Crist Drive

Easier sharing with the new Serenade

2011-11-04T01:57:32Z

We just released a new version of Serenade on the App Store (version 1.7) and we're happy to bring you 2 nice new features:

Easier Twitter sharing. We're using the new Twitter goodness in iOS 5 to make Twitter sharing super easy and more reliable. It'll automatically import all the accounts you've setup on your iPhone and you can just tweet your best songs to your Twitter friends. You need iOS 5 on your iOS device, just connect your device to your Mac or PC and follow the onscreen instructions in iTunes.

You can now also control AirPlay directly from Serenade. If we detect that you have AirPlay speakers around, we'll show the AirPlay icon and you can send choose to stream your songs to any of them.

We also made some improvements to the Facebook sharing and various other bugs. Please let us know how you like it on our Forums or by leaving a review on the iTunes Store. Thank you so much!

Serenade 1.6 is now available!

2011-08-02T14:30:17Z

The latest version of Serenade is now available for Free on the App Store. The good news: we fixed bugs with the Facebook login part, and are now using the "Single Sign On" feature of Facebook so you can login with just one tap with you have Facebook installed on your device, no need to enter your credentials anymore! We also greatly improved the creation of links to the iTunes Store, fixed issues with the Grooveshark links and we also added the #nowlistening hashtag by popular demand!

Now one bad news... we had to take out the Lyrics feature from Serenade. The API we were using shut down without any notice (!) which explained the bug in Serenade. We tried hard to find a replacement API without success. If you're not familiar with Lyrics, there's copyrights on them, and you basically need to pay to have good data. We cannot afford it since Serenade is free, so we took the decision to remove the feature, until we can find a reliable replacement for a good lyrics feature.

We hope you enjoy Serenade 1.6 and that the bugs you were encountering have been fixed. As usual please leave reviews about this latest version on the iTunes Store and feel free to send us feedback on Twitter @cristdrive or on Get Satisfaction. Thanks for your patience!

Serenade, a definition

2011-06-26T19:33:40Z

As seen in San Francisco's Mission district.

Inline preview of songs on Twitter.com

2010-11-19T03:42:18Z

The recent partnership between Twitter and Apple with the integration of iTunes Ping brings a new interesting feature for Serenade users: when sharing a song on Twitter, with a link to iTunes, users can listen to the song right on Twitter.com and buy the song if they want to. To do this, simply choose "iTunes Store" in the settings of Serenade, and share your favorite songs on Twitter!

Serenade 1.5 has arrived!

2010-11-10T19:33:36Z

A new version of Serenade just arrived on the App Store. We completely updated the interface to be compatible with the gorgeous retina display of the iPhone 4 and the new iPod touch. But it's not all! We also added the ability for you to share your songs by SMS in one tap, as well as the ability to copy either the song information or the link to the song by double tapping on the album art. We also improved sharing on Facebook with the Graph API, which should allow us to do interesting stuff in the near future.

We hope you will like this new release as much as we do, and as usual, feel free to send us your feedback and feature suggestions on our feedback forum.

We are back!

2010-09-21T02:34:37Z

A new version of both Serenade and Voilà! are now available on the App Store. The main change on both is the support of Twitter's new authentication system from Twitter (OAuth) which is more secure and which is also why you couldn't share thing on Twitter with our apps... until now. It took a bit longer for us to update both apps, so thanks a lot for your patience!

We have some great ideas for the next version of Serenade, but I'm sure you have some too, so as always feel free to suggest features and give your feedback on our feedback forum!

Thanks to Nate Weiner for his help and his great work on ShareKit for the transition to OAuth!

Voilà! and Serenade updated

2010-02-17T02:50:42Z

It's been a little while since we haven't updated you but we have good reasons. Voilà! has been updated to 1.4 a few weeks ago, bringing you the ability to use the Twitter Geotagging feature to directly attach your location to your tweet. Clients like Seesmic Web will then display your location address and map next to your tweet directly in the timeline. We also added more control on your privacy, and you can now choose the precision of the location you're sending to your Twitter Profile. You can also change the type of map displayed in Voilà! just like in the Maps application of your iPhone.

We also released the 1.3 version of Serenade today with the ability to share a song with a link to Grooveshark so your users can directly listen to the full song directly in their browser (like here, for example). Users also asked the ability to add the very popular and always trending #nowplaying hashtag when sharing on Twitter.

Now what? As you probably know, Apple introduced the iPad a couple of weeks ago. We're really excited by this new type of device, that is going to change the way you use a computer. Of course, the iPad is going to allow us to bring Serenade to the next level, and we'll share more about it with you, very soon. Stay tuned!

A big update for Serenade

2009-11-08T17:35:45Z

We're really happy about the new version of Serenade that just landed on the App Store, since it's the biggest update so far. We included features that we think makes Serenade the best social music player on the iPhone:

Sing, Sing, Sing!
Do you want the lyrics of the song you're listening to? Just tap the Mic button on the top-right of the screen and we will display the lyrics from Lyricsfly.com if we find them. It's very easy to do, and you can know check out the lyrics before sharing a song, or a specific part of the song.

More sharing
If you don't want to share a link to the iTunes Store, you can now choose to link to Youtube or Spotify. We'll build a search link for those services and there's a very high chance that the song you're listening to will show up at the top of the results. We still prefer you to use iTunes (because that's how we earn money!) but if you want other links, you know have the choice to.

I'm listening to...
You can now add a prefix before the information of your song, like "I'm listening to" or "I really like" so you message is already personalized and you can share a song even faster. We'll add custom prefix in the next version.

Hashtags
When you share on Twitter, you can now add Hashtags next to your message. For now, we have 3 types of Hashtags: #serenade (to help us make some buzz about Serenade), the artist or band name of the song you're sharing and #musicmonday if you're sharing a song on on Monday.

We also made improvements to the Facebook sharing, and fixed other little bugs. As always, let us know what you think and if you like using Serenade, please write a little review about us on the App Store.

Serenade, now with Facebook sharing

2009-10-02T05:19:25Z

We're really excited about this new version of Serenade, now available on the App Store. We've listened to you, and we added features that we hope you will love:

Sharing on Facebook
You can now share your songs with all your friends on Facebook. Simply login from the Settings section, and you're good to go! A cover art of the sond you're listening to will be included with your message (if we find it on iTunes), as well as the link to your song.

Smart saving of your message
Now that you can share your song on 2 different services, we wanted to make it easier to share a song on both services, with the same message. So when you're sharing a song on Twitter, and then on Facebook, we'll memorize and add the same message you typed on Twitter. If you don't want to use the same message, simply shake your iPhone, and we'll clear the old message!

Playlist management
Previously, you had to leave Serenade and manage the songs you wanted to listen in your iPod app. Now, you can do it from Serenade. Simply press the top left button and you can access all the content of your iPod, and add it to the current playlist.

We're also supporting the sharing of Audiobooks, and we made the Settings section easier to use. We already started to work on Serenade 1.2, and we can't wait to show you what's next. If you have any feature ideas, let us know!

Voilà! the return

2009-09-21T03:16:47Z

It's been a little while since we haven't updated Voilà! The main reason was that we were pretty busy working on Serenade, but also that we had big plans on launching a totally new version of Voilà! (2.0) rewritten from scratch. We were a little bit ambitious on this, and it's going to take much more time that planned. But don't worry, we're still taking care of the current Voilà! Today, we're introducing Voilà! 1.3 that contains a lot of changes and we know that you'll like them.

Better map, with tracking
We now use the great MapKit framework introduced in iPhone 3.0 to render the map in the application. No more static map, welcome to a beautiful dynamic map. Use it the same way you use Google Maps on your iPhone, you can pinch, zoom in (double tap), zoom out (tap with 2 fingers),... Simply tap the blue dot (your current location) to reveal your current address. The map and your current location will be updated real-time on the map. If you lost yourself on the map, tap the "Locate me" button at the bottom left of the main screen, and we'll show you were you're currently are again.

In-app email with map
You can now share your location by email without leaving the application. Plus, the emails now contains a map of your current location.

Tons of improvements
We deleted a bunch of code thanks to the improvements and new frameworks Apple released in the 3.0 SDK. We also fixed the bug that was not allowing certain persons to share their location on Facebook correctly.

We're going to release a small update to Voilà! in a couple of weeks, with some more improvements, before working full time on Voilà! 2.0. Stay tuned!

Introducing Serenade

2009-07-21T08:19:23Z

We love friends

2009-07-09T03:56:58Z

We just created a Facebook page for Voilà! since you can now enjoy Voilà! on Facebook. That means that you can become a fan of Voilà! and show all of your friends that you like our little application. That would be really cool for us! Also, if you haven't written a review of Voilà! in the App Store, you can still do it, and also do it on our Facebook page.

Thank you so much for loving us, and showing it to the world!

Voilà! 1.2 now with Facebook

2009-07-06T04:01:24Z

A new version of Voilà! is now available on the App Store and we suggest you to update as soon as you can. This new version (1.2) has a lot of new features, that you asked us since we launched a couple of months ago.

The biggest feature (and our favorite) is that you can now share your location, with a message on your Facebook feed. Adding your Facebook account in the application is very easy, just click on "Connect" in the settings. Then, to share your location on Facebook just type a message (or not, if you just want to share your location) and it will be published with a little map and a link to your current location map on your Facebook Feed.

As requested on Get Satisfaction, it is now possible to post an empty message on Twitter, which will use a default message, just like before. The accuracy of your location will be displayed in feet or meters depending on your Region settings on your iPhone, we updated OAuth to the last version following the security hole found in April (you will not notice anything different if you are already using Voilà!) and to finish, your current location page is now available in a nice iPhone-friendly format (try to visit http://v.cristdr.com/96J from your iPhone or iPod touch). That mobile page also use the awesome new "nearby" Flickr page for iPhone.

As always, please send us your feedback, bug reports or feature request on Get Satisfaction. We are starting to work on another application as well as on a whole new Voilà! 2.0 for iPhone OS 3.0, so tell us what you want!

Voilà! 1.1 available on the App Store

2009-04-29T06:03:38Z

We are super excited to announce you that our biggest update since the launch of Voilà! has finally hit the App Store. The new features are:

You can now type a Twitter message before to share your location on Twitter. No more pre-determined messages! You can type whatever you want, in 140 characters and a short URL to your current location will be added at the end of your message.
Each time you share your location, we used to add a link to a Google Maps page. We now replaced that page by a beautiful Voilà! page containing your current location map (by Google) as well as Flickr pictures taken around your location. You will also see you Twitter avatar and the time you were at that location directly on the map. You can see an example of that page here.
We also corrected few bugs. If you find other ones, let us know!

We hope you will enjoy this new version of Voilà! and as usual please send us your feedback, bug reports or feature request on Twitter or on our Get Satisfaction forum.

What's next?
We will be presenting Voilà! on Monday May 4th in San Francisco, for the Mobile Monday Silicon Valley, in partnership with Skyhook wireless. If you are in San Francisco, please pass by and say hi! We will present the main feature of Voilà! 1.2 that is well underway and that will be on the App Store in just a couple of weeks!

Thanks for all your emails that are extremely encouraging.

New Authorizations to Fire Eagle deactivated

2009-04-25T16:13:41Z

A security issue has been found last week in the authentication protocol OAuth that Fire Eagle is using to authorize its users. The bug is being resolved right now but in the mean time, if you are new to Voilà! and need to authorize it to Fire Eagle for the first time, it will not be possible. It's not due to us, and we are also waiting for a fix for that security issue. We're very sorry, and thank you for your patience!

[UPDATE 04/28/2009] As Fire Eagle explained on their Twitter account, the activations are possible again and Voilà! should work without any problems for the new users. The disclaimer that Yahoo! added on the authorization page explain the underlying OAuth problem that is being resolved for the moment. We will let you know when the problem will be fully resolved.