
Rate My App: blueTunes.net -- a cloud music service - nick007
http://www.bluetunes.net/
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ktharavaad
A few things off the top of my head after seeing this.

About the business model:

1) The interface seems almost like anywhere.fm (albeit less polished), which
was bought by Imeem, which itself is rumored in a lot of debt right now.

2) The "sharing" aspect of the service kinda reminds me of playlist.com, which
means if you gain any traction, you'll have lawsuits from the record companies

Regarding the technical aspects:

3) Back to the interface, the "play" and "rewind" buttons..etc looks badly
aliased and ugly, I think it would have been better if you copied itunes more
completely like anywhere.fm did.

4) As a fellow flex developer, I'm sick of seeing flex being used for simple
applications like music players, you really don't need the 200+k framework
code for something simple like this. It just adds to the loading time.

5) As I mentioned before, the interface doesn't seem polished, you have kind
of "aqua" styled button but other parts of the interface uses the default flex
Halo theme, it doesn't seem very coherent together.

6) I'm sick of seeing the default flex loading screen, do something more
interesting like fotoflexor or picnic.

~~~
nick007
thanks for the advice... especially about the buttons and loading screen.
those will change soon.

~~~
ktharavaad
NP. upon reading my comments again, I sound quite mean and nasty in my
citique, sorry about that, its because I spent the past 10 hours in flex
builder =P

A few more things that I would like to point out after playing with it a
little more.

Usability issues

1, In the "Add playlist" screen, the "enter" key on the keyboard should press
the "ok" button. In flex, you can easily do this by setting the defaultButton
property in your TitleWindow. Likewise, the escape button should press the
cancel button for you.

likewise for your "edit playlist" screen

2, I dont like the java uploader, Why not use a flex based one like the rest
of your app?

Minor UI stuff

3, Your aqua scrollbar seems to be taken from <http://www.scalenine.com> , but
it doesn't have the nice "rounded" arrows that the real aqua scrollbar has.

Ideally, it should be something like this, with both the rounded corners and
the "swimming animation" underneath:

like this: <http://kpicturebooth.com/temp/aquascroll.swf> * disclaimer, I made
that and I might write a tutorial on how to skin this.

Other things

4, Are you using Flex RSL? at the moment, it doesn't appear so. That will
speed up the load time by a lot.

~~~
nick007
thanks again for the feedback. you definitely know your flex (this was the
project on which i learned flex from scratch).

1\. good advice on the enter key stuff.

2\. the uploader actually does more than just upload... it fingerprints songs.
i'm sure it could be done with flex. however when i first tried to do so i
started running into a lot of security issues. and so i ditched it and went
with something more familiar, with the justification that a user only uploads
a handful of times. but, yes, this needs to be redone in flex.

3\. good advice. one thing that i haven't been able to figure out (and it
looks like your example doesn't have it either) is how to let the mouse's
scroll wheel activate the scroll bar. any ideas?

4\. no i'm not. thanks for the tip

~~~
ktharavaad
2\. A good way to do fingerprinting would be to use the flash player 10 API
which allows you to process local files before uploading them.

3, for mouse scroll, look here: <http://hasseg.org/blog/?p=138>

Contact me directly if there's anything else, I think I'm clogging up this
thread too much =)

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patcito
> Straight out of the engineering department at blueTunes, try our next
> generation uploader (patent pending)

seriously??

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paul9290
Seems cool, but Id watch out for the man! If your not funded to pay royalties
and you gain a smidge of traction they'll shut you down.

Allowing the share option is a big no no in this regards.

The tech and idea are cool, but it's risky. Good luck!

~~~
nick007
right-- the share option actually allows you to share short clips (less than
30 seconds) of all your songs which is considered fair use.

~~~
geuis
That "30 seconds or less is fair use" does absolutely nothing to stop the
idiot RIAA from sending you all kinds of fan mail. That is not a law on the
books anywhere. Its one of the problems of fair use, because there aren't many
explicit laws defining exactly what fair use it. Its all more or less come
about through court decisions and judges opinions over the years.

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rmason
I wonder if its just me. I saw that headline and thought cool, blue tunes.
Finally something for those of us who love the blues. But sadly it was yet
another music service, sigh.

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jusob
I wonder how you will handle the cost of storage and streaming.

~~~
nick007
Right now it's built on s3... so storage and bandwidth is pretty easy to do,
and cheap. Also, notice that there are premium feature (more songs, and
playlist streaming) which users can, and are, paying for.

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siong1987
The "sign up and get started" button is below the fold on my 15inch 1440X900
maximized Firefox. I would suggest to take that button above the fold.

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rochers
Seems like you're taking lala.com head on. I happened to think they are really
innovative in the cloud music service space.

What is different about your site?

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mstefff
what does this have to do with "cloud"? because it's simply hosted on amazon?
does that really mean anything different? does it affect your users at all? do
they even know what it means?

just sick of the overuse of the term.

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nick007
how's it look? what's it missing/need? anything else?

~~~
arfrank
a few things are broken around the website:

-in chrome the pricing for adding song storage isnt working

-the job form doesnt work

thought: maybe have a default 1 song for everyone(that is no longer
copyrighted), so that people can see how easy it is to use

also you have the iTunes logo on the front page, but I cant seem to find where
to stream to itunes; my guess is that you are working on this currently and
its not ready yet.

~~~
nick007
thanks... both bugs have been fixed. and i really like the idea of the free
songs.

the iTunes streaming is working, but it's a premium feature (currently $12 a
month). email me if you want a free trial.

~~~
arfrank
thanks. I thought it might be like that, it only just mentions second life. I
will email you to try it out.

Also found that on the account page the title is screwed up until a Name for
the account is entered, but you enter a name to register: might want that as
default

