I finally tried out the Songbird media player (I noticed that it is now available for Linux and that the developers were throwing a party, which I attended). The killer feature is web integration. Browse (Songbird is built on the same platform as Firefox) to a page that links to music or video files or a podcast feed, Songbird displays all available media and allows you to play, subscribe, or add to your media library immediately.
It feels as if there’s no distinction between files on your computer and those on the web. In fact the only gripe I have is that once a file is added to your library from the web, there’s no facility for getting back to the web page you obtained the file from.
Check out the Songbird screencast, which does a good job of demonstrating Songbird’s web features (Songbird is also a good all-around media player).
Screenshot of Songbird 0.2rc3/Linux browsing ccMixter.
[…] So it looks like I’m going to be presenting at the Seneca Free Software and Open Source Symposium later this month. I’ll be presenting about our work on MozCC 2, with a talk titled Little s Semantic: Exploring Metadata About the Web. Who knows, maybe I’ll even work in something about this mythical MozCC for Songbird I’ve heard about ;). […]
I like the application design a lot. It’s still buggy enough that I constantly have to kill and restart it, but otherwise I would use it every day.
It’s been stable for me with lots of use. Sluggish at times, but never to the point of hanging.
[…] I’ll take the rest of the internet. […]
[…] Several video sites are attempting variations on this theme (among them Revver, Lulu.tv, and Metacafe, but as far as I know Jamendo’s is the first attempt in the audio space. One might think an audio site would have a harder time making web advertising work than a video site (videos are usually watched within a web page and can have clickable ad areas or bumpers even if not), but I gather that listening via (usually Flash-based) audio players embedded in web pages is increasingly common (and Jamendo upgraded theirs recently), as will be media players that “play” a web page in a browser interface. […]