Pulsar Public Preview 2
Posted By Paul Kafasis on January 26th, 2009
Since releasing Pulsar earlier this month, we’ve had thousands of downloads and gotten great feedback as well. We’re still working on our full “1.0” release, but we have several important bug fixes and improvements we wanted to make available as soon as possible. So today, we’re releasing Pulsar Public Preview 2, available from the Pulsar page.
This update adds support for SIRIUS Internet Radio Canada, as well as fixing an issue with XM tuning after long idle periods (where a #1003 error would be seen). Many other bugs and issues have also been addressed, so grab this update now.
If you’ve got a license for Pulsar already, this is a free update. If you haven’t used our XM and SIRIUS internet radio streaming client yet, check it out now. You’ll be glad you did.
Mikey says:
January 26th, 2009 at 9:50 pmAutostart on favorite/last channel!!
Otherwise love it!
Adolpho says:
January 28th, 2009 at 3:57 amSame as Mike, Autostart on favorite/last channel!!
Otherwise love it!
Fryguy451 says:
January 28th, 2009 at 1:55 pmFor me, it accepts the XM login, says the account is ok. When selecting a station, it goes from tuning to connecting and sits there for as long as I let it (let it sit for 25 minutes this morning.
Paul Kafasis says:
January 28th, 2009 at 9:47 pmWe’ll have to consider auto-starting on launch.
As for issues with connecting, please contact us directly for support, so we can best assist you.
Chuck says:
January 30th, 2009 at 4:03 pmWorks great.
Add EQ, and I’m in.
Jason says:
January 31st, 2009 at 2:32 amAwesome. It’s already better than the others, and it’s not done yet! Can the update frequency for the station’s artist/title be user adjustable? Perhaps make them update sooner, or later?
Also, the ability for the window to auto-resize when in the favorites view.
Smaller desktop footprint view, too!
Thanks again!
Airic says:
February 2nd, 2009 at 11:43 amPaul,
Auto-start is a huge feature for those of us that like Audio Hijack to open our audio application, start recording a show (Howard Stern for example), and close it out afterwards unattended.
Love the program. With auto-start, it is everything I need.
Airic
Adam says:
February 2nd, 2009 at 3:45 pmCan we get proxy support?
Paul Kafasis says:
February 3rd, 2009 at 1:39 amChuck: We’ll see what happens with an EQ. For now, if you’re using Pulsar with Audio Hijack Pro or Airfoil, you can use the EQs found there.
Jason: I don’t think you’ll see auto-resizing, and the current design doesn’t allow for adjustable refresh times, as every refresh is hitting a server (either XM’s or DogstarRadio’s). We have them set as fast as we’re comfortable loading the servers.
As for a smaller footprint, as we’ve said, a mini-view will be coming in the future.
Airic: Auto-start would work with AHP, but it’s hardly ideal. Better would be for AHP to be able to command Pulsar. That way, you can record more than one channel, and not have to worry that your auto-start is on the right channel. We’ll see what happens.
Atlanta Jones says:
February 3rd, 2009 at 8:34 amThank you, thank you! I’ve waited forever for a good desktop XM client for Mac. And as an Audio Hijack owner, the free license was a great surprise!
Some suggestions for the future: Channel “Groups” like rock, pop, country, etc; EQ; Last.fm support.
Wonderful!
Chris says:
February 3rd, 2009 at 10:01 amHow about an iphone app like the iTunes “remote” app to remotelt change channels? Add in Airtunes output and this would be killer.
Atlanta Jones says:
February 3rd, 2009 at 5:10 pmOne more feature suggestion :)
On my car unit, I love the ability to “watch” an artist. It would be great if you could enter artists (like Billy Joel or Queen), and Pulsar would monitor what’s playing on all channels and pop up an alert that your favorite artists are playing. Just a thought.
Paul Kafasis says:
February 3rd, 2009 at 6:39 pmAtlanta: Groups is an interesting idea, though I don’t know that it really fits our listings (and I’m not sure if we can get that data easily from XM/SIRIUS.
An EQ may or may not make an appearance – for now, using Pulsar with Audio Hijack Pro or Airfoil provides this.
Last.fm scrobbling support is something we’ll consider, though I’ll admit it’s not a top priority. Artist alerts fall into the same category, actually.
Chris: AirTunes output is unlikely to be found in Pulsar – that’s why we have Airfoil. As for a remote app, we’ll consider this, but that’s a lot of work for something that right now would be very niche (The small group of users who have an iPhone and are using Pulsar). We’ll see what happens in the future.
Mikey says:
February 3rd, 2009 at 7:52 pmPaul, thanks for listening to your customers, it really speaks tomes about what a great dev Rogue Amoeba is. I just sold my Stiletto 2 on eBay and changed my Sirius account to online only.
Alex Spencer says:
February 3rd, 2009 at 9:24 pmI just tried this great program and its been streaming all day from my XM account. Sending out through AirFoil. Very nice. My wife will love this simple setup. She loves to find music on iTunes and having a way to book mark a song she hears for later searching on iTunes would be great plus.
David Schamis says:
February 4th, 2009 at 8:52 amDoes anyone know if the stream that Pulsar plays is the 128k “premium” stream from Sirius? Is there a way to select that?
MLC says:
February 4th, 2009 at 9:49 amUsing Sirius on a Mac via Safari was such a kludgey pain in the butt, and then you guys come out with Pulsar, and for FREE no less…..this is ridiculously wonderful, thank you!
Paul Kafasis says:
February 4th, 2009 at 3:35 pmDavid: Pulsar does The Right Thing. If you’re paying for premium streams, it gets them, automatically. There’s nothing for you to select, it just works.
MLC: Enjoy, and spread the good word 8).
5footmorty says:
February 4th, 2009 at 6:43 pmPaul,
“Auto-start would work with AHP, but it’s hardly ideal. Better would be for AHP to be able to command Pulsar. That way, you can record more than one channel, and not have to worry that your auto-start is on the right channel.”
Yes, agreed, but puh-leeeeeze, how about autostart-with-last-channel-selected just to tide us AHP users over in the meantime? Puh-leeeeeeze?
BTW, you guys rawk.
KR_in_408 says:
February 5th, 2009 at 4:51 pmA great app. Now you need to make “Pulsar Touch” for the iPhone! OR better yet add support for the SiriusXM streams in Radioshift Touch.
David Creemer says:
February 7th, 2009 at 2:13 amI’m enjoying the Pulsar / Airfoil combination very much. My one suggestion would be (optional) Growl notification support for song changes.
Paul Kafasis says:
February 7th, 2009 at 3:09 pm5footmorty: The two are pretty much equal work. We’ll be doing it the right way, and we’ll consider Auto-start on its own merits, outside of Audio Hijack Pro.
Kr_in_408: Unfortunately, Pulsar has a great deal of Python code, making it a rewrite, not just a simple recompile for iPhone. We have no plans for support for XM/SIRIUS on the iPhone at this time, I’m afraid.
David: Growl support is something being considered for the future.