Fresh AIR Apps

MuxMaster is an AIR app built by Flex and ActionScript guru Doug McCune for the excellent MuxTape.

If you were the kid that created mix tapes of all your favourite tracks then you will love MuxTape, it is mix tapes for the MP3 generation. Simply create an account and upload your favourite MP3’s.

Doug’s application takes inspiration from Apple’s coverflow to load in MuxTapes. that you can then browse through. Clicking on a track will start to play it and a counter appears on the right side of the track. The app gives you the options to load your own MuxTapes or those of another user if you know there name. The app did have the ability to download the tracks, although Doug has now altered it so you can’t. I think this is a wise decision as MuxTape is already on thin ice regarding copyright issues, and it’s a service that definitely should not be shut down.

Read Doug’s blog post for more info and his thoughts behind the app.

Design eye

Simple interface that uses a coverfow inspired navigation. Probably not the best for this type of data and Doug does explain that the app was in response to a OSX application made using Fluid.

Technical eye

Built in Flex using a number of open source libraries like Doug’s own coverflow component, papervision 3d and some bits from FlexLib.

MuxTape does not have an open API, although because it is built using web standards and well structured mark up it is just as good. Using the native E4X within the Flash player, scraping the pages is trivial. This is a good example of how an application can be built using data from a normal website. Inspired.