OSXFAQ Mac OS X Tip-of-the-Day  

iTunes - Freeware

Here are a few useful applications to accompany iTunes.

(1) X-Tunes

"X-Tunes is a free utility to to control iTunes without bringing iTunes to the foreground, or having the iTunes window on screen.

Contrary to iTunes or other controllers, X-Tunes does not display a window permanently on screen, but only when you press a given key combination (Apple+Space by default). This window appears in front of all applications so you can click on its buttons while remaining in the current application. As soon as you release the key combination, the window disappears smoothly."

(2) Clutter

"Clutter is a small Mac OS X application that lets you put music CDs on your desktop. You can drag them anywhere -- they're really windows. Line them up neatly or put them in piles, it's your choice. Each one looks like the real CD's cover, and double-clicking it tells iTunes to play that CD.

Think of Clutter as an alternate user interface to your music collection. When deciding what to play next, instead of searching through a huge alphabetical list, let your eye roam over the covers of your favorite CDs and those you've been listening to recently.

There's a main window that shows the CD you're now playing -- the cover picture is looked up automatically from from Amazon.com or from iTunes 4, or you can paste in your own. (You can also export pictures to iTunes 4.) To keep a CD around for easy access, just drag the picture out of the window onto your desktop. Then double-click it whenever you want to play it."

(3) iTunes Capitalizer

iTunes Capitalizer is a Applescript driven by Perl to quickly capitalize each word of selected files in iTunes. For example:

"a song like this" would become "A Song Like This"

Processing songs by Name, Artist, Album, and Genre all at once is achievable as well as individually. This script comes with an installer to make sure that it goes in the right place on your system. You can access the script via the iTunes script menu. Look for: _(NNSW) iTunes Capitalizer

** Hint: hold down "shift" to select multiple categories

You can get information regarding it here:

Or download it directly here:

(4) Malcolm Adams

This site has tips and Apple Scrips for iTunes.

A bonus hint:

Create iTunes RSS feeds using Apple's iTunes Music Store RSS Generator:

Create iTunes links for you web pages using Apple's iTunes Music Store Links maker:

Tested in Mac OS X Panther 10.3.4

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ENJOY !!

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