I think I may have found a media player that I actually like on Windows: Musik.

It’s a cross-platform program, but I think I’ll be sticking to Rhythmbox on Linux just because it’s more polished and follows the HIG very closely. That makes it more consistent with the other apps I use, which is good =)

However, I’ve been using Windows for developing SharpMenu and I have been at a loss for a media player to use. Apple’s iTunes is a very nice program, but it just seems clunky and out-of-place on my desktop. It doesn’t help that re-sizing is so slow either. Winamp just doesn’t stand up to the might that is Rhythmbox/iTunes, though I used to like it, it just doesn’t cut it now. I’ve also tried foobar 2000, which is what I settled on for a while before I found Musik. Foobar is fast and uncluttered, things I like. However, I found myself missing the searching power and speed of iTunes, so it was never quite there.

Keith writes a post over at asterisk* about how web standards are now second nature, that, to him, other methods just don’t come to mind when designing a web page. Whilst I don’t want to sound egotistic about the whole thing, I’d say his sentiments are pretty much what I was getting at when I said that using standards is just easier for me; they’re now second nature to me aswell.

A popular indie record label? Selling their tracks online at very decent prices, you say? Discounts when you buy full albums? Warp Records have a pretty cool online music store with proper, non-digital-rights-managed mp3s of most if not all of their collection. The rest of the record industry, take note.

They want to steal my money and I’ll be damned if they can’t have some of it with my blessing.

Maybe this Rob Love desktop integration lark is progressing faster that I thought. Latest news is that gnome-volume-manager is checked into the Gnome CVS repository. This little baby handles things like auto-mounting removable media, such as CDs and Compact Flash cards, when you insert them rather than this task having to be carried out manually. It also holds support for autorun of programs upon inserting of the media.

Whilst I’m not a particular autorun-fan, it’s things like this that will make general Linux usage easier for the masses. The ones that couldn’t care less that the reason they cannot use their new digital camera is because they have to mount it first. Gnome-volume-manager will mount it for you, copy the files to a folder and pop-up a Nautilus window with your new photos in. Which is an autorun feature I would use.

I read a post at Whitespace today. It’s about why Scrivs uses web standards and cares about things such as Information Architecture and accessibility when designing websites; whilst most of the web designing population still knock up any old rubbish in Dreamweaver or Frontpage. For each argument for standards, he could put up another against. Seems like there is some kind of balance here? I don’t think so.

With many things, there is an easy, hackish way to do a job that just gets it done. Not perfectly, but in a way that looks okay. If you are willing to take more time to learn the proper technique, your finished item will be better in some way; perhaps more robust, more beautiful or just more rewarding. I believe that web design is at this level.