Jinzora Weblog

Jinzora for Amahi Home Server

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 17:53:06 GMT

Are you looking for an extremely quick, hassle free way to install Jinzora on a home server? A new option for deploying Jinzora is now available: the open source home server from Amahi.

Amahi gives its users:

A simple to use Web 2.0 user interface
One click application installation, with an expanding library of applications available.
Zero effort installation, with automatic configuration of a VPN and Dynamic DNS, a LAMP stack and more.

Amahi recently announced the availability of a new feature, called "one click application installation". Jinzora is among the first applications they support. Check out this screencast to see how easy it is!
Other features of Amahi include:

Cross platform support for Mac, Windows and of course, Linux.
User and file share creation and authentication.
Simplified home networking with short URLs.
Media storage and streaming (iTunes, movies, and picture delivered to xBox, PS3 and Wii among others) and more as Amahi's application gallery expands by the day.

So, if you're looking for a new, easy home server, be sure to check out Amahi!

Jinzora 2.8 Released!

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 20:31:12 GMT

Wow, it's been two years since our last release!

Jinzora 2.7.5 was released on March 4 2007 and marked a milestone for Jinzora. It was supposed to be the last 2.x release and the start of Jinzora 3 development.

With over 5,000 downloads each month, Jinzora 2.7.5 is still a very popular release for everyone who is looking for a stable, mature and free web based media manager.

Unfortunately, a few small problems arised over time. We moved to a new server which rendered the integrated Jinzora lyrics and metadata retrieval services useless. The increased interest for Jinzora from countries with other character sets asked for better Unicode support, etc.

Since the new Jinzora 3 backend still needs a lot of work, we are not able to provide a Jinzora 3 release to solve these problems soon. Fortunately, Sören stood up and decided to come up with another Jinzora 2 release to address known bugs. As a result, the Jinzora Team is very proud to announce the immediate release of Jinzora 2.8!

Some major changes in this version include:

Integration of Fred Hirsch's Custom Metadata Retriever to replace the non functioning Jinzora Metadata Retriever. This is the first user contributed OpenDevelopment Project that made it into a stable Jinzora release.
Integration of the LyricWiki Lyrics Retriever by Jan Kleinhans to replace the broken Jinzora Lyrics Retriever. This is another OpenDevelopment Project that was contributed by a community member.
Enhancements that make Jinzora fully UTF8-compatible.

For a full list of changes, please read the Jinzora 2.8 Changelog.

I'd like to thank everyone who contributed to this release in any way. Specifically Sören who coordinated development and Wim who lead the test team.

On behalf of the complete Jinzora Team,

We hope you like this new version! Comments and suggestions are welcome.

Forum Bug Solved

Sun, 01 Mar 2009 16:22:25 GMT

Hi everyone,

For the last week or so, several of our users were unable to post to the forums.

They received an error similar to "You cannot make another post so soon after your last" due to problems with our server clock.

We've implemented a temporarily solution that has the clock running at the right time now.

This should enable anyone to post again, while we're working on a more definite solution.

We are very sorry for the inconvenience and like to thank everyone who made us aware of the problem.

Jinzora on Google Android

Sun, 25 Jan 2009 19:07:01 GMT

Hey guys,

I just put out the first release of the Jinzora interface for Google Android. You'll want to update your server to the latest SVN version to use it. Any feedback would be appreciated :)

Also, I added a pretty undocumented feature: A zero-configuration jukebox. To use it, you'll have to have the jukebox enabled. Then, point a web browser to:

http://[your_site]/jinzora/jukebox

and you'll be able to control the music coming out of that page remotely. You can set an id for the jukebox by visiting:

http://[your_site]/jinzora/jukebox/?id=[your_id]

November Poll Results

Sun, 25 Jan 2009 19:03:18 GMT

Smack me, I'm stupid: Publishing results from November in January!

I know and I'm terribly sorry. But better late than never.

In our never ending quest in getting to know our audience, we wanted to find out what your favorite player is.

101 people answered the poll. And again, I'm pretty surprised about the results. I'd expected to see that most people would be using WMP, iTunes or the like.

But, it seems our audience consists mostly of Linux/open source-fans. From our last poll I've learned that 57% of the respondents owned their own Linux server.

This poll shows another preference for open source and Linux based players, according to the top 5:

Position	Player	% of votes
1	VLC	21
2	Winamp & Jeroen Weijerings FLV Media Player	17
4	Another Desktop Player	11
5	Another Embedded Player	9

Again, thank you very much for voting! I'll publish another poll soon. It's about the platforms we're using!

October Poll Results

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 00:21:59 GMT

Hi all,

As you might know, we're running a series of polls to find out how you are using Jinzora and what you would like to see improved.

Our first inquiry was 'Do you run Jinzora on your own private server?' and was answered by 45 people.

We were pretty surprised to learn that only 12% uses a shared hosting server.

57% of all respondents has it's own Linux Web Server, 27% runs it's own Windows Server and nearly nobody uses a Virtual Server at this point.

Thank you everyone for participating! Next up: What's Your Favorite Player for Jinzora?

Tekzilla

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 23:36:46 GMT

Don't you just love it when pretty girls talk tech?

Especially when Jinzora is also briefly mentioned (6:10).

Site Optimization

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 00:06:08 GMT

Hello everyone,

It’s good to be back, though we have never really been gone…

I hope you’ve noticed our sites are renewed since just over a week now! Thanks to eZ Systems, we now have a fresh new look and feel.

Our own team hasn’t been sleeping either. We’ve updated and added a lot of content to our sites!

Sören Bernstein joined our team a couple of months ago and translated approximately 95% of Jinzora.com into German. With me translating about the same amount of content into Dutch, we can now proudly say Jinzora.com is available in English, German and Dutch!

The ‘Development’ section is pretty much the last thing we need to improve at this time, adding SVN change logs etcetera.

Obviously, there’s always more to do. We are now concentrating on Jinzorahelp.com, updating the general English content. As soon as that’s finished, it will be translated before we continue with the documentation and FAQ that desperately need updating!

If you’re seriously interested in writing documentation about Jinzora, please use the forums to send a private message to user ‘maarten’. Your help is highly appreciated!

At this time, we are also testing and improving the OpenDevelopment Contribute pages. We have started with two OpenDevelopment Projects to test the new upload and management features for Jinzorahelp.com.

If you have created a cool theme or language pack for Jinzora, please contribute it now!

Unfortunately, our new server seems to have a problem, causing short service interruptions. We are trying to solve this as we speak!

Fixed Missing Files in SVN

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 12:22:48 GMT

Hi all,

As you might know, you can download untested, unstable Jinzora code from our SVN Repository.

Our developers use the repository to store the code they're working on. Because this code work in progress, it might contain flaws. For instance, we've removed some directories from Jinzora 3, since we won't need them anymore.

However, we have not yet changed the Web Based Installer, to reflect those changes. This means the installer looks for directories that aren't there.

As a result, users who trie to install the Jinzora 3 SVN branche, need to create the directories manually to continue installation.

Because it can take a while before we update the Web Based Installer, we've decided to re-add the missing directories to SVN, so you won't encounter this problem anymore.

But keep in mind, the code can still contain bugs, since it's definitely not a stable release.

Happy testing!

Jinzora OpenDevelopment

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 12:18:28 GMT

Hello everyone,

Thank you for your continued interest in Jinzora!

In the past, I've received several e-mails from people who want to help in developing Jinzora. This is something we need to think through carefully: Because we don't know how good (or bad) a coder might be, we can't guarantee the quality of Jinzora if it would be open to all developers.

We tried to manage this by letting coders send their code to us so we could merge it into SVN after approval. But this is a very time consuming job. And since we don't have a lot of time, some good code got lost because we never had time to test and commit it.

So we are now looking into ways to make the community more self-supporting, while maintaining the high quality Jinzora stands for.

Introducing OpenDevelopment

We're starting a test by opening up SVN to other developers!

We are going to add an extra writeable branche to the Jinzora SVN Repository.

To be able to guarantee the quality of Jinzora, there will be two Jinzora 3 branches: The classic Jinzora 3 SVN branche that's writeable to the Jinzora Team and read only to everyone else and a Jinzora 3 OpenDevelopment branche that will be writeable by the community.

Users can then choose to download the 'classic' or the 'OpenDevelopment' version of Jinzora. Perhaps we'll merge the two branches periodically, after checking the committed code. We'll have to wait and see how this develops, but it could certainly lead to a new boost for Jinzora!

Besides this, we'll open a new Projects Section at Jinzorahelp.com. Each OpenDeveloper can use his own section to publish packaged releases, documentation and changelogs for his contribution. Users can use the Projects Section to download individual projects, instead of all projects as is the case with downloading from SVN.

Sign Up!

Contributions can be language packs, themes or extended Jinzora functionality like the Custom Metadata Retriever ('extensions'). If you have created something like this, visit the Contribute section of Jinzorahelp.com to upload your contribution and become a Jinzora OpenDeveloper!

For questions, suggestions and discussion please use the forum topic 'Questions about Jinzora OpenDevelopment'.

Scheduled Server Downtime April 9 2008

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 19:53:00 GMT

Hello everyone,

Tomorrow, Wednesday, April 9 we'll be moving our servers to a new location. Unfortunately, this means our sites and services will be unavailable for a couple of hours.

If you experience any problems, please check back after 1 or 2 hours and everything should be fine again.

We are sorry for any inconvenience and try to move everything as fast as possible.

Grand Opening!

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 19:46:56 GMT

As you might know, we've got a Virtual Office in Second Life.

This is a great place to meet other users, hang out, enjoy the jukebox and ask questions about Jinzora.

Feel free to hop in and discuss your Jinzora ideas or just general chit chat. How very Web 3.0!

Wim spent the last weeks painting and decorating our very new HQ. It's all dusted, cleaned and polished now so you're all invited to the Grand Opening!

Use this SLURL to hop right in!

Hello Germany!

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 19:40:30 GMT

Last week German computer related magazine C'T, Magazin fur Computer Technik wrote an article on online media managers in which they explored the possibilities of Jinzora.

This will probably attract even more German visitors to our site, so I'd like to say 'Herzlich Willkommen!'.

We hope you enjoy your stay with us! Check back regularly. We have a German translation of our site planned for the last quarter of 2008.

A Mobile 2008

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 19:27:44 GMT

Hey all,

I finally got my Windows Mobile phone, and have had good success getting Jinzora to play well on it.

I started work on a modified version of interface 'Slim', called 'Mobile' in the Jinzora 3 SVN branche. It looks great in Portable Internet Explorer (PIE) and includes good Stylus support. There are some issues in browser Opera right now.

To get everything playing well, I highly recommend the TCPMP player. It pulls M3U's in from PIE and plays them as well as my desktop, including support for seeking. So long iPod.

That's all for now, I have some solid features planned for Mobile, so stay tuned.

Happy New Year =)

Device Goodness

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 19:08:37 GMT

Well, the good news for me is I just got myself a Chumby and will soon be getting a Windows Mobile-based phone. The good news for you is I just got a Chumby and will be getting a Windows Mobile-based phone!

I am a little busy through the holidays with work and grad school applications, but look for some new fun interface work soon.

For the Chumby, the first thing I plan on doing is adding an API call to pull dynamic tracks and playlists directly.

The Chumby's next software version will support web streams and hopefully M3U's from the net, and you should be able to plug Jinzora right into that. You should even be able to use Jinzora and Chumby as your alarm clock!

Keep checking in...

Power Outage December 12 2007

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 19:03:10 GMT

Wow, it seems I only have time to write for this blog when something bad happens. Remind me to post with good news more often!

Today we've had a power outage causing the Jinzora Server to power off. Our sites have been unavailable for the last couple of hours but are back online again. Thanks to Wim who spent his evening getting everything back online!

I'll ask Ross and Ben to post some good news about what they're up to with Jinzora!

Welcome to our New Website!

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 18:50:41 GMT

Hi everyone,

Thank you very much for your patience with us!

As you might know, we've been working at our sites and servers for a very long time now. The last 2 years, we've tried and tested several options for our websites.

During this time, we've had some major setbacks, including a complete loss of our new sites, just before it was about to be released and a crashed hard drive, just last month.

But now, we finally solved 90% of the problems. We've moved to a new server for everything except the demos. Today, we've changed DNS to point to the new server, and released the new sites at the same time.

Jinzora.com and Jinzora.org both serve the primary Jinzora Website. Once we've fixed the last 10% of the technical difficulties, we'll be focusing on finishing the content of this site, since a lot of work is still to be done.

Jinzorahelp.com is the official home of the Jinzora Community. This is now your primary source of information (Wiki and upcoming documentation) and free support (Forums, Second Life, IRC etc.).

We hope to have outlined 2 sites that can now be filled with everything you'd like to know about Jinzora and can easily be expanded in the future. Feel free to browse around and let us know how you feel about it.

Thank you eZ Systems for providing the free and truly amazing CMS eZ Publish!

We should really integrate Jinzora into eZ Publish ASAP!

Besides eZ Systems, we'd also like to thank the numerous loyal fans that help out in several ways like the Forums and our Wiki, including people like Strebge and Quasimodo.

Stay tuned to this weblog for more updates!

Server Downtime October 18 2007

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 18:41:10 GMT

Bad news for us! One of the hard drives that hosts the Live Demos broke down. This calls for some maintenance! Later today, we'll have to shut down one of the Jinzora servers.

The affected server is the one that hosts the Live Demos and the new sites, including Jinzorahelp.com. This means those sites won't be available for a few hours today.

Tomorrow, everything should be online again, except for the Live Demos. In the upcoming weekend, we'll be moving the new sites to another server. The Live Demos will be unavailable for a much longer period, pending our search for a new hoster.

Hopefully, we'll have more news this weekend. Please be patient if any of the sites should be unavailable for some time over the next couple of days.

Improved Keyword Search

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 18:31:29 GMT

I've been on a bit of a Jinzora-upper recently, and I just added a new feature!

The keywords searching is more advanced than before. It now supports queries like the following:

@play @album @genre alternative

Plays a random album from the 'alternative' genre.

@random @album @artist Jimmy

Randomizes a randomly chosen album by Jimmy Eat World.

@random @artist @genre rock

Randomizes an artist from the 'rock' genre.

This doesn't work with an tag-based backend, but I don't think many people use that anyways ;)

If you didn't know about the '@play' and '@random' search keywords already, this is a great time to try out one of my favorite features!

Introducing VLC Media Player Support

Thu, 29 May 2008 17:05:43 GMT

Just wanted to post a quick note to tell you Jinzora now supports VLC Media Player in Jukebox Mode.

VLC is our first fully cross-platform jukebox, relying on its own built-in HTTP interface!

Configuration is really easy and the plugin is very feature complete. VLC also supports video playback, but I have not tested this to see how well Jinzora will play along... Test away and be sure to post any issues you run across.

I recommend setting $jbArr[ID]['prefix'] = 'HTTP' to have Jinzora send Web Links. This makes configuration a breeze and provides better track information on your site.