New webapp SonicSwap hosts your iTunes playlists on the web and streams the music in them free and legally without requiring you to perform tedious file uploads or use any of your computer's upload bandwidth. SonicSwap doesn't host your gigabytes of music files—you just give it your current iTunes playlists, and it pulls the tracks and videos named in them from YouTube, and recreates them in a drag-and-drop web-based version of iTunes. Sign up for a free SonicSwap account, upload your iTunes playlists either via the web site or using an iTunes plug-in, and you can listen to and share your library's playlists (including Smart Playlists) at SonicSwap, which includes video playback of the YouTube clip. Here's a full screenshot what it looks like.

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Tech site ZDNet walks through how to trim the bloat from a fresh install of iTunes on a Windows PC.

The Windows version of iTunes 8 is a 64MB download. (For the sake of comparison, Windows Media Player 11 for Windows XP is just over 24 MB.) The full iTunes 8 installation takes up nearly 200MB of space on a Windows PC. As it turns out, the iTunes installer has been bulking up for the past year or two. Don't be fooled by the filename: iTunes8Setup.exe includes much more than the iTunes client.

The author explains that the iTunes 8 setup installs several drivers, system services, and at least one add-on that are completely unnecessary to the operation of iTunes on your computer. As a workaround, the article details how to extract individual installers from the iTunes setup client so you can install only what you need and want on your computer. iTunes may still take up more than its share of system resources compared to other popular media player alternatives, but at least this way you have a little more control over what programs it installs to your hard drive.

Mac OS X only: By default, when you have iTunes set to automatically organize your music library, it saves the files in an /Artist/Album/Track # Song Title.mp3 format. But, if you don't want that track number stuck in the beginning of your music file names automatically, a quick preference change in iTunes 8 will remove it. Macworld explains that you can fire up Terminal, and type the following commands:

Then, uncheck iTunes' "Keep iTunes Music Folder Organized" preference, apply, and then re-check that option. At that point iTunes 8 will rename all your music files sans track number prefix. Of course, a backup to your collection before letting iTunes do its thing is prudent, just in case the big rename goes awry. How do you name and organise your music? Or do you not even think about it? Let us know in the comments.

Windows only: iTuny is a free plug-in for popular application launcher Launchy that controls music playback and so much more. Once installed, iTuny adds several actions to Launchy that allow you to play, pause, stop, or advance playback, which alone is a nice start. iTuny doesn't stop there, though; you can also rate songs, show track info, set the volume, search your library, create new playlists, display album art, post to Twitter, and more. iTuny also integrates with previously mentioned Snarl to display notifications when you invoke iTuny commands via Launchy. The installation and setup are a little confusing, so keep reading for a closer look at how it works.

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Windows (with iTunes, WinAmp, or KMPlayer): Free plug-in tool MiniTube hunts down music videos from Flash-based video sites and plays them along with your tunes. MiniTube's signature feature is the ability to play the video synced up to your local MP3—in other words, lip-synced to wherever you are in the song when the video starts playing. Its video accuracy depends, of course, on the accuracy of YouTube uploaders (and the video's copyright status), but you can tell MiniTube that a video is wrong and have it re-search, and it can be set to disappear when there's nothing to grab. Check out a video demonstration of MiniTube in action below.

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iTunes 8's new default music visualizer, based on the beautiful Magnetosphere plug-in, has several keyboard shortcuts that customise its look and behavior—not listed in the iTunes help file. Macworld lists them:

• + and -: Increase or decrease the intensity (brightness) of the particles; multiple presses further increase or decrease the intensity.
• A and S: Add or Subtract particles to the visualizer. You can make the visualizer as complex (or sparse) as you wish.
• R: Reset the intensity and particle count to their default values.
• E: When in nebula mode (press N), this greatly accentuates the nebula clouds, making them very easy to see. (If you've used the M key to change modes, you may find that the nebula clouds aren't visible; it seems they're only used in certain modes.)

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Despite iTunes' success, most people—especially those averse to DRM—still don't buy music there. The last thing we need, then, are shortcuts to take us from our music library to the iTunes Store with a single errant click. Since you can no longer disable these links in the iTunes 8 preferences, weblog The Glitch highlights how to tweak iTunes 8 in both Windows and OS X to remove the track arrows that—when clicked—take you to the iTunes Store. All it takes is a simple Terminal command in OS X or editing the iTunesPrefs.xml file in Windows. I still prefer to keep the links around, but I remove their iTunes Store functionality and instead point them at my own library. (E.g., clicking the link next to an artist will filter all songs by that artist.) Here's how that works.

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The iPhone Remote App has updated to support Genius playlists, streamline speaker switching, and update the UI to match the iPhone 2.1 software update. If you've been using your iPhone as a multi-room wireless music remote, you'll definitely want to grab the latest from the iTunes App Store.

Wired's How-To Wiki offers tips on getting better Genius recommendations in iTunes 8 for those readers who don't think the app's all that smart. Included tips: Don't customise your genres, de-select poor matches picked by Genius, and label your imported mulit-CDs with "Disc 1," "Disc 2," etc. Have you wrangled your own Genius into better picks? Tell us how in the comments.

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The latest iPhone software update is now available from iTunes, so plug in that phone and click Update for the numerous smashed bugs, improved signal strength, better battery life, and Genius playlist creation. If you've updated, let's hear what improvements you've noticed in the comments.

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