another password. Hurrah!

Handy for the Speed Scrabble players, and any of Supernifty’s other offerings requiring login, such as the time tracker, site ranker and lifestyle tracker.

Currently, only the most popular OpenID providers are listed – if you use a provider that you’d like to see listed, let us know.

Supernifty – saving you from remembering yet another login

Smartphone Market Penetration

peter — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 00:30:14 +0000

Some stats from ComScore illustrate the state of the mobile market. This post provides some simple charts of the data.

What’s the breakdown of smartphone market share?

Clearly BlackBerry are doing incredibly well, covering almost half the market.

Which platform’s been growing the most over the last 3 months?

Somewhat surprisingly, BlackBerry continue to consolidate their position, taking most of the new entrants to the market.

Interestingly, in the original statistics, Google appear to be doing the best, and Microsoft the worst. However, in terms of actual numbers, BlackBerry continue to be number 1 for growth, with Microsoft and Palm equal losers.

These stats are based on the US market. Visit ComScore for the original figures.

Remember me with PHP – hack it #6

peter — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:38:54 +0000

“Remember me” functionality was recently implemented on the Supernifty login screens. The PHP documentation is surprisingly non-obvious so here’s how to do it.

If you’re already using the $_SESSION variable, the default is for this variable to live only for as long as the browser. Once the user closes the browser, the cookie will be deleted, and they’ll be logged out.

To remember a user across browser sessions, here’s what needs to be done.

Tell the browser to remember the session

You do this with the line:

setcookie( session_name(), session_id(), time() + 86400*30 );

This overwrites the default session cookie, with a cookie that will persist on the user’s browser for one month.

Note that since cookies are set in the headers sent to the browser, this needs to be done before writing any content to the browser.

With HTML like

You could have a handler like:

$remember = $_POST['remember'];

if ( isset( $remember ) && $remember == 'remember' ) {

  setcookie( session_name(), session_id(), time() + 86400*30 );

}

Tell the server to remember the session

Bizarrely, PHP’s default session time is something ridiculous like 24 minutes.

To tell the server to remember the session for longer, you need to set some PHP environment variables, like so:

ini_set("session.gc_maxlifetime","2592000"); // 24*30 hours

session_set_cookie_params( 86400*30 );

session_start();

More details about PHP’s session lifetime

With these two pieces in place, you can now implement a “remember me” checkbox on your login screen with PHP, while continuing to use the $_SESSION variable.

Top 500 songs of all time – visualized

peter — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:27:55 +0000

A radio station recently ran a survey asking listeners vote for their favourite songs, the result being a 500 song countdown of the “greatest songs of all time”.

Supernifty has produced a handy tool for you to play with the results, with a simple search function, charts of the most popular artists, and a breakdown by decade of the greatest songs.

Can you guess who the most popular artist is? Wondering if your favourite made it? Check it out.

Although the results are in many ways a reflection of the listeners’ demographic, it’s still pretty fun to play with.

See the top 500 songs of all time.