Update: Add Track page now has captcha

I have the recent tracks RSS on my feed reader, and evry once in a while some spammy entry gets in the radar, which makes me go and delete that manually.

It was never a problem, and I didnt mind to do that since the spam ratio was low, but in the past days the problem grew and I decided that it was time for me to do something…



So I added one extra step in the add track proccess and users will now have to complete a pretty simple captcha from reCAPTCHA, I hope you don't mind it, and also hope that this measure helps in keeping the repository clean :)

Upcoming.org Integration

I went to this awesome event on the Yahoo HQ this weekend (oh yes, I have moved to the United States, I am living on the Bay Area now... ), where I had the opportunity to make some new friends, met many interesting people (personal idols included), enjoy a kick-ass Beck concert and get in the mood to hack. All thanks to the Upcoming.org website, where I first heard of the conference.

And to salute our new guitar-hero overlords here is a little new feature.

Following the Flickr standard, if you tag a CCHits track with upcoming:event=id (where id is the number of the event on Upcoming) the entry will be updated to display an Upcoming icon with a message indicating that the artist is playing on an event, as well as information about the venue and dates in the music track details page.

Here is an example.

Rock on!

Tags: cchits, ning.com, upcoming.org, hackday06, yahoohackday, yahoo, guitarhero, beck, music, creativecommons, podcast, podsafe

JSON Feeds

The main lists are available now in JSON format! JSON is a simple data exchange format that can be easily integrated on your application.

The names and notations used on the playlist output are based on the XSPF spec with small adaptations, here are some examples:

CCHits recent tracks:
http://cchits.ning.com/recent/?fmt=json&xn_auth=no

CC tracks tagged with synthpop:
http://cchits.ning.com/tags/?/synthpop/&fmt=json&xn_auth=no

There is a working demo of this playlists in action at the JavasScript Sound Kit page, JSSoundKit is an open source Javascript wrapper for the Flash Sound Object created by Gustavo Amigo, a really cool interface to integrate sound in html pages.

coComment support!

Ralph Inselsbacher, the man behind our CCHits German localization asked for coComment support this week on our bug track system. I didnt knew what a coComment was and now that I do, all I can say is:
Wow! This is the best Firefox extention ever!



coComment helps you keep track of all your blog comments conversations, it is pretty cool and easy to use, it works on many popular websites like Blogger, Flickr, Digg, Youtube and now... CCHits too!

So go and give it a try, install it on your browser, leave some comments on your favorite tracks and dont worry about losing the thread anymore! =)

[unstable] normal again =)

Ning is having some database issues, so some pages and feeds are not acessible, please be patient it should be fixed soon.

[update 06-28-10:46am] still working on this critical bug
[update 06-28-11:39pm] the main bug was found and the app was updated to implement a workaround, but there is still some cleanup to be made on the database, it will be fully functional again any time now, I am really really sorry about the broken pages, one entire day without many important ones sucked :( The good news is that while on track to find the bug some performance adjustments were made and some platform bugs reported, so in the end the whole experience should be enhanced.

This was the cause of all trouble, thanks id3 tags :P

Search!

Check out the new section that will make it easier to find CC music on the website, so, alternative to the tags page there is now a music search page that looks for keywords on track titles, descriptions and artists names, there are also advanced options to restrict your search for songs that you can use commercially or make derivative works, and other search engines (Google and Yahoo so far).

This is our first feature integrated with the new Ning bar, so it is possible to use the search field directly on top of any page, we hope to introduce new features that explore the other social features like friends soon.

Oh, and yes, there is a CCHits Firefox search plugin that you can install on your browser by just clicking on the link.

And as in every other list of the website, all search results pages are available as media RSS, wich means: ready to be subscribed for automatic download on your iTunes and any podcast client (look for the little rss link on the top-right corner).

under maintainance [updated]

Ning released a new update this weekend and there will be great new integrations and nice things soon, I am currently away from home (iSummit) so some bugs may have been introduced with this platform update and I will not be able to fix them until tomorrow :(

The changes and fixes will be announced here, stay tuned.

[update] the user profiles are back, the tracks not showing on IE bug, and some others seems to be gone, please test and let me know =)

Gefällt mir!

I am glad to announce our 4th language, German!

Many thanks to Ralph Inselsbacher (cchits profile), one of the first persons to blog about CCHits in German and now a fellow contributor =)

There is also a good discussion in German about the website at Yigg.de, with at least 2 great feature requests that should be adopted soon: a stand-alone player with vote capability and play and approve buttons embed on the rss feeds.

Some updates and a Bug tracking page

Some of the recent updates:

• new pagination bar at the bottom
• extended lists on the user pages (little "more..." buttons)
• tip on the add form to prevent flood
• filters to order by votes, comments and plays on the recent page
• many small bugfixes

And to better keep track of important bugs, features and fixes I have opened a product on Launchpad, here is the Malone Bug Tracking page for CCHits.

J'aime!

Following the last post, here is our first localization: Français!

Thanks to Dominique for the great job! To celebrate, how about some Godon tracks? =)

Flight Club

Rigodon

CCHits in your language: request for help

If you visit your user profile page (the "me" link on the right above the Ningbar) you can edit your profile and set some preferences, like the language of the interface and what online bookmark service you prefer to use when sending your favorite tracks with the "bookmark" button.

Dogood has commented that would be great to have French on the list, and I totally agree, not only French but every other language we can translate.

So, if you speak a language that is not current supported and want to volunteer, please send a message on the discussion group or leave a comment here. Anyone can download the locale sources, modify them on any text editor and send the changes back.

If you already did this for a cloned version of CCHits please send us the url :)

Creative Commons Music Ecosystem Tab

I have just organized a NetVibes ecosystem tab full of Creative Commons tracks sources, it uses feeds from CCHits, CC365, ccMixter, Starfrosch and Uwe Hermann's.

To install just click the button below:



If you have published an ecosystem tab or module that is using one of the CCHits RSS podcast feeds, drop a comment!

Open for business

Ok, as my first post here, I should say that I plan to use this space to write about updates on the CCHits system and other related issues.

The website has been running under the radar on a closed-beta for some time now, and with the help of the Ning folks that sponsored some of my dev time, reviewed the code (thanks Diego) and is helping with QA(thanks Steve, Nancy), the app is ready to see sunlight as a public beta. Special thanks to everyone that helped testing and giving feedback (Lucas, Mike, Yoz, Anderson, Smeg...), the CCHits mailgroup will continue to be a channel to discuss bugs and enhancements.

Everyone is invited to come in and bring the friends, lets share the music :)