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Category: Finetune

December 20th, 2007

Looking back at the years most popular posts

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 12:41 am

Categories: AIR, Adobe, Apollo, Finetune, Flash, Flex, Rich Internet Applications, Silverlight, iPhone

Tags: Apple iPhone, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Rich Internet Application, Post, Adobe Flex, E-mail, Online Communications, Ryan Stewart

Every year ZDNet sends out a list of our most popular posts. This is based purely on pageviews so it could have been a particularly witty (or deceptive) title or just something from a big news day. It’s always fun to look back and since pageviews are a good metric, hopefully I can copy these more next year. So here are my top five posts with the beauty of 20/20 hindsight.

Flash CS3 boxThe top 5 new features in Flash CS3 - Ahh Digg. This article was Dugg 738 times and most people just wanted some news about Flash with the CS3 release because Photoshop got all the love. Maybe when CS4 comes around I’ll be able to do a top features of the RIA-centric products.

 

Flex LogoAdobe Flex goes open source - Interestingly enough this also got Dugg and had way more Diggs at 1320 but fewer page views. This was my favorite announcement of the year because I think it helped Flex get a lot of momentum. I’m going to be touching on this tomorrow but one of my predictions was that Flex would be the primary RIA technology this year. In my year-end review I went with “no” but I got a lot of email feedback about that and I’ve got a followup.

Flash on the iPhoneWall Street Journal: Flash is coming to the iPhone - iPhone and Flash were bound to be pretty popular topics and I think a lot of the pageviews for this are from search terms. I posted this back in January and we still have no Flash on the iPhone which is a big bummer.

Ultra Smart F700Samsung’s Flash based iPhone killer - I don’t have one of these but maybe I should have picked one up while I was in Japan. It has all the multi-touch goodness of the iPhone but the UI is all done in Flash.

Finetune DesktopFinetune - The next generation of online music with Apollo and Flash - Finetune is still my favorite AIR application and it was my 5th most popular post. Since that post they’ve been really busy with a Wii version and improving both the browser version and the AIR application. I still think it’s a great example of what the Flash Platform is capable of; being able to reuse code and create experiences on a number of touch points.

So those are the 5 most popular posts this year. Digg was responsible for two of them and any time I mentioned the iPhone I got more hits. One thing that surprised me was that it was all Adobe-centric news (even before I joined Adobe). The 10th most popular post was The scoop on Silverlight for developers which I wrote back in April. It will be interesting to see how the mix changes next year. The past couple of months my page views have been either down or steady so either I’m getting boring or there are just a lot of places to find RIA information now (probably a bit of both). It’s a good sign and I’m looking forward to trying to stay ahead of the curve.

February 5th, 2007

Finetune - The next generation of online music with Apollo and Flash

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 3:12 am

Categories: Apollo, Finetune, Flash, Rich Internet Applications

Tags:

Finetune - The next generation of online music with Apollo and FlashI have always been a big user of Pandora. I think it's a great way to find and listen to music and I've spent many a long nights coding to the music that Pandora decides to play. I've purchased CDs because of Pandora and I've tried to hook my entire family on it (with decent success). It's also a great example of OpenLaszlo at work. But this month I've found something that is heads and tails better than Pandora: Finetune. If all you want to do is browse to a site and listen to music, Pandora does a pretty good job and it will always be great for its simplicity. However Finetune has both the simple "browse and listen" model as well as advanced features that will leave audiophiles amazed and coming back for more. In almost every category Finetune outdoes Pandora.

Finetune has a team that evolved out of NextRadio Solutions, so they have a lot of experience in the space. They contracted Teknision, a design firm in Canada, to develop the technology behind the player. At it's core, it is a social music application but it has a lot of features that foster a bigger community and put more power into the hands of the users. In many ways it combines last.fm's social scene with Pandora's knack for finding good music. It really is the best of both worlds.

Finetune Album CoverWhen you browse to the Finetune page, you can type in an artist and start listening just like you would do with Pandora. It finds related artists and songs and then creates a radio station for you. But if you want more with your music, that's where Finetune really shines. By creating an account and logging in you can build, save and share playlists. Now these aren't artist-based playlists (though they can be) . You can actually drill down into a specific performer and choose specific songs for your playlist. You have to have a minimum of 45 songs in a playlist and you're allowed 3 songs per artist. You can pick three of your favorite songs for a performer then browse through Finetune's list of related artists to create a playlist perfectly tailored to you with only the songs you want.

 

Finetune ApolloOne of the major benefits of Finetune is that it is built on the Flash Platform. Finetune uses Flash Media Server to stream content , the Flash Player for the web player and the Wii version and they are using Flex and Apollo to deploy a version of Finetune on the desktop. They also have a widget that allows you to embed your playlists on a blog or MySpace profile. Finetune for the Wii pulls your stored profile data and gives you access to all of it from the your television. It's the perfect example of how the Flash Platform allows you to extend your reach with very little changes to the code. The Wii version has gone viral and allowed Finetune to reach an audience that would normally have been out of their scope as a simple web application. It is a testament to both how good the application is and how widely distributed the Flash Platform has become. Finetune in many ways is the ideal Rich Internet Application.

The Apollo application is a big part of the Finetune strategy. Phase one of the application will include an express install feature so that the Finetune Desktop application can be quickly installed from any embedded player (including the widget). The Apollo version will be able to load your Finetune profile and give you access to all of your playlists, artist radio stations and tag radio stations. You'll also be able to search the radio stations for artists or tags and create embedded players from any artists, playlist or tag you specify. The Apollo version will feature an option to load an artist radio station based on your iTunes Library helping make the application more relevant based on what you're listening to in iTunes. Finally, you'll be able to collect and save playlists from any of the embedded players you find on the web so that you can easily listen to things you think look interesting.

I can't wait to see how Finetune evolves. Flash gives them so much power to create a great experience that the sky is the limit. They've built an online music service that flies way past anything currently available and they have been able to reach a non web audience with things like the Wii. It is an exciting time for music lovers and Finetune is a good example of why.

For more Finetune Screenshots, check out the gallery.

Ryan StewartRyan Stewart, a Rich Internet Application developer and industry analyst, recently joined Adobe's Platform Team as a Rich Internet Application Evangelist. full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.

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