OStatic

We've covered VLC Media Player a number of times, and it is now out in a new version 1.0.0, dubbed Goldeneye. You can download it here. It's available for the Mac, Windows and Linux, and has long been one of the best of all media players. Back in April, VideoLAN put out a call for Mac developers, and the Mac version is slicker than ever. You can use VLC Media Player to transcode videos and songs between formats, stream content, and it's well-known for handling almost any format you throw at it.

The open source jukebox and iTunes competitor Songbird is out in a new version 1.2 for Windows, the Mac and Linux, and it's worth getting, even if you're a dedicated iTunes user. There are several new features, described here. It's now much easier to work with files and folders, and there are many new ways to work with Last.fm, especially when discovering new music.

These days, computers and software are central to how a lot of the music that you hear is produced. Many top recording artists use ProTools and other proprietary applications to edit and mix songs, and there are newfound opportunities for garage musicians to make professional quality recordings using customized hardware and software. As noted on the Musician's Friend site, Linux fans with musical abilities may want to take note of the new $499 Indamixx Netbook MKII. It runs a Linux multimedia operating system called Transmission 3.0 that has a pre-loaded, ready-to-go set of applications for editing, mixing, and recording music.

Recently I've come to really like Pandora, the free, automated music recommendation and Internet radio service created by the Music Genome Project. If you haven't tried it, it does an uncanny job of serving up artists and songs you may not have heard of, based on similarities to artists and songs that it already knows you like. Pandora's skill at this is based on how the Music Genome Project indexes over 400 attributes of songs in its database, relying on analyses from human musicians and on algorithms. Now, Livio has a $150 Linux-based Internet radio (shown) that plays back both personalized streams from Pandora, and streams from over 11,000 other stations. Especially for those who like Pandora, this radio looks appealing.

Sure the world of digital music is loaded with copyright sharks, DRM and other undesirables, but it's also increasingly teeming with cool, free open source tools and applications. Do you want to sync iPods and iPhones to any computer anywhere? How about playing Doom on your own customized OS for iPods or most other music players? Do you need customized music library management for multiple platforms, including Linux? Would you like to mix and record original music online with other musicians? How about a free, streaming radio application for your phone that will automate interesting playlists for you, and play while you use other apps? Here are eight great resources for doing all of this and more.