INTERACT FORUM
More => Old Versions => Media Center 14 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: JimH on October 23, 2009, 03:26:29 pm
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Nobody asked for it. In fact, when I brought it up a few months ago, some people booed. It has nothing to do with music. It will distract developers, encourage them to think for themselves, etc.
So we did it. Maybe this weekend we'll have a build to look at. It's called Clipnotes because Cliff's Notes was taken, and because it's like a multi-page version of the clipboard.
Here's what we've done.
1. It's in the tree, but optional. In early builds, you will have to turn it on under General/Advanced/Features.
2. It may not stay. We may move it to another program and (gasp) sell it separately.
3. It's a list of text entries. A contact for example:
George Washington
Mount Vernon
Mount Vernon Highway,
Mount Vernon, VA 22309
or a text list
Take to Work
Car keys
Office key
Lunch
Snickers Bar
4. The first liine is the subject. The notes collapse. So for the two entries above, you would see:
George Washington
Take to Work
5. When a note is selected, its contents appear to the right.
6. Text can be imported, so if you have contacts in a CSV text file, they can be imported. You could import google contacts, for example.
7. It's fast to add or edit. It's fast to search.
8. It may be best used for miscellaneous text. It provides a quick place to store information that doesn't fit well in fields.
If you've used Palm Desktop, this is similar to memo entries.
If it sticks, we'll provide keywords and sync to another copy. We may provide backup to THE CLOUD (aka The Internet).
So we're basically done with music, photos, and video now. We're moving on to that big database in the sky.
Just kidding.
And one person did ask (http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=54522.0) for it.
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I think I was one of those that booed, but hey if your hearts set on a dream good luck :)
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"Cliff Notes"
"Clip Notes"
I think that's funny, Big Smile
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:'( I feel left out. I asked for it too:
Sorry to change topic, but a gap in the market that MC could fill if it were quick enough would be Notes. (http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=51993.msg354897#msg354897)
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Not something that 2 users have asked for over the last year
I don't think anyone every asked us for Media Jukebox when we did it in 1998. And nobody wanted images when we first added the feature.
Sometimes we like to do what seems promising to us.
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I don't think anyone every asked us for Media Jukebox when we did it in 1998. And nobody wanted images when we first added the feature.
Sometimes we like to do what seems promising to us.
Fair enough.
Understand, though, that some of us still don't want/need images. :-) I bought Jukebox long ago and have upgraded all along solely for managing and enjoying my music library. (Heck, I don't even do video!)
I would do this:
>> 2. It may not stay. We may move it to another program and (gasp) sell it separately.
I find it to be an interesting proposition, as I have used notes/outlining apps on my PC for years (loved Ecco Pro). I just don't see it as a fit for inclusion in Media Center.
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waldron, you know that you can disable images and video and documents in MC14...general settings->
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waldron, you know that you can disable images and video and documents in MC14...general settings->
Yes, I do both know and use that feature. Thanks.
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The pizza module (using recipes stored with Clipnotes) will order toppings appropriate to the mood of your movie, guide the driver to your home, and tip him to wait at the door until an appropriate time to pause the movie. Not ground-breaking my ass. Stop being so cynical! ;)
"any media, any time, any place... with pizza!"
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I have to say - great PR job! ;D
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I have to say - great PR job! ;D
But I do want the pizza module!
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Please use this thread (http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=54548.0)now.
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I've been fiddling round with the notes section lately. It's pretty neat.
I know it's only early days, but here's what I'd like to see happen. Notes is set up so it could be a true information database - you know, a way to store information that isn't a physical file on my hard drive. The rest of the program is completely file-centric. All tagging happens at the file level. I can tag music files with an artist and an album etc, but these artists and albums only exist as values attributed to a particular file. If the file goes away, so too do the artist and album (unless other files share the values of course).
There has been discussion in the past about the potential for use of 'categories', 'entities' etc throughout the program - ie taggable entities that aren't files. This is exactly what you've done with notes, really. What's missing for me is a way to usefully link these 'notes' back to 'files'. It's not April yet, so I won't revive the YARB (http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=51456.0) thread, but you're actually very close to many of the things we talked about there.
Case example: I want to create an artist database. I want to be able to tag artist entries with artist-specific metadata (bio, nationality, artist image etc). And I can actually do this right now - just create a new note, type in "Abba" as the name and tag it with an "Artist" keyword and... voila, I have created an artist record for abba. I can then tag it with whatever I want using any of the fields in my library. And I can do the same thing with movies, people, albums etc etc. This is totally cool.
So my question is, how can the rest of the media library take advantage of this? How can I link the Contacts in my Notes, to People I've tagged in photos? How can I link artist entries I've created in the notes section with my music?
If a file could be 'tagged' with a 'note' we'd be laughing... If I have a working artist database, I only need to let the program know that this file belongs to "Abba" and all the artist-specific information is inherited. Same goes for movies.
This would also solve a few oft reported issues / requests:
- "I've re-ripped an album, how do I swap the tags over to the new rip" question - if the 'album' info is already in the database the user need simply allocate the new files to the album 'note'.
- Artist images - we could simply assign coverart for artist entries in the notes section
- Series / Season / Episode management - we'd have a way to tag these three levels separately.
If you have some time to spare, I posted here (http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=51456.msg351950#msg351950) about some of the advantages that such inheritance would offer.
How are people using notes? Any thoughts?
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I'm not currently using notes, but I like where your suggestion is heading...
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I don't use Notes because it doesn't yet do what you suggest. I suggested here (http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=54548.msg371779#msg371779) how this might be implemented. Something along these lines would be very flexible, useful, and (it seems to me) relatively easy to implement. I dearly hope this development cycle doesn't end with the (IMHO) comparatively useless contact manager function.
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Totally agree Darichman! This could probably solve a some of the most frustrating limitations of MC. Very good suggestions about link and inheritance. Oh, the possibilities! I hope another thing than Keywords will be the link thing here though. Don't like using Keywords for other things than images.
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I like these ideas. Would also like to link to external files for those cases where it makes sense to store info in a file rather than the MC library. We were so close with the Links feature. Wish a couple tweaks could have been made.
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New Notes features added in build 111.
If a note is tagged as a "Google Contact" it will be synced to Google. At this time, they are filed by Google under "All Contacts" but they can be manually moved to "My Contacts" so that they appear on a Google phone.