my first 8tracks list.

Have a listen, won’t you?

8tracks.com plays in a random order, but here is what I intended:

1. Untitled, She & Him
2. Paris Sunrise #7, Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals
3. Day Five, Explosions in the Sky
4. When I Was a Baby, The New Pornographers
5. Black River Killer, Blitzen Trapper
6. Please Concrete, Wye Oak
7. Red Dress, TV On The Radio
8. We Own The Sky, m83

She has a way with lighting and texture.  I tried to include some examples that summarize her work, but of course this is impossible to do in just three photographs.  Visit her website for more.

• The website of Maria Hinze, an artist who apparently has no concept of a frame, in the traditional sense.  Fortunately this results in beautiful works of art that fill a space, literally.  Her website is still in development, but the small portfolio she’s posted shows some gorgeous works that I wish I could see with my own eyes – I’m sure the photos don’t do them justice.
• An excellent, Barack-Obama-rific poster that is a work of great typography and a lesson in history all in one.
• A well written and quite insightful blog all about design:  Core77.  I read the site every day; it’s a great resource for designers (they have daily job listings!) as well as people who dip a pen in design ink.

Music:

• Shiny Toy Guns’ album Season of Poison (MySpace)
  
• The Dodos’ album Visiter (Their song Red and Purple especially) (MySpace, YouTube)
  
• Paramore’s (live) album The Final Riot! (Particularly the intro of Hallelujah) (imeem)
• Kanye West’s songs Love Lockdown and Heartless (YouTube)
  
• Lily Allen’s cover of the Kooks’ Naive (A live version here) (YouTube)

Books:

• Mohammed Hanif’s A Case of Exploding Mangoes (Amazon)
• Chuck Palahniuk’s Choke (Amazon)
• Jose Saramago’s Blindness (Amazon)
• Michael Freeman’s The Photographer’s Eye (Amazon)
• (I’m still enjoying this one in retrospect) David Carr’s Night Of The Gun (Amazon)

Images from Amazon.com, Borders.com, and terababes.com.

Check it out!

And by the way, “The New Yardbirds” was the name adopted by Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Bonham, and John Paul Jones before they became superstars as Led Zeppelin

And Happy New Year!

See y’all soon!

GetSongbird.com. Will this program replace iTunes?

Apple’s iTunes is one of the most popular media library management applications currently on the market.  It’s available for free, comes pre-installed on all Apple computers, supports all of the most popular audio and video formats, and is the most compatible application with the iPod.

But a tall tree attracts a lot of wind.  Just as Mozilla decided to take on the task of toppling Internet Explorer’s dominance of the web browser world (after a few other companies tried), a new start-up is trying to take on iTunes.  And wouldn’t you know it:  their software is based upon the same code as Mozilla’s Firefox. 

Songbird, an open-source media player in development by the secret-society-sounding Pioneers of the Inevitable, saw its first stable release this past week, and while rough around the edges, the program definitely has potential.

Songbird's main view. Look familiar?

By default Songbird includes support for all of the media formats supported by iTunes, and even has some rudimentary support for Apple’s DRM-imprisoned AAC files purchased from the iTunes Music Store.  When first launching Songbird, a transition wizard of sorts appears, making the process of switching from your current media player of choice to Songbird that much simpler.  The wizard can either search your computer for media or import your iTunes library.

I chose the latter option.  It imported most of my songs, but not all of them; I was promptly reminded of this by a warning message saying that some of my files could not be imported.  Unfortunately, I have no idea what files were unable to be imported.  But a particularly nice feature was the wizard’s suggestion of add-ons to install along with Songbird.  Much like the Firefox website, the Songbird homepage has a section where users can download plug-ins to suit their needs.  The import wizard saw that my iTunes library included some DRM-protected files, and suggested I install the plug-in that adds playback support for these files.

The mashTape plugin. A nice touch.

Songbird also suggested some other plug-ins, such as “mashTape,” a customizable info-box that displays information, photos, and videos about the artist of the song currently being played.  I also installed the “Concerts” plug-in, which allows you to, unsurprisingly, search for concerts in your area.  You can also filter the downloaded list to include only concerts of artists in your library.  The concert-browsing feature is streamlined and easy to use.  This is easily one of the best features of Songbird.

It is also worth mentioning that plug-ins like “Concerts” integrate so seamlessly because Songbird has an integrated Mozilla browser.  You can search sites like Skreemr.com and the Hype Machine right inside the software.  It isn’t a fair replacement for a full web browser, but it does get the job done for quick searches.

However, Songbird is not without its limitations.  The current iteration of Songbird is a bit sluggish, and can suffer from the occasional hiccup or crash.  I haven’t tested iPod support; supposedly it can transfer music to any iPod, but I’m a little hesitant to play around with that feature.

All in all, Songbird could definitely be a formidable challenger to the market dominance of iTunes, but not in its current state.  And although I probably will not replace iTunes just yet, Songbird is clearly moving in the right direction.  iTunes is painfully un-customizable, and it seems to be at the peak of its success.  It’s about time that a new contender in the media player war showed up.

Songbird is available for download at GetSongbird.com.