Online videos are my favorite work break. I might watch an episode of Star Trek TNG during lunch, but I watch far more online videos while I wait for some stuff to compile or just to take my mind off what I’m doing.

Tapetrap makes sure I spend less time searching and more time watching these videos. I use it daily and love how it works. Now I need your help to make it even better.

The videos I like to watch aren’t available from a single website. YouTube has a lot, but definitly not everything. Maybe even less in the future, with the copyright claims a lot of video game oriented channels had to deal with lately. I wanted to get away from browsing to every single website independently, deciding what I wanted to watch and then forgetting which clips I had already seen. Or making an account for every site to overcome that last problem.

Tapetrap will hold all my favorite sites, make it easy to add new ones, play videos and remembers which I’ve already seen. When I have 5-30 minutes to spare, it gives me a quick overview of what’s available and ten seconds later I’m watching a video. I don’t even have to check where I left off if it’s a series. It’s pretty awesome really.

Especially while Tapetrap’s in beta, I’m looking for ways to improve the experience and add features. If you’re like me and follow a bunch of skateboarding channels on YouTube, TED Talks, Funny or Die, Artsy Vimeo Channels, Spoony etc. etc., download Tapetrap and let me know what you think.

It feels like an update for AirVLC has been overdue. Even though it’s been working very well for me and even made the transition to Mavericks like it was nothing.

The changes in this update are mostly behind the scenes; I updated the frameworks and project to work with Xcode 5. Besides that I’ve made some tweaks to accomodate a few changes Videolan made in VLC 2.1.0.

Unfortunately there is no way to test if those changes work yet, because the AirPlay support in 2.1.x still seems to be completely broken. Even in the nightly builds. So if you intend to use AirVLC to watch your movies on your Mac and play the audio in sync over AirPlay, stick to VLC 2.0.9 or downgrade if you’ve updated already.

Everybody knows software updates. A window pops up to notify you an update is available, you accept and a few seconds later you have new features (and less bugs, hopefully).

Automatic software updates are great and generally make everybody’s lives better. As a developer I can be sure most of my customers are using the latest version. As a user you press a single button to update, instead of going to the website, downloading a new package and overwriting the previous version.

All Danger Cove apps (except the ones on the App Store) use Sparkle for automatic updates. Sparkle checks a feed every day and lets you know when a new version is available. Getting that feed online is what I want to talk about today.

Previously I manually edited these feeds and manually wrote the release notes in a text editor. Knowing that I have to look up version numbers, file sizes and sign the update (for security, nobody should be able to release an update in my name). This can take some time.

That’s why I’ve made Glow and if you’re a software developer, it might come in handy for you as well. That’s why I’ve released it on GitHub. Here’s my description of it.

Glow is a tool that generates Sparkle-compatible Appcast update feeds and html release notes for your Mac projects. It’s not a full blown, database driven, multiple project supporting, update releasing laser canon. Rather it’s a clean, easy to use script that will automate 90% of releasing updates to your users.

The GitHub page contains a very detailed walkthrough on how to get started.

Automating the process of creating these updates leaves more time to work on fixing bugs and adding cool new features. Also, I might have some more time to style those release notes :).

Apple released OS X version 10.9 yesterday. It’s a free update and I think most of you will want to upgrade as soon as you get the chance.

All Danger Cove apps have been tested and work with OS X Mavericks. So, don’t let Porthole, AirVLC, coucou or Reign hold you back and have fun checking out all new features Apple’s added!

If you’re anything like me, you spend quite some time reading, listening to and watching various things online. It would be impossible to organize all this information without the use of a few excellent apps, like Reeder for news and Instacast for podcasts.

Web videos are harder to manage. Despite popular believe, not everything is available on YouTube or Vimeo. In need of a dedicated tool to keep up with online videos, no matter where they’re hosted, I’ve made a brand new app!

Tapetrap will give you instant access to your favorite webisodes, lets you know when a new item comes out and keeps track of which you’ve seen.

For me, this means I can watch VICE, Zero Punctuation, the AVGN, Conan’s Clueless Gamer, the Spoony Experiment, Gamekings, Christopher Walkenthrough, TED talks and Uitzending Gemist all in one app.

It’s been in development for the past month and, not too tease you too much, is working great! That said, it’s not done yet. I still want to polish a few features before putting out a public version. Until then, subscribe to the mailing list to stay up to date and help testing!