Has anyone tried any of the other software developments based on Mozilla technologies? I’ve just resently tested Songbird, and I must say it’s pretty awesome! It’s like having the best qualities of iTunes (which I hate with a passion, but it does have some great feats.) and WinAMP, mixed in with some of Mozilla’s great initiative. Also, there’s Mozilla Ubiquity – the addon that should rock the world of browsing, but I’ll get onto that later.
Songbird, is a media player – with addons! Bold statement Haz, I hear you say, but don’t we already have that? Do plugins mean nothing to you? Well yes, I know that, but still… power to the open-source! Besides, you forget I’ve converted to the dark side! Linux!
As standard on ubuntu, it has 2 media players (Movie Player, and Rhythmbox Music Player). Neither apeal to me much. I had to apt-get install VLC straight away for watching movies, and I’ve stuck with Rhythmbox Music Player for music – it lets me play music from Last.fm, and manages music with a library. Songbird seems to be a treat to the eyes (and the ears), it also brings something I thought was not possible… Firefox (or at least the gecko engine) browser integeration, and all things music all in one app.
I’ll put it into context, I didn’t think Ronald Jenkees would be a highly know artist. I mean he’s a YouTube guy who made his own album and distributes it himself via his site (and now amazon.com as MP3 downloads). But sure enough, his album was regnoised in the mashTape addon section at the bottom:
Now before you say hey that’s cheating, that isn’t in-built into the software!, technically it isn’t. I left everything as default during the install (not really an install on linux, but I digress), so unless you unticked it… you’ll have it as standard.
Anywho! As I was saying, mashTape! At first glance, it seems to pull information from the internet based on the currently playing artist/song. It shows information about the artist from [Last.fm | MusicBrainz | Freebase], Lists reviews from [Amazon], News from [Digg | Google News | Hype Machine | MTV Music News], Photos from [Flickr] and Videos from [MTV Music Videos | Yahoo Music | YouTube]. Those are default values obviously, configuratable in the Preferances. Also, bare in mind that I assume it pulls information from sources that has data which is why I’ve used | character, in programming you might know this as being the OR operator and this is why I’ve used it.
I’m currently looking into addons, because at the end of the day thats why you get an application with addon (or plugin) support. To customise it to your liking. Ones that have caught my attension so far are: Now Playing List (for the right panel) and FireTray (a system tray extension for linux). Themes? Oh yes please! I wish Foxkeh was ported to Songbird, but alas it isn’t yet (or maybe I haven’t looked hard enough yet). Either way, much everyone’s favourite browser, there’ll be something to tickle everyone’s fancy. Below is a picture of the addon manager in preferences:
One cool addon that also comes with Songbird by default is called “Concert”, and guess what that might do? Yep, it lists upcoming concerts based on artists in your library. Brilliant! Even more exciting is the fact that if you leave it to just show concerts based on your library, it shows the number of upcoming concerts in brackets, so you’ll always know if something new is happening! Sadly, I have only one artist in my library so it showed me this message:
BUT on the upside, you can set it to show all concerts coming soon in your area:
Okay, onto the next topic: Ubiquity for Firefox (addon).
If you haven’t heard about it already, well then you should click the link and watch the videos. It’s basically trying to make browsing more intuitive, more language based, and being able to display/use/manipulate data the way you want it. Rather then me rant on, watch the videos and you’ll see for yourself. :)
I’ve known about Ubiquity for about a year, but they’ve finally made a prototype of it! If your interested, give it a try. Head on down to the Mozilla Addon page for Ubiquity. I’ve currently installed it myself, and need to restart my browser to try it. So this is me signing off, and I hope you enjoy my findings/review. :)
Songbird Images:
