Posts with keyword: itunes


Lovin' Genius

The latest version of iTunes has something called Genius which automatically creates playlists from a single song. When I downloaded the new version, I turned off the genius sidebar and figured it was something I'd just ignore. I was turned off by the need to genius to upload information about my songs to Apple and the idea that it has such strong tie-ins to iTMS. But yesterday Steve Fulling was raving about it, so I decided to give it a try. In less than 12 hours, I'm a convert. I still hide the sidebar because that's where all the
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Optimizing iTunes for IT Conversations

A number of people use iTunes as their podcatcher--the software that automatically downloads a podcast and puts it on their iPod. If that's you, please take a minute to change your preferences so that you don't miss any IT Conversations podcasts. By default iTunes only downloads the most recent podcast from a given site each day. For most sites, which publish less than once per day, that works fine. For sites like IT Conversations, however, that means you might be missing some shows you'd rather have downloaded. I try to just publish one show per day to avoid this
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Speeding Up Podcasts

As you can imagine, I listen to a lot of podcasts. I listen to everything on IT Conversations, sometimes multiple times as it comes to production, I subscribe to a few other podcasts, and I review audio for inclusion on IT Conversations. One trick that helps, particularly with reviews, is speeding up the audio. As far as I've been able to tell, there's no convenient slider bar for speeding up audio in iTunes. But, you can easily use Quicktime to get the same effect: Right-click the show in iTunes and choose "Show song file." Open the selected song file
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Newer Is Not Always Better

Today I ran across OldVersion.com who's tag line is "newer is not always better." OldVersion.com is a collection of old versions of programs. When I saw it, I thought of a couple of benefits: first old version often run better on old computers because newer versions require more resources. Second, some new versions disable features that you want or add features that interfere with how you use the program. One benefit I hadn't thought of that's listed prominently on the site is the ability to avoid spyware. Older versions of programs that are now bundled with spyware are often
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Identity and Presence

I put a piece about the difference between identity and presence information at Between the Lines. The difference is pinpointed by iTunes in its use of proxies for presence to enforce its DRM policies--badly, as it turns out.
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