Cool tools for iTunes
iTunes is immensely popular, and rightly so, because it’s a great program for managing your music library. But there is still room for improvement. Here are a couple of tools for customising iTunes.
1. Smart playlists. A useful new iTunes feature, which makes for an even better musical experience, is the use of Smart Playlists - playlists compiled on the basis of one or more filters. Any existing songs, as well as new ones, in your iTunes library which meet these conditions will be automatically included in this playlist. You can create a smart playlist via File;New Smart Playlist. You can now define your filters by clicking on the plus sign to add an extra filter. A possible example is a playlist containing all the songs you’ve added in the past three months and which you’ve played only once so far. Tip. To exclude podcasts and videos from your smart playlist, specify “Type, is not, mov” and “Genre, is not, podcast”.
2. Suggestions. There are tools which analyse your iTunes music library and suggest new artists and songs on the basis of this analysis. Two free tools are Goombah (http://www.goombah.com - Win2000/XP or Mac) and The Filter (http://thefilter.com - Windows, Mac, Nokia mobile phones).
3. Sharing. If you feel like sharing your music with others via your blog or website, use the My iTunes widget by Apple (http://www.apple.com/itunes/myitunes/). This widget puts your favourite music and your recent purchases on your blog or on your profile page in a social network program.
4. Library maintenance. A great feature of the latest version of iTunes is the Coverflow, which enables you to browse through the covers of all the CDs, as you can on a record rack. You can copy any missing covers from online shops such as Amazon and paste them into the appropriate space in iTunes. However, the free Soundcrank (http://www.soundcrank.com - Windows and Mac) will add covers, and even lyrics, automatically.
Free iTunes Library Manager (http://free-ilm.sourceforge.net - Windows, free) keeps your library up-to-date and tidy; for example, it traces and deletes references to songs which are no longer sitting on your hard drive.
5. Extras. If you’re only interested in adding lyrics to your music library, not covers, use the free EvilLyrics (http://www.newfreedownloads.com/download-EvilLyrics.html - Windows). And if you think the visual effects in iTunes are too plain and simple, try out these free tools: G-Force (http://www.soundspectrum.com - Windows) or Magnetosphere (http://software.barbariangroup.com/magnetosphere/- Windows and Mac).
6. Transfers and syncing. Normally, it’s impossible to transfer music from your iPod to your computer. However, this is possible with iPod to Computer Transfer (http://www.ipod2computer.com - for Windows - shareware £7.70). And to synchronise your iTunes library with other media players besides an iPod, try the free iTunesSync (http://www.binaryfortress.com - Windows).
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