Kung-Tunes - Post your iTunes listening habits to the web
May 05, '03 10:11:00AM
Contributed by: robg
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I spent much of my time this weekend working on a new site for our family pages. The original site was pure HTML, and as a result (you know what's coming), it was never updated. So this weekend I installed something like 12 different blogs on my OS X box and started playing around with them. After much research, I decided that Textpattern was the package that best fit my needs. But that's a different story (or a future Pick of the Week, perhaps).
In the course of setting up Textpattern, I was browsing their forums and stumbled across a post explaining how to put iTunes song information on your Textpattern page using an application called Kung-Tunes. Kung-Tunes has been previously hinted here, but I'd never seen it (full proof that I no longer have the time to try absolutely every program that gets mentioned!).
After downloading Kung-Tunes and playing with its capabilities, I came away impressed enough to make it this week's Pick of the Week. Using a template, you can create an HTML file that gets updated each time your song changes (or on a schedule you specify). You control what information (track, artist, etc.) gets presented, as well as how many songs are presented. Since the file you're creating is straight HTML, you can embed tables, formatting, etc., to really make some sharp looking output. The forum post I was reading even explained how to include URLs for the CDDB, so the songs, artists, and albums are all linked back to informational pages. Once created, the file is then transferred to your webserver via FTP or other methods.
Kung-Tunes has a few limitations, mainly imposed by AppleScript and iTunes itself -- you can't post lists of songs if your library and songs live on your iPod, and iTunes AppleScript support of the Music Store is currently missing. But that's about all I ran across during my use this weekend.
Kung-Tunes may not be the most important application ever released, but it's a fun way to add some dynamic content to your website, as long as you're willing to tell the world what type of music you listen to!
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