I am the ghost of groovymother.com. Woooooo!

This is an old page from Rod Begbie's blog.

It only exists in an attempt to prevent linkrot. No new content will be added to this site, and links and images are liable to be broken. Check out begbie.com to find where I'm posting stuff these days.

Filed under 'itunes'

July 9, 2010

Requiem

Current cutting-edge DRM removal for iTunes store purchases. Can theoretically be used to unlock HD video purchases so they can be played in full res on Xbox 360s. I imagine.

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May 17, 2008

I Love Stars

Lightweight menu-bar app for OSX which displays, and lets you edit, the star rating for the current track in iTunes.

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February 22, 2008

CoverSutra

Got this as part of MacHeist recently, and dismissed it as “pointless eyecandy”. I couldn’t be more wrong — While it is graphically-lovely, it allows for keyboard control of iTunes (including tasks like rating tracks) and is a lower-memory last.fm client than the official last.fm client. Added to my Login Items!

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June 2, 2007

Call Me Fishmeal.: NEWS FLASH! Adobe Hides Customer Information!

Sums up how I feel about the whole fucking stupid “email addresses stored in iTunesPlus files” storm in a teacup. I’m ashamed to be an EFF supporter sometimes.

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May 18, 2007

Moody - Mac OS X app to mood tag your music in iTunes

Tag your tunes by mood, then shuffle away for the right mix. Would be interesting to see if there’s a consistent way to share moods across users…

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April 2, 2007

Apple Unveils Higher Quality DRM-Free Music on the iTunes Store

Apple will be selling DRM-free music from EMI next month. Pitched as “higher-quality” (256kbps AAC) to justify the price increase. The interesting statistic once this launches is going to be the number of people who choose the lower-cost DRMed version.

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March 16, 2007

DockArt

Replace the iTunes icon in the dock with the coverart of the currently playing track. Nice.

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February 6, 2007

Apple - Thoughts on Music

Steve Jobs publicly calls for the record companies to drop their requirement for DRM on online music sales: “Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. […] This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat.”

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January 15, 2007

rc3.org: Defining your music collection

Interesting thought: Is your “music collection” just your audio files, or is it all the ratings and playlists and stuff that go along with it? Is Apple’s DRM less of a lock-in than just the time spent organising your music *just so* in iTunes?

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January 5, 2007

Singles chart set to go retro | The Guardian | Guardian Unlimited

This weekend, the UK charts will switch to including sales of all digital tracks, not just those marked as “singles”. As a result, album tracks and one-hit wonders are likely to hit the Top 100. Anything that gets The Proclaimers into the charts *has* to be a good thing.

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December 13, 2006

iTunes sales are NOT plummeting! Press credibility, on the other hand . . .

Tsk. I should have known better than to link to an Orlowski post on The Reg.

October 16, 2006

The Filter

App that works with iTunes to build up “smart” playlists from your library. Seems to be entirely metadata based (no fingerprinting), and limited to your existing library. Giving it a spin now.

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October 10, 2006

Qloud

Some kind of weird audioscrobbler-type thing, that allows you to deal with Tags inside iTunes. Or something. Their site is incomprehensibly flashy and slidey and swoopy and I only got five hours sleep last night.

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September 12, 2006

March 21, 2006

BBC NEWS | French MPs vote to open up iTunes

Well, it’s the law. Apple either have to open up their DRM to other devices and music stores, or shutdown the iTunes Music Store in France. I’ll put $50 on the latter. (Update: OK, it’s not the law yet: It has to pass France’s Senate yet. Stupid multi-house parliamentary systems)

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January 31, 2006

Blogzilla: DRM-a-go-go

‘DRM-protected files exclusively released through iTunes … appear in unprotected form on P2P networks 180 seconds later’. Well, that makes screwing your honest customers worthwhile.

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December 6, 2005

iTunes Signature Maker

This brilliant little applet analyses your iTunes library and based on your listening behaviour, patches together a short “signature” of your music taste. I’ll upload mine in a moment.

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About This Site

This is an archive of groovmother.com, the old blog run by Rod Begbie — A Scottish geek who lives in San Francisco, CA.

I'm the co-founder of Sōsh, your handy-dandy guide for things to do in San Francisco this weekend.