Today we added two new Creative Commons licensing options; available to all members.  The two new options are:

1. No Derivative Works
2. Noncommercial-No Derivative Works

For Kompoz PLUS members only, we have added a traditional "(c) All Rights Reserved" license option for Public projects.  Up until now, this was only available in Private projects.  Thanks for all of the input.

Just wanted to let everyone know that I released Kompoz for Android. The app allows Android phone users to interact with Kompoz.com on their Android device via their Kompoz user account.

Why?

The project started as a way for me to teach myself mobile device functionality in the context of a web service. Raf was kind enough to provide the support I needed and somewhere along the way I decided that it might be something I’d want to use regularly and so I continued to develop the features and user interface.

Features

Currently, the app allows quick access to member  profiles and projects, continuous playback of Kompoz’s user radio stations, creation and playback of playlists and the ability to search for artists and projects.

Future plans

Priority will go to fixing issues and improving usability and performance. After that I’d like to consider support for tablet devices and adding support for the latest Android UI features.

What if 'X' feature doesn’t work correctly for me?

I'm relying on user feedback to help test and guide my efforts since I'm the sole developer. All feedback is welcome. Just drop me an email at my developer account and I’ll look into it as soon as I can.

Where can I get it?

Grab it in the Google Play store:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.theobviousexit.kompoz

Many thanks to the folks here that helped test the original app. That feedback helped me a ton.

Enjoy!

Kompoz.com is hosted in the mighty Amazon Cloud.  Amazon provides nearly unlimited computing capacity and storage.  Many large sites, such as Netflix, Instagram, Pinterest, Foursquare (and many many others) rely on Amazon's infrasture.  

But even the mighty Amazon Cloud is sometimes no match for Mother Nature.  Yesterday, a large electrical storm in the Virginia area has resulted in power interruptions.  Kompoz and many of the sites I just listed have had issues.  Amazon refers to these issues using words like "elevated error rates" and "temporary connectivity issues".  I just say "Oh damn!"  

Service seems to be back to normal, but may be spotty for a little while.  Welcome to the Cloud.

The amazing Craig Steen has created an application for Windows that makes uplading new tracks easy.  The application, named Kompoz Konsole, was created by his company, Flagship Computing, using the Kompoz API.  Konsole is super easy to use, very reliable, and lightening fast.  

And if you are a Kompoz PLUS member, it is yours to use for free.  

The app comes complete with a professional installation program.  You'll also find a Quick Start PDF file included in the download file.  Unzip the contents, run the installer, and start uploading.    

Craig invested countless hours building this application, with no proding from me.  I can't thank him enough for his contributions to the collaboration community.  Give it a shot and send him a big thank you.  If you're not already a PLUS members, this application alone is worth the price of admission. 

Download Konsole Now

This application is for Windows users only.  Kompoz is currently developing a Mac application, which should be ready for general release mid-July.  

I thought I'd share a little video demo of a product we're developing.  This is a proof-of-concept.  I don't think think we'll release it exactly as shown.  Instead, the functionality demonstrated will be incorporated into a more feature-rich application, which will also include upload and download capabilities.  Still, I think this is pretty cool (as is).  

We've made a few improvements to the site navigation and to the overall site look-and-feel.  The biggest and most noticable improvement is the addition of the new dropdown menus.   We hope you like them.  We do.

Other improvements you may not have noticed right away include:

• PDF documents uploaded to projects (for lyrics, chord charts, etc) are now viewable directly (embedded) within the track page.  Here's an example. 

• MIDI files uploaded to projects can now be previewed on the page, if your browser supports it (you might need a plug-in, such as QuickTime).  Keep in mind, though, that MIDI files without a context will always play back as a piano sound.

We made some small cosmetic changes to your Kompoz profile.  The most obvious change is the the larger user photo, which appears on the left side of your profile page.  We also made the right side (where your projects and activities appear) a bit wider, and we applied some formatting and icon changes.

With regards to your default profile photo, you may want to upload a new one when you get a chance.  Because we increased the size from 150x150 to 300x300, some user photos look a bit pixelated.  If you upload a new photo, we'll scale it properly to the new size. 

If you have previously applied CSS formatting to your profile, you may want to review and tweak.

The Kompoz Download cart has been updated to support Dropbox.  Dropwhat?  Dropbox.  It's a "disk drive in the cloud" solution, which allows you to store files -- any file -- on a virtual disk drive.  If you install their software, Dropbox will appear like any other disk drive on your PC or Mac, which means you'll be able drag-and-drop files to your Dropbox, open files directly from your Dropbox, etc. 

Kompoz is now able to put audio tracks directly to your Dropbox drive.  This means you don't have to download a large zip file using your browser anymore, sucking up bandwidth.  You can now simply ask Kompoz to send the files (unzipped and ready to use) to your Dropbox account -- no need to wait for them.  Kompoz will communicate directly with Dropbox, without using up your Internet connection or bandwidth.

We'll even copy the project art for you (if you request it).  I use this when adding finished Kompoz tunes to my iTunes library.  

To use Dropbox, just add tracks to the Kompoz download cart, just like you've done in the past.  When you're done adding tracks, you'll see a new Dropbox button on the cart.  Click that button and we'll copy the files to your Dropbox account.  They will be placed in a subdirectory under "Apps/Kompoz" (created automatically by Dropbox when you authenticate).  

This feature is only available to Kompoz PLUS members.  

As you may have noticed, we rolled out a colorful new feature this morning.  WAV and AIF tracks (uncompressed audio files) now have a shiny HD badge, along with a matching color-coordinated waveform.  

This makes it easier to see which tracks within your projects (and other projects) are available as hi-res uncompressed audio.