Signal - The Ultimate Remote Control for Your PC's Media Player

Signal 1.2.1 is now available, resolving a potential hang issue with the web interface, a bug preventing folder-based album art from being displayed, and some Unicode compatibility issues for Windows users.

Due to a bone-headed move on my part Windows Mobile users will need to install the updated client through the web access URL or ActiveSync after upgrading to 1.2.1. The 1.2 client has a bug that prevents the automatic update from working on Windows Mobile 5 and later. The worst part is that I specifically tested to make sure over-the-air upgrades were working before shipping 1.2…but on a Windows Mobile 2003 device where the bug does not occur. My sincere apologies for the inconvenience, really kicking myself for letting this one slip through.

The web interface hang issue was a rare but long-standing bug where you’d sometimes see the browser pause for a few seconds before loading the page. The problem was caused by a remote device going to sleep without signaling that it had closed its network connections, then being woken up it up before Signal detected the connection loss itself. When the device came back online the server would try to send information to the inactive connection, delaying the real messages that should have been to the device. Signal now transmits all pending messages at once and sorts out the connection state in the background so nothing is held up.

1.2.1 is available now via the download page and software update.

Signal 1.2 is here! This release brings some long-awaited changes for Mac and Windows Mobile users, and performance improvements across the board. It’s available now on the downloads page and through the built-in software update.

Indexing Performance

Media library indexing performance received a lot of attention in this update and has been significantly improved. In addition to being much faster, indexing is now performed on a low-priority background thread so an automatic re-index for a large library will not impact the performance of other applications on your computer. The re-indexing triggers have also been made more intelligent so that trivial changes to the library will not trigger a re-index.

Faster Album Art

Album art is now optimized on the server for the device requesting it. This results in smaller files to transmit over the network and faster updates for all clients.

Mac: System Preference Pane

Signal has been moved from a standard application running in the dock to a background application controlled through System Preferences.

Note: Signal now requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later.

Mac: Automatic Library Updates

Mac users can now benefit from a feature that has been in the Windows version for a while – automatic media library updates. Signal will detect changes to the iTunes media library so as you add or remove songs these modifications are reflected within Signal. As soon as a change is detected the media library view is automatically refreshed, so if you happen to have the podcast view open when a new podcast finishes downloading the new entry will show up automatically.

Windows: Launch on Startup

The Windows server now has an option to start Signal automatically when Windows starts. The server application has been designed to use as few resources as possible when no clients are connected, so you can leave it running and it will be there when you need it.

Windows Mobile: Softkeys

The toolbar and menu items have been reworked as softkeys to integrate better with Windows Mobile 5 and later devices.

Note: Signal now requires Windows Mobile 2003 or later.

Windows Mobile: Smooth Library Scrolling

Windows Mobile is the first to client platform to benefit from the improved media library data transfer in Signal 1.2. Reading media library information from the server is now much faster, allowing for live scrolling of the media library on the device.

The complete list of changes is available in the release notes. Enjoy!

Signal is moving to System Preferences. It will now run as a background application without any dock or menu bar icon, so your Mac’s UI stays nice and clean. It will also start automatically at login if left running when the system shuts down, so in most cases you can set it once and forget about it.

If you already have Signal installed the move will be handled for you via software update. After installing and relaunching you’ll be presented with an upgrade utility that will install the new preference pane and remove the old version from /Applications.

Signal 1.1.6 is now available and resolves a compatibility issue with iPhone OS 3.0.

My apologies for not catching this one before launch day, it should have been found earlier and fixed in advance of the iPhone update. Signal was tested thoroughly against earlier development versions of the iPhone 3.0 software and I made the mistake of assuming that no compatibility-breaking changes would be made to the browser in the final release. Not so lucky.

The problem was caused by Signal’s use of a persistent HTTP connection back to the desktop application for fast interface updates. When putting the device to sleep with such a connection running Safari was suspending all JavaScript execution and Signal was not able to recover when the device was woken up again.

The 1.1.6 update resolves this issue and offers an added bonus – by taking advantage of network state notifications in Safari to fix the problem the iPhone interface now reconnects faster than ever. This fix has also served as a good reminder that even small OS changes can have a big impact.

For those of you running out to buy a Palm Pre I’m happy to say that the Signal web interface designed for the iPhone is working on the device on day one. To access it add “iphone” to the URL shown in the Signal application window on your computer, so you’ll end up with something like this:

This will bring up the web control interface on your device and you’ll be able to use your Palm Pre to control your media player!