8BitKid: Living Bit by Bit

My favorite alliterative-loving Linux company, Ubuntu, is gearing up to release version 8.04, aka “Hardy Heron” tomorrow. I have been using Ubuntu intermittently for years now. Usually, I end up playing with the latest version, reveling in the nerdy self-satisfaction of getting to embrace and tweak an open-source OS, getting frustrated by the random quirks, and fleeing back to OS X a week later.

I’ve been testing the release candidate build, and have been quite impressed with a number of tweaks that really add up to a vastly improved OS. The general software includes seem better, and I have had a much more pleasant networking experience. I’ve been eying buying an ultraportable notebook for a long time now, and am hoping to combine this release with one of the new lightweights debuting this summer. So gear up your bandwidth and get prepared to grab the latest Ubuntu build when it goes live. Maybe this creature will be the one that keeps me in the Ubuntu stable.

- feeling anxious? click here to download the release candidate.

Songbird is an open-source media jukebox from the Mozilla Foundation (the people who brought you Firefox). The Songbird team recently released version 0.5 of their player, and I got a chance last night to test it out.

On first glance, you may think that you have just launched a reskinned iTunes that favors a darker color palate. However, there is a great deal more going on under the surface. Songbird does an excellent job of easily importing your existing iTunes library file to make the transition seamless. Once this is completed and you start digging deeper into the application, you begin to discover what truly sets Songbird apart.

First off, the developers have implemented a plugin system similar to Firefox. You can search for and install a variety of plugins to enable a host of functionality like album art, iPod compatibility, and more. This really opens the floodgates to innovation by providing a flexible music player platform.

Additionally, Songbird integrates with music on the web through a tightly integrated browser. I was able to create a playlist, search for a song on The Hype Machine, see not only the page in the browser but also all of the media present on the page in a search results pane, add the song to a playlist, and play it back as if it was locally stored. This notion of having a distributed music library is a phenomenal twist on music management. Now I can scour the web through Songbird for free tunes, add them to a playlist, and now have my music collection stored in the data cloud of the internet. However, this is all contingent on the user having a network connection to work, but Songbird provides an easy method to purchase discovered tracks from Amazon, Amie St., or iTunes.

Songbird has grown a tremendous amount since I first started playing with it back in the 0.1 days. It still has growing up to do, but this build shows the direction the team is taking the product, and it is great to see how well it is maturing. While I am not ready to ditch my iTunes marriage yet, I am starting to be seriously tempted.

- click here to download Songbird 0.5