This cool little application as brought to my attention by Steve. Its an application designed to take you automatically to the Amazon MP3 Store from iTunes. The idea behind this is that you can usually get the MP3 a lot cheaper on Amazon, as a result you can save some money. A simple little application which could save you a lot of money in the long run.

The app is called Advantageous MP3, its a small iTunes script and application working in conjunction with the iTunes Store. Every time you search for a song on iTunes and go to the specific product page you can then you Advantageous to quickly send you to the Amazon Store. The script runs from the script menu (Duh!), once as you click it, it will take a couple of seconds for it to find the correct URL and open Amazon in your web browser where you can then download the MP3 for a lot less.

There are a couple of problems with this program. For instance it only works with the USA store. As a result any one from any other store will not be able to use it. As well as this you also have to be on the specific page for each song, otherwise it has problems finding the right tune. These are only small problems which I think will be fixed and improved in future issues.

I wish I thought of this program/app since it is really good an pretty useful. However I don’t see how using the search on Amazon is that hard. Try it out and see what you think.

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I have been meaning to do this post for a long while now but I have never got round to it. The iTunes visualiser is a really interesting feature for iTunes 8. Its a big upgrade from the previous version. Accompanying the upgrade is a new set of controls. These controls change how the visualiser looks and works. If you are new to iTunes you may not know many of these keys. This post will hopefully example them to you.

? Toggle Help

This shows, as in the image above the help list, useful if you forget a shortcut.

M Change Mode

Changes how the visualiser looks, its basically changes between different types of swirls.

P Change Palette

The colour of the visualiser.

I Display Track Information

Shows a heads up display of the current track with album art and other track information.

C Toggle Auto Cycle

Cycles between the different visualisations, if you like one particular theme you press this button.

F Toggle Freeze Mode

Freezes the visualiser, it doesn’t do any movements other than panning the camera.

N Toggle Nebula Mode

Turns on or off the cloud in the background.

L Toggle Camera Lock

Locks the camera position. If you press F and L not a lot happens.

If you want to take iTunes a bit further I recommend iPod & iTunes For Dummies its a good book and I have featured a couple of the tips and tricks before.

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This little Terminal trick seems to be whizzing around the Internet at the moment, I might as well show it to you if you haven’t already seen it. If you have used iTunes at all you will know that there is a star rating system for songs. Each star is out of 5 and can only be a whole star. With this little hidden preference option, you can now add stars which are equal to a half, enabling you to have a 10 star rating system in effect. Its simple.

To access this setting close iTunes and open Terminal. Inside it copy and paste or type the following.

defaults write com.apple.iTunes allow-half-stars -bool TRUE

Its that simple. When you open iTunes again you will be able to add half ratings. To add such a rating slowly drag from left to right on the rating dots. You will be able to see the half come into effect. If you are very skilled with the mouse you can click in the center of the star or slightly to the left. This half rating system works with pretty much any star rating options in iTunes except on the right click menu.

If you want to turn this option off you can type the following into Terminal.

defaults write com.apple.iTunes allow-half-stars -bool FALSE

Restart iTunes for it to take effect. I haven’t tested this but I think the half stars will remain, you just wont be able to add new half star ratings.

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