Optimised for smart-phones and other hand-held devices you can find it at abcnotation.com/mobile.

It’s been on its way for quite a while now, but with a gig-free month I finally found time to put some finishing touches in over the weekend. And only . . . → Read More: abcnotation.com goes mobile]]> I’m very pleased to announce that the mobile version of abcnotation.com has just been launched.

Optimised for smart-phones and other hand-held devices you can find it at abcnotation.com/mobile.

It’s been on its way for quite a while now, but with a gig-free month I finally found time to put some finishing touches in over the weekend. And only just in time by the looks, since mobile traffic on the site has doubled in the last six months (although it’s still only 5% of the total).

Anyway, there are still a few improvements to come, including better resolution for the “dots”, browse by title pages and auto-detection of screen size, but they are all in the pipeline. However, if you have any feedback – positive or negative – please do let me know.

Chris

Well, I’ve had a really busy summer with fun gigs plus a load of (not-quite-as-much-fun) work to do.

There’s also been quite a lot going on in the abc world, particularly in July when a lot of updates were added to the abc 2.1 draft standard. It’s still . . . → Read More: October updates]]> A round-up of changes to the site since June …

Well, I’ve had a really busy summer with fun gigs plus a load of (not-quite-as-much-fun) work to do.

There’s also been quite a lot going on in the abc world, particularly in July when a lot of updates were added to the abc 2.1 draft standard. It’s still not quite finished (work got in the way) but there’s not too much more to do to it.

Apart from that this website has had a few minor changes: I’ve redesigned and beautified the tune search form – you can now find one on every tune page, plus (a bit of a no-brainer) on the home page – can’t think why I didn’t add one before now.

I’ve also added the Google +1 button to every page (although not these blog pages, nor the forums or the wiki) – it’s supposed to help direct search traffic to the website, though I’m reserving judgement on that for the moment as it hasn’t exactly provoked an overwhelming response. Please click it if you like the site.

Other updates include:

• Several more tune composers have agreed to their music being included in tune search including Pete Whittet, Bruce Shawyer, Rob Lindauer, Roger Peppe & Chris Perry – see the copyright page for more details.
• There more software to try as well including music21 and Ernie (for Mac users who find that things have broken when they upgraded to Lion)

Enjoy!

Chris

Here are some of the possibilities:

Hotlinking is when a page in one website displays an image served from another website.

It’s usually frowned upon as it uses the bandwidth of the server at the image’s website without giving credit to that website. In fact it’s sometimes called . . . → Read More: Stop thief]]> I’ve recently been playing around with some code to prevent hotlinking of the images on the site.

Hotlinking is when a page in one website displays an image served from another website.

It’s usually frowned upon as it uses the bandwidth of the server at the image’s website without giving credit to that website. In fact it’s sometimes called bandwidth theft, especially by webmasters who pay for bandwidth by the gigabyte – apart from the copyright issues, every time someone looks at an image stolen from your website, you have to pay to provide it. It’s like having someone steal your car and then getting you to pay for the petrol … forever!

It’s usually frowned on, that is, unless it’s Google doing it (or any one of a number of image search engines) in which case it’s a good thing, as Google does give credit to the host website and, more importantly, sends traffic to it.

Fortunately, it’s not too difficult to detect where an image is being displayed and, for any requests that come from unrecognised websites, substitute another picture. You can even give the bandwidth thieves a nasty surprise or warn off their potential customers.

I tried this approach for about a week recently, serving up the following, fairly innocuous image, instead of the one that had been requested:However, it isn’t always easy to tell which requests are benign (Google, Yahoo, etc) and which are not. For example, how about images sent in emails (which I can’t read).

So in the end I decided it was easier just to serve up the image as requested, but make sure it had “www.abcnotation.com/tunes” at the bottom as an indication of its source.

So now you know.

Chris

Aside from the attention grabbing headline, it’s customary at this time of the year to take a look back at what developments have happened over the year, so I thought I might as well join in. Here are a few of the 2010 . . . → Read More: A year of massive growth]]> … at least, in terms of the number tunes available in the tune search.

Aside from the attention grabbing headline, it’s customary at this time of the year to take a look back at what developments have happened over the year, so I thought I might as well join in. Here are a few of the 2010 highlights for abcnotation.com:

• Perhaps the biggest change from a visitor’s point of view is that the number of tunes indexed in the tune search has gone from 55,000 to 275,000 – a five-fold increase in just a year.
• The scope of the tunes has increased too, with copyright tunes listed and duplicates eliminated from search results. Plus a number of composers have now given consent for their tunes to appear on the site.
• The tune search also allows you to search a particular collection and tune pages also have recommendations (visitors who viewed this tune also looked at …).
• Both the blog and the main website have had a makeover, in particular to allow for easier navigation, and direct advertising on the site is now possible.

And finally … although I hadn’t announced it until now … as of late December, the website has a brand new wiki area.

This has been set up initially to host the new abc standard version 2.0 – the semi-formal description of the rules of abc – with the aim of giving abc software developers a clearer baseline to work from. However, there’s no reason it couldn’t be used for other things, such as abc tutorials, or examples pages, or even an a-z of abc usage – please contact me if you’d  like to start something off.

Happy new year!

Chris

About half of those are duplicates and another 15% are copyright, but that still leaves over 120,000 non-duplicate, non-copyright abc tunes to discover. It took a . . . → Read More: Twice as big]]> I’ve just released a new edition of the tune search and I’m pleased to announce that it’s massively increased in size now with over 275,000 tunes indexed and available for searching!

About half of those are duplicates and another 15% are copyright, but that still leaves over 120,000 non-duplicate, non-copyright abc tunes to discover. It took a bit of work to squeeze them all on to the server but the backend system is now much leaner and hopefully faster.

On that note I’ve also put some effort into making the pages load a bit faster. The site still isn’t nearly as responsive as I’d like, but it’s definitely better than it was and I’ve got some more ideas to try.

Finally, other minor updates include:

• another composer, Paul Gitlitz, has given consent for his tunes to appear here – thanks Paul
• any software that has been added to the software page in the last 3 months is given a  label automatically
• some more software links – see the software page and look for the label
• a link to Steve Merrony’s quick reference chart

Chris