Smart iTunes playlists help with language lessons
Dec 16, '05 06:17:00AM
Contributed by: vitaming
I use my iPod to listen to language lessons during my morning commute. Since I could never remember whether I was on Lesson 16 or 17, I was constantly having to listen to the first couple of minutes of the lesson to be sure I wasn't doing a repeat, or even worse, skipping a lesson. iTunes Smart Playlists came to the rescue:
- Create a Smart Playlist called "_Lessons"
- Set the first criterion to "Album equal to Name of the appropriate album"
- Set the second criteron to "Play Count is 0". (You can also use the Last Played date if you're working through them a second time.)
Now, when I drive to work, I just push the center button on my iPod four times and like magic, I am listening to the correct lesson. This works for two reasons:
- Putting the underscore at the front of the playlist name ensures that it's always at the front of the list.
- The criteria for the playlist ensure that the first item on the playlist is always the next lesson that I haven't listened to.
Two caveats: First, make sure that you connect the iPod to your computer every night. Otherwise, the playlist won't get updated to remove the old lesson. Second, make sure that you don't forget to stop the player after the lesson. Otherwise, the iPod will continue to play more lessons, removing them from the Smart Playlist, and this is a mess to clean up. (I've found using the Sleep Timer to be helpful for this purpose.)
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