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December 09 An e-mail for the little guy...I found a very cool new product while doing a search for an audio file editor on my favorite shareware/freeware site the other night: Helium Music Manager 2007. It's got all the best features of iTunes, WinAmp, Windows Media Player and SAM Broadcaster wrapped up into one sweet package. I'm not going to go into the entire list of features because, frankly, it's huge. You can read all about it by clicking on the link I provided above. I will say that it supports as many music formats as I've seen (.mp2, .mp3, .MPC, .MP+, .WMA, .FLAC, .FLA, .OGG, .M4A, .M4P, .MP4, .M4B, .APE, .WAV and .WAVE), as well as all the associated tags that go with them (the tag dialog box has over 60 fields for those of us that are particular to the point of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder), album art, lyrics, plugins like last.fm, CDDb and evilLyrics, an auto enqueue/auto DJ feature...I'm here to say that this is one knocked-outta-the-ballpark package for the audiophile in you. But I haven't gotten to the best part yet - when you're done putting it through its paces during your free trial, it only costs $39 and you get the HMM 2008 upgrade for free. **(I know that it sounds like I work for Intermedia, but I honestly have nothing to do with them and I am getting nothing but satisfaction for telling you about HMM. I will provide, from time to time, click through links and ads to Amazon, Office Depot and others. But for the record, if I'm rating a product it will always be one that I have actually used and truly evaluated, and I'll always let you know beforehand if you buying it is going to benefit me in any way, shape or form. I feel that it's the only honest way to get you good information, and then allow you to decide my level of bias before you incorporate that knowledge and follow it.)**
I know this screen shot isn't very clear, but if you click on it you'll be taken right to the information about the "Playlist Browser", which is one of the many views that you can use to see, modify and play your library. As you can see here, the interface is very clean, uncluttered and well organized despite having a metric ton of information and a music player (at the bottom) on it. It does need a database to store all this info in, so make sure that you have either Microsoft Access, Microsoft SQL or MySQL (an open source and completely free data base you can download by following the link to TUCOWS) installed prior to installing HMM.
The only downside that I can see at this point is that there's no iPod support as of yet, and there probably never will be. Apple has a stranglehold on that and as of now you're stuck with their proprietary iTunes application. You would think that old Stevie Jobs and his lackeys would have learned their lesson by now about all that proprietary crap, but it looks like they're testing the definition of insanity by doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result. Note to Mr. Jobs: Get into a 12 step program. "We admitted that we were powerless over innovation - that our business model had become unmanageable"* The first step, Steve, is to recognize that you have a problem. The second is to pick up Bill Gates and all the guys from the anti-virus firms on your way to the meeting. I was unfortunate enough to buy an iPod both for myself and for my oldest son and, although the iPod itself is a great piece of equipment, I can tell you that I am no fan of iTunes for a million different reasons (you can do very little to modify its view to your liking; it's a major resource (memory and CPU) hog; it constantly runs in the background, whether you're using it or not, making it an even bigger resource hog...I could go on and on). All I know is that I'll be buying a different MP3 player here in the very near future, and putting the iPOS on E-Bay as a sort of welcome-to-my-new-career kinda thing. As far as HMM is concerned, I'll be purchasing that as soon as possible. Now, in the spirit of going around the world to get my freakin' point, that leads us back to the blog's title and the accompanying "conversation" below. This is the reply that I sent back to the actual person that answered my feature request (the question I asked about iPod support was in a different e-mail, but answered by the same gentleman). Yes, you read that correctly - I sent in a request for a new feature to be added to HMM and got a real person to send me a helpful, polite and prompt reply back. No auto-responders for these folks! I'm impressed beyond mere words. I took the time to "reverse" the order of the e-mail for your reading ease and pleasure, but it is otherwise re-posted in verbatim. Enjoy. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------- > Dear Steve, Dear Fredrik, I'll have you know that I can see through your thinly-veiled and desperate attempt to keep me from purchasing Helium Music Manager: "No" to extra sort fields; "no" to iPod support. Well, my friend, consider yourself on notice that I shall not be discouraged that easily! You have forced me to take a stand, and as such, I have no choice but to purchase this Music Manager doodad of yours in spite of your diabolical efforts. And as punishment for your insolence, I will be pointing all of my friends, family and associates to your product as well...how do you like those Kiwis (I'm not fond of apples)? In fact, I'll be adding our little conversation to my blog (with your personal info removed, of course) with a link right to your site, so all of my loyal readers can come and buy a copy of their very own. I'll bet you're feeling pretty foolish now, aren't you Mr. I-say-no-to-all-your-requests-man? You're a hard sell, Fred, but so am I. So am I. Steve PS - Please give Mikael and Mangus my best.
*Credit where due - I stole the first step from the AA Big Book and reworded it a little. Steve@Dall-Tech Comments (3)
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