Stephen Lau wrote: > Dick Hoogendijk wrote: > >> On Sun, 23 Mar 2008 12:49:19 -0700 (PDT) >> ken mays <maybird1776 at yahoo.com> wrote: >> >> >> >>>> Steve Lau said: >>>> We're planning to push Songbird 0.5 out on Monday or >>>> Tuesday of next >>>> week - probably easiest to wait for 0.5 final and >>>> then make a build based off of that. >>>> >>>> >>> Great! SongBird 0.5RC2 is simply awesome. Let's make >>> this rock on OpenSolaris distros. >>> >>> >> And why is songbird so much better than rhythmbox that is provided by >> gnome already on opensolaris? >> >> >> > One benefit is that because of the exception we add to the GPL, Songbird > can be distributed alongaside binary GStreamer plugins like the MP3 > codec Sun has licensed for Solaris. > > <snarky> > plus we embedded a web browser! > </snarky> > > ;-) > in all seriousness, there are other benefits. I'd encourage you to take > a look at songbirdnest.com for a more detailed list. Here's a couple of > points of distinguishing features: > * Mozilla extension system allows for easy extensions & theming. See my > mashTape extension for example: > http://addons.songbirdnest.com/extensions/download/780 (download and > then install it into Songbird) > This is a bunch of retardedly simple and easy Javascript that hits up a > bunch of various websites for contextual information surrounding the > artist and track you're listening to. Namely it pulls in upcoming > concerts, Flickr footage, YouTube videos, lyrics, bio, etc. This was so > easy to write, it's absurd. (seriously look at the code - it's ugly > since it was my first Songbird extension, but you can see it's pretty > simple) > > * Has a Webpage API, which allows the media player to be addressed via > websites. Why is this interesting? Because it allows websites to > integrate and enumerate your media player. e.g., go to my blog here: > http://whacked.net/explore > Start playing a track and you'll see it pulls up cover art, tags, & > similar artists from last.fm on the left hand side. On the right hand > side, it's building a tag cloud of your library's artists. This is all > done via the webpage API. What makes this interesting is that websites > like music stores can build in the same level of integration that places > like iTunes + iTunes Store have.... Apple has built a really smooth > experience if you: > a) Use an iPod > b) Use iTunes > c) Buy from Apple's iTunes Store > Change any of those 3 variables, and you lose the experience. > Songbird's strength of talking to any device, and any website and > allowing that same level of integration is certainly one thing I find > compelling. > > cheers, > steve > > Songbird work with Podcasts? I use UC Berkeley, MIT, and a few misc tech podcasts with iTunes. (ITMS URL is just authenticated HTTP with a null session I think... there's no login for these)
James
