Rakkit

Rakkit’s New Player and the HTML5 History API

We’ve just launched one of the most major updates to Rakkit since it went into Private Beta; a new version of the interface that makes use of the HTML5 History API on modern browsers.

“What does that mean?” i hear you say…

Well the History API allows us to manipulate the Internet browsers history. With regards to Rakkit, this means we’re able to load new playlists, music and screens into your browser, as well as change the URL in the browsers address bar (for bookmarking purposes), without the need to refresh the page and stop the currently playing music.

As a result we have had to tweak our system in order to maintain a consistent playlist as users navigate around the system, which we have done using Redis.

Redis allows us to maintain two playlists for each user at a given time: the ‘currently playing’ playlist and an ‘armed’ playlist. When content for a new page is loaded, all the tracks from that page are loaded into the armed playlist. This means when a user presses play on a track from the playlist on screen, the currently playing playlist is expired and recreated from the armed playlist and the track begins playing.

Tradeoffs we have had to consider are that the History API is still a working draft of the HTML5 specification. So as well as only working on modern versions of the popular browsers, it is also subject to change. We will need to be vigilant in ensuring we adhere to best practices over the coming months as this element of the specification is carved out, but we’re more than happy to support the development of this aspect of HTML5.

We will be ironing out any performance bottlenecks over the coming weeks as speed is at the forefront of our work. This new functionality was in fact delayed as we chiseled away at unsatisfactory page load speeds.

We will also be carrying out further integration of Redis to enhance our caching policy and provide the best service possible.

Enjoy.

Join the Rakkit Team

Rakkit has been out in the wild for a little over two months now. We’re taking small steps towards how we envisage the application working but there is no doubt we have a lot to do before we get there. That’s where hopefully you come in…

If you’d like to be part of the Rakkit team and help us to develop a great music player for the web then we’d love to hear from you.

What is Rakkit?

Rakkit is a music aggregation platform for the web. We monitor as many popular music websites as possible. Rakkit hangs on their every word, waiting for the next hottest track to drop so we can dish it out to our users in a beautiful clean interface that allows them to glide through updates from all their favourite sites effortlessly on a daily basis. But this is only the start…

We’re looking for people with some or all of the following skills:

Ruby on Rails
Redis
PostgreSQL
jQuery
HTML5
CSS
Heroku
C#
GitHub

We welcome introductions, code samples, portfolio examples and even haikus, from music savvy interns with a keen eye for problem solving and programming, to seasoned pro’s looking to cement their stamp on the web.

What will I do?

Your position will most likely be remote, although it’s not unlikely that we’d like to meet you and share a beer at some point.

You will liaise with us at least weekly to discuss which aspects of Rakkit you would most like to work on as well as how you’re getting on. You will then wow us with your enthusiasm and skill in helping us to further the project.

What will I get in return? (Besides love and respect)

In all honesty, right now, nothing.

Rakkit is currently a bootstrapped startup and at present it makes no money. The system is developed solely outside of working hours by team PANDR. As a result, at this time we’re just looking to work build a friendly team of talented people who simply have an untouchable passion for music and Rakkit too.

Who are we?

We’re a small web agency called PANDR, based in deepest darkest Norfolk (UK). I’m Pete (@zoltarSpeaks), the developer and my partner in crime is Rob (@robbarwell, our designer.

So…

If you love your music, like what we’re doing and want to get stuck in then get in touch: hello@rakkit.com.

(This is probably what will happen when you join us.)

Changelog: 23/01/2012

Well, well, well, the weeks are just flying by at the moment and the changes are getting pushed into Rakkit pretty regularly at the moment. It will be interesting to see how long this continues for, as we (PANDR) have a fair amount of work in the studio at the moment; clients are calling!

Anyway, we’ve slowed down on sending invites out at the moment because of a few issues we’re clearing up with some of the 3rd Party API’s we’re using. Hopefully it won’t be long before we can extend some more invitations your way!!

Here are a couple of stats for your faces, as things stand:

Plays: 5416

Artists: 2595

Tracks: 5230

Users: 41

Anyway, enough of that, here’s whats been done in the last week:

Updates:

• Within The Directory we have added further Alphabetical pagination to enable easier browsing of the library of content: Artists/Blogs/Users we have on the system.
• We have started using the HTML5 History API within The Directory too. This allows users to dynamically navigate the content without any page reloads (all with a fancy, non essential but pretty slide effect too).
• We have built in support that allows us to publish and unpublish an entire website from the system. This gives us Moderators the ability to remove any content requested by either a website owner or a content owner who might be unhappy about their material appearing on Rakkit - a safety feature. This functionality also enables us to amend any data anomalies that occur via the automagicallness of Rakkit before our lovely users get their hands on it.
• We’ve added a sprinkling of CSS3 niceness with some hover effects on some of the sub-navigation items. We’ll let you work out which ones.

Bug fixes:

• Fixed a bug whereby new artists weren’t being displayed in the right hand column of the interface. This is updating far more regularly now for users to explore.
• Added the new heart logo for a persons Rakkit to the sub-navigation when viewing another users profile.

I think that’s about it for the last week. Don’t forget, if anyone has any feedback then feel free to drop us an email at: hello@rakkit.com.

Changelog: 16/01/2012

Hello!

Well the first few weeks of Rakkit have flown past and we’ve received plenty of very healful feedback. I just wanted to highlight some of the changes we made to the system this weekend, a bit of a Changelog style approach.

Updates:

• Firstly you are now able to log into Rakkit using either your registered username or email address.
• A lot of the work we did last week was in an effort to ease the introduction to the system when new users registered. We are now providing two different streams of music on the system: All Music and Feed.
• All Music is literally that, an entire playlist of all the music that drops into the Rakkit system. However, there are controls to filter this to show only new music from the last 24 hours or music the current user has never listened to on the system. This should help to prevent users from listening to the same music over and over again.
• The Feed tab is a playlist of all the music that is contributed by the Blogs that user is following. For example if i was to only follow Gorilla Vs Bear on Rakkit then i would only see music here that was posted by Gorilla Vs Bear. It’s much more of a personalised list and i expect this is where the majority of users will spend their time on the system once they have decided which blogs they like the most.
• The most played tracks in the sidebar are now updated on a rolling weekly basis. This provides a lot more variation as the chart will update on a far more regular basis.
• Feedback: We now have a Send Feedback link in the primary navigation on the website. If you would like to send us anything at all then this is where you can do it - it’s just an email link.

Bug fixes:

• There was an issue with case sensitive urls for users profile pages. This has now been removed and everyone’s usernames are now case insensitive when it comes to profile pages.
• Side bar charts: we were aware that the ordering of some of the items in the sidebar charts was inaccurate. Our database queries have been updated and these charts are far more in tune with the system now.

Interface Updates:

• We have changed the Cloud logo on the Player and Track items to be a heart. Feedback received from early users indicated that it was unclear what the purpose of the Cloud button was. If anyone is still unaware; the Heart icon will “Rakkit” a track. This means the track will be saved to the users “Rakkit” in order for listening at a later date; a “Favourites” playlist if you will.

Right, that’s it for now. We’ve still got a list of things as long as our arms (stretched out one after another) to do, but if you have anything else to feedback then don’t hesitate to pop us an email to hello@rakkit.com or leave a comment on this blog.

Happy Rakkit’ing!

Rakkit V0.1

Well, we’ve done it. The first version of Rakkit is out the door and up and running. We’ve sent the first few Beta invites out to some close friends and music fans to test the system, with an aim that they might feedback some useful feature requests, UI tweaks and general likes and dislikes for the site too.

Along with the deploy of the system is the launch of the new homepage with a few screenshots and a registration form for a Beta Invite, so get involved and drop us your email address and we’ll send out an invite as soon as we’re ready.

Happy Christmas everyone. Ill provide a few more details about the build and deployment of the system once all these holidays have passed.

Lots of love

Team Rakkit

Performance Fine Tuning

The excitement of launching our first full scale product (side project) here at PANDR is starting to kick in and we’ve hit that crucial point where we need to make sure we don’t get distracted by all the things we could do and make sure, for now, we do what’s required to get our system out the door so people can use it.

That means: browser testing, more browser testing and a bit more browser testing. Tedious, we know. However it also means performance testing and in our opinion this is by far, one of the most rewarding aspects of testing, especially early on in a products life cycle.

Over the course of the last two weeks we have put some significant hours into improving the page loads of Rakkit. We’re able to collect a lot of data from our site, play data mainly and there are lots of interesting things we would like to do with it. However with this great culmination of data comes great responsibility and we have had to make some tradeoffs between the level of information we can provide users with and overall system performance. Loading deep relationships from the database via numerous queries simply isnt viable at this early stage of our existence. Removing unnecessary database calls from our pages has literally shaved seconds off our page load times, a very satisfying result.

What’s next? Well we still believe there is more we can do before launching but we’ll be moving to the front end of the show in order to provide our users with the slickest interface possible. We’re competing with web and desktop based systems so our interface has to compete despite the medium; over the next few days we’ll be drawing inspiration from some modern application development concepts.

Development