Navegas: Connecting the World of Music
Working on a project with a strict deadline that isn't too far away isn't something that we developers like to do, to put it mildly. So when Lutz Villalba-Adorno, a German entrepreneur, contacted us in December with a project that had to be ready for the Midem music conference on 28th January, we knew it was going to be a challenge. But the project just seemed too interesting to refuse…
The application, which was originally implemented by another company from Poland, is called Navegas and is a web-based music player that lets you easily play music from various online sources, arranged in a single playlist. Currently it supports YouTube and SoundCloud APIs, and also a new Berlin-based online radio service called Aupeo which we've integrated; additionally, you can mix music files from your local disk with those from the web. The app currently has full support only for Chrome, although most features should also work in latest Firefox and other modern browsers.
We knew from the beginning that we wouldn't be able to add every feature and improvement we wanted, so we had to keep it simple and focus on the essentials. We've determined the set of features that were the "must haves" – e.g. the Aupeo integration, new design or the social sidebar which finds links to music videos posted by your Twitter or Facebook friends. We had to constantly remind ourselves that it's logistically impossible to do everything in time – it was sometimes painful to ignore some nice ideas for improvements, but it was the only way we could meet the deadline.
There were some technical challenges too. For example, the Aupeo API is very fresh and we were probably the first ones apart from its creators to use it, so there was no open source code available and we had to write it ourselves. But there were also some bright sides – you can't really complain if your work not just allows but actually requires you to listen to music all day :)
Fortunately, we managed to get everything ready in time before the conference, and Lutz could proudly present the new version to the attendees. The app has now more features, looks much better than it did before, and it works faster. We even managed to make the code a bit more maintainable in the meantime, which, as you may know, is especially difficult when you're working under time pressure and there's a constant temptation to cut corners to finish the work faster.
Overall, the project was a great success – we all had a lot of fun working on it, we've learned a lot, and we'd love to do that again in future. We're also hoping more users will start using it regularly – some of us certainly will!
Like in real life, your second big love is even better! The folks at LLP did an awesome job with limited resources (time + budget) but most importantly - inspired me and Navegas! Always again!
– Lutz Villalba-Adorno