I started iTunesTouch with the intention of creating a great free touchscreen product. My time has however not been available recently… mainly due to the arrival of my little girl (now 4 months old!).

I’ve had several requests for source code so other members of the community can keep the software going. I have now created a repository on Google Code. However, I’ve never used it.

If anyone wants to help with the coding, then please head over to http://code.google.com/p/itunestouch/

Reply to this post to let me know if you’re interested and I can add you as a developer. If anyone has any tips on how to use Google Code to get me started, that’d help a lot!!

There’s no code there yet – I need to head back home to get that. Hopefully I will upload it later this evening.

[Update 08 April 2011]
Finally got around to uploading the code. Take a look and let me know any problems etc.

I couldn’t install anything “modern” on it. Funny how I take for granted the Intel chip in the newer one… so it then became a project for what I could actually use it for. First thing’s first – I had to update the OS. As it’s a PowerPC processor, there’s no way snow leopard would go on and I didn’t want to fork out for more memory (it only has 512mb) to run Leopard. So I bought Tiger OS. (10.4 I think). Once updated, it was time to install something… anything.

Sabnzbd – download slave

Sabnzbd is the be-all-and-end-all of usenet downloader applications. I’ve used a whole host of packages to download usenet files before and always struggled with unpacking or fixing etc. This does everything for you. It will even connect to the nzbmatrix and newzbin API for quick bookmarking.

You either use the web interface to add an NZB or bookmark it (on Newzbin or NZBMatrix) for sabnzbd to pick up automatically. It goes away and does it’s thing – unpacking & repairing (if need be). You are left with the finished article. It also allows you to run shell scripts on completion – so you can move the file to your network drive for example. Or, in my case, move to the external drive and add music to iTunes. (I’ll post a script for that later).

Sabnzbd is available for Mac OSX, Windows and Linux from www.sabnzbd.org

iTunes – music slave

I have a few Veho wireless speakers dotted around the house and it’s always frustrated me having to turn on a mac to play iTunes so I can have a listen. Queue the always on mac mini music slave! The Veho speakers have a USB transmitter which each of the speakers automatically connect to.

Using the iPhone or my iPad as a remote control allows me to connect any time to the “music slave”. Switching the speakers on and bang – always on music! If you’re not happy with the sound produced by these Veho speakers, check out my post on modifying them. I hacked it up to work with my Bose speakers. Works a treat!

Other options

Although this isn’t running on my ancient mac mini, I do use Plex on my newer Intel Mac Mini. It’s an amazing bit of kit. If you have at least 1GB ram, you could run this on your “always on” mac mini to watch movies on your iPhone or iPad. Of course, you can always hook it up to your TV as we have done with the newer one. www.plexapp.com

Using Mame OSX (http://mameosx.sourceforge.net) you can turn your old mac mini in to an arcade machine. Play all the old classics (Track & Field is still my favourite). Check out http://mamedev.org for more information and how to download some ROMs (games) to play on it.

Put the mac mini in your car or campervan! Check out http://www.macvroom.com for more information and project ideas.

Any other ideas?

I’m keen to try other ideas so please post and let me know!

Another addition comes with the timer notifications. You no longer need to keep the applications open. It will push notifications to your screen when items are ready to start their cooking.

Cookit has also now been upgraded with iOS 4 greatness – so the icons and images have all been made for the retina display. No more fuzzy horrible graphics!

You can also now keep up to date with developments and updates via Twitter.

Here’s a little taster of the new version with some screen shots.

Cookit 2.0 will be release over the next week. Watch the app store for an update soon!

Your client can then (having already loaded the provisioning profile) simply double click the IPA file which is then loaded in iTunes.

Navigate to your build folder and run the code from terminal:

mkdir Payload
cp -rp MyApplication.app Payload/
zip -r MyApplication.ipa iTunesArtwork Payload

Bingo, you will have an IPA file. Thanks to the original post over at http://johnehartzog.com/2009/04/iphone-app-ad-hoc-gotchas/

When Mrs Facer and myself go out, we tend to enjoy the more obscure days out. Don’t get me wrong, alton towers and Lyme Park are both fun (in their own ways!), but how about visiting a tractor theme park or a crypt with hundreds of human skulls…. it’s all out there! Trouble is, there isn’t really anywhere to list them all!!

Hence the reason we created offbeat attractions, a directory for listing unusual days out in the UK.

We’re slowly building the directory as we come across places we’ve visited or have been recommended by visitors to the site.

Do you have an unusual attraction or place to visit? If so get in touch through the website and we’ll add it. The weirder the better!!

Visit: Offbeat Attractions – Unusual days out in the UK

• Cat5 network around the house
• Wireless available around the house
• NAS drive with music (UPNP enabled)

So – how to be in any room and listen to the music. I’ve looked at several options, but all require fairly significant investment. The response to all these is, “for the next house…”. So for this house, we need a temporary / cheapish solution.

Netgear MP101

I had one of these for a while and it worked nicely. It’s wireless, but way too slow for my liking and (as I remember) you had to have some media server running on a PC for it to work. Even when on the wired network it wasn’t terribly fast.

Browsing for artists and albums wasn’t great either. It was clunky and the response time from the remote was too slow.

So it was ebayed. Pretty sure I got a good price for it!

The current solution

I bought a few Veho wireless speakers. These are truly brilliant and are reasonably cheap (around £45 for a speaker with transmitter and £30 per speaker thereafter).

You plug the USB transmitter in to the PC/Mac you want to broadcast the music from (in my case it’s running my jukebox), then simply turn on as many speakers as you want. They connect and play the music. Each speaker has it’s own power source (rechargeable batter) and volume control.

The only downside is the actual quality of the sound. They are fine for background sound, but they have no life when turned right up, producing a rather tinny sound.

It got me thinking…. surely the internal parts can be ripped out and I can hook up to bigger speakers? The simple answer is YES. It does work. I wrote it up on my other site: http://www.touchscreenjukeboxes.co.uk/modified-veho-wireless-speakers

The future

I’d love to have speakers wired to the Cat5 sockets which can be controlled BY room. Ideally controlled by iPhone or iPad. I’d like click on a room then select which music I want to listen to in that room. I know there are solutions out there which do this…. I just need to save the cash!!

iTunesTouch is free software which allows a user to operate iTunes as a touchscreen jukebox. I wanted to use itunes as a jukebox for a party, but didn’t want to allow users full access to my library / playlists.

With iTunes running in the background, iTunesTouch will grab your album cover art, display each album and allow users to add tracks to your designated playlist.

Download for free at the main site here: itunes touchscreen jukebox plugin.

The actual product which I wrote (TextArea Rich) hasn’t been updated since 2004 or 2005 (it’s that long ago)… yet the website lived on and thousands of people downloaded it.

I’ve now closed the site and am offering the domain name for sale. It’s got a good monthly hit rate – so if you are developing a web based WYSIWYG editor (or just want to increase your hits), take a look and make me an offer.

http://www.textarearich.com/index.php

The first thing now was to update the bloody wordpress software. It was ancient and as a result, constantly being hacked. Now it’s brand spanking new and looking pretty sexy. Gone is the pink/red colour scheme of the old.

Not going to write loads now as it’s late and I need to crack on with getting an iPhone app moving. Keep an eye out for it – it’s an app version of the [very] popular dress up Lucy!

If you’ve got a minute, be sure to check out the current cooking timer application I have created, CookIt. Only 59p and it *could* save your dinner!

Nice and cheesy valentines day message. Special thanks to Dave Jennings for creating the music.

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