Current Status

We're making steady progress with our Android application.
We got our lyrics working, we can change station, top albums and related artists are also done.
Next step: show upcoming events of an artist on google maps (almost done) and add a eventlistener when someone clicks on a related artists.

status update

At this point, all functionalities needed for our application to work are implemented, though uncoupled and on different computers. These functionalities are:
- retrieving artist and track information from Belgian radio-stations by parsing xml-styled-noa-information (noa: now on air)
- calling last.fm webservices, and by using artist- and track-strings obtaining information about related artists, artist albums and artist events
- downloading and displaying external images (i.e. album-covers)
- a nice-looking tab-based layout with components for displaying the information obtained as explained in previous points

Now the main challenge will be the coupling of these functional components.

An extra feature will also be added. Users will be able to locate events of their favourite artists (current/previous artist, or related artists) on a map using google maps. At this moment a lot of google-maps-experimenting is happening and we are expecting to implement this extra feature very soon.

We'll keep you posted!

So....Android

We started working on our android project on friday, we were already able to do the most important thing when we decided to call it for that day so things are looking good so far!

Zet eens een mxml online...

Onze applicatie is hier terug te vinden (met view source om de code te bekijken).

Enkele opmerkingen hierover:

In tegenstelling tot de now-on-air informatie aangeboden door vrt (Studio Brussel, Mnm), blokeert Q-music externe requests afkomstig van flash/flex files. Oplossing hiervoor is in php een proxy te maken die de xml-file ophaalt en weergeeft.

Aangezien de webruimte voorzien door de K.U.Leuven geen php ondersteunt moest de applicatie ergens anders online gezet worden. De webruimte van zaalvoetbalploeg 'de gouden studs' springt hier ter hulp.

Laatste opmerking: de google map veroorzaakt soms een fout, de applicatie kan hierdoor gestopt worden, we hebben niet ontdekt waarom deze fout soms, at random voorkomt. Gelieve de applicatie opnieuw te openen als dit voorvalt.

Verslag Flex

Hier vind je het verslag van de eerste opdracht over Flex in .doc formaat.
En hier het .zip bestand met de code in.

Like/dislike

We like the use of Twitter in class because you can stay up to date about what other people are doing. Like that you can see if other people are way ahead of you and notice that you have to hurry. It's also nice to read that other people have troubles too, so when you are swearing at Flex, you can see other people are cursing it to. It might sound cruel, but if you have problems, it' s less annoying when other people have them too.

We dislike the use of delicious in class because there is too much information on it to handle. All the people in this class post websites weekly. It is almost impossible to take a good look at all of them. Also the information is quite unstructured. You can search all the bookmarks of the people of this class, but there's no ordering in it. It makes it more difficult to select which links you would like to read more about.

We like the use of Facebook in class because it is our central communication centre. We send all updates and questions to each other using Facebook.
We dislike the use of Facebook in class because on the account of the course, only the links are important. Those links could have been posted on Toledo as well. Now we have to watch both Toledo as the Facebook sites for newsflashes.

We like the use of blogs in class because here too we can keep an eye on what the other people are doing. We looked at some storyboards to make sure that we understood the assignement right (and to make them better then the ones we looked at of course :p). It also enables us to keep the professor up to date with our project, so that if something is terribly wrong, he can warn us.

The final touch

We're almost there,

We have google maps working and pop-ups when clicking on an artist or album.

Only some fine tuning now but the finish line is in sight!

The next step

At the moment we can receive various information about both the current and previous song at 3 belgian radio stations.
Our next goal is to show the user a map of Belgium where he or she can select wich radio station he or she is listening to.

Status report

We're currently able to retrieve the name of the artist currently playing on a radio station. We are also able to send this name to last.fm to retrieve more information about that artist.

Next step is to retrieve lyrics, albums, a map and a nice layout but it's looking good so far.

We'll keep you updated!