Sunday, October 5th, 2008
iTunes Music Discovery
With the recent release of itunes 8 and it’s built in genius feature, it would seem that my work on similar playlist creation has become outdated. However, there is one thing that genius lacks: a feature that allows exploration of similar music apart from my own collection. Of course, there are suggestions from the itunes store, and I can preview 30 seconds from each of these songs, but that’s not always a good indication of whether I’ll like the song or not. So I decided to write a quick little program to combine the features of last.fm’s similar tracks functionality and seeqpod’s playable search. Here’s the result. It’s ugly, but it’s functional (as far as I’ve tested it). As always, interest will dictate how much additional work goes into the program.
Requires .Net framework
To run the program, unzip the folder, run the .exe file, and select a track in itunes. Then click on the “Generate List” button to start listening to new music!
Sunday, September 14th, 2008
A new (working) itunes lyric downloader
With the recently released iTunes 8.0, it seems that my itunes tagger app’s similar playlist functionality isn’t a big priority anymore. While I sometimes like the results from last.fm’s similar tracks better than itunes’, having Genius built into itunes is just a lot more convenient.
The one thing iTunes is still (surprisingly) missing is automatic lyrics downloading. A while back I wrote a quick program to find some lyrics from lyricwiki and sing365, but it has since become terribly outdated and provided no relevant results. And since I still get a couple hits a day for that program, I thought I’d update it for y’all.
Sunday, August 10th, 2008
Updated itunes tagger program
The itunes last.fm tagger program has been updated. The old beta version has replaced the current itunes tagger program, and there is a new beta program on this page. The beta version has a couple cool new features that you might want to check out, including faster tagging, last.fm tag submissions, and similar tracks playlist generating.
Thursday, June 5th, 2008
itunes lastfm tagger now open source!
Alright, so it’s all out there in the open now. If you download it, it’ll probably be the worst coding you’ve seen. But maybe some people can fix that? We shall see. Anyways, have fun folks. Just goes to show that if enough people ask for open source, they’ll get it.
Sidenote: I love open source and all it stands for. And I know it took me a while, but I really wanted to write this one by my lonesome, as it’s my first ever program that’s actually starting to be useful. But, I can see a lot of potential here as well, so it’s time to let it run free 
Link: http://code.google.com/p/itunes-lastfm-tagger/
Thursday, May 15th, 2008
New iTunes Last.FM Tagger Release
I’ve just put together a new beta release of itunes tagger. It includes a couple really exciting features, which took a little bit more coding under the hood, but I think it was worth it.
- saves a list of tagged tracks
- saves your options on exit
- can make a playlist from a selected tag
- better error catching!
Thursday, April 3rd, 2008
iTunes Last.FM Tagger v1.4 beta
I just finished updating the last.fm tagger. It actually wasn’t too bad finishing it off in vb.net. I’ll be looking to add some other features to the program in the near future. Leave a comment if there’s anything in particular that you’d like to see.
Monday, March 10th, 2008
Last.fm similar track playlists in iTunes
I’ve just come up with an idea to continue the trend of writing software to extend last.fm’s web services. This program is just a little example so you can see the direction I’m heading. The program takes some selected tracks and will automatically create an itunes playlist of similar tracks (according to last.fm) that it finds in your library. It also spits out an approximate accuracy (just for curiosity’s sake). Give it a try, and if you like the idea, leave a comment and I’ll probably put more work into it. Maybe I’ll even compile it to work with some of my other programs.
This isn’t a real release, so take it with a grain of salt. Requires/will install .Net Framework 3.5.
[Download] (now it runs an installer to fix some dependency issues)
The possibilities for this program are endless really. Some ideas would be:
- Limit the playlist to contain only songs with a particular tag in the comments (would work well with itunes tagger)
- Create automatic playlists from itunes’ most played tracks
- Allow user to specify the approximate popularity of the track (ie only songs you listen to a lot, only songs you rarely hear, somewhere in between)
- Exclude certain ratings, skip counts, etc
There is also another program out there that will create playlists for you based on various last.fm data. It’s called Local.fm, available here.
Thursday, March 6th, 2008
iTunes Last.FM Tagger v.1.3 beta
So, here it is. I finally got around to working on Cherbonsy’s suggestion of using the top Artist tag instead of the track tag from last.fm. I’ve updated the iTunes Tagger Page, so go take a look.
Wednesday, March 5th, 2008
Use Any Old IR Remote to Control Your Computer
Once I moved my old PC into the living room to act as a media pc, I decided it just wasn’t practical to carry the keyboard around whenever I was doing work on my computer. The good news is, you can use your basic computer functions with a simple IR remote control.
1.Get yourself an IR Receiver and old remote.
I got mine from this site for $12 plus shipping. I think his price went up to $18 for the same model since then. Make sure you ask for a windows optimized unit if you buy it from him. If you’d rather do it all yourself, you can try following the instructions from the source at WinLIRC. You can also just buy any other computer remote at your local hardware store, but I’m not sure it’ll be compatible with winLIRC (though it probably comes with it’s own software). Basically, you’ll want to make sure your receiver is connected via a serial connection on your computer, or else check WinLIRC documentation for your remote. The only receiver I can guarantee is the one I use that I mentioned above.
The trick with the remote is that not all signals are recognizable by WinLIRC. 2 of the 4 remotes I have in my house worked fine. One other one I was able to configure with winlirc, but the signal response isn’t solid enough to actually use. In most cases, the best remotes are older ones that you have lying around from your plain old DVD player or TV.
2.Download and run WinLIRC
Get WinLIRC and run the program (it doesn’t require an install). Click on reconfigure… all the default settings are fine for my IR receiver. Yours may vary. Next you need to see if WinLIRC recognizes the remote signal. This is done by clicking “Learn” and following the on-screen instructions. Don’t forget to click “Analyze” when you’re done. Now you should have a .cf file located in your WinLIRC directory, named according to the remote name you gave. You can open this config file in notepad and see all the settings WinLIRC has determined for your remote. If you have WinLIRC running, you should see the “light” in the system tray turn green whenever you press one of your configured buttons. If not, something is wrong.
3. Set up a program to receive the signals
This part is probably where most users find that WinLIRC is too much work than it’s worth. That said, there are a few plugins set up for WinLIRC found at the bottom of this page. There is also an AutoHotKey script set up for WinLIRC if you’re familiar with that program. I plan on preparing my own program in Visual Basic to run and receive the remote signals. This will potentially give me the flexibility of allowing any key to perform any task I desire. It will also potentially require a large amount of work. I’ve written only one portion so far, and it enables this tiny remote to perform some essential itunes commands. The remote config file is available here. The program is up for download here. If you just run the program, you’ll need to configure your buttons to match my configuration file above.
If you’d like to write your own program, WinLIRC has a nice little writeup on how to receive winLIRC signals in Visual Basic.
In the future, I’d like to make the program work with a variety of other programs, and ideally I’d like to set up a little GUI that functions as a way to open movies, songs, or even web pages using nothing but a remote control.
Thursday, February 21st, 2008
CD Art Display
CD Art Display is a great program. If you failed at the tutorial I posted on how to change your MSN picture to your currently playing album artwork, this program will do it all for you. It also displays the current artwork and info for the currently playing track, finds artwork, lyrics, etc. The display is skinnable, and can look amazing. Head over and download this program. I love it.
The lyric functionality doesn’t save the lyrics to iTunes directly (as far as I know). So you can still use iTunes Lyric Downloader for that. And if you want to fix your track information so it looks a bit better when you display it in CAD, try this.
(This also means I’m ending all my work on iTunes Displayer, since it’s crap compared to this program.)
