Some more previews of Nightingale.

A lot of people have been asking about updates on Nightingale development. While none of this is ready for “action” yet, I thought I would give you an overview of some of the things we have been working on. These are screenshot and designer views from what we’re cooking in the labs. Feel free to comment! All the images are low resolution, click on them for full resolution/scale versions!

The front page, dynamic version. Contains live updated news items from the blog, etc. TODO on this page: the sound player is just an image, the star rating isn’t real yet. Latest uploads (not seen here) is working but might need tweaking). On the top you can see what a logged in user sees…

The html draft of the simgle sample page. This page is a static HTML page, i.e. straight from pixelshell. The user avatars are missing, the colors need tweaking, the download button needs to be yellow, … but the general layout is there. This one also features the new and awesome “huge” sample player we’ve developed and will be shown to the community soon.

The forum front page. The little text bubbles light up if there are new posts since you last visited. This is a dynamic version, no a static html page. As you can see we’ve gone for a very minimal feel.

Forum threads. Sticky threads are red and stay on top. The minimal pagination you see at the top will be used everywhere in freesound. Again a live page, fully functional.

Forum posts. TODO on this page: only the user avatars… Smileys are very simple and minimal (you can see one at the bottom), the whole style is very “light”. You can quote a post by clicking the quotation marks right next to it.

Message inbox. Functional page, but no design yet! The message “outbox” from phpbb has been removed (as it created much confusion!). We now have inbox, sent messages and archive. Messages can be either archived or deleted.

Posted in design, Nightingale | 1 Comment

Github and Lighthouse.

Quite happy with the switch from subversion to git, and quite happy with github. One of the big advantages of all the new “do one thing good” websites is that they, well, do one thing very good. So, looking for bug tracking, I found Lighthouse, another wonderful website that has “Ruby on Rails” written all over it. The fanboy overload of RoR is horriblme, but some people are truely doing some really amazing things with it.

Without further ado, here is the freesound 2 ticketing? service: http://freesound.lighthouseapp.com/

Please only use it for future freesound 2 tickets, not freesound 1 tickets.

Posted in Nightingale, Tech Talk | Leave a comment

2009 Summer School in Sound and Music Computing & SID Training School on Interactions with Environmental Sounds

Hello everyone,

I thought you might be interested in coming to this summer school!

Best regards,

emilia

We are pleased to announce the 2009 Summer School in Sound and Music Computing & SID Training School on Interactions with Environmental Sounds.

It will take place in Casa Da M?sica, Porto, Portugal, July 18th-21st, 2009, just before the 6th Sound and Music Computing Conference.

The theme of this summer school is Interacting with Sounds of Porto. This summer school will explore the potential of recording, processing, sharing and interacting with city sounds.

During 4 days, the program will include lectures, as well as hands-on practical sessions under the supervision of tutors who will provide one-to-one mentoring on artistic and/or scientific projects focused on interactions with sounds that reflect the city of Porto and its activities. Speed talks and poster sessions will also be organized for students to present and receive feedback on their current research, and to foster scientific cross-fertilization.

Lectures and teachers

  1. Design of new interfaces for musical expression . Marcelo Wanderley.
  2. Registering the soundscape. Joel Chadabe.
  3. Sound edition, description and retrieval, social networks. Xavier Serra.

Tutors and proposed topics

  1. Jean-Julien Aucouturier (Topic: Hearing objects)
  2. Stephan Baumann (Topic: UrbanSync: back in Porto)
  3. Eoin Brazil (Topic 1: Porto sound shaker. Topic 2: Porto Mobile Sound Wall. Topic 3: Porto fact-oid mutlimedia kiosk)
  4. Bram de Jong (Topic: Porto in Freesound)
  5. Luis Gustavo Martins (Topic: Automatic segmentation, classification and clustering of sounds of Porto for tangible interaction)
  6. Rui Penha (Topic: Interfaces and algorithms for Casa da M?sica robotic Gamelan)
  7. Stefania Serafin and Federico Fontana (Topic: Natural interactive walking in Porto)

Dates

April 24th / Deadline for application (see details on the web)

May 12th / Notification of acceptance

There will be a registration fee of 200? to the Summer School. The COST Action IC0601 on Sonic Interaction Design will provide financial help to a selection of students under the form of individual fixed grants of 500 Euros (preference will be given to students whose proposal projects best fit SID topics -see here).

Summer School students are also encouraged to attend the Sound and Music Computing Conference (23-25th July 2009). There will be special (lower) conference fees for Summer School students.

More info at http://www.smcnetwork.org/summerschool/porto2009

Stay tuned on the summer school and conference news:


							
Posted in talks, workshops | Leave a comment

From subversion to git.

Following the overall exodus where people change from using subversion to git, we -much like lemmings- could not stay far behind.

All source code for freesound “2.0” a.k.a. nightingale can now be found over at github:

http://github.com/bram/freesound/tree/master/

Update your links!

Posted in Nightingale, Tech Talk | 4 Comments

Meet Chiapas, the new database server.

Meet chiapas:

HP Proliant DL360 G5
Processor: Xeon Quad Core E5440
Memory: 14 GB RAM
Dual ethernet
Dual power supply
Redundant ventilation system
Hard drives: 3 x 15000RPM, 72GB, SAS
Price: 4.797,42?

Chiapas is now happily running the Freesound.org database. It wouldn’t have been possbile to start using this machine without the help of Letusa ( http://www.letusa.es ). They kindly sponsored the aquisition of this machine and of another, even pricier one I will introduce once we start using it.

The previous server was completely out of breath when we installed this machine. This one is keeping up just fine:

http://iua-share.upf.es/ganglia/?c=Freesound.org&h=chiapas.upf.es

As you can see for yourself, Freesound.org has become snappy again and quickly responds to all your requests. Hurray for big, bad server machines! Oh and here’s one for people with hardware fetishes:

Chiapas

Chiapas on the left, Mystery Machine on the right.

Posted in hardware, Tech Talk | 2 Comments

The final front page design…

Hello everyone,

Thanks for all the feedback that you all gave when we posted the various freesound designs. We’ve used this feedback and worked on a new design, which is -in our opinion- offers a much better design which works well with freesound. Have a look:

Comments? Post them in the forum

Posted in design, Nightingale | 2 Comments

Slow, slower, slowest…

Hello all,

We know, freesound has been getting slower these days. But, help is along the way. Next week we will start initial testing of our brand new shining database server ( more about that later!). For those who like little graphics to spice up their daily lives, how about these. They represent the “server load” (how much the server is suffering) in the last year:

Our web server, doing relatively well:
http://iua-share.upf.edu/ganglia/?r=year&c=IUA&h=iua-freesound.upf.es

Our poor database server, slowly but very surely drowning:
http://iua-share.upf.edu/ganglia/?r=year&c=IUA&h=freesound-db.upf.es

You don’t need to be a genius to tell that that line is going up too fast for our own good. There’s just too many of you who want to use Freesound! Of course all of these problems will be solved with Freesound 2 a.k.a. Nightingale, but… we’re still heavy at work there. For now, switching to a new, shiny, 4 core, 14GB RAM machine will probably help. Again, more about those later! 😉

Your host for tonight,

– Bram

Posted in hardware, Tech Talk | 1 Comment

Nightingale possible design

Go over to http://www.freesound.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3542 and help us decide which logo to choose, and comment on a possible new design!

Posted in design, Nightingale | Leave a comment

Introducing Freesound Radio

Hi there. Freesound radio has now been installed on freesound:

http://www.freesound.org/radio/?

The?Freesound Radio is an experimental web-based system I’ve been working on ?at the MTG ?to experiment around collaboration and social interaction in sample based music creations, using freesound as the source of sounds.??The Sample Patch Editor interface allows you to put together short creations (sample patches) using samples?from the freesound?database.

?

??freesound radio editor?

?

?The?Player interface offers a meeting place to listen and interact with the existing creations of the users. By voting patches and bookmarking your favorite sounds and tags you collectively influence an evolutionary algorithm that continuously creates new patches by remixing and mutating existing ones.??

?

freesound radio player????

?

Both prototypes are now online and waiting for your contributions. ?Enjoy!?

Posted in freesound radio | Tagged , | 11 Comments

Dobroide and Reinsamb(r)a at National Geographic

Freesounder and pro sound designer Ron Sunsinger wrote me yesterday. He has used sounds from Dobroide and Reinsamba on the national geographic episode Man Made – Hi Tech Museum. And -like the license requires- both are credited. The episode aired in August and may air again soon! So keep an eye on the N. G. tv!

Row writes: “Here is a shot from my digital camera of my screen for the credit. Its a nice one, freesound has the first credit when the film is over [snip]. You can look on Nat Geo TV network site under Man Made for credits, but they take a while to get them up on the website.”

national geographic

Pity they got Reinsamba’s name wrong, but I’m sure he won’t mind 🙂

Special thanks to Ron for sending this in!

Posted in attribution | Leave a comment