iTunes, as we learned in the last Bali PC Advisor article, may not be the best media player on the market, but let’s face facts: with its tight integration with your iPod and its excellent playlisting tools, it’s very likely the digital jukebox you’re using every day to manage your music. With that in mind, it’s time you take iTunes to the next level. Today we’re taking a look at iTunes add-ons. Of course, a few of these add-ons require you to be on-line when you use them, but with Telkom Speedie, it’s slow but cheap:
Neat Shortcuts
l CD Art Display (Windows): Display the currently playing track, album art, rating, and tons of really wildly customiz able features. In addition, CD Art Display can download missing album art and create universal hotkeys for controlling iTunes. (http://www.closetosoftware.com/?s=cdartdisplay)
l moreTunes (Windows): Similar to CD Art Display, moreTunes displays a floating album art notification but instead has an emphasis on completing or repairing your metadata (all your tags). moreTunes also has a recommendation feature and works with several other non-iTunes media players. (http://code.google.com/p/moretunes/)
l Quicksilver (Mac): Control iTunes playback, browse your iTunes library, and more from the comfort of your favorite application launcher and beyond Quicksilver. (http://www.blacktree.com/)
l DeskTunes (Mac): Another iTunes notifier, DeskTunes floats the current album art, track name, and rating on your Mac desktop. (http://www.stevestreza.com/blog/?p=189)
l You Control: Tunes (Mac): Control iTunes from the menu bar, define universal hotkeys for changing tracks, view current song info or navigate and play any song in your entire iTunes library all from the You Control: Tunes menu bar drop down. (http://www.yousoftware.com/tunes/)
Great Utilities
l iTunes Folder Watch (Windows): Monitor folders for new music and automatically add the songs to your iTunes library if they haven’t already been imported to iTunes. It’s a feature everyone wants and tons of other players have, so this one’s a must-have for a lot of iTunes users—especially if you download from sources other than iTunes
(http://albumbrowser.klarita.net/iTunesFolderWatch.html)
l iTunes Export (Windows): Okay, so let’s say you decide that you really do want to move your iTunes library to an other computer, or maybe you just want to export the perfect playlist to a thumb drive to give to that special some one. Either way, iTunes export gets your music out of iTunes for moving to another computer or device. (http://www.ericdaugherty.com/dev/itunesexport/)
l iTunes Remote Control (Mac): Remotely control playback of another iTunes library on your network by playing and skipping tracks, browsing playlists, searching songs, and more. (http://them.ws/itrc/)
Excellent Tagging Tools
l Quick Tag (Mac): Quickly add your own tags to the current song playing in iTunes with a simple, universal key board shortcut and autocompletion for quick tagging. Metadata goes into the Grouping field for easy playlist creation later. (http://blog.seanmcg.com/?page_id=116)
l Qloud (Windows/Mac): Qloud adds a button to iTunes for in-program tagging of your music, which—for better or worse—integrates with Qloud’s social networking and recommendation feature. (http://www.qloud.com/)
Lastly, some Playlist Generators
l AutoRate (Mac): Some people love rating songs in iTunes, others don’t. But the great part about ratings is that they’re really handy when you’re creating smart playlists, which is why AutoRate—an app that analyzes play fre quency and skip count to automatically assign ratings to your music—is a handy download to have in your pocket. (http://tzisoftware.com/products/autorate)
l Soundflavor DJ (Windows): Soundflavor makes audio fingerprints of your music and builds playlists based on similarity of those fingerprints. (http://www.soundflavor.com/)
l The Filter (Windows/Mac): Another playlist creation and recommendation tool, give The Filter three songs so it knows the feel you’re looking for and it will build you a playlist based on that mood. (http://www.thefilter.com/)
