14 DAY TRIAL // Jajuk is a Java music organizer for all platforms. The main goal of this project is to provide a fully-featured application to advanced users with large or scattered music collections. I wanted to meet the Jajuk project admin, Bertrand Florat (the guy in the picture on the left) and have a chat about what is and what will become Jajuk. Please enjoy this nice interview!
M. Nestor, Softpedia: Please introduce yourself!
Bertrand Florat: Hello Softpedia, my name is Bertrand Florat. I live in Nantes (France, Britanny). I'm a Java software engineer, member of Linux-Nantes (our local LUG) and Jajuk admin since 2003.
M. Nestor, Softpedia: You're not working alone on Jajuk, I understand there is a team, how many are you?
Bertrand Florat: Jajuk team, like most OSS projects, is very changing. There are days when we are about 5-10 people working on a release. Some people are in the group for years and we have good German and Spanish translators and a new graphist. It's without counting testers (we have a web quality center they use). We hope to recruit more developers in the future to deal with the current roadmap.
M. Nestor, Softpedia: Yes, I saw on Jajuk's homepage that you are looking for help, so I think this is a great opportunity to tell people out there that their skills are wanted by the Jajuk team.
Bertrand Florat: Sure it is! We are looking first of all for experimented Java/Swing developers, testers, promoters and translators for some languages (follow this link). If interested, please contact us here.
M. Nestor, Softpedia: Please explain to our readers what Jajuk does. We will review all the features of Jajuk in this interview, but I think a small intro is necessary at this point.
Bertrand Florat: Jajuk is a multi-platform music organizer. Its primary goal is to manage large to huge size music collections and to bring as many useful features as possible into a single product.
M. Nestor, Softpedia: Jajuk works on Linux, Mac and Windows systems and I am sure that the last two people can find alternatives, but I didn't see an alternative on Linux systems. Is Jajuk one of its kind for Linux users?
Bertrand Florat: We think Jajuk is one of the best jukeboxes under Linux. Moreover, it can be nice for users to use the same app under Linux and Windows for instance.
M. Nestor, Softpedia: I consider Jajuk a pretty complex music organizer software as when I look at the window I see a lot of buttons, information, sliders, etc. Do you think Jajuk has everything or is there room for more improvements?
Bertrand Florat: A lot of people initially think that Jajuk is complex but they soon understand that it's because we show the same information using several views. If you wish, maximize the table view and the overall app will seem much simpler, isn't it? Moreover, we made a re-factoring work in 1.3 to cleanup the GUI and make it netter. Most advanced features are available from contextual menus or wizards so we think GUI remains pretty intuitive.
M. Nestor, Softpedia: Talking about advanced features, I tried to play a little with the Manage DJs and Manage Ambiences options found in the Configuration menu and I didn't understand what they actually do, but maybe you can explain more to us about them.
Bertrand Florat: An ambience is a set of styles (ex: "Soft"= Jazz + Easy Listening + Ballad ...). About 10 ambiences are brought out of the box but you can change them or create new ones. Then, selecting an ambience in the command panel at top works as a filter for smart functions (global shuffle, novelties, best of). This way, you get a first level of intelligence for listening to the music you wish. We think it's a very simple and useful feature (I use it myself a lot).
Digital DJ is a kind of DJ you program yourself, basically before a party. A wizard assists for its creation. You have to provide its name, cross-fading duration between tracks, minimum notation (based on Jajuk automatic notation) and a behavior: either proportion (example: 30% of jazz, 20% of rock during the party, shuffle the 50% remaining), transition (3 rock songs, then a slow etc... ) or based on ambiences. When the DJ is created, you just have to select it from the drop-down button and click on it to build and launch the playlist.
M. Nestor, Softpedia: Indeed, the Digital DJ is a piece of work, wonderful job you did! Why Java? Why did you write Jajuk in Java language and not in GTK or QT?
Bertrand Florat: We think that Java is a more advanced language. It is really multi-platform (OK, QT can be used under Windows now). For instance, some users reported in 2004 using Jajuk under Mac OS X without any issue as we, the team, had never seen it running on this OS! Java was and still is the first language used by SourceForge projects, I think there are good reasons for that. For us, the question was different: Swing or SWT ? but today, I would personally still use Swing even if RCP/SWT is an excellent platform. On the other side, Sun has renewed Swing with OSS projects like JDIC and SwingX.
M. Nestor, Softpedia: Does the newly released Sun Java 6 help you in the creation of Jajuk? Is it more powerful? More options to work with?
Bertrand Florat: JRE 1.6 is significantly faster: about 10% for Jajuk (Sun tells from 5 to 23% of speed increase). We use some new JDK classes (like tray or advanced tables) but using external API like JDIC or Swingx in these cases because we can't force users to get JDK 1.6. Jajuk requires JRE 1.5 +.
M. Nestor, Softpedia: Jajuk has a lot of interesting features like: Automatic rating system, Automatic indexing, Devices synchronization, CD scanner, CDDB tagging / re-tagging, Configurable cross-fade, Recursive play/repeat/shuffle/push, Planned tracks, Best Of smart function (to play your favorite tracks), Novelties smart function (to play your collection newest albums), Continue smart function (to continue in current album after a shuffle selection), Visual catalog of all albums by covers and more others, some of them which I see for the first time in a music organizer software. I think there is more than what a user has ever dreamed of from a music organizer but do you think you can provide more innovative functions to Jajuk?
Bertrand Florat: Sure we can ! A lot of feature requests sent by users are still to be done. Basically, we will continue to work on "standard" features like a "prepare party" feature that copies files from a playlist to a device, or devices synchronization enhancements... and on the other side, we plan to make Jajuk more "wired": perhaps a P2P Jajuk protocol, a better Wikipedia support, a RSS reader, the support for webradios/pod casting, and a support for some music recommendation system like Last.FM.
M. Nestor, Softpedia: Yes, I've also looked at your roadmap for future version of Jajuk and it's incredible! You want to implement a RSS reader, Web Radio, Pod casting and Visual effects. Don't you think all this will be a bit too much for a music organizer?
Bertrand Florat: An RSS reader could be seen as out of scope but we feel that a modern music organizer should bring content and not only manage the music itself. We want to provide an integrated application where you can do everything dealing with your music collection and with music in general. Moreover, most of jukeboxes now include a kind of webradio / podcasting support. Jajuk can handle this naturally with its device-oriented collection design.
M. Nestor, Softpedia: Great! So in conclusion, users should expect more and more from Jajuk with each release, as I think it�s the most powerful jukebox out there. Maybe Windows or Mac users will not agree with me, but Jajuk is FREE and this is a start advantage. Anything else you want to tell the users? What should they expect from future versions?
Bertrand Florat: Using Jajuk, users can really take advantage of their collection, find songs very easily and instantly. In the future, Jajuk will be more "wired" and make people more connected with each other.
M. Nestor, Softpedia: Thank you for the interview and for your time spent with me. I wish you a Happy New Year and full of success!
Bertrand Florat: Thank you a lot and congratulation for your excellent reviews on Softpedia ! Happy New Year!
You can read an in-depth review of Jajuk made by Softpedia here. You can download the latest version of Jajuk from Softpedia here.