SONGBIRD: A BOOT IN ITUNES’ ASS

Before I say a word about Songbird,here is a screenshot to feast your eyes on: Are you done feasting your eyes on it? If you are done then read on.As I said earlier,Songbird was released this morning as a proof of concept.The first word I muttered when I saw it was WOW!!! The shiny black alone won many people over to download it.So,..Songbird is a media player just like Apple’s iTunes (Songbird likes almost exactly like iTunes) but with a twist. Unlike Apple’s iTunes which connects you to one store and makes you buy all your music needs from that store, Songbird gives you many choices in search of a music shop.Songbird allows you to connect to and buy music from a very wide range of shops.Songbird allows you to connect to 9(nine) music stores by default but more are going to be added,I am sure.Also,since Songbird is built on the same platform (XULRunner) as Firefox,Songbird functions as a special web browser that detects available media on websites that you visit.Songbird plays any kind of music file that you can throw at it.Also,Songbird is extensible.Modules called extensions can be added to it to be enhanced.Some people are claiming it is a memory hog and it crashes when you start it and open its window immediately,but that hasn’t yet happened to me.When I start Songbird and I maximise the window immediately,nothing happens.Also,its memory footprint is really small on my pc even though I have lots of processes running.The only time Songbird crashed on my pc was when I tried to change the defualt theme whilst I was playing a music file. Also,another bug i noticed in Songbird is that,sometimes the playback time exceeds the specified time.For example,if I am playing Rammstein’s-Du Hast,the file is shown to be 3 minutes long but sometimes playback goes on for about 30 seconds more.Also,a preferences or another tab should be made available to allow configuration of Songbird because not all users know that you can also edit Songbird by going to about:config Songbird is a proof-of-concept so users shouldn’t expect really high standards from it.Also Songbird is for only Windows right now but versions of it for other OSes are in the making and will be released real soon. Though,i hope it moves beyond a proof of concept really soon. The Songbird website was fatally ravished by the traffic so the website is offline but you can download it on different mirrors.Here is a mirror.Boing Boing had an interview with the leader of the dev team here. PS: You got to love the Songbird logo.It shows a birds with headphones on listening to music and farting.I can only guess why the bird is not smiling and is farting.Here is a picture of the logo.

Technorati Tags: songbird, free, itunes, music, XULRunner, DRM

THE SONGBIRD HAS ARRIVED

Finally,the long awaited release of the Songbird media player has arrived.For you who don’t know what it is(duh),it is a media player built on firefox’s browser engine.It is open source and will run on all platforms but currently runs on only Windows.It is highly customizable with moudules created by users called extensions.I am testing it out and will blog more about it later in the day.It looks and acts like iTunes on steroids. Here is a screenshot of it : Technorati Tags: songbird, open source, media player, itunes, gecko, free,

NEXT-GEN KEYBOARD

That is a picture of the OPTIMUS keyboard.It is a next-gen keyboard which has every key being a stand-alone display showing exactly what it is controlling at the very moment.It is like having a fully customizable keyboard without shelling extra bucks to buy kits and extra keys.Since each key has its own individual screen it can display any image almost instantly.
Here is a shot of the keyboard being used to play quake:

Here’s to hoping that it wouldn’t be that expensive when it comes out.

Damn,I still cant stop drolling.More can be found out about it here or here.

Technorati Tags: next-gen, keyboard,