ShowHN: We built this so you can send a mixtape to someone you like | Hacker News Reader

ShowHN: We built this so you can send a mixtape to someone you like

flirttape.com

63 pointsjpadilla_57 comments

This is probably the first Parse javascript app in the wild! Cool stuff guys.

certainly one of the best javascript apps so far

Thanks!

It’s pretty buggy on Firefox. When I first loaded the site, it kept trying to search for something even though the search box was empty. Then I reloaded the page and compiled and saved a mix tape (http://flirttape.com/JRhANofRX9). But I couldn’t play any of the tracks with the player – no sound came out when playing, and clicking Next did nothing. Also, the Pause button that is the alternate of the Play button had its round button borders smaller than the pause symbol.

having the same issue

Taking a look at it. I guess we didn't really test it in Firefox

Same issue in Chrome. Love the design!

What kind of issues did you see on Chrome?

Same as roryokane, couldn't play the tracks. Clicking next goes to the next song, but no sound.

EDIT: Also, the pause button thing, here's a screenshot: https://skitch.com/sachitgupta/89s6a/flirttape

Reminds me of the first iteration of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muxtape

this was the shit when it came out. i wish i had taken screenshots - really admired muxtape (and a similar website.. i think it was called favstar?) for the incredibly clean UI and UX

There's an open source clone if you want to sate your nostalgia: http://opentape.fm/mixtape/

oh wow... nostalgic indeed. thanks for sharing!

thanks :)

here's an archive of the original UI: http://justinouellette.com/muxtape/

I made a tape and sent it to my wife right away, with a bunch of music that means a lot to us. It was a fantastic way to relive a lot of memories in a few minutes.

Great idea, love it.

Did the same thing for my wife...I await her response. ;)

Awesome! Hope she likes it! Thanks

With a name like flirttape, how are you supposed to pretend you're just being casual?

You could:

A) provide a disclaimer. "Hey, this isn't really a flirt tape, I just thought you would like these."

B) stop being a nancy boy.

>>B) stop being a nancy boy.

That's kind of rude, and very sexist. Please be polite, and maybe re-read this: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Oi, not this again. Let not a single comment be directed at a specific gender, ever.

Thank you. This needs to be said now on HN, unfortunately.

Well, you shouldn't. So it's a good name!

Even if you shouldn't (and I'm not convinced that's necessarily true), that does not therefore mean it's a good name.

Not sure where else to report issues. I was able to search for songs, add them to a mixtape and share it via email. I wasn't able to play any songs though. After pressing play, it would send a request to the youtube API and receive a successful response (200 OK), but just sit there and not play anything. Each time I press next, the same thing would happen - a successful request then nothing.

This is fantastic. Mixtapes use to be such a great form of self-expression. Thanks for making a tool to bring them back!

Interesting.

How are you playing the YouTube track in there?

We are just hiding the Youtube chromeless player away with some CSS and hooking up to it with js to make our own player

Ahh, I see now. We've been working on a way to do the same without Flash - have you had any success with that?

Isn't that strictly against youtube TOS?

Pretty cool. I made something similar (a site that played any song via YouTube) last year at a hackathon but I failed to think of such a creative idea, props.

Just a heads up that this link is broken on getblimp.com: http://bootstrap.getblimp.com/

Thanks for the heads up

Where are you getting the song data (title / artist name) from? If it isn't scraped from YouTube, how do you match up the search results with YouTube videos?

Good work!

P.S. When viewing source (on Chrome, OS X) it shows the .search and .mixtape divs as blank! Is there a reason for this?

It looks like youtube. If you check the network tab in Chrome.

Thank you for bringing this to my attention - I will make good use of the Network tab going forward :) I had only ever really used Console and Elements in the past.

This seems pretty cool but I think you might have been banned...the player won't play. Which basically inevitably happens to every app I've seen that grabs songs off YouTube and repurposes it. The one that most sticks out to me is the old Songza.

Yea, I think we may have been banned.

When I loaded the page it was mostly blank. As soon as I Zoomed out the browser, the page loaded properly.

Might have been a browser issue. Chrome 19.0.1084.54 on Lion.

This site is pretty much broken on Mobile Safari. The top banner in purple is cut off on the right and I have no way of scrolling over. :(

Am I the only one for whom this never worked? It didn't work 6 hours ago and it's not working now. Still Hacker News'd or just me?

Where do you get the audio data from?

YouTube :\

Where will you get it when they shut this down?

nice idea!

but be prepared for lawyers ... these guys send ugly letters with long numbers :/

Yes, he needs to add "no copyright intended" to protect himself.

Lest anyone misunderstand, shasta is referring to the practice of misinformed YouTube users adding that phrase to their videos as part of a cargo-cult-esque attempt to avoid drawing the attention of the ringwraiths of Sauron, er, lawyers of MPAA/RIAA.

In opera with 120% zoom, purple bar partly covers edit box.

Ah, also search doesn't work. :)

Very cool, every think about using Grooveshark players for this?

Search doesn't work; It just spins indefinitely.

Doesn't seem to be working in Safari.

Very cool

i wish it weren't called flirttape so I could send it to friends! also, i'm using IE (at work..) and it keeps throwing me errors

None of the songs are available (Here is a screenshot after I made the player visible: http://i.imgur.com/eP3sK.jpg )

You guys may have been banned... looks like YouTube doesn't like to have its player hidden.

Seems like we may have been banned :(

Indeed, this app totally violates the YouTube API terms:

You aren't allowed to:

"separate, isolate, or modify the audio or video components of any YouTube audiovisual content made available through the YouTube API;

promote separately the audio or video components of any YouTube audiovisual content made available through the YouTube API;

access any portion of any YouTube audiovisual content by any means other than use of a YouTube player or other video player expressly authorized by YouTube;"

https://developers.google.com/youtube/terms

Why wouldn't you read the API terms and comply with them before wasting all the development effort on something that will only get shut down? My advice is switch to the soundcloud API. http://developers.soundcloud.com/

startup in puerto rico? wow nice

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