Mindquirk started as sort of a lark of mine, to make some software that hopefully other people enjoyed. And enjoy they did.

As I headed off to college last fall, I realized that it would be difficult to continue maintaining all of these various projects, and still take on new ones like Coolpoints and Cardstalker. I was more than right, I have so little time to devote to my Mac apps and Dashboard widgets that I seriously considered abandoning them.

However, the most successful software isn’t maintained by just one person. It’s maintained by many. And open sourcing Mindquirk’s applications is a great solution. So, starting today, all three main applications from Mindquirk are open source. I am hoping that this will do two things. Firstly, get more people involved with working on these great applications. Second, influence me to continue working on these projects and clean up the source code so it isn’t so embarrassing. So please, fork us on GitHub.

Xbox Live Friends on GitHub
Harmonic on GitHub
Symphonic on GitHub

See you in the source!

Well, it looks like the music industry has demonstrated its shortsightedness yet again. Harmonic, everyone’s favorite lyric fetching widget, will no longer be able to fetch lyrics. LyricWiki has stopped allowing developers from accessing lyrics via their API due to pressure and licensing restrictions from record labels.

LyricWiki cannot be faulted for this, however. They provide a great service and attempt to do so without stepping on the feet of the music industry. If they were to ignore the label’s demands they would most likely have a lawsuit on their hands within minutes. Mind you, LyricWiki is still allowed to exist, presumably after paying a hefty licensing fee, but that application developers can’t access it. This is just another bit of flailing as the music industry continues crafting its own demise.

Record companies are quickly becoming irrelevant. We don’t need them to get our music anymore. We want to support the artists, not the record labels. Believe me, I am not one of those people who arrogantly and disingenuously says things like “information wants to be free” as an excuse to pirate music. Music has value. Pirating is not a right, and it deprives artists of money. Even if artists get a tiny sum after the label takes its cut, they still get some money and supporting art is important. I don’t mind paying for music. What I do mind, however, is when record labels try to protect the lyrics for no reason at all. Lyrics are included in liner notes in physical albums, but not on digital downloads. Nobody is selling the lyrics, not even the record companies, so how is a free database of lyrics a threat to anybody?

So that, dear readers, is why Harmonic can no longer access new lyrics. It can still find lyrics that have been saved previously in iTunes, but that’s about it. This is frustrating for you guys, and it’s frustrating for me. Unfortunately, I don’t know how to fix this problem. Harmonic is free, and I don’t have the resources to license lyrics on my own, nor would I. It shouldn’t cost money to get lyrics for songs one already owns.

I need your advice. I haven’t found another lyric site with an API, and I don’t want to get involved in the moving target of screen scraping. How do we proceed from here? Leave a comment or email me with your suggestions.

A side project I have been working on is finally done: Cardstalker.

Cardstalker is the best way to create, learn from, and share online flashcards. Cardstalker is entirely web-based so you can easily share cards with anyone, and learn from anyone’s cards.

Please check it out and tell me what you think!

It’s been ages since the last release, but we have been hard at work on Xbox Live Friends 4.

This version is miles better than any of the previous versions, and miles better than anything else like it on the Mac.

Head over to [the Xbox Live Friends site](http://mindquirk.com/xlf) and check out screenshots, screencasts, and then download it!

**Bonus**: Since Xbox Live Friends now supports Growl, we’ve made an Xbox 360-themed Growl Style which you can [download here](http://mindquirk.com/downloads/xlf_growlstyle.zip).

Just a quick update on Xbox Live Friends: it still exists, and I’m working on it when I can. To prove it, here is a shot of the new Gamer Info window. However, we’re a one-man team over here so it’s a little tough to get things done.

All that needs to happen is to fix some bugs and then it should be ready. However, these are tricky bugs that will probably take a little time to solve.

Massive apologies about the delay, but the new version should be pretty cool.

In the interim, a brainstorming session about which games have online stats that could be added to XLF would be interesting. Halo 3 is the only one I can think of. (Rock Band and GTAIV both have websites that do not work for screen-scraping, which is unfortunate).

Hot of the heels of the previous release, Harmonic has been updated to version 2.3. Here’s what’s new:

- New, more compact, design for the options toolbar
- “Clear Lyrics” button now works correctly
- Additional international support for artists and titles with special characters in the name, like Mötorhead

Harmonic 2.3

After the jump, there’s a story! A boring story! For developers!
Read the rest of this entry »

Harmonic has been updated to version 2.2.1. This is an extremely minor release and the only change is to simply report “Lyrics Not Found” when LyricWiki spits out its terrible errors like it has been prone to lately.

This should resolve the “Host ‘pedlfaster.pedlr.com’ is blocked because of many connection errors” issue.

Harmonic 2.2.1

You may have noticed that Harmonic recently hasn’t been able to find any new lyrics. This is because of an issue with [LyricWiki](http://lyricwiki.org/), whose [API](http://lyricwiki.org/LyricWiki:REST), has stopped returning lyrics correctly. We’re hoping this will be fixed soon, and the next version of Harmonic will include a few backup lyrics sites in case of an issue with LyricWiki. We are, however, still looking for good lyrics websites to leverage in Harmonic besides LyricWiki. If anybody has any suggestions, we’d love to hear about them in the comments. Apologies for the inconvenience!

**Edit (March 16):** LyricWiki is operational again!

It’s been a couple years since Symphonic received an update. The winds, they are a-changin’.

This is quick maintenance update to Symphonic. Here’s what’s new:

- New (and working) update system. It’s now much more obvious when there is an update.
- Links to user manual fixed
- Cleaned up some code

Head on over to [the Symphonic page](http://mindquirk.com/apps/symphonic/) to download it.

It’s only been a day or so since the last update, but we thought we should keep on a roll.

So, welcome to Harmonic 2.2. Here’s what’s new:

- New colors: indigo and pink
- Looks nicer when the lyrics are set to “Instrumental”
- Fixed issue where preferences button was hidden on some color schemes
- Preferences button is now on the left
- More reliably finds lyrics under alternate names and through LyricWiki redirects
- Fixed an issue with ColorSync that could cause Harmonic to look funny on some monitor setups
- Made the “Update Available” banner more obviously clickable
- Tweaked preferences layout

Please [download the new version](http://mindquirk.com/apps/harmonic) and enjoy!