Reluctantly, I’m a card carrying member of the iTunes User Group. iTunes is an example of a piece of software that works just well enough that you don’t actively go out looking for an alternative. Very few would argue that iTunes is the best music library manager available yet; some would go as far to say it’s one of the worst. As an iPhone user, I feel more or less tied to iTunes as I’m sure many others do. While iTunes is not the only media player that can sync with your iPhone or iPod, the entire experience isn’t horrible enough for me to seek an alternative. Sure, iTunes is horribly slow and bloated but at the end of the day, it just works and sometimes that’s just enough to keep users locked in.

One of the lacking features of iTunes is it’s support of global keyboard shortcuts, simply it doesn’t have any. If I wanted to pause the playback of a tune I generally have two options: use the mini-player so that I have quick  access to pause/play or restore the iTunes application window by clicking on it’s icon in the tray. That’s borderline unacceptable, but still not taking me to the tipping point in my iTunes usage.

CD Art Display, a free Windows application, is designed to work with your media player and display album cover art of the currently playing song on your desktop, like a widget if you will. In addition to album art, you also get the title, artist, album, and basic playback controls. Here’s where it becomes compelling for me. The playback controls can be bounded to keyboard shortcuts and provide some functionality lacking in native iTunes. You are even able to rate songs right from the desktop, again by keyboard shortcuts if you wanted. CD Art Display is not limited to iTunes; it supports WinAmp, Foobar, and Windows Media Player too. Lastly, if the track contains no album art you may use the embedded browser to search for artwork.

CD Art Display takes about 5MB of system memory which is a small price to pay for all the additional functionality it provides.

Were you aware that it is possible for iTunes to use multiple libraries under the same computer account? I wasn’t – but then again, I never had a reason until lately. iTunes creates and stores it’s library database in your user profile folder so it makes sense that one profile = one iTunes library. This proves not to be the case, it is possible to tell iTunes to use a different library upon launch but it is in no way obvious for some reason.

There are many reasons why multiple iTunes libraries would be welcome. If you share a computer and profile with someone else, you may have radically different musical tastes. As one who obsesses over properly tagged and organized music, I wouldn’t want to see the other person’s pop music infiltrate my play lists. Even if you don’t share a computer with someone you may still have a reason to wish for multiple libraries. Perhaps you could have a different library that hosts all your Christmas music. Sure, it is possible to use tags and smart play lists to filter out those tunes in July, but why add that extra layer if you can keep them cleanly separated?

Whatever you reasons may be, it’s actually quite easy to create and use a second library. Ready? All you need to do is hold down the Shift key as you launch iTunes. iTunes will present a dialog that allows you to choose or create a new library. Every subsequent launch will use the library of the previous session – so if you want to switch to the first library just hold down Shift again.

iTunes is likely the top music library manager available for Windows and OS X, unfortunately it’s generally not because of the quality of the product – especially on the Windows platform. Rather, the iPod’s dominance in the portable music player market dictates iTunes success. Savvy users may be aware that the iPod is not exclusively bound to iTunes but for the general populace it’s the only application in town. iTunes works well enough that most don’t actively seek out alternatives but that also isn’t typically a glowing endorsement of the product either.

A glaring omission in iTunes’ functionality is the inability to export all of your playlists, at least in a usable fashion, to other devices – devices that can’t directly interface with iTunes. If you are someone who has taken hours to construct the perfect playlist for every possible occasion this can be quite a drag when you hit this wall. Thankfully, with each problem there often exists a solution and here is one where that rings true.

iExporter is a free Windows .NET application that interfaces with iTunes and facilitates the exporting of any and all assembled playlists. It’s usage is as straightforward as one would suspect; launch the application and click Connect to iTunes. The software will query a running iTunes instance or launch iTunes if isn’t already running. Secondly, select a folder you wish to export the playlist to. It is unfortunate that iExporter can not export a .m3u playlist; the software will simply copy the MP3 files referenced in the selected playlists into the folder of your choosing from step 2. For some, this oversight could be a deal breaker but also something that hopefully can be solved in future releases.

iExporter does the job with little frills, which is generally something I like to see in a product.

We all like clean and well maintained systems right? One of the most annoying tendencies of all software vendors is the installation of additional programs and system services that are not core to the main application. Two such vendors are Apple and Adobe. If you’ve installed iTunes, or other Apple software for the PC, you may notice a strange process named mDNSResponder.exe running in Windows Task Manager. Not to be overshadowed by Apple, Adobe exhibits the installation of the same rogue process.

In all actuality, mDNSResponder is the Bonjour service that is responsible for the auto discovery of network services and devices across your local network. In other words, it helps finding things like network file shares or network printers. Does that sound useful to you? No – me either! Worse, the uninstallation of the initial software will leave the Bonjour service installed and running. If you are interested in recouping precious system resources, Bonjour can be removed safely and still leave the main applications – like iTunes – functioning fully and correctly.

Au Revoir, Bonjour is a small freeware application for Windows that locates and eradicates the Bonjour service from your system. At 88KB, the single executable does it’s thing with great efficiency. Upon successful removal of Bonjour, a reboot will be required to complete the process.

Say Au Revoir, Bonjour!

• The movie I purchased is about 1.30 GB, and took around 35 minutes to download.
• It is possible to stream the movie while it downloads; as well as seek and scan.
• The content is protected by “FairPlay Version: 2″.
• The bitrate is 1.5Mbps at 24fps.
• The audio is Protected AAC, stereo, 128kbps, 44.1kHz.
• The video is Protected H.264/AVC0 640×272 – this is a widescreen ratio.
• The video actually does look “near DVD quality.” This is on my Viewsonic 21″ LCD Widescreen, results will vary.
• The actual file can be burned to DVD but not in the sense that it can played in the traditional DVD player.
• You can play the movie on multiple computers, similar to the iTunes music restrictions as best I can tell.
• Most movies I saw were priced at $9.99, though there were a few brand new releases at $14.99.

That’s the gist of it, let me know if there are any questions?

Significant? The ability to boot Windows makes Mac hardware more relevant, not less. They will go from selling 5 million boxes a year to selling 10 or 12 million. Apple is betting that most of those people will use OS X more and more, and Windows less and less. After all, the Intel Macs come chock full of very nice software (iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, iWeb, etc) which still have no equal in the Windows world.

Area of concern? IBM killed OS/2 by making it extremely easy to run Windows applications under it. As a direct result of that, no one bothered developing applications for the OS/2 platform; the rest is history. Apple is walking a very fine line here, and as most of us know, history has a way of repeating itself.

read more | digg story