Signal - The Ultimate Remote Control for Your PC's Media Player

This release resolves a speaker selection compatibility issue with iTunes 8, a display issue on Nokia internet tablets, and includes a number of other minor bug fixes. The complete list of changes is available in the release notes.

Note for Leopard users: Signal’s application binary is now signed by a trusted certificate authority, allowing it to be added to the system firewall rules automatically. If you have manually added a previous version of Signal to the firewall you may be prompted to re-authorize it, or in some cases you may need to remove Signal under System Preferences > Security > Firewall and then launch the new version.

Signal 1.1.3 is available via software update and direct download.

iTunes 8 was released yesterday, and after testing the new release one compatibility issue was found: multiple speaker selection currently does not work. A fix is being worked on and will be released as soon as it’s ready - iTunes 8 offers improved accessibility exposure which may allow for a better overall solution to the continued lack of a proper speaker selection API.

All other features appear to be working properly against the new release.

Update: The speaker selection bug was fixed in Signal 1.1.3.

One thing to be aware of is that the new grid view is not well suited to remote control clients. When a playlist is displayed in the grid view within iTunes, playing that playlist will only play the tracks within the selected grid item, and this is also true when playing the playlist through Signal. You can start the playlist and jump to a particular song, but only the artist/album/genre that song is contained within will be played. If the playlist is in the list or Cover Flow view then iTunes will play back the entire playlist as it normally would.

A quick heads-up for Mac users: starting with version 1.2 Signal will be ending support for OS X 10.3. The new release has started using system APIs that are only available on 10.4 and later and offer performance improvements, lower memory use, and a reduced application footprint.

In general support will be provided for the current and prior OS releases, creating a good balance between compatibility with a wide range of systems and moving the application technology forward to take advantage of the latest OS improvements. If you have any questions or concerns please don’t hesitate to contact support.

As you may have heard, today Apple announced a free native application called Remote for the iPhone and iPod touch, and that this app seems quite similar to a certain other product you may be familiar with. Naturally this has raised a few questions:

Did Apple purchase Signal?

No, Apple has implemented their own solution.

Did Alloysoft patent the idea?

No, as there was prior art even back when Signal was first created.

What happens now?

For the immediate future the plans for Signal remain unchanged. The native iPhone client is still under development and will still be released as planned. This will be a great new feature for all Signal users, including many requested changes and offering substantial performance improvements over the web client on the device. Winamp and Windows Media Player users will of course continue to benefit from all of Signal’s functionality, and for iTunes users Signal already offers features that the Apple product lacks such as the ability to queue up tracks, view internet radio station info, and automatically fetch album art.

Following the native iPhone release the Windows Mobile client will receive a UI update as promised, and there are plans to further expand the web interface to provide support for additional devices and even simpler controls from other Macs and PCs.

So while a free Apple product may well have an impact on the business, Signal isn’t going away anytime soon. Be on the lookout for continued software updates.

Now and then I get asked where the idea for Signal came from and how this all got started. Signal’s history is actually a bit longer than you might expect, so for the curious among you here is the tale:

Signal’s story actually begins back in 2001. A bunch of friends and I had just moved to Denver after all being hired straight out of college. After adjusting to a new city, a real job, and actually earning income(!), it was unanimously decided that Life Was Good. This naturally led to more than a few parties, and our place being the biggest (and coolest) was usually the venue of choice. Of course any good party needs good music and this function was served by an MP3 collection delivered through Winamp on my PC. People could queue up songs, add new songs into the library, or just go jump to something particular in the playlist. This all worked out great except for one problem: drunk people kept spilling stuff all over my keyboard.

Read the rest of this entry »