Music

iTunes 8.1 brought us some snazzy improvements to Party Shuffle iTunes DJ and the iPhone's Remote app. That wasn't the only iPhone-related improvement, however, as Ars Techica notes, there's a new feature that used to be reserved for the iPod Shuffle that you can now use for the iPhone: Autofill.

Autofill essentially lets you just fill up the empty space on your iPhone with some randomly chosen music (you can choose to leave some space open for installing apps and the like later on). As somebody who's not really into constantly creating playlists and managing albums, it's a nice option. A nice option that's squirreled away in a pretty difficult to find place.

After the break, we walk you through the steps (courtesy of the Ars Article) screenshot-by-screenshot.

CNet takes a look, 6 years later, at Steve Jobs' 2003 interview with Rolling Stone Magazine and the checklist of predictions -- make that accomplishments -- is impressive. Then again, Steve Jobs did make his name, and Apple's, with just that kind of market savvy:

Sonos is a "multi-room music system" that lets you wirelessly stream music to any "zone" in your house either independently or synchronized together using a centralized controller. And, oh yeah, that centralized controller can be an iPhone or iPod Touch.

Chad, with the help of his friend, gave us a first look at using Sonos with the iPhone in lieu of its traditional controller, and raised some great pros (total iPhone control of all music, in every room, of your Sonos-enabled home) and cons (iPhone relegated merely to control, and not leveraged for the media-powerhouse it is in its own right as well) about the experience. So great, in fact, that when Sonos offered TiPb a limited-time demo to test it out, I jumped at the chance.

Since I'm not a Sonos user, not an audiophile, and not particularly interested in struggling anymore with complicated setup procedures, I thought it would be ideal to approach this from a new-user perspective, and one used to the iPhone ecosystem where things (often) "just work".

How did it go? Find out after the break!

[This is an iPhone blog App vs. App review! Last week, we ran our Google Earth vs. Earthscape showdown, with Google Earth scoring the win. But which commenter won an iTunes gift certificate? Congratulations musicobsession! Want your chance to win the winning app this week? Comment below!]

Have you ever had a song running on infinite loop in your brain but can't quite place the name or artist? What about those times you are in a store or in your car and you hear a song that you really like, but you have no idea what the name of the song or artist is? Fortunately, there are two excellent FREE apps for your iPhone, Shazam and Midomi, that can help you name the song and artist, watch the music video, and even buy the song. How do they compare? Read on for App vs. App, music tagging edition!