Kontakt 3.5 beta available

A beta version of Kontakt 3.5 is available for Kontakt 3 users (the final version will be available before July). It brings many new features and fixes :

New and improved features:
-Compatibility with Windows Vista 64 (XP 64 tbd)
-64-bit memory addressing for Mac OS X and Windows Vista 64
-New DFD engine with drastically reduced memory footprint
-Optimized sampling engine with substantial performance increase
-Advanced multiprocessor support
-New browser feature for Kontakt Player libraries
-Direct MIDI Learn for all sliders and knobs, including performance views
-Improved automapping
-Bypass button for effect slots
-Aftertouch interpretation added to KSP
-New “Engine Restart” button
-Custom wallpapers for library boxes
-Play cursor for Beat Maschine mode in Wave Editor
-Pro Tools compatibility under Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard
-Localized info pane in six languages

Fixes:
-Several fixes and stability improvements

Voice of Apocalypse expansion

A expansion for Eastwest Symphonic Choirs is provided (priced 80$ and requires the PLAY SC version – or PLAY upgrade) : it brings the old famous Voices of the Apocalypse samples (that library was priced more than 500$ and was made of many CDs). Moreover VoA patchs can now be used with WordBuilder. The VoA licence is also now less restrictive : the restriction for using Voices of the Apocalypse for film trailers has been removed.

New videos tutorials about SC are also available.

iPhone : Randgrid synth / iShred

Following noise.io, or the more recent technoBox, we can discover Randgrid (6,99$), a new synthesizer for iPhone that brings a very powerfull sound (close to ImpOscar). It provides two virtual analog monophonic synths (substractive synthesis, with two oscillators per instrument) and 14 drum samples, effects (stereo delay, distorsion) and a step sequencer.

To complement it we can watch stunning videos of iShred (4,99$ for the full version, 0,99$ for the Lite version), whose sound somewhat seems better than pro guitar samples and effects applications priced one hundred times more, and whose usability seems great.

Power Toppler for iPhone : Nebulus clone

Power Toppler is a clone of the famous Nebulus (Atari ST/Amiga) for iPhone. It offers 16 levels (8 in the original game) and the character is a robot (was a frog). Graphics are presented as enhanced, however from provided images they seem less attractive than in the original game (the music was also great). It seems however interesting from first reviews, and the touch control scheme is said to work well with the original (particular) control system of the character (does not move – the tower rotates as he moves towards or backwards). The game is available at the AppStore for 1,99$.
We could still get Zebulon on OSX, another (free) clone of Nebulus.

Google O3D : 3D framework with javascript APIs

Google presents O3D, a 3D framework that provides javascript APIs (works inside a browser plugin). The OSX verison requires an Intel mac. The plugin accesses to the graphics card acceleration through OpenGL or DirectX. An utility allows importing of external 3D models from Collada, SketchUp, 3ds Max and Maya.
We can watch a stunning video and launch demos (require the plugin to be installed).

CP2JavaWS 0.5 release : full digest and state support

A new 0.5 version of CP2JavaWS bridge is available at Sourceforge. It includes the following new features :

– full digest authentication (rfc2617) support (tested on Safari and Firefox), with automatic retrigger of original connection.
Besides digest parameters settings (nonce life, realm, etc.), the authentication filter allows to set list of services that require (or not) authentication (using includes and excludes).
Authentication occurs only once (for the first service that requires it).

Note : only works with sameDomain (when using JSONP digest authentication could happen, but there is no mean to check response status nor retrieve response headers – see security considerations)

– session/state management : JSESSIONID cookie is automatically retrieved once authentication challenge ends (Authentication-info response header with Ok code) and added to following requests (had to be coded for Safari – Firefox handles it natively).

Note : only works with sameDomain (when using JSONP, for security reason the server isn’t allowed to set a cookie to the client, as it originates from another domain).

– a new Habilitation fillter has been added : it allows (through a custom habilitation service) to set access rules for services, depending on the user, remote service and method called (these rules apply after authentication check).

– sameDomain setting moved from remoteService to endPoint (the same for all services of a web app).

– the packaged cp2javaws-filter.jar now includes the right files (sources files were ok however).

Mac mini : power and heat / idle mode

Apple provides guides about macs environmental performances. We learn that the new Mac mini uses 45 percent less power (only 13W) when idle (that isn’t sleep – that uses only 1,5W – but fully awake machine without any active application other than system daemon tasks). The previous version required 23W in idle mode, and the original version with 1,25Ghz G4 used 32W in that mode. The max power is 110W (was the same in older CoreDuo versions, and 85W on the single G4 with Radeon 9200), for a 2 Ghz Core2 Duo and Nvidia 9400M. Heat dissipation in idle mode is also down (2,5 times less than with the first G4 model, and close to 2 times less than with the previous CoreDuo model). However max heat dissipation in full charge is the same (was a bit higher when switching from a single G4 to a CoreDuo).

New MacPro also made progress in idle mode, however they can require up to 300W in full charge (that is in fact considering 8 cores, many fans and a high end graphic card).

CP2JavaWS 0.4 released

A new version of CP2JavaWS, 0.4, is available at Sourceforge. It includes the following new features :

– Decoding and encoding now support cycles/references. Existing objects’s references are replaced with a path ($ref:<pathFromRootObject>) when encoding to JSON. The path follows EL/BeanUtils rules : someKey.anotherKey, someKey[0](key).anotherKey, [index], (key), someKey(key)[1](key2).anotherKey, etc.
When decoding, references/paths are replaced with the previously decoded objects.
A new CPPropertyUtils class allows to get/set these nestedProperties on the cllient side, in the same way as Java’s commons BeanUtils (the two frameworks manage nested dictionaries and arrays, and multiple dimensions arrays). You have to use at least commons beanutils 1.8.

– CPJSONAware categories aren’t required anymore. Automatic decoding/encoding of ivars (used when custom objects do not implement CPCoding) has been merged in to CP2JSCoder and CP2JSDecoder. Implementing CPCoding allows to set different JSON keys than ivars name (can then match Java’s objects attributes names if they differ from CP objects’s ones).

– fixed a problem with dates DST.

Rolando 2 site

A site on Rolando 2 opened. The game is due this summer. New free levels for the first Rolando will be provided each week until release (5 new levels still have been added recently).

Myst for iPhone available soon

While a video of the iPhone’s Myst version is appearing at Youtube (is removed shortly thereafter) we learn that this version is reaching completion and will be available soon at the AppStore. Images are said to have been rendered again in 32 bits (original ones used dithering, the optimized palette contained only a hundred of indexed colors), an automatic-zoom would be included, and interaction with elements uses touch control (for example activation of switchs in the main island), as well as switch of view. Finally the download size is said to be huge due to the high number of media files (weigthed about 500 Mb in the original game – not 32 bits but images resolution was still higher than iPhone screen’s one). The price isn’t known yet.

Google AppEngine : free Java hosting

Google added support for Java in its free AppEngine hosting platform. Among additional services provided is BigTable database, that is optimized for scalability. Use of the datastore (BigTable is accessed through the DataNucleus Access Platform open source framework), is really easy (complies with JDO spec – also supports JPA).

To deploy a war we have to add an appengine-web.xml file into the WEB-INF (that file contains the required application id, and some other optional parameters).

Google also provides an Eclipse SDK, that brings a GWT project wizard, and server test (simulates the AppEngine, including the services and the datastore) !

Details for uploading a war can be found here. Scalability features of the solution are great, for the database and static files.

See also : If you elect to use the free appspot.com domain name, the full URL for the application will be http://application-id.appspot.com/. You can also purchase a top-level domain name for your app, or use one that you have already registered.
There is no way to delete an application in App Engine. You can register up to 10 application IDs per Google account. If you do not want to use one of your allotted application IDs for the tutorial, you can just read this section, and refer to it later when you are ready to upload your first application.

It is stated that the offer is for now restricted to some users, however I did success registering my first application id using my Google account (a verification process of account through sms is required).

We can then now easily host a Cappuccino application : client part in the war’s web root (index.html entry point, Cappuccino application’s .js file that has been optimized through press tool, objective-j.js file), services code (Java classes), Spring jars and configuration, CP2JavaWS jars and configuration.
Download of application’s js files can be optimized (can use separate servers, others than the main server that serves dynamic resources -servlets/jsp) if they are marked as static in the application configuration file (via exclude/include parameters). By default JSP files and resources residing in the WEB-INF folder are considered dynamic.

CP2JavaWS 0.32 : CPCoding support

A new 0.32 version of CP2JavaWS is available at Sourceforge :

Encoding and decoding of client objects now also supports CPCoding, through new CP2JSEncoder/CP2JSDecoder.
These coder provide transparent backward compatibility with previous versions of CP2JavaWS that were based on the CPJSONAware protocol :

– if no CPCoding implementation is found on custom objects, it uses instead the old toJSObject/objectWithJSObject methods from CPJSONAware categories.

– Furthermore it does the switch at each node level ! That is for custom objects we can etiher implement CPCoding protocol’s methods (if the serialization requires particular work, for example to exclude some attributes or choose arbitrary JSON keys – different from ivar names), or benefit from the automatic encoding of objects provided by the CPJSONAware categories (then custom objects have to import CPObject_CPJSONAware.j, and JSON keys will match exactly ivar names).