Open source yum cha

By David M Williams
Wednesday, 05 September 2007 09:42

Open Source

Described by some as the greatest media player ever, Amarok (not Amarak or Amorak but Amarok) itself professes to help you “rediscover” your music. These emotive platitudes are well-merited; Amarok is a versatile and intuitive music player. It successfully conveys loads of information at a glance without giving the feeling of a cluttered, cramped screen.

In a similar fashion to iTunes, Amarok’s list of available media includes sortable title, artist, album and personal rating columns. The track currently being played is clearly highlighted, along with an on-screen audio spectrum and play and volume controls.

Quite unlike iTunes, however, Amarok displays a context sensitive pane with relevant information on the selected item. This includes integration with Wikipedia, which is possibly a first for a desktop application. Other nice touches are that Amarok will use your play history to recommend other tracks you may like, and will upload your statistics to social Web 2.0 site last.fm, allowing you to subscribe to music streams which should appeal to your tastes.

Amarok isn’t just rippling with features; it also looks great and is packed with eye candy. And, for many, best of all, it doesn’t just play music, it also helps maintain external, portable media players – most notably the Apple iPod. Apple don’t provide any official version of iTunes for Linux but happily thanks to open source software, users of the popular free operating system can still gain maximum enjoyment from their iPod. MP3 players from Creative and iRiver are also supported, as are generic USB-based MP3 devices. Recent blog entries show creative users also seeking innovative ways to control Amarok via Bluetooth-enabled mobile phones and PDAs.