iTunes
All Narfed Up photography and words by Bryan Villarin
Quick thoughts on Songbird 1.0
iTunes is too bulky and sluggish for me. Sometimes, it’ll halt for a second or two navigating through my library. I also don’t like how iTunes installs additional software1.
- I don’t need Bonjour.
- Apple Mobile Device Support isn’t necessary. I have a 3rd generation iPod.
- I don’t need MobileMe.
- I don’t want Apple Software Update installing the whole shebang of unwanted apps.
Wait, doesn’t that article explain how to slim iTunes down? Yep. How about I just want to try something new and extensible? Huh? 
Enter Songbird 1.0.
After downloading the setup file, it took less than two minutes to install and import 1,900 songs (and podcasts) from my iTunes database into Songbird.
In the process, it asked if I wanted to import my iTunes database and if I needed iPod Device Support, QuickTime Playback Support, SHOUTcast Radio, and Windows Media Playback. Ratings and play counts were all intact. I was good to go.
Memory footprint: In use, Songbird got up to 100 MB, and as low as 40 MB when minimized.
Add-ons: I like Concerts, Last.fm, Last.fm Album Art, and mashTape.
Grouping field/tags: The grouping field in iTunes helped specify elements in my music, which enabled better smart playlists2. There isn’t a similar field in Songbird. (Yet?)
Podcast management: I guess they’re not using that word and going with “subscriptions.”3 I’m totally cool with that. I need to manually find the URLs of the podcasts I was subscribed to and add them in — a pain if I subscribed to a lot of podcasts.
That’s all from me about this — for now. I think you should give Songbird a try.
P.S. I’m ignoring Songbird support questions because I’m also a new user. They have a help section.
Update 12/3/2008: Songbird runs just fine on my Windows XP-based work computer. Also, listening to music directly off my iPod get scrobbled to Last.fm perfectly.4
- “Slimming down the bloated iTunes 8 installer” by Ed Bott via ZDNet ↩
- Mellow, Songs with screaming, fast songs, catchy songs. ↩
- “Songbird is the bitchinest podcast receiver ever” - Croncast ↩
- I remember reading that someone was having issues with that. ↩
iTunes 7 works fine for me
Since some people (via Buzz Out Loud) are having problems with iTunes 7, and I just wanted to give my two cents on that.
One co-worker can’t get iTunes to start anymore, despite attempting to reinstall. She called tech support, and they said that they would charge $50 to troubleshoot it over the phone for the next five days, or she’d need to take her laptop and iPod to the nearest Apple Store. Oh yeah, she’d have to schedule an appointment, too. (No walk-ins.) I think that whole scenario is lame.
I have a 3G iPod. My music library is on my home computer (running Windows XP). I upgraded that computer to iTunes 7 without a hitch. At work, I just use iTunes to play music off my iPod in disk mode, which I connect to via Firewire. I upgraded there just fine, too.
I hope Apple fixes all this. Register at the iLounge forums and participate in the threads of the iTunes (Mac + PC) forum.
See “Issues with iTunes 7 (Mac or PC) - please post them here!” and “Simple Guide for iTunes 7“.
Good luck… =/
Random links 2006-03-16
I was catching up with Justin earlier this morning because he commented in my post “Utilizing tagging with iTunes“. I haven’t talked to him in a long time, just because we’re both pretty busy. Basically, he gave me a couple good links I haven’t seen before:
- Pear Budget - “a FREE budgeting program, written in Excel. It can be used by almost any [spreadsheet] program (Excel, Word, OpenOffice, etc.). Setting it up is a snap, and it takes less than half an hour a month to maintain it and see how you’re doing. (And—did we mention?—it’s free!)”
- SmartPlaylists.com - a resource for creating, sharing, and chatting about iTunes Smart Playlists (I’ve heard of this one before, but it’s a good one to mention anyway)
- Apple Store Student discount - you don’t have to be a full-time student to get this, either
Also, he wanted to know how to merge multiple feeds into a single one. So, I searched and found FeedShake and FeedJumbler.
For me, Pear Budget will be huge once I implement it into my life.
On a side note, I just have to say that it was awesome to catch up with him. It was a 48-minute conversation, and we both got something out of it. We might’ve talked even longer, but I had to get back to work.
Why don’t you do the same? You’ll definitely gain something, even if it’s just the experience. (Thanks Justin!)
Utilizing tagging with iTunes
First of all, this is a personal request to any [Windows] iTunes developer that can create plugins:
To whom it may concern:
I use the “Grouping” tag to tag my music. At the status quo, I have to right-click the song within iTunes, click “Get Info”, go to the “Info” tab, then type the tag(s) I want. Too much work for a simple task, isn’t it?
It would be incredible if a plugin could be installed where I can right-click the iTunes icon in the system tray, and a “Tag song” item pop up. Oh yeah, and maybe a slick way to display all the tags I’ve used, utilizing the weight used for each term? Within iTunes, instead of pressing F2 to edit the name of the song, how about a hot key to change the contents of the “Grouping” tag?
Can you look into this, or perhaps pass it along to someone who could work on it? Thanks!
For those of you wondering, how do I use these tags?
Smart playlists + more specific tags (as opposed to just using Genre) = better playlists depending on my mood or the people riding in my car
Sometimes, I feel like listening to some screamo-type music. Maybe my friends [who made me drive for the evening] just prefer mainstream music. Or if I’m out with a lady friend, they’d prefer a bit softer music, so I play my “Mellow” smart playlist. Isn’t that kind of neat? Maybe I’m just a bit geeky, but at least I’m not scrolling through artists too often, and I can focus on driving.
Just signed up with Last.fm
I just read GFMorris’s post “How and Why I Use Last.FM“. With that, I’ve signed up at Last.fm, personalized my profile, and installed the plugin and player into my system. Oh yeah, and I edited my status page to reflect my recently played tracks. Unfortunately, I haven’t been at my computer regularly. I wish there was a way to stream all the data from iTunes, because I listen to music from my iPod more than from within iTunes. In any case, I’m new at this, so any helpful hints about Last.fm would be cool.
iTunes Library Updater
As iTunes doesn’t provide a function to update/synchronize your music collection with it’s own database, I’ve written a small utility for that purpose. Well, you may use ‘Consolidate Library’ of iTunes, but this is a typical Mac’ish behaviour letting one application control almost your whole life.
Um, I’m not sure what this means, but the following made a bit more sense:
One of the most frustrating things about iTunes is that it won’t rescan your folders and automatically add new media and remove dead links. OS X users can run apple scripts to clean up the iTunes library, but until now Windows users have been stuck. Not anymore, thanks to iTunes Library Updater.
So, with that Digg, I’ll duplicate that post here because it seems like it’ll help wonders for Windows iTunes users.
iTunes Signature Maker
I think I’ll have some signatures downloaded onto my iPod in their own playlist. Perhaps a short, long, and extended version of my musical tastes from iTunes will be nice? Thanks iTunes Signature Maker! (Golf clap: Lifehacker)
iTunesKeys and other iTunes helpers
I’m using iTunesKeys, which was referred from the article “How To: Fix iTunes” at Download Squad. There’s some other programs that’ll add even more functionality, but iTunesKeys was the one that hit home the most. Yay for being able to rate songs from my keyboard.
iTunes toaster plug-in
“iTunes toaster plug-in [...] displays a popup notifier window with track informations (art cover, song name, artist, album). The window appears each time a new track is played.” The Plug-ins folder needs to be created manually (I’m using version 5.0.14). PopupDuration is set to 9500 so it stays longer. Very awesome, especially now that I have album covers for most of my library.
Hello Chris Gonyea
I stumbled onto Chris Gonyea’s blog, and just had to add him to my blogroll after seeing him divulge two gems I haven’t seen anywhere else: the iTunes toaster plug-in and ClearLooks for Windows XP (I know, I haven’t installed yet, but still).
← Back to Home
Copyright © 2004-2009 All Narfed Up. Powered by WordPress using the DePo Skinny Theme. #