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8Tracks Creates Virtual Mix Tapes
Posted by Lifehacker US Edition at 4:00 AM on August 31, 2008
Web-based service 8tracks remixes 30-minute MP3 playlists for personal listening or sharing with friends. 8Tracks offers all of the basic functionality of previously covered Muxtape, with the additional ability to add artwork and information about the mix itself. Users can browse others' mixes, comment, and view mixes sorted by popularity and freshness. Here is a sample mix I enjoyed listening to while reviewing the site:
iTunes users who aren't heavy checkbox users, selecting songs by checking them off is an easy way to make playlists on the fly (by selecting "Match only checked items" in the Smart Playlist dialog). Macworld points out that you can check or uncheck a list of songs (from a search, or in a playlist, or in your entire library) by Cmd+clicking on any song checkbox in the collection (Ctrl+Click for Windows users). Are you an iTunes checkbox checker-offer? How do you put iTunes checkboxes to good use? Let us know in the comments. For more playlist fun, see our 
Web-based music search tool Mix Turtle creates playlists of songs you find online. Working from an index of millions of songs, Mix Turtle supplies suggestions to your search terms as you enter them. Covering a broad spectrum of time and tastes, Mix Turtle returned impressive results for diverse searches such as Miley Cyrus, Robert Miles, and Miles Davis. Once you find songs you would like to listen to, you simply click on them to start playing or click on the plus symbol next to the song to add it to your playlist. Create an accoung and log in to save your playlists, but a login is not required to use the service. The playback applet has no control for volume or jumping about within the track that is playing, but otherwise the playback is clean and the quality of the tracks high. While not a replacement for more robust service like 
Marking a song as "Loved" or a "Favorite" on music discovery apps like Last.fm and Pandora doesn't help you a whole lot when you want to hear them again. Free mashup site Favtape bridges the gaps between your Last.fm or Pandora profile, track-finding sites like Seeqpod, and the dead-simple interface of a site like 
Mac OS X only: Funes is a one-purpose app for OS X that just might inspire you to start rating songs and getting creative with 
Webapp Muxtape lets you upload MP3's into a streaming playlist for anyone on the internet to hear. Register for a free Muxtape account, and start uploading MP3's (which you have permission to share), and send your Muxtape URL (youraccount.muxtape.com) to others, who can play your tunes directly from the page. Muxtape's interface is bare-bones—no album art and sparse song metadata—and there's no obvious way for listeners to download the tunes you uploaded. Check out 
You've put together the perfect holiday playlist for your office party and don't want anyone to mess with your computer while the music's pumping? The How-To Geek weblog highlights a lesser-known feature of Windows Media Player that allows you to lock the screen in fullscreen mode, enter a 4-digit PIN, and leave your computer safely pumping out tunes. It's not groundbreaking, but I can say that I do wish iTunes had something similar for fullscreen Cover Flow mode.
