Fun New Ways To Waste Time Using iTunes.

Sometimes you get an idea and just run with it. This idea was like that. I got it, I ran with it, and I got lost.

Worse, I was stuck with an idea that was just wrong in so many ways. How? Greed.

The idea was simple. I wanted to review music from Apple’s iTunes Store, promote it on Mac360. Cool, huh?

Then, I thought, “Hey, Alex. How about reviews and then link them to the Mac360 Store (it’s really Amazon, you know)? A few extra bucks here and there would get us that extra bandwidth we need.

So I did a search and found a number of Mac utilities that took playlists from iTunes and built web pages. Some even built links to Amazon and the iTunes Store. Greed was in business.

The value vixen was on a mission, a roll, with an idea in hand and looking toward a solution with a monetary prize. Surprise!! Life should be that easy.

What I found first was iTunes2Web. Did I mention that it’s free? Sometimes I zig when I should zag. Or, go for free when I should keep looking.

In this case, I finally figured out it was probably better to ditch the idea of fame and fortune and search for a Mac utility you could use rather than one I could use to get you to part with your money.

At the simplest of levels iTunes2Web does what it says it’ll do. It exports an iTunes music library or a playlist and creates a web page.

The web page even resembles iTunes in a way that Billy Bob Thornton resembles an appropriate mate for Angelina Jolie.

The interface was a bit cumbersome as I have lots of playlists in iTunes. The exported web pages looked nice, though spartan; almost sterile. Sometimes the links to iTunes Store and Amazon worked, other times not.

Besides, the idea was to put my reviews and playlists up on Mac360 so you could see what music I listen to and be attracted to the store to buy your own copy. Amazingly, I had a better idea when I decided to become a mommy, and you know what’s involved in that.

After a lot of wasted time trying to figure out how to do what I wanted to do with music playlists and Amazon and Mac360, I came up with an even better idea.

Declare victory and leave. In the future that decision may be called the “USA’s Iraq Disengagement Plan” but for now it’s mine.

My search did turn up some interesting Mac utilities which are worth a look or two. For example, Musicast turns your Mac and your iTunes playlists into a broadcast system on the internet.

This is a remarkably simple application which lets your Mac broadcast your music. Anyone with a web browser or iTunes or an RSS reader can access your tunes.

As you might expect with such sophistication, Musicast tracks who’s listening to your music, what they listened to, and so on. It’s really just a Podcast of your music over the internet, except you don’t have to talk.

It’s remarkable what ideas Mac people come up with these days. Your iTunes playlist and your iTunes music can be broadcast to others as a Podcast and they can listen to what you listen to.

Why? That’s the one part of that whole idea that I haven’t figured out yet. At least my original idea for music reviews and playlists linked to Amazon from Mac360 had the all important element of greed.

Musicast looks very cool. It actually seems to work. It’s not really expensive considering that you become your own Podcast DJ (without all that messy DJ talking stuff). I’m still asking myself “why?” Am I missing the obvious?