I’ve published an update that includes support for e-mail reminders.
I’m putting development of Typecast on hiatus for now. It’s a frustrating application that nobody seems to be interested in, so I think I’ll focus on something that’s even more interesting to me for a while. I’m sure I’ll get back to Typecast because DigiGuide seems to be abandoned, and I need something to manage my television listings.
Highlight programs that are currently airing or in the past.
Added a “demo” swatch of the border color, background color, and image to the left of each search in the list to remind you of the highlights you selected for each one.
Added a check box to each search which will quickly show or hide the results of that search.
Important: You must delete your Searches.sdf file. (The path is in the Settings window.) The schema has changed so that in future releases, Typecast can save your data instead of requiring a delete (like this time).
Released a new build of Typecast with improved performance of searches with thousands of matches.
Typecast, from now on, can save your search data when I change the database schema.
Fixed these:
When Typecast needs to refresh all searches, it does as much as it can in the background. This means it starts up faster and is more responsive while it’s populating the list of results. There’s still work to do, but this is a start. Next, I’m going to work on adding features, probably e-mail first.
I just published a fix for a crash that occurred when copying a search that didn’t match any programs.
Sorry there hasn’t been an update in a while—lots of family stuff going on this summer. I’m also working on a significant performance update: performing the searches in the background. After this is implemented, a large number of searches will still take some time to complete, but you’ll still be able to use Typecast while they’re running in the background.
Clearly I don’t run Typecast from scratch as much as I should. I fixed a crash on startup that occurred when the user had never run Typecast before. Obviously, this would affect anyone trying Typecast, so I apologize for that. It should be okay now.
I also fixed the reminder windows that were sometimes being displayed again if Typecast exited and started again before the reminder time passed.
I’ve released a new product: Typecast. Typecast is an electronic program guide (EPG) that displays the shows you’re searching for. Old-fashioned EPGs just show you a grid of programs and channels and expect you to scroll for days, until you find the show you want to watch. Nowadays, most cable and satellite subscribers have dozens—if not hundreds—of channels to choose from! By the time you find what you want to watch or record, it’s over.
Typecast lets you customize any number of searches and displays the results in an easy-to-read list. Typecast can search by program title, episode name, description, season and episode numbers, start time, new/repeat episodes, genres, actors and crew, original air date, TV and MPAA ratings, high-definition, closed-captioning, subtitles, and more. You can format search results with custom images, colors, etc. You can set actions to occur before each schedule that matches a specific search, including reminders, e-mail (not yet implemented), and opening an arbitrary application (not yet implemented).
To get the television listings, Typecast requires you to have a subscription to Schedules Direct—an excellent non-profit service that provides quality, legal television listings.
This is an alpha version, so there will almost certainly be some bugs and it’s not as polished as the final version will be. There are still some debugging commands (Import) and performance issues (searching). I improve it constantly though—because I use it myself.