HOS News

New version of our custom Flash Player (again)

Some of you may recall that we did this update on June 24th and documented the new features and fixes here.

Despite our efforts to think of everything that could possibly go wrong, a few bugs slipped through. They were causing enough problems that we rolled back to the previous version of the player so we could fix them, rather than inflict them on you, our beloved users.

We fixed the bugs and made a few more minor tweaks, and on Monday July 6th at 2PM Pacific we rolled out the next version of the HOS Flash player for good — or at least until the next one. For those who follow these things, it's version 2.7.4, which you can see by right-clicking anywhere in the player area of the site.

If you are reading this after the update, you don't have to do anything — the new player loads automatically when you come to HOS.com. If you were already on our site during the update, some browsers are stubborn about re-loading changed files with the same name. Please clear your browser "cache" by following the instructions in our Help! section (link in top menu bar, on the right) under TECH SUPPORT> TROUBLESHOOTING> EMPTY BROWSER CACHE.

As always, we solicit your comments and suggestions for any and all improvements to the operation of the service.

:: SH

PGM 844 "AMERICAN CROSSROADS" : Week of July 3rd..

Every July 4th, we celebrate America's independence with food, fun, and fireworks. For as long as most of us can remember, everything that's good about America — our diversity, freedom, individuality and self-assurance — has been proudly on display.

This year, our celebration is tempered by a growing awareness of the great challenges we face in national, global and even planetary affairs. You have to look back to the 1930s to find a comparable period, but even those challenges seem limited by comparison.

So this year we celebrate the founding of America with the knowledge that American ideals and the American character are being tested. If Americans can respond positively to the challenges we face, we may look back on this period as the time of America's maturity.

American music today reflects the maturing of our melting-pot of cultural traditions— hymns, folk and popular songs, blues, jazz, electronica, maverick classical, ethnic rhythms, and immigrant genres — a complex panorama of musical sources, freely invented and reinvented. On this transmission of Hearts of Space, we listen for the reflective side of the American soundscape, on a program called AMERICAN CROSSROADS.

[ view playlist ]      [ play 30 second MP3 promo ]

PGM 332 "DEEP FOREST" : Week of June 26th...

"The music of the rainforest Pygmies of Zaire and the Central African Republic is among the most beautiful and haunting of all world musics. Older than written history, it reflects the Pygmies' underlying spiritual serenity, their warm humor, and powerful ties to their traditional home, the rainforest. From sweet child-like solo pieces to angelic group choruses, the Pygmies' music is intensely melodic and filled with natural hooks."

In 1991, French keyboardist and programmer MICHEL SANCHEZ imagined a new sound that would combine the music of the Pygmies with the electronic dance music then popular in Europe. With his partner ERIC MOUQUET and producer DAN LACKSMAN, they created a unique  album, released in 1992, called DEEP FOREST.

The album's creators say, "Imprinted with the ancestral wisdom of the African chants, the music of DEEP FOREST immediately touches everyone's soul and instinct. In all civilizations, the forest is a mysterious place where the yarn of tales and legends is woven with images of men, women, children, animals and fairies. Not only living creatures, but also trees are steeped in magical power."

"The chants of Deep Forest — Baka chants of Cameroun, of Burundi, of Senegal and of the Pygmies, transmit a part of the oral tradi tion harmonizing all peoples and joining all continents through the universal language of music. DEEP FOREST is created in respect for this tradition,  which humanity should cherish...as a treasure."

Music is by DEEP FOREST, HEAVENLY MUSIC CORPORATION, COIL, ORBITAL, ARIEL KALMA & RICHARD TINTI, KIT WATKINS, and COLIN TURNBULL.

Service outage report

Some problems developed today with our recent update that forced us to switch back to our primary Flash server. During the update we were running new software on our backup Flash server, but it needs more attention to work correctly.

We do everything we possibly can to avoid service interruptions during normal hours, but during this operation the streaming service was down for about 90 minutes. Service was restored at 1:45PM Pacific and is now operating normally.

If you were connected earlier today, you may need to empty your browser "cache" to reload the site (helpful instructions under EMPTY BROWSER CACHE in our HELP section). We sincerely apologize for this problem and are taking steps to prevent any recurrence.

:: SH

New version of the HOS Flash Player on 6.24.09

We fixed a few bugs and rolled out several improvements to our Flash player at 2PM Pacific time on Wednesday, June 24th. There was no service interruption during this update, though a few users had to empty their browser cache and reset the site to resume streaming.

The new player will load automatically when you come to HOS.com and you should only notice the changes and improvements to normal operation listed below. Everything will be as you expect as far as personal playlists and Favorites are concerned.

FIXES AND NEW FEATURES

Some of these improvements are pretty subtle and you may never notice them. Others improve basic operations for everyone:

• Dynamic Buffering : This advanced feature will improve operation for dialup users and anyone experiencing stream interruptions or dropouts. The initial buffer length is set to 10 seconds to ensure fast startup of stream. As soon as the initial buffer is filled and playback begins, we increase the data buffer to the equivalent to 5 minutes of music. This should eliminate almost all stream dropouts in normal use.


• Player Activation Trigger : The "active player" display view will fade out only after your mouse exits the player area. As long as the cursor remains in the player area, the active player view will always remain visible. This is more intuitive and prevents unwanted fadeaways while choosing or editing playlists. 


• ADD function activates player : If you add an item to a playlist while the player is in the "minimized" mode, the active player will fade in and display the newly added item at the bottom of the currently active playlist. The player will return to the minimized view after 10 seconds if the cursor is not in the player area.


• Swap Playlist Buttons Position : For convenience, the positions of the ‘Manage Playlists’ and ‘Add Playlist Item’ buttons at the bottom of the MY PLAYLISTS tab have been swapped. Now you just mouse straight down to pick a new playlist.


• Last Good Port Stored : The player now stores the last successful connection port in the Flash cookie so that users on corporate networks need not cycle though all possible ports on each connection attempt. Instead, the player tries the last successful port first. In the event the ‘last good port’ fails, the player will resume cycling through all other options trying to establish a connection to the Flash Media Server. This will speed up connecting at work.


• Return to 0:00, Start Over : The operation of the control for the ‘step back’ |< function has been revised. The button now behaves in the same way as iTunes or CD player. If the user clicks the ‘back’ button during the first 3 seconds of a track, the playhead will go to the start of the previous track. If the user clicks the ‘back’ button any time after the first three seconds of a track, the playhead will return to the start of the currently playing track.


• Player Busy Icon :  The standard Flash "watch" animation will appear briefly when the player is busy switching between streams and during voiceover on/off operation — just so you know something's happening.


• Refresh View Tab On Sign In/Out : The player will refresh the player tab when you sign in or out now so that metadata will always be in sync with your login state.


• Fixed Radio Channel Buglet : a very rare sequence of operations could cause the player to lock up. All better now.

We continue to work on improvements to our service operation and solicit your feedback and suggestions. Please write to help@hos.com with your comments.

:: SH

PGM 879 "CLOUDSCAPES" : Week of June 19th...

Summer brings us one of the greatest free shows on earth. In fair weather, rising water vapor freezes into microcrystals of ice, and we see a vast, constantly changing panorama of clouds, floating and flying overhead. When summer storms arrive, the sky grows dark with the drama of thunder and lightning — nature's original multimedia show.

Clouds come in four families: high, middle, low, and vertical — with official Latin names like cirrus, cumulus and stratus. Satellites now give us the big picture of cloud patterns around the planet and how they affect the weather; there are even clouds on other planets, and interstellar clouds in outer space. It's no wonder that ambient musicians find clouds a major inspiration.

On this transmission of Hearts of Space, a high altitude summer electronic journey called CLOUDSCAPES. Music is by DIGITONAL, RUBEN GARCIA, FORREST FANG, ROBERT RICH, TERRA AMBIENT, BRUNO SANFILIPPO, and DARSHAN AMBIENT.

[ view playlist ]      [ play 30 second MP3 promo ]

PGM 878 "CROSSROADS TO ECSTASY" : Week of June 12th...

Emerging out of the desert like a prayer, rising with the sun and swaying off across the sand — the ecstatic, melismatic call at the heart of Middle Eastern music. It's a musical experience we return to time and again for its exotic ambience and emotional rewards.

Long before the turmoil of today, the Middle East sat at the crossroads of ancient civilization, and its music records a history of shared influences from North Africa, Egypt, Persia, Turkey, Greece, and the 600-year Moorish occupation of medieval Spain, the storied Al-Andalus.

Today our crossroads are urban and digital, and musicians from all over the world gather in studios, on stages, and online to combine elements of electronic, folk, classical and world music into an evolving super-cultural mix — respectful of history and tradition, bridging cultural barriers, taking a step into the future.

On this melismatic Middle Eastern journey, music by MERCAN DEDE, MILAGRO ACUSTICO, the AL-ANDALUS ENSEMBLE, ELIYAHU and the QADIM ENSEMBLE, PAUL AVGERINOS and OMAR FARUK TEKBILEK, YUVAL RON, ANOUAR BRAHEM, and SIWAN.

[ view playlist ]      [ play 30 second MP3 promo ]

PGM 877 "SUSTAINABLE WAVES" : Week of June 5th...

Well, spacefans, we started out doing a summer acoustic show this week, but it morphed into a western style slide guitar and pedal steel show, and then into a "western landscape" show. Think canyons. 

But wait, it wasn't done: it took a head fake toward the Native American flute, but on the way it shapeshifted into something more ethereal: call it "pedal steel atmospherica."

Whatever. Time for a title to tie it together. On this transmission of HEARTS of SPACE, its a sultry journey in western spaces called SUSTAINABLE WAVES. Actually, we borrowed the title from SUSTAINABLEWAVES.COM of Austin, Texas, creators of very cool green solar powered stages and location sound. These dudes don't just abide...they sustain.

Music is by DANIEL LANOIS, BLUE STAR, JAPANCAKES, BUCKETHEAD, MARJORIE DE MUYNCK, and PATRICK O'HEARN.

[ view playlist ]      [ play 30 second MP3 promo ]

Short scheduled service interruption today

All you new spacefans have been keeping our new Flash Media servers so busy they need more RAM. So we'll be upgrading the hardware on our primary Flash server today, THURSDAY, June 4th, between 3PM and 3:30PM Pacific Time.

We'll be down for a maximum of 30 minutes, probably much less. During that time we'll have a service screen up to prevent frustration with dropped streams.

Apologies for the inconvenience — we usually do these in the middle of the night, but this one has to happen during business hours.

:: SH

PGM 766R "FLOATING GARDENS" : Week of May 29th...

Summer...opens our ears to the sounds of warm weather cultures, where music is still in touch with the rhythms of the natural world. Along with the weather, the body stirs and wants to move to sultry beats, or drift, in the ethereal atmosphere of the tropics.

On this transmission of Hearts of Space, sounds of nature and music that floats through your world, as we turn the corner into summer on a program called FLOATING GARDENS.

Music is by ROBERT RICH, JAMES JOHNSON, ELVE, LARAAJI, STEVE ROACH, PETER KATER, and BRUNO SANFILLIPO.

[ view playlist ]      [ play 30 second MP3 promo ]