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m3u playlists are used often on the Net to stream
music. Our own InferNote does this, and many other sites and
applications do as well.
M3U2iTunes is a helper application which overcomes the
problems iTunes has with m3u playlists.
iTunes, when downloading an m3u playlist, places all songs
scattered throughout the main library (rather than, say, creating a
playlist and organizing the stream tracks in it).
M3U2iTunes simply creates a single playlist named "M3U Internet
Stream" and places all songs from the downloaded m3u playlist into
the M3U Internet Stream playlist.
M3U Internet Stream is always used as the target for m3u playlists.
Rather than creating a new playlist each time, the M3U Internet Stream
playlist is removed and recreated (so you won't have a huge mess of new
playlists in your iTunes libraries).
There is a Macintosh and a Windows
version of M3U2iTunes. Each requires iTunes 4.5 or higher.
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Macintosh
The Macintosh version of M3U2iTunes is an AppleScript application, built
using XCode. To install it:
- Download
M3U2iTunes1.1.zip
- Double click on the file once it's downloaded to extract M3U2iTunes
- Copy M3U2iTunes to your Applications folder
- Select a .m3u file (hopefully you have one on your desktop or some
similar location!) in the Finder, and select File->Get Info
- Change "Open with" to M3U2iTunes (you may have to browse
to find it) (see picture)
- Press the "Change All" button to make all .m3u files open
with M3U2iTunes (see picture)
Note that you may have to double click on an .m3u file to launch
M3U2iTunes before it will work in Safari. This is due to new
security in OS X - you'll be warned that this is the first time the
application has run and be given the choice to proceed or not.
M3U2iTunes on Macintosh automatically moves the .m3u file to the Trash
once it's been added to iTunes.
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To uninstall M3U2iTunes, simply drag it to the Trash. You'll want to
(probably) redo the association between .m3u files and iTunes in this case, so
find a .m3u file (probably in the Trash since that's where M3U2iTunes will have
been putting them), select it and then choose File->Get Info in the
Finder. Change Open with back to iTunes and press the "Change
All" button.
Windows
The Windows version of M3U2iTunes is a C++ application which makes use of the
iTunes COM for Windows SDK to drive iTunes. To install it:
After the install is complete, all m3u files should be associated with M3U2iTunes. If you double
click on an m3u file (or download one over the Net), it will cause M3U2iTunes to
be launched, which will in turn start iTunes, put all of the songs into the M3U
Internet Stream playlist and start it playing.
To uninstall M3U2iTunes, simply use Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel.
Well...here I am after the WWDC, waiting for my 7am flight out of SFO. What did I learn?
Apple is switching to Intel processors. This should just plain not matter to the average user (although all of the usual pundits are desperately trying to make it matter. Lets face it: your mother doesn't care whether her computer has a G5 PowerPC or a Pentium, as long as it works. And Apple is going to extraordinary lengths to make sure it will work, from adding a PowerPC translation layer (Rosetta), universal binaries (so that devleopers can deliver one binary for both processors) and just making it really really simple for developers to transition.
It doesn't matter, except that we'll likely see (eventually) somewhat faster systems (notably in Apple's laptop offerings). Should this stop you from buying a Mac now if you were already planning to? Probably not. Lets face it, two years from now your processor would likely have been outdated already, regardless of the switch.
Interesting note: you know you're getting old when the Apple guys felt they needed to spend 15 minutes explaining what big endian and little endian means. And only you and a few other people seemed to be bored during the explanation.
Recommended reading on the transition: Going for Broke
Dashboard turns out to be Apple's attempt at a personal "portal". Remember portals? They were going to take over the world, oh, back in 2000 or so. They didn't. Dashboard is prettier though than portals we've seen in the past but will still suffer from the usual portal-ly problems like lack of useful content and broken plugins (i.e. widgets) as developers rediscover the inherent problems of screen-scraping HTML content. Widgets are, however, extremely easy to write, and the widget framework is very friendly to such tasks as running a shell script or command line executable and wrapping the output in a pretty UI.
Spotlight will eventually make hierarchy folder structures obsolete. This isn't just my prediction. There's no excuse for any application not to provide a spotlight plugin for their document types. It's just that easy to write one.
I learned how to make an application installer. It's easy. Sadly, there's no uninstall. Yeah, I couldn't believe it either.
The WebKit technology is simply amazing, especially with the Tiger additions like WebArchives. These guys produce really well thought out technologies.
My personal pet peeves from the conference (and from most conferences I've attended):
- people who walk around a densely crowded show floor with open, full cups of coffee. The lids are there for a reason. You will spill the thing all over yourself and probably some others when some other situationally unaware developer type slams into you.
- people who insist on sitting on the edges of the rows of seats while the rest of the row is empty. You aren't so important that you need a quick escape after the session. Really. I mean it. No one likes climbing over you to get a seat and you'll probably get an open cup of coffee dumped on you.
It was a fun conference.
