Giant Bomb Desktop Alerts (Updated 2014-07-13)

This little Java app is something I've been messing around with in my spare time since the Bomb Squad started using a different video player for premium streams. No twitch stream means no e-mail alerts from twitch for the premium shows. So, I made something to help prevent me from missing any live shows while I'm at the computer.

The tray icon changes color as scheduled events approach. When the next item is 15 minutes away, a pop-up notification appears for it and any other simultaneous events. When a live show is on, the tray icon becomes a blinking red dot and double-clicking sends you to giantbomb.com/chat instead of the main page. It uses a couple of short Bombcast clips as audio alerts, as well.

Note: I haven't tried running it on any other computers. It's just something for personal use, but a few people asked if I was going to release it. So, don't blame me if something goes horribly wrong...

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Download

Mac Bundle

(Java 7 not included)

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Update 2014-07-13:

• fixed a bug which was resetting the live show state to false, causing multiple notifications during long shows and sometimes missing notifications

Update 2014-07-07:

• switched the last remaining scraping code out with data from giantbomb.com/upcoming_json... let me know if something goes horribly wrong
• made the schedule entries taller when the title is long enough to wrap over to a second line
• had to add my own time zone correction because the new data is being reported in Pacific time

I will test this out on my machine right now!

You're a cool duder. I'll test it out for sure.

I will also test this out.

That is seriously awesome. I've got it downloaded. Thanks duder!

Works for me so far, will see if the other functionality of it works with time.

This seems amazing! I'll have to download it later, but thanks.

Works. I had to update Java and foolishly clicked through the process without noticing the sixteen different fucking programs it brought with it, but after a bit of uninstalling I'm golden.

My computer didn't explode.

So it seems to be working

@chrisharris: Nice work, very useful! Seems to work great on OS X 10.9.1.

@mb: How'd you get it running? I'm having some trouble.

@adambomb: Try installing the Java dev kit environment for your system, then opening the app.

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk7-downloads-1880260.html

I just added a pop-up and sound for when it detects that a new Bombcast went up, since that usually isn't on the schedule. If hearing Ryan's famous "hey everyone, it's tuesday" line would be painful for you, it's easy to change the resources. Just open the JAR file with your archive program of choice (like 7-Zip) and replace tuesday.wav with another sound.

it seems to be working well on OS X 10.9. thank you!!

This is cool, thanks

I will definitely try this when I get home, looks cool.

I need a rainmeter thingy for this, that would be really useful :O

Cool!

Got it running right now, seems really decent. Good work!

Anyway to test it to see if it works? Or will I have to wait 4 hours for the next event?

I'm not on my desktop so I can't test unfortunately. But can you pick and choose what it'll notify you about or is it everything that comes down the "Coming Up..." pipeline?

@nightriff said:

You should be able to manually trigger a pop-up of the full schedule from the right click menu.

It's everything on the schedule, at the moment. I'm planning on eventually making it read from a separate text file to whitelist or blacklist either general categories (podcast, live show, video, etc) or terms matched in the titles (unprofessional, quick look, etc) and maybe change a few settings.

Giant Bomb really should start getting back to these people that have contributed great additional systems for the site and start getting them some deals like a lifetime Gold membership or something. This looks really neat and should be part of the official site, the guy who made the Quick Look Crew website did an amazing job as well as the person behind the iOS app. It's a shame these really helpful tools just stand to the side with very little official acknowledgment from Giant Bomb - they should be listed on the site under apps or something.

@chrisharris: When I click Full Schedule it does nothing

@nightriff: Does the icon indicate (either through the color or tooltip) that it found any events? If so, you could try running it from the command prompt (java -jar GiantBombAlerts.jar) or terminal and see if it shows any debug messages when you try to view the full schedule. If that doesn't say anything useful, which OS and version of Java are you using?

Oh god yes.

@chrisharris: This is great, thank you. Works great, I am on Win 7.

well fucking done, sir!

YO. This is awesome.

This is so cool! Working great for me. Thanks so much, @chrisharris!

Edit: btw, I am using Win 8.1

Awesome!

Someone get on a Mac version!

Oh man, this rad as shit.

Thanks duder!

Thanks a bunch. This is really cool.

And thanks to @vinny for tweeting about this.

You know what? Thank you to everyone.

This is the best. You are the best.

This is pretty cool

This is perfect, thanks duder! Hopefully I won't ignore these like I do email notices.

I agree, that'd be really nice to see. I use QLCrew pretty much every day. It's an amazing companion site.

Working great here duder, much appreciated. This is very, very cool.

Good idea, you should put this on github.

Vinny Caravella brought me here. Well done Sir! :)

It's java-based, it'll work on pretty much anything. Running it on a Mac now :)

This is awesome! I'm glad it works with Windows 8!

Seems to be working for me. Now all I need is some sort of way to get notified when new threads on the forums are created, like the NeoGaf New Thread Twitter account.

Posted on NeoGAF - http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=98094740&postcount=14840

Very useful! A while back I was hoping the Windows 8 client would make use of the Toast notifications for things like this, but this is an excellent substitute!

@mb: how did you get it running on osX

Wow! This is fantastic! Thanks for making this!

Brilliant work, thank you, works like a charm, as mentioned above I had to install this first for it to work:

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk7-downloads-1880260.html

Holy cow, great job!