Introducing forte.fm: Rdio Client for BB10

Apr0813Apr 08, 13

As seen on CrackBerry.com!

I'm pleased to introduce...

forte.fm

I've added a bunch of features, but the main ones are the things asked for here:

1. Shuffle!

Just hit the menu button from any screen to access the toggle. The checkbox shows you if shuffle is enabled.

2. Shared Playstate

Like other Rdio apps, Forte.fm now acts as a remote control if Rdio is playing elsewhere. To switch to your device for audio output, just tap the track position slider.

3. Search

Tap the search box or click the "Search" tab. Type your search, then hit [enter] to get the results.

4. Infinite Scrolling

Scrolling to the bottom of lists fetches more results from Rdio. Particularly useful if you have a large collection or lots of playlists.

5. Track Scrubbing

On the Now Playing screen (tap the icon in the upper left), the blue track scrubber now works. As mentioned above, tapping the scrubber will also redirect audio output to your phone if Forte/Rdio isn't already playing there.

6. Add Track To Library

A new "star" icon in the upper right of the Now Playing screen lets you add the current song to your collection.

7. New About & Report Issue Screens

Not amazingly useful, but they work now. The bug report link opens Hub Email so you can quickly send me issues and suggestions.

8. Homescreen Icon

Add the app to your homescreen via the corresponding BlackBerry Browser menu item, and you'll see a nice icon.

9. Faster...Everything

Good software gets faster over time. Hopefully the speed boosts for launch, scrolling and navigation are noticeable.

Screenshots

Comments and Permalink

miniPNG - Online PNG Crusher

Jul2209Jul 22, 09

Firefox 3.5 came out recently, and along with a number of much anticipated improvements, the web design community was given the gift of PNG color profile support. I'm not an expert on the subject, but in my experience, PNG images have always been picky about the color profiles you select when working in Photoshop. Until now, Safari was the only browser that would correctly display the images - though it has been more of a headache than a feature, since there doesn't seem to be a "correct" color profile to use in Photoshop that would enable identical rendering across all browsers.

Now that Firefox 3.5 renders PNG images similarly to Safari, it is much more important that we produce PNG images that render correctly in these two popular browsers. I spent a few minutes taking a look at which images were being distorted, and the pattern is very clear. Any PNGs that I had run through a "crushing" (see below) utility rendered accurately, and had a noticeably smaller file size - any PNGs I had not "crushed" looked different in these browsers.

So the solution is simple. When you use a PNG compression utility, you are removing the color profile data that is causing Firefox and Safari to render the images differently from how you saw them in Photoshop.

Since we all love free web apps, I give you miniPNG:

Launch miniPNG

or

Download (requires Mac OS X 10.5)

Here are some screen captures of miniPNG in action. Can you find the secret?