Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[RobOK]

I know there are plugins that do great things with playing now, but it seems like the MS standard is catching on, meaning that blogger tools are built to detect the MS standard way of telling the tool what is playing. [see http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/wm_create.mspx].

I am requesting to have Media Center incorporate that function so tools that are built to detect whats playing from WMP would instead detect it from Media Center.

I am not sure if this is possible.

An example tool is called BlogJet.

thanks,
R.

[paulr]

I'm not very familiar with this stuff, but from the MS website you linked:

Blogging Plug-in for Windows Media Player 9 Series

Add more personality to your blog with this plug-in that adds the artist, song, and album name to the Windows Media Player 9 Series title bar. Blogging clients like LiveJournal, w.bloggar, Semagic, and others can then easily add that information to your next entry while you compose.

It sounds like what you want is the title bar to be modified with the artist/album/son name.  Is this correct?

The WritePlaying plugin does this for MC.  I guess it would then be a case of reading that information into a blogging tool, which would be a job for those tools if I am not mistaken about how this works.

[RobOK]

Sort of.

I think the blogging tools -- tools that compose blog entries like BlogJet -- can dynamically pick up the playing artist and song name from WMP. I don't think (but i dont know for sure) that it is NOT a case of the media player writing to a file and the blog tool reading or including that file.  I think it is a more dynamic function call.  

I am not sure how the MS thing works.

[ethomp]

Bill Zeller actually wrote plugins for iTunes, Winamp 2/5 and Winamp 3.  You can find them here:
http://www.minimalverbosity.com/archives/2004/06/02/blogging-plugins/

I know it's not MC, but there are ways to do it...I just don't know how.

There's also a thread that sort of discusses using the Playing Now plugin.  I haven't tried it yet, though.

[RobOK]

yes, Playing Now is quite good, I recommend that.  It does write to a file, but not the dynamic call that I am looking for.

[ethomp]

Yeah, but isn't there also an option to have that info on the clipboard and then Win+F9 to paste it into the application?  Yeah, I know it still isn't a dynamic call.  That is one thing we lack.

I was thinking more about uploading a file via FTP and just using an include in the blog.  It's been more work than I've wanted to do, though, so I haven't.

[paulr]

WritePlaying modifies the title bar of MC, which is exactly what the MS plugin does for WMP9.  So, the dynamic call you are looking for is something the blogging tools are going to have to do.

[RobOK]

ah... so the blogging tools need the option of pulling from the MC title bar instead of the WMP title bar if I follow.

Its hard to get people to code for MC though.

[paulr]

Yea, I think so.   I didn't install any of those tools, but from reading the descriptions, that's what it sounds like to me.

I wonder if Girder could be used somehow to do what you need?  (I have no idea if this is possible, just throwing out ideas).

[RhinoBanga]

Yeah, but isn't there also an option to have that info on the clipboard and then Win+F9 to paste it into the application?  Yeah, I know it still isn't a dynamic call.  That is one thing we lack.

I was thinking more about uploading a file via FTP and just using an include in the blog.  It's been more work than I've wanted to do, though, so I haven't.

PN also FTP's.   Sveeral people use it to update their blogs on their websites.

[RobOK]

but with the include approach it is ONE playing now (which i can understand people wanting that) vs. I was thinking of having it get added into each blog entry so each blog entry had the playing now of when the blog entry was created and would never get changed over time.

I bet with PN i can get something pretty workable.

EDIT:  by workable, i mean i can use Win-F10 (or maybe map to a different key) to Paste from Playing Now into my blog entry.  And use FTP approach for a dynamic one like in my sig.

[RhinoBanga]

Would you want it to blog a separate entry for playing now info?   If so then let me know what you are using for blogging and I'll see if it is programatically controllable.

[RobOK]

I am debating between two --

one is MoveablePoster which works primarly with the MoveableType blog system and a few others.

I think the most recent version is: http://www.mattberther.com/2003/12/000350.html

[Win-F10]:  
Playing Now: A Perfect Circle - The Hollow - Mer de Noms  [Time: 3:01 | 188 kbps mp3 | 4.2 MB]

The second, i really like but i have to pay, which I may yet still do.  It supports windows media player for picking up Playing Now from WMP.  I like it b/c it is WYSIWYG.  Its called BlogJet - http://blogjet.com/

EDIT:  see this post:  http://blogjet.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=features;action=display;num=1093484243;start=0#3
on BlogJet boards.

thanks for looking into this.


later on:
Playing Now: Jet - Cold Hard Bitch - Get Born  [Time: 4:05 | 196 kbps mp3 | 5.9 MB]

[Omni]

Out of curiosity, why would anyone want to flood their blog with trivial, ever-changing "Playing Now" info anyway?  ?

[RobOK]

LOL!

good point!  I think mostly just because I want to .      My blog is just for fooling around, couple friends and family read it and they like to know about new songs from me.

I could probably do a less annoying way of  just somehow keeping a log of last 20 songs played on the blog sideline.