Music Arsenal Blog

Just a quick note that I'll be presenting some of the tools we built Music Arsenal with later this month at the Nebraska ColdFusion User's Group. I've presented here before on the old version of the app, but these are the tools from the all new version. These meetings are always a lot of fun and you learn some great stuff.

It will be primarily focused on the Transfer ORM but I'll also discuss a couple of the other cool things we used as well.

Here's the information:
Tuesday, November 25th at 6pm
Location: CF WebTools at 11204 Davenport, Suite 100, Near I680 & Dodge.

Hope to see you there!

I was talking with some friends recently and we were discussing the tools we use on a daily basis to run our businesses. I heard the standards like the Microsoft Office tools, online banking, Photoshop and more. To give a little back, here is a list of the tools I use every day to make my work at Music Arsenal a little easier.

Eclipse
I use the Eclipse IDE day in/day out for Music Arsenal development. I couldn't imagine a better IDE and I don't know what I did without it! I used to use Homesite for development but with CFEclipse my life is a breeze.

Firefox
C'mon, we're a web company. I use this all the time!

Bloglines
I never could get into Google reader so this is my RSS reader of choice. I try not to spend ALL my time with whats going on in music and the web so I also have a few feeds like The Perry Bible Fellowship and Will Draw Anything to keep me "balanced".

Favorite Feeds: HypeBot, Coolfer, Bruce Warila, ReadWriteWeb, and Vitamin.

iTunes and Sirius Internet Radio
For me its Sirius all morning and iTunes all afternoon. (Evident on my Last.FM feed) I didn't just start Music Arsenal because it was a natural progression but all I want to do is listen to music.

Music Arsenal
Not only do we develop it but we use it all the time too. We drink this special sauce for all of our contact and project management. Events.... not yet, but we have some things cooking.

Firebug for Firefox plugin
Nothing has made my life easier when it comes to web development than Firebug! Making changes on the fly to see the results instantly is a life saver.

This isn't everything I use, but its 85% of the important stuff. So what about you? What are your key tools on a daily basis?

We're keeping things moving here at Music Arsenal HQ and have a nice bag of Halloween goodies for you.

First, we're happy to announce a new user plan. This plan is $16/month and offers full access to our contact directories. After hearing back from our users that a lot of one person shops don't need 5 users but they still want full data.... we created this! Now, for the price of a tour t-shirt you get the full Music Arsenal Directory.

Mailing Labels
We've been working on and testing this for awhile and now its live! After you add contacts to a project you can quickly print mailing labels for everyone. To do this, open a project --> click the contacts link --> click the 'Create Mailing Labels' link. From this screen you can select which type of Avery mailing labels you want to create (five types) as well as the format.

Tour Details
Not only did we revamp how you add and view a concert but now you can quickly see all the retail, press and radio contacts near that concert. This is really useful knowing who in the area you can contact about your show. Take a look at the screenshot below!

Like always, we're working hard to add the features you request and we'll have more soon!

Hey everyone! We're staying busy here but wanted to give you a quick update on whats going on...

We've just made a big update to the Music Arsenal directory by adding more than 900 new contacts. This includes 500 new venues to play shows at and more than 350 new record stores to carry your releases. These contacts were all carefully researched and gathered so you know you're getting the most up-to-date and accurate information.

Beyond that we also redesign the dashboard page to help you quickly get started with the features available in Music Arsenal. A little deeper in the program you'll also see we've added guides to nearly every page of the site. These will help you easily understand how each section of Music Arsenal can benefit your band or company.

Thanks for reading and keep checking back for updates!

Its only been a week since rolling out Music Arsenal and we're already making updates! We're going to be making these improvements pretty consistently so keep an eye on the blog.

First, we've added an Activity Feed to the Music Arsenal Dashboard. With this activity feed you can now see at a glance the 15 most recent activities in your Music Arsenal account. You can see who created what contacts, who called what stores and lots more. Check out the screenshot for a visual.

Second, we redesigned the search results page. It was OK before, but its great now! Instead of just displaying a contacts name, location and type we're also displaying phone numbers and e-mail addresses. Now you can find the information you need even faster.

Thats it for now but we're working on even more stuff for the next couple of weeks.