Murphy's dashboard

Hehe. That's the sign of a true programmer- you couldn't leave any tag left open.

That sounds like a great idea if it would ease the process of upgrading Songbird's engine. Is there a website where you can read about the new features and changes to Gecko? – Murphy, on August 19, 2009 14:08

Oh, I didn't think about that. I wonder if they ever plan on it? They are based on Mozilla code and it seems like they should have supported them from the beginning if they plan to. – Murphy, on August 18, 2009 14:30

oh, perfect timing Radiohead: http://radiohead.com/deadairspace/ind...

And thanks Tim. Maybe they will have hats in the Songbird store one day and you can have a non-fictional one. =D – Murphy, on August 17, 2009 22:33

That mockup looks really good; however, whenever people talk about incorporating video features into Songbird, I always feel that audio and video are different enough that there should be separate programs to deal with them respectively. You should check out the open-source program Miro, because it is made to work wonders with web video sites like YouTube.

I hope that one day, Songbird and Miro should form an alliance and work together to push forward media on the web.

I understand that we wouldn't want to enable people to unintentionally break the law, but with all products that have both legal and illegal uses, it is the responsibility of people who use them to know the laws where they live and not break them. After all, a digital audio player like Songbird is probably being used by the majority of users to play some illegally-obtained copyrighted music in the first place, but it shouldn't be Songbird's responsibility that the program can be used in this way.

If we are worried that not enough people are familiar with their country's copyright laws and might unintentionally break them, the best solution would be to prompt users with a message the first time they share or stream music. It could just let them know that it is illegal in some countries to share or stream music that is copyrighted, and that they should be aware of what they are doing. Instant messaging and email clients don't even bother showing a message like this when you are sending files, even ones that are clearly digital audio and video files, so I think it would be a good gesture.

As far as actually getting in trouble for unknowingly sharing a copyrighted files through direct transfer, it is extremely unlikely that it would happen. Programs like these make encrypted file transfers from one person to another, which means the only other party that could even know that the transfer took place would be your ISP, and they might not even be able to see what file was actually transferred. I don't believe anyone has ever been sued for sharing copyrighted files directly through an instant messaging client. People, such as those getting disconnected in the UK, generally get in trouble by using public P2P programs like bittorrent clients or Limewire, since it is easy for anybody to see what files you are publicly sharing.

Yet if torrent support is added to Songbird, it will probably present even less of an opportunity for someone to unknowingly get caught committing a crime. To download illegal files through the bittorrent protocol, the user would have to seek out a torrent file in the first place from sites that are clearly not shining examples of legal music distribution. Those who plan on using the torrent features for legal uses would know to get files from the musician's own websites or websites that share public domain work and most likely don't feature advertisements for adult friend finder =P. – Murphy, on August 17, 2009 22:04

I posted a feature request on Bugzilla for native-looking default feathers in Songbird: http://bugzilla.songbirdnest.com/show...

Hopefully some of these ideas will help if the team ever redesigns the interface.

I posted a feature request on Bugzilla for native-looking default feathers in Songbird: http://bugzilla.songbirdnest.com/show...

I posted a feature request on Bugzilla for native-looking default feathers in Songbird: http://bugzilla.songbirdnest.com/show...

Hopefully it will get some official support and there will be a real Aero feather one day.

The first mockup is the original one that I made, and the second mockup was an evolution of ideas that led to removing the text from the title bar. I think the first design would be a more practical because it is now most programs are still designed, but I have come to like the second design a lot as well since the title bar text - the currently playing song's information - is already displayed in the control panel.

In either case, I think that Songbird should try to have a more-native appearance to separate itself from iTunes. These mockups were based on mockups of future versions of Firefox, and I think Songbird would benefit from an interface redesign as well. – Murphy, on August 17, 2009 04:55

One idea that could help sharing songs, making collaborative playlists, listening parties - anything that requires multiple people to somehow have access to the same songs - would be the ability to have songs in your library that link to files on the web rather than local files. It was suggested in this thread a while ago: http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/t...

When you go to a website with audio files on it and Songbird shows them in the bottom service pane, in addition to the "Download" button, it could have a button that says "Add stream to library".

Basically, it would show up in your library just like any other song, but when you double click it, it would be streamed instead of played off of your hard drive. When you have the "source" column showing in your song list, it would have a URL for the audio file of the song instead of a location on your hard drive. It could always have a little download button next to it in your library in case you ever decide that you want to store it locally.

Linking to tracks stored in the cloud would help people play their libraries on netbooks with small hard drives, and also make it easier for people to collaborate and share songs, because they could both work with files stored externally.

Ooh, I didn't know a topic like this existed. I made a few mockups in this topic showing what Songbird could look like all glassy.

Here are two different mockups, just showing different versions of what title bars could look like.

Who's that suspicious-looking bird giving a presentation on a listening history page mockup...

=D – Murphy, on August 16, 2009 17:37

That's a great idea. A site called Muxtape used to be a really cool place where you could make public mixtapes, but I think they shut down because it didn't have rights to stream the songs that it hosted. Here is a screenshot of what it used to look like: http://www.subdrivemedia.com/muxtape.png

And I just found this demo of a site in progress that is very similar: http://opentape.fm/mixtape/ – Murphy, on August 16, 2009 17:35

* sharing playlists amoung friends would definitely be ace, but what about publically? There could be a central bank of playlists, tagged by users which you could search through by tag, track, artist, genre etc etc in order to find a good selection. Then maybe an option to provide spotify links to tracks which you don't have locally. Option to build playlists colaboratively with people you've given access to.

That is one nice looking CD collection! How many years has it been brewing? I do sometimes enjoy playing around with physical music formats; I have even gotten a few of my favorite albums on vinyl in my life to spend some quality time with them.

P.S. I really enjoy cookies and milk as well. – Murphy, on August 16, 2009 17:26