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Well, lets see if this blog lasts longer than a bored afternoon. Lotus domino, community wireless networks, Camberwell, greater London Ladies Drinking Club, mojitos, Burning Man and big art in general...

Friday, February 03, 2006

open source iTunes?

Songbird, is an opensource itteration of itunes-ish...well not really , really but kinda.

its a desktop media player that looks to work with apples proprietary music store files amongst the usual others...but I can't say that legally. From what I can gather, it's based a bit on Firefox.

From what I've read so far, it looks to work better with genereic mp3 players - but what I'm after is something I can use my pod as hardware for, with open source media library/jukebox for the desktop and open source OS to put on my pod.

The pod itself was freecycled, so it kinda fits that I should try and shrug off other closed source bits hanging off it, and use openness. ( ipod G3 15Gb = £0. replacement battery and postage = £35. Desktop charger/cradle thingie = £20 plus or minus, can't remember. Charger = £15 probably. Not too bad eh.

Now - I could put iPod Linux on my pod - and boot into either the linux or the apple OS. That I like - having a choice. The linux one even allows for simple monochrome pictures and also sound recording!

I may as well hack about with it now - I rebuilt my pc so I've got a pod that loaded with tuneage, a partition that has the original tunes on it ( untouched by the rebuild) and no itunes on the pc. I'd really like to keep it so as I find itunes sucks up all free resources. In fact I curse iTunes - having to provide corporate support in a design agency - I can assure you that each and every staff member demands the right to have itunes. Which is fair go - creative types and all that.
But hell - I gotta say I sometimes take a small amount of malicious glee in telling people their desktop has siezed coz of itunes and I dont have to support it or fix their problems as it is not company related software. ( I do help em, but barely, and only coz I'm nice.)

So, lets see what I can come up with.