When it comes to audio players, most people choose between the three or four most popular apps: iTunes, Winamp, VLC, AIMP Player… but there are many other interesting choices like Songbird.

Songbird is an open-source music player and organizer with which you can manage, play and discover music. It's free, cross-platform, highly customizable thanks to a wide variety of plug-ins and can be improved and extended by the contribution of its user community.

The first thing you'll notice about Songbird is its resemblance to the iTunes interface, which means that if you've ever used iTunes you won't have any problem in learning how to use Songbird. Then, as you explore the program's menus and options, you'll start discovering all the goodies it has to offer.

Songbird automatically imports your music files from a selected folder, monitors that folder for future music additions, organizes your music in a handy, easily browsable catalog, is compatible with iTunes and Last.fm libraries, can be controlled from any other app thanks to global hotkeys and also supports Last.fm scrobbling. It also includes album art and a simple equalizer.

Songbird is such a complete tool that's hard to find negative sides to it. Plus there's an army of developers constantly working on improvements and new features. The only thing I missed so far, in fact, is support for podcasts – which I'm sure will probably be added some time soon.

Songbird is a complete, full-featured music player and organizer with support for plug-ins and an extensive user community.

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For people whose sights are trained on a computer screen all day long, reading in-depth articles on favorite blogs or sifting through long emails is the last thing you want to do at the end of a day at the office. You may also have a medical condition that means it's easier to listen than to read.

TextAloud is a text to speech tool that will read all this text aloud for you, so you don't have to. The beauty of TextAloud is that it not only reads out anything you copy and paste into the voice window, but also allows you to save the resulting speech as an audio file. Effectively this means you can transform any web page, email or text document into a podcast to download to your MP3 player and listen to at your leisure. TextAloud keeps file sizes at a minimum, making it possible to save entire novels as a audio files of less than 1 megabytes apiece.

Unfortunately, TextAloud's default speech sounds somewhat monotonous which can get dull really quickly. TextAloud does have options to let you change the tone and speed of the speaking voice, but this doesn't really have much effect on improving the overall sound of the speech. The full version of TextAloud has quite a bit more to offer since it makes use of AT&T's Natural Voice technology. You can choose from several different accents with this feature, including UK English, Indian English and Spanish. It's almost as convincing as having someone sit next to you and reading out loud.

Although the voice in the freeware version is pretty monotonous, TextAloud is a nice option for anyone who wants text read out loud.

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J. River Media Center is an intuitive program that will allow you to manage all of your multimedia files - audio, video, images and more - from a single interface. It isn't very pretty, but it does provide a great platform for your media and pretty much every configuration option you could hope for.

Although there are a number of skins for the J. River Media Center, none of them particularly help in the looks department. What is attractive, however, is the variety of viewing modes available: the four screen options available will take you from quick access to more theater-like viewing for movies and television. Playback quality is good, especially for audio, and larger screen options don't compromise viewing.

J. River Media Center has all the features you would expect from a modern player. As well as the standard audio, video and images, you can also subscribe to and manage podcasts, burn and rip CDs, sync with handheld devices, control via remote control, stream from the 'net and connect to high definition television (although to do this you'll need a tuner). Add this to J. River Media Center's extensive organizational, tagging and management abilities and J. River Media Center begins to look like a serious threat to other multimedia players.

Don't be fooled into thinking that the J. River Media Center is just a pretty face. It also has a fully functional browser, allowing you to search for information related to your music - and more - on the internet. Tech fans won't be disappointed either - J. River Media Center has a huge variety of configuration options ranging from the esthetic to the advanced, including a DSP (digital signal processor) studio for tweaking your audio, a media editor and audio recorder.

Often, a major problem with programs that try to do a lot is that they overreach and end up compromising quality. Not so with J. River Media Center. In the short time I tested it, the program performed perfectly, was easy to use and gave great quality output. If you just want a program that will play your CDs, you can probably get away with something lighter, but if you are looking for an integral multimedia manager with plenty of options, J. River Media Center might be the program for you.

J. River Media Center provides options galore and great quality - what more can you ask for in a multimedia player?

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Audials One is designed as downloader and converter for music that, via it's subscription fee, allows you to download and copy music without fear of infringing copyright laws

Audials One tries to help you discover the kind of music you will like Simply select the music genre that you're into and click on "Start". The music is all copyright free because it has been recorded from over 60,000 internet radio stations, 590,000 Artists, 870,000 Albums & 10,000,000 MP3s.

Audials Radiotracker uses the Audials Network to simultaneously monitor several thousands of online radio stations, and in doing so locates the targeted radio stations in no time flat to automatically record your desired music. Audials Radiotracker allows toy to get recorded MP3 music with the same or better quality than commercial outlets such as iTunes with the advantage that it doesn’t cost you a thing,

If you don't find the kind of music you're looking for among the 100,000 artists listed in the MusicFinder database of regularly-played music, you can use the Audials One Internet meta-search engine to locate and download the MP3s you want. What's more, Audials One comes bundled with a limited audio, video & DRM converter plus a simple CD & DVD burner to burn your favorite tracks.

The converter in Audials One is especially useful for recording music onto mobile devices with around 30 different formats supported. The aim to is to allow you to play your music, audio books and videos on mobile phones, MP3 players, MP4 players, PDAs, PSPs, auto radios and Apple iPods. In addition, there's direct access to podcasts from the community of listeners plus ID3 tagging options to organize your library.

Audials One is a solid music program for those that want to download and share music legally although inevitably, the full subscription fee may put some people off.

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MediaMonkey automatically scans your PC for all types of music formats. If you have playlists from other programs, it’s good to know that MediaMonkey also adds m3u files, sparing you the pain of having to recreate them. The file explorer view on the left lets you easily navigate your music collection by categories like artist, genre or rating. You can convert tracks in MediaMonkey into any format you wish, depending on what size or quality of sound you’re looking for. MediaMonkey also lets you analyze and adjust the volume of tracks to increase your listening experience.

MediaMonkey has made its reputation on its advanced tagging management feature. Every time a track is added, the program will verify its tags. You can automatically fill in missing details with info from Amazon or Filename. The program can clean up your tags, move information into the correct categories and synchronize tags for selected tracks. You can also rename and move multiple files thanks to the auto-organize function. MediaMonkey also supports Winamp plugins and visualizations plus skins can be applied to spice up the interface.

If you want to make your own mix CDs, you’ll be happy to know that MediaMonkey rips and burns CDs and DVDs. Create a virtual CD of your favorite tracks and let MediaMonkey do its job. Budding DJs will enjoy the auto-DJ mode, which mixes tracks for you and the Party Mode, which blocks your configuration but lets anybody play their favorite tune. MediaMonkey’s versatility doesn’t stop there. The music manager also lets you synchronize with your portable music devices like your iPod or iRiver.

If you feel like completing your library with a couple of fresh albums you can browse sites like Amazon, Barnes and Noble or AllPosters and purchase tracks. However, unlike Songbird, where you can type in a URL, browse and save your favorite music blogs and sites, MediaMonkey only allows you to browse their selection of online stores.

We were disappointed with the web radio selection, which only features Shoutcast and Icecast, and were surprised to see no sign of podcasts anywhere in the application. However version 3.0 is planning on incorporating this to the application.

Despite these drawbacks, we recommend MediaMonkey to anybody looking for a solid alternative to iTunes or Winamp. This original music manager is more than capable of organizing a very large music library and offers advanced tagging management rarely seen in other music applications. While the browser and web radio are fairly limited, MediaMonkey allows you to rip your custom CDs and connects to most portable music devices. If you really take a liking to MediaMonkey, cough up a few bucks and upgrade to the Gold version, which will open up all of the program’s functionalities like finding missing tracks or creating auto (smart) playlists.

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The first thing MediaMonkey does is ask to scan your drives for music. This is effective, and will really pull in any audio it finds. You can select the kind of audio files you want to use, which can stop MediaMonkey importing irrelevant audio. This is one of MediaMonkey's advantage over iTunes, as it's less reliant on its own library system. It is also compatible with many more formats. You can sync Media Monkey with devices such as iPhones and MP3 players.

For playback, MediaMonkey has all the usual tools, like equalizer and volume leveling. However, its layout takes a while to get used to, and it's not as easy to drop into as iTunes. The folder tree is comprehensive but ugly, and the tiny buttons in the toolbar are incomprehensible without trial and error testing.

MediaMonkey is a comprehensive audio management and playback device that's absolutely packed with features. However, it's looking old these days and really lacks a intuitive interface.

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Appearance

In terms of appearance, Nightingale is attractive, but not very innovative. It's got a nice slick and easy-to-use interface, and can be customized with feathers - Nightingale's equivalent of skins. These must be downloaded separately,and there aren't very many of them, but the job is made easy thanks to the app's built-in browser.

Options

Unfortunately, Nightingale doesn't seem to get very far in the options race. Although it supports music and video, it has a hard time with anything else. It can't handle podcasts or streaming media natively, for example, and has a limited selection of tools for customizing or modifying your music. When you compare it to an app like VLC, for example, Nightingale looks really bare.

Extras

One area where Nightingale does stand out, however, is extras. Given the built-in browser, it's really easy to get extra content for the app, from album artwork to skins and add-ons. There's not a huge number of any of these (3 skins, about 26 add-ons), but they add some nice functionality, like Icecast and Last.fm support.

Overall impression

Nightingale looks good, but relies on add-ons for almost all functionality beyond basic music and video playback. If it's your first dealing with a media player, you might well be impressed with its slick looks and ease of use, but for the rest of us - and we're the majority - it just feels like Nightingale is all style and no substance.

Nightingale is a good-looking player, but in terms of functionality, falls well short of the mark.

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The Radiotracker interface won't be to everyone's liking. It seems crowded, and is not very intuitive. Reading the manual is an absolute must, even for the most basic tasks. Luckily, the help files are fairly complete, and there are plenty of Radiotracker tutorials online.

The basic concept is this: you choose a music style or artist/song and start recording. The downloaded (recorded) songs then appear in a window on the right where you can then listen, save or process them.
Radiotracker offers additional features such as format converter, a wishlist for finding songs not easily available and a very complete podcast function. It goes without saying that you can also listen to the music via the Radiotracker player or export it to your mobile device.

Any tool that helps you to get free, legal music is an interesting proposal. Radiotracker has ample configuration settings, automatically checks for updates, allows you to ban certain stations, syncs with your music player and uses intelligent filters when saving songs, so you don't get any duds.

Despite all these good points, there's a major 'but' - Radiotracker seems unnecessarily complicated. Although it may be a great program, it takes some effort to crack. While some users will be willing to put the work in, many will quickly tire of having to refer to the manual to identify every window and carry out every task.

If you are looking for a legal way to get free music, check out Radiotracker.

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Initial setup of MyTunesRSS involves setting up a server using the IP address of the computer that contains your music. Once connected, the user interface is like a stripped down version of iTunes showing you your tracks and categories such as the 25 most played, best rated and most recently added. You can browse your whole library by album, artist or genre, plus you can access your playlists or create new ones.

To play tracks, you can either download them or play them directly in MyTunesRSS. If they will play in Flash format, you can play them directly in the MyTunesRSS player but anything that won't play in Flash will require a plugin. Alternatively, you can download an entire playlist in M3U or XSPF format and play them in any application that can play them such as iTunes or VLC Player. If you're a Last.fm user, it can even continue to scrobble your tracks as they play.

There's even a theme creator in MyTunesRSS to give your own touch to the app's interface but this requires knowledge of how to use the remote API, which isn't particularly easy if you're a beginner to XPI. The main downside of MyTunesRSS is the fact that it's written in Java and as a result, it can run rather sluggishly. Note that in addition, this trial is limited for a period of 30 days.

MyTunesRSS is a simple but powerful program that can help you access your tunes over a network or wherever you are in the world as long as you have a decent internet connection.

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Billed as a three-in-one device management app, Xilisoft iPod Magic lets you rip audio and video from your iPod to your PC, copy files from iPod to iTunes, and transfer files from your PC to your iPod. The software even lets you convert non-iPod file formats on the fly, before transferring them to your device.

Thanks to a clear, well-designed interface, Xilisoft iPod Magic makes it easy to manage files on your iPod or iPhone. The contents of your Apple device are displayed in the main window (sectioned into audio, video, podcasts and photo). There are three large buttons underneath to add files to your iPod from your PC, export files from your device to the PC and for exporting to iTunes. Alternatively, you can simply drag and drop multimedia to and from Xilisoft iPod Magic. The app even supports batch transfers.

Ripping a DVD to your iPod/iPhone is very easy with Xilisoft iPod Magic. Just load the disk, hit the icon and the movie will be transferred to your device, or to iTunes, in the correct iPod format. In fact, any (well, almost any) video or audio that you transfer using Xilisoft iPod Magic will automatically be converted to the correct format. And quickly, at that. The program comes with a a neat preview window so you can see the video as it's transferring.

On the negative side, some users might find Xilisoft iPod Magic to be a bit sluggish and unresponsive at times. It often takes a very long time to build your audio library into the window. The iTunes integration is far from perfect and a number of times Xilisoft iPod Magic managed to crash iTunes as it was trying to export music into it.

Putting these glitches aside, Xilisoft iPod Magic makes for a useful way to move music and video between your iPod and your PC.

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Download Podcast Remote for iTunes in Softonic

ZIP and move music to another PC. New ZIP options: share after ZIPNew unZIP options: automatically add track to iTunes and unip from share folder (file transfers)Includes drag n' drop support for easily sending of file using Easy Share.

Zip the full contents of your iTunes Music Library. Zip all the songs in your iTunes Music Library. Zip all the movies in your iTunes Music Library.

Zip all the videos in your iTunes Music Library. Zip all the TV Shows in your iTunes Music Library. Zip all the podcasts in your iTunes Music Library.

Zip specific entries matching your specified pattern in your iTunes Music Library e. g. *. mp3Create backupsSpecify compression levelSet zip folder locationPlatform support includes Windows Vista and XP.

mp3Create backupsSpecify compression levelSet zip folder locationPlatform support includes Windows Vista and XP.

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Learn everything you need to know about digital music and video from the experts at Macworld! With a colorful layout and cheerful writing, this Superguide helps you collect all your audio and video in iTunes, and play it in iTunes or on a variety of devices.

You'll find help with digitizing and organizing content in iTunes, whether from old tapes and LPs, music or audiobook CDs, or a pile of DVDs.

The book also looks at how to find free (and not-free) media online through various Web sites and the iTunes Store. Once your content is in iTunes, Macworld's experts provide advice on keeping iTunes organized, finding your stuff, fixing problems, and generally getting the most out of iTunes.

Although you can enjoy your content in iTunes, the book also helps you sync it to an Apple TV, iPod, or iPhone, and discusses what to do if your content doesn't sync properly or plays incorrectly.

It closes with a look at the choices availablemdash;and recommended picksmdash;for iPod/iPhone cases, headphones, speakers, and car attachments.

This ebook answers questions such as:How do audio file formatsmdash;like AAC, Apple Lossless, MP3, WAV, and AIFFmdash;differ? How can I get the squealing noise out of a precious tape before I digitize it?

How can I use social networking to find more music that I like? Where can I find free (and legal) music and video online? What should I know about the video rental option in the iTunes Store?

How can I get the most out of the tagging feature in iTunes? How do I best go about finding, downloading, and listening to podcasts? Help! My playlists seem to have disappeared from iTunes.

What should I do? How do I deal with problematic iTunes authorizations? How can I make an uncooperative video file transfer to my iPod or iPhone?

What speakers should I buy to use with an iPod/iPhone? We encourage you to download the free sample to see what it looks like, since it's rather different from our Take Control design.

Download Macworld Digital Music & Video Superguide in Softonic

Make a Web site and work creatively in iWeb! Apple's new iWeb application aims to help you build a Web site quickly and easily, but if you've found yourself stuck on the basics or unhappy with amateurish results, turn to Steve Sande's 123-page Take Control of iWeb for assistance.

Steve provides step-by-step instructions for building an iWeb site and uploading it to. Mac or to your own Web host, and you can look over his shoulder as he works in iWeb's templates with a designer's eye.

Steve teaches you the best ways to make basic iWeb pages, including blog, podcast, and photo pages, and he covers topics that go beyond the basics.

You'll learn how to create eye-catching graphical effects, encode podcasts and videos for use with iWeb, edit graphics so your site loads faster, make image maps, and even set up an online store.

For those with multiple sites or multiple Macs, Steve explains how to edit one site on two Macs and how to store multiple sites in multiple iWeb files.

Pick up your copy today! Read this ebook to learn the answers to questions such as:How do I create special graphical effects with iWeb? How do I create an RSS feed for my blog?

)Can I create an entire online store with iWeb?

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Discover over 200 tips for Mac , Mail, Safari, and more, including Terminal basics and beyond! In this colorful title, Rob Griffiths, editor of the MacOSXHints.

com Web site, presents a cornucopia of over 200 tips to help you get the most out of Mac 10. 5 Leopard. Culled from MacOSXHints. com, and with additional content from other Macworld experts, the book covers a wide range of topics and user experience, with basic tips any Mac user can easily implement and plenty more that go way beyond the basics, employing Terminal, Automator, and AppleScript to maximize your Mac's mileage.

Rob covers a lot of territory, with tips relating to new Leopard features like Screen Sharing and Spaces, others that cover existing features like screen savers and keyboard shortcuts, and hardware-related tips for printing and working with discs.

He also helps you get the most out of standard Apple applications, including Mail (find and remove large attachments from your mail store), iCal (learn how to add and work with URLs easily in events), Safari (want to invoke bookmarks with voice commands?

), and iTunes (check out the AppleScript to update podcasts manually), as well as iChat, Preview, and Dashboard. If you've wondered about using Unix commands in Terminal tocustomize your Mac beyond what the graphical interface offers, or if you've wanted to get more comfortable with Terminal, the book provides a nice foundation.

It coversthe basics of using Terminal and has a generous collection of tips sprinkled throughout that will get youtyping (or pasting) simple command strings in order to tweak your Mac in useful and interesting ways.

It also has info for those who are already comfortable with Terminal, covering new commands in Leopard, searching from the command line, and more.

We encourage you to download the free 14-page sample to see what it looks like, since it is rather different from our Take Control design. If you plan to print, print a few test pages from the sample first in case you wish to consider Macworld's $19.

95 print version, which has higher-resolution images than are feasible in an ebook.

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Usually, program updates bring improvements and slight changes to software, but every so often, an application seems to completely change direction. This is the case with Moovida - last time we looked, the application included photo management and also had the ability to find new media from a variety of sources.

This no longer seems to be true - this version of Moovida seems to have scaled back the new material side to concentrate on the fairly standard management of existing media. The interface is quite slick and easy to use, and fullscreen mode is crisp and clear. You can also minimize controls for music listening, and Moovida supports drag and drop, which makes playlist creation really easy.

Moovida retains some of its internet capabilities - the app is integrated with Last.fm and partially integrated with YouTube (videos open in your web browser). Other than that, however, social media integration is lacking, which means that there is relatively little to distinguish Moovida from the dozens of other media management tools out there.

As far as Moovida does act as a manager application, it is fairly successful. It has good options, podcast support and a nice playlist function. Even so, it's not revolutionary and by losing features that stood out in previous incarnations, it's just not as interesting as it once was.

Moovida is an average media management app, but has lost features that once made it interesting.

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MAGIX MP3 is an all-round solution that aims to provide music enthusiasts with everything they need to manage your music. In fact, here's very little you can't do with this app: managing your music collection, finding duplicate files, fixing names and ID3 tags, editing tracks, mixing music (great for parties!), ripping audio CD, burning both CD and DVD. You can even record internet radio stations and podcasts, and use MAGIX MP3 to find new music that you'll love.

MAGIX MP3 interface is clearly divided into several different areas. There's a button bar that launches the program's main functions, as well as a more detailed toolbar with access to many other tools and utilities. However this new version features some minor changes to the interface - mainly in the button bar - that make the program slightly more difficult to use, because now some of its functions are a bit more hidden. Don't forget to use right click to make sure you're not overlooking any of MAGIX MP3's varied features.

Most users will probably spend the whole time in playback mode, with your playlist taking up the main area in MAGIX MP3's interface. Unfortunately the playback controls are a bit out of the way at the bottom of the interface – they would be easier to reach and use in another position, like higher on the interface.

MAGIX MP3 includes pretty much all the tools you need to make the most of your music collection.

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