bendytree/buzzam

Buzzam Radio - Create Your Own Personalized Radio Station

buzzam's Issues

Rdio Not Playing For Some People

Rdio not playing for two listeners

• After debugging straight Rdio for a while, here's what I found
• Rdio can work great, but gets in these modes where no song seems to ever load - like an avalanche of failures
• After running some logs, I found that the Rdio http api seems to get bogged down & slow to responde
• To play an Rdio song in Buzzam, we have to do these things sequentially
  • Login (1.6, 1.8, 2.2)
  • Load tracks from selected playlists (8, 13, 12)
  • Buffer enough of the song that playback can begin (6+)
• The numbers are seconds it took to complete the call.
• *** Buzzam bails on any audio that takes more than 15 seconds to begin playing, so when the api becomes so slow, Buzzam will never be able to begin playing a song
• Ways to fix: longer load times and caching credentials &/or track listings
• ALL FIXED, except seek then skip doesn't stop previous song, see: rdio/api#8

Record New Sounds

We need new DJ recordings:

• Alarm Failed, "Buzzam is in the background so it is unable to play. Next time leave Buzzam running by locking the screen instead of pressing the home button."
• Alarm Succeeded?
• Unable to Connect, playing local music
• Nothing to Play (i.e. no music)
• Ad promoting social sharing - one click to enable?

Target Platforms

What platform(s) should we develop for next?

Where do people listen?
What platforms do other services support?
Where are people moving?
What is the cost / payoff of developing for a platform?

Badges List Is Ugly

Needs dark bg, smaller icon images, smaller icons?, how many earned (2/23)

Find Voice Talent

Find voice talent for upcoming 60-second segments.

VoiceBunny: 30-60min delay, ~$40/segment/day
Otherwise, need someone on East coast or Europe

App Starts Playing Audio By Itself

• Why? check all [Playlist play] actions - possibly 'resuming' from after a call or text

# Listeners On Main Website

Show number of listeners or minutes listend on main website.

TTS Time Out

TTS not working - fixed Oct 22

• times out: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?shva=1#inbox/13a86b6d73506f25
• One story was over 5000 characters, so possibly too much to convert
• fixed FB status updates to be discarded if they are over 300 characters long (no one wants to hear that much TTS anyways)

Offer Automatic Social Sharing

Options include:

• Tell friend when you hear their tweet/fb status (limited to once a day)
• Tell fb ticker that you're listening to music (or whatever)

Spotify Login Crash

Crashes because improper retention in Spotify API (& only shows for some users).

SPOTIFY LOGIN

• Spotify playlists get stuck in endless loop of loading playlists, showing playlists.
• https://github.com/spotify/cocoalibspotify/issues/112
• Anyways, creaetd my own custom login & hid the upsell that pops up

Nav Bar animation is wrong

Starts too high, maybe parent view hasn't quite been set yet

Error Loading Spotify Playlists

Sometimes spotify playlists are nil instead of an empty array.

Adding nill to an array crashes, so we check everywhere for nil now.

• fixed in v1.3

Occasional Crash on WebAPI

Occasional crash on WebAPI timeout - fixed in v1.3

• NSTimer retained self & released on [invalidate], uses blocks now so it won't

(now using MAZeroingWeakRef)

Potential Sources

Always looking for new sources...

Terrestrial Radio -

• iHeartRadio (i filled out their "get a dev key" form)

YouTube -

• consider integration like songza?

MOG -

Rhapsody -

• need to talk with the developer (he emailed me & we tried to setup a time)

Sound Cloud -

• not sure we want to do this

Random Local Songs Is Not Random Enough

Facebook access_token is sometimes null

Facebook access_token is sometimes null on FacebookControllerCallback

• Logged info and redirect to login page

Various TTS Issues

Text to Speech - fixed Oct. 18

• Now says twitter real name instead of username
• Fixes common words like 'reposted'
• Says one comment instead of 3 (FB)
• No longer reads URLs

Not Playing Twitter Lists, Just Timeline

Not playing twitter list, just main timeline. - fixed Oct 22

• What happens is, when you change lists we're not deleting the aggregated segments. So it already aggregated the main timeline, so we need to clear cache on some sources when the config changes.

Mixes

Allow listeners to create "Mixes"

Mixes turn sources on/off & also customize settings (like select different playlists)

Editing sources is now within the context of a mix

iTunes Match Failing

"iTunes match not working" - fixed in v1.3

"Buzzam will play 4 songs in a row, which I have it set to, then news and wx, but when it gets to the next block of songs, the app will sit there trying to load the next tune (all local), and show null/null instead of the band/album. (Kevin Kirk [email protected])"

• added check for: hasProtectedContent || asset.isPlayable == NO || asset.isExportable == NO

Rdio Can Crash On Interruption Resume

Waiting for response from Rdio team:

rdio/api#9

Blurry Rdio Album Art

Low Quality Rdio Album Art - fixed in v1.3

(now using 600px instead of 200px)

Songs Cut Off Early

Some songs are cutting off early.

Share What You're Listening To

Easy, 1-click sharing what you're listening to.

Facebook, Twitter, Email, SMS, Instagram, etc

Create Writer > Voice > Polish > Live Workflow

Create a workflow where:

1. Writer creates a script for a daily segment (news, sports, pop-culture)
2. Voice talent sees script in app, reads to app, app uploads recorded voice
3. Uploaded recording automatically compresses, eq's, adds bumpers, bg music
4. The result is posted to CDN, RSS feed is updated with new offering

Server Connection Error Incorrect

Showing connetion problem but there isn't

Let Listener Pick Next Segment

Allow listener to pick something else to play now or right after this segment.

Don't get too specific - keep it to "Music" or "News", etc

Driving View Rotation Is Ugly

Shows white bars around edges

App Plays Music When Music Not Selected

Happens because of network failure

• need to SAY what's happening (not just error message)
• connection notification should show if it can't connect

'Driving Mode'

Make an interface that's just for driving (very simple)

• shows title, play/pause, next btn, volume?

Social Notifications Not Implemented

Email, FB friends, Twi friends

AUTOMATIC SHARING

• tell Facebook friends when you hear their status updates
• tell Twitter friends...
• share on FB/Twitter when you listen to Buzzam Radio (how often? tell them what?)

these aren't automatic...

• recommend Buzzam to all you FB friends
• recommend Buzzam to all you Twitter friends

Spotify Crashes on all 4.3 devices

Spotify accidentally used __weak ref - not allowed in 4.3. Fixed in their latest SDK.

No Music Repeating

When not connected & no music, it keeps trying & failing - impossible to stop. It needs to stop automatically if there is no music.

Admin Website - Add User Management

Admin dashboard to

• lookup users
• view usersources
• view played items
• view logs
• view errors (email, podcasts)
• give overview (ie. what needs our attention)

Keep News Articles Posted on Website

Add note, wired, yahoo, marketwatch articles to website.

Settings Not Implemented

Settings like:

• show badges when you get them
• auto show driving view
• number of songs in a row
• number of other stuff in a row?

Local Podcasts

Add Local Podcasts (like local news, sports)

Listener Competition

Whoever is listening at 50,000,000 seconds gets a chance to win an iPad mini.

60s Buzzam Segments

60s Buzzam News, Sports, Pop Culture

Back to Radio Doesn't Stop Sources Loading

When loading sources & you press back to radio, the request doesn't stop. If it fails then an alert pops up when you're back on the Play Screen. Needs to stop the request.

PS toolbar is ugly

ugly & wrong - needs to say Sources instead of Mixes for now. Not sure about the look in general.

Playing 1 Music, Then Moving On

Playing 1 music segment, then moving on (instead of 3) - fixed Oct. 20

After it played through once, it was grouping previous plays into current section so it thought it played 4 isntead of 1 in this section. fixed it with proper grouping

SoftLayer SSL Warnings

Softlayer CDN SSL Warnings

• SoftLayer gave a new url for assets, no more warnings

Add podcast timeout

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7855497/javascript-execution-exceeded-timeout

• Appears to be a result of a slow (or non) loading javascript library. We were referencing libs on 3 other (CDN) domains, one of which must have been down. I changed the site to serve all assets from our own server. If we're down, then we're down anyways. & I don't think typical CDN caching advantages completely apply since we're loading in a sandboxed webview.

Crashes if No Songs To Play

I think this is on an old version, but confirm.

Custom CDN SSL Url

Not currently supported by SoftLayer.

Podcast Repeating Failures

If a podcast fails, it keeps trying to play. It needs to move on - just consider it played.

Filler Sound Not Always Playing

Filler sound not playing, loops bad anyways - find another way to play it

Emails Not Sending

Emails Not Sending - fixed Oct. 20

• Blocked by google
• so sending through SendGrid

Playing NPR Twice In Same Hour

Playing same NPR news update twice within Hour - Not fixable (for now)

• NPR publishes same news feed, under a different name, if they have nothing new

Ideally we'd do a md5 checksum on the feed to determine if it was new content