Recently in iPod Category

Music for inspiration, without the brainwashing of ads. More signal, less noise.

Support internet radios such as Radio Paradise - eclectic online rock radio or Radio Akasha

These radios, like many others, are under direct threat from the music industry to fall under the weight of a royalties system not adapted to an internet age.

The sad thing is that I had stopped buying music from the recording industry for years because of the album model and the lack of diversity available in stores. It is only with the advent of itunes, ipod and internet radios that I have started buying music again. And I am clearly not alone thnking along those lines.

Internet radios are a perfect way to find out about new artists. They can be segmented into the tiniet niches, each with their following. It is BECAUSE they are about music and not ads that people support them and listen to them.

When are the RIAAs of the world going to wake up and adapt instead of asphixiating themselves by trying to squeeze as much rofit as possible ? 

I discovered The Filter in one of those 'Top 10 software you can't miss' articles. At first, it seemed a little esotheric - would it really create a useable playlist from a sample of only 3 songs ?

After using it for a few months, I can say yes - it is working fine on both Mac and PC.

This little app has a tendency to 'forget' past settings from one update to the next, but this little problem is quickly forgiven. The playlists generated are far from the random choices of plain iTunes. The app relies on the choices of hundred of other users to make educated guesses of what other songs in your library are likely to match your initial selection.

The result is more diverse playlists and a re-discovery of a lot of lost tunes from your own library. 

And if you want to push the concept a little further, it provides you with options to share playlists and accept suggestions of music you don't even have. 

iTunes 7 is out, and it looks good so far :) .... a good occasion to add a nagging tip to this little collection.

As I was trying to keep my iTunes library synchronized between my desktop (windows) and my laptop (mac OS), I found it frustrating to have to delete and reload my library each time I did a backup.

Here is the correct way of doing this :

How to recreate your iTunes Library

Click on the details for a copy of the steps in case that article changes on Apple's website.

Found in a recent link from Slashdot to an entry of Phil Ryu's blog about the top ten most beautiful Mac OS X apps -  coverflow puts to a good use these neglected cover art pictures in your iTunes library and turns them into a fluid, intuitive interface to select albums you want to listen to. Now if only Apple would listen :)

To make it even more useful on my laptop, I decided to finally clean up the cover art in my iTunes library. After trying a few shareware, I found iPodSoft's Iart worked nicely to recover lost covers on windows. It allows recovery of images from multiple search engines (amazon, itunes, ...), creates a playlist for albums that do not have a cover (to search them manually more easily) and even recovers Lyrics :)

Update 09/12/2006: coverflow has been officially sold to Apple for inclusion of the technology in iTunes 7 ! now you don't have to have a mac to rediscover your cover art.