News

8-Bit Software Magazine Online Conversion

I’d like to introduce a new project - the 8-Bit Software Magazine Online Conversion.

8-Bit Software was a public domain software library and floppy disk based magazine for the owners of BBC computers, which was published between 1990 and 1998, and contains a wealth of information about BBC computers.

The magazine disk images are available elsewhere online, but to read the disk images, a BBC emulator (or BBC) is required. This makes them difficult to access easily, and searching for obscure BBC information contained in the magazines doesn’t usually turn up any information from search engines.

I’ve currently only converted a single issue: (the fairly arbitarily chosen) Issue 64, but as the conversion is fully automated, I should be able to add more issues as time and enthusiasm permit.

So, check it out, and also feel free to let me know if you find any bugs, or if you’ve got any comments.

Radio Downloader 0.5.10

I’ve just released a small update to Radio Downloader. This release fixes the problem with selecting new multi-episode programmes that I mentioned previously.

This release is the first to benefit from the recent changes to the installer - just download and run the installer, and the old version will be uninstalled automatically.

Radio Downloader Problem

Currently, trying to select a new multi-episode BBC Radio programme in Radio Downloader causes an error. This has been caused by the BBC tinkering with the structure of their programme pages again.

I believe that I’ve found the solution, and I’m just in the process of validating it. I hope to release an update to Radio Downloader with the fix in the next few days.

Radio Downloader 0.5.8

I’m pleased to announce the release of Radio Downloader 0.5.8. This fixes the problems with browsing for BBC Radio programmes, and adds the ability to specify the MP3 encoding options for BBC Radio programmes. It also includes quite a number of other bugfixes and enhancements which you can find in the changelog.

This release also removes the automatic update feature, as it was unfortunately proving too time consuming and difficult to support. However, Radio Downloader will still notify you of new versions, and you can be kept up to date with the new Radio Downloader news feed. To make the process of installing updated versions easier, I’ve streamlined the installer and laid the groundwork for future releases to be installed without having to uninstall the old version first.

Radio Downloader Problems

Currently, trying to select a new multi-episode BBC Radio programme in Radio Downloader causes an error message to be displayed. This is caused by a change that the BBC made recently, which has broken Radio Downloader slightly.

I’m in the process of testing a new version of Radio Downloader at the moment, which fixes this problem (amongst other things), and should be released in the next few days.

Radio Downloader 0.5.6

Today I have released a new version of Radio Downloader, fixing the problems with browsing for BBC Radio programmes by genre and format.

This release also adds the feature of ID3 tagging downloaded BBC Radio episodes and improves the accessibility of the application from the keyboard. See the changelog for full details of what has changed in this release.

Radio Downloader: Browsing by BBC Radio Genre or Format

A quick update about Radio Downloader - currently browsing for new BBC Radio programmes by genre or format is broken. The workaround is to use the A to Z option for the moment. This problem should be resolved in the next release.

Radio Downloader 0.5.4

Today I have released an update to Radio Downloader. This is mostly a bugfix release, which should also resolve the problem selecting or downloading any BBC Radio programmes - see the changelog for full details.

This release should also fix an issue experienced by some users, which causes updates to repeatedly fail.  If you are currently experiencing this problem, uninstall Radio Downloader and download and install the latest version (this will not lose the items in your downloads or subscriptions list).

If you find Radio Downloader useful, I would very much appreciate your donations to cover my costs.

Radio Downloader 0.5.3.1

Today I have made available a point release of Radio Downloader. This fixes a crash when minimizing the application (sorry!), as well as resolving a small problem with the statistics in the Downloads view.

Radio Downloader 0.5.3

I have just released an update to Radio Downloader, which mostly contains interface improvements postponed from previous releases. These should particularly benefit Windows Vista users, although there are also improvements for users on XP and 2000 as well.

This release also fixes some reported bugs relating to database compaction - see the changelog for full details.

I have also taken the opportunity to put together a help page for Radio Downloader, with some basic information to assist users.