However commenter Rian from DailySplice.com thinks it should be the other way round: iTunes to become social like MySpace! Rian wrote: "What if the iTunes store was more like MySpace or Last.fm where you were given a little corner of the store and could even promote your favorite bands?"

Here is Rian's full comment:

"Agreed. Last.fm is one of my favs for this. What if you could purchase and sync up your latest playlist onC Last.fm. We're banking on this kind of concept too as we develop our features for podcasts at DailySplice.com.

But I don't think it's time to say goodbye to iTunes. I think it's just time for iTunes to become more social. This seemed like the game plan for Zune when it came out. What if the iTunes store was more like MySpace or Last.fm where you were given a little corner of the store and could even promote your favorite bands? Hmmm... even make commissions off your sales... haha, ok, maybe now I'm dreaming."

Now, however, thanks to an online version of the App Store which scrapes the content of the store in iTunes, you can quickly browse for applications, read reviews, and see screenshots from any computer that has access to the Internet without ever having to open iTunes.

As Amit Agarwal notes, Apple uses a rather cryptic XML format for delivering the pages in iTunes. However, the developers of the online App Store have found a way to decrypt these XML files and render them as regular HTML.

Limitations

Of course, there are some limitations to this approach. You can't, for example, install apps without using iTunes at some point. The online App Store also doesn't have a search function.

Will Apple Shut it Down?

Of course, given Apple's litigious nature, we don't know if this version of the App Store will be around for a very long time, but it's a great resource if you just want to link to an app in the store, for example, without your users having to open the desktop iTunes app (which, after all, is not available on all operating systems).

Of course, this is only a first attempt and we laud the Wikipedia Mobile team for releasing this app as an open-source application. However, the fact that the search field is populated with "::Home" when you first open up the app shows that the app still needs a lot of polish before it can compete with the 'unofficial' apps. For now, if you just want a lightweight way of accessing Wikipedia articles from your phone and you don't want to install an app, just use the official mobile site.

In an interview with the Guardian, George Harrison's son Dhani even suggested that rights owners create their own Beatles-specific independent music store to sell the remastered versions. If Yoko is right about the catalogue making it to iTunes, it will be interesting to see the pricing negotiated on this epic release.

As Fortune's Jon Fortt, who also first wrote about this book in the iTunes store, points out, Gibson (who was last featured in Transformer's 2) wasn't alone in creating this iTunes LP - Apple actually helped Gibson out by allowing Sam Herz, a user interface engineer for the iTunes store, and Barry Munstersetiger to work on this project. According to Fortt, the two also created a number of tools that could now make creating similar projects a lot easier.

Are There Multimedia eBooks in Apple's Future?

Maybe the future that Apple sees for eBooks isn't just the static books we are used to today on eReaders like the Kindle or Sony's Readers, but multimedia eBooks that combine text, audio, and video just like Gibson's comic book. With the iTunes LP format, Apple has already developed the right format and delivery method for this - the company would just have to change the name a bit. One restriction of the current breed of iTunes LP albums is that the extras don't work on the iPhone, so it definitely takes a device with a larger display (the Apple tablet?) to really make the most out of these multimedia eBooks.

Music Apps / Internet Radio

• Pandora (M)
• Slacker Radio (F) - our review
• Last.fm (R)
• Tuner (P)

News

• New York Times (M,F) - our review of version 2.0
• USA Today (P)

Photo Apps

• Photon (F) - our review
• Pixelpipe (F) - upload your photos to over 70 different photosharing and social media services (we just posted a review of Pixelpipe's new Firefox plugin today)
• Mobile Fotos (P) - browse and upload photos and videos on Flickr
• iview (P) - share photos on Tumblr

Social Networks

• Facebook (P, M)
• Foursquare (P) - our review

Twitter Clients

• Tweetie (M, P)
• Twitterfon (F, R)

E-Books

• Kindle for iPhone (F) - our review
• Stanza (P) - part of our list of seven must-have offline apps

Productivity

• Todo (F) - lots of to-do list apps for the iPhone - this one is $9.99, but worth the money
• Groundwork (R) - access Basecamp from your iPhone
• YouNote (R) - note taking app, but also works with photos, drawings, and audio
• Soonr (F) - access documents from your desktop on the iPhone

Chat / Voip

• Skype (P, F) - our review ("It's Real and It's Spectacular")

Health

• Diamedic (R) - for tracking glucose levels, insulin injections, lab results etc.

What are Your Favorite Apps?

These are the apps that we use every day, but you surely have your own favorites, so feel free to leave a comment and let us know which apps you prefer.

Apple also announced a new pricing structure for iTunes, which will start from 1 April 2009. The iTunes service up till now has sold songs for 99 cents each, which when it first launched in April 2003 was a major reason for its initial success. However times change and Apple has decided to offer more flexibility. The new pricing has three tiers: $0.69, $0.99, and $1.29.

At the keynote, Apple noted that it had sold 6 billion songs through iTunes up till now - making it "the world's largest media library". iTunes is also now the number 1 retail channel for music in the U.S. - above Walmart, BestBuy, Amazon and Target. iTunes currently has 75 million accounts with credit cards.

Apple also announced that on the iPhone 3G, starting today the iTunes music store will no longer just be available via WiFi - it will be over 3G too. It will be the same pricing model, same selection of music, and no loss of quality. Users can then sync music from the iPhone back to their computer.

What Didn't Get Announced

There were no technology innovation announcements today regarding iTunes. Last September Apple released iTunes 8 and its 'Genius' recommendation engine. We were impressed by it, although we've noted since that third parties have come up with better music recommendation plug-ins for iTunes and there are other innovative twists on iTunes functionality. So we think Apple could do more technology innovation with iTunes; although the 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' strategy is entirely justified while iTunes is number 1 in its market!

The other major thing missing from the iTunes announcements today, which was among our Web predictions for 2009? Social network functionality for iTunes! Oh well, we're sticking with that prediction until the end of 2009 ;-)

Conclusion: Meh

Overall, there were no big surprises at the Macworld keynote in 2009, which surely was the main reason Steve Jobs wasn't on stage. The iTunes news above was probably the highlight - no shiny new products this year.

The reality is that Apple, ReadWriteWeb's Best BigCo of 2008, is in a fairly dominant position in a couple of key markets now - music and mobile - so it just needs to tweak the business model rather than astound us with tech innovation (again).

Update: Here's the official release from Apple. Regarding the pricing changes, Apples notes that "many more songs [will be] priced at 69 cents than $1.29."

After signing up for Audiolizer, you only have to export your iTunes library and upload it to the service. We tried this out with a relatively small, 1000 song library, and Audiolizer was able to import almost all of them. Unlike Lala, however, which offers a similar service, Audiolizer does not upload and store any of your songs that are missing from its database.

This, however, is typically not a major problem, as Audiolizer is able to draw upon a very large database of songs. While Audiolizer bills itself as a streaming music service, it actually gets its music (and accompanying videos) from YouTube. For some reason, however, Audiolizer downplays this reliance on Google's popular video sharing site and the videos are not even linked to their original YouTube pages and only appear in a very small window.

One feature we would still like to see is the ability to share your playlists with friends. Audiolizer is also still working on a music suggestion feature, which should be available shortly. Even without these, however, Audiolizer is definitely a music service worth trying.

We'd like your help in predicting the following: Will iTunes change its pricing from $.99 a song or go to a subscription music site by the end of 2008?

• Microsoft's Zune Pass music-subscription service allows unlimited music downloads for $15/month
• Every song sold on Wal-Mart can be played an unlimited number of times on most portable devices
• Rumors have surfaced that Apple is considering a $129.99 a year subscription service for iTunes

The post also predicts what will happen in digital music in 2008. Here's what Steve expects to happen with DRM:

Citing the popularity of iTunes Plus, in October Apple slashed the price of DRM-free tracks offered on iTunes, and early reports suggest that Amazon MP3 has also been a huge success (making it the number three digital music store in just one month). It therefore appears that ditching DRM has to some degree achieved the dual aims of invigorating the marketplace for digital music and creating a serious competitor to iTunes. As a result, many are predicting that 2008 will be the year that DRM is ditched completely, as all the major labels come on board, and I think this will be true for traditional music downloads.

However, in another context, DRM’d music looks like it’s here to stay for the foreseeable future at least. Subscription-based services still require the use of DRM and may become more acceptable to consumers as broadband becomes ubiquitous, enabling our music collection to “live in the cloud”, accessible anywhere and anytime.

Check out the full post for more; including details on mobile music stores and services, Radiohead’s pay-what-you-want experiment and other alternative models. You can also digg the post here.

In our tests, Mufin often performed better than Apple's Genius feature, but for now, the plugin is only available for Windows.

Mufin creates a unique fingerprint for every song in your library when you start the plugin for the first time. You can choose if you want the recommendations to be based on the analysis of 30 second snippets (for fast analysis) or on the whole song (very slow, but highly accurate). Mufin's proprietary algorithms can then create playlists based on the similarities between the songs in your library. In creating these fingerprints, Mufin looks at over 40 characteristics, including tempo, instruments, and rhythm structure.

Apple's algorithms, on the other hand, are hidden in a black box, but seem to be based around the listening and purchasing habits of other users on iTunes.

Mufin's approach means that it will work for any song you may have imported into iTunes, no matter whether it is part of Apple's library or not. Mufin is also agnostic as to what language the songs are in.

Similar to Apple's Genius, the Mufin plugin will also make purchasing recommendations for similar songs that are not yet in your iTunes library and take you right to the iTunes store to listen to the preview or purchase them.

Verdict

Overall, we have come away very impressed with Mufin's recommendations. Judging from what we have seen so far, it may just replace the Genius feature as our preferred way of constructing automatic playlists.

That said, we are still not great fans of Mufin's core web service, which, unlike the plugin, is encumbered by licensing problems and which can only play 30 seconds of most songs (and often it can't play the songs at all). The plugin, however, is a clear winner in our eyes.

According to a post on Apple's website, the company is now claiming - for the record - that they will not guarantee other devices will sync with the iTunes software nor will they support those devices.

Here's how the post reads:

Apple designs the hardware and software to provide seamless integration of the iPhone and iPod with iTunes, the iTunes Store, and tens of thousands of apps on the App Store. Apple is aware that some third-parties claim that their digital media players are able to sync with Apple software. However, Apple does not provide support for, or test for compatibility with, non-Apple digital media players and, because software changes over time, newer versions of Apple's iTunes software may no longer provide syncing functionality with non-Apple digital media players.

That sounds like a definite slap in the face to the Pre who may soon see one of their main selling points disappear with a simple update to the iTunes software.

Still, Apple has to be careful not to implement the update in a such way that makes it appear that they've done so just to break the Pre's syncing ability...that would reek of anti-competitiveness and could get them in trouble with the U.S. Department of Justice. However, we know Apple is filled with enough smart people that they could surely think of a way to break it without making it look like they broke it on purpose . The question is, will they really do something that under-handed and sneaky? Or do they just want to create a climate of fear by implying that you can't trust the Pre to always work?

Either way, it doesn't look like good news for Palm.

What's On iPhone?

What'soniphone is not only a great iTunes apps review site, but also a great web apps review site. With a team of engineers, writers, medical professionals, culinary artists, home makers, What's on iPhone will help anyone decide on an app. Reviews start off with an overview of the application and follows up with their personal take on the app, a mini review, and the final verdict.

iUseThis

If you not only want reviews of an app, but also want to know how many people are really using it, iUseThis is your site. You can register for iUseThis to keep a log of all the apps you're using. However, the site is best for finding out the most popular of two apps. For example, if you're trying to make a decision between two or three note-taking applications and wanted to know which one may have been downloaded the most, iUseThis is a great place to find out.

AppVee

AppVee is a recently launched application review site. AppVee aims to do things a little differently by providing users with a personal review of the app and also ratings for the apps. Ratings range from ease of use and features to the app's user interface. I've already spotted quite a few app reviews that I haven't seen elsewhere on AppVee.

Apple iPhone School

Apple iPhone School is a great app review site for both the App Store apps and jailbroken apps via Cydia. There's a great selection of app reviews currently available for both sources. If you're looking for a particular app review check out the site's sidebar for categories and more.

More Than Enough

Now you'll never have to complain about needed more reviews for an app. With over 4 sources including the iTunes App Store itself, you're all set to make a safe decision on whether or not to buy a particular app. Did we miss any sites? Let us know what your favorite iTunes App review sites are!

We got a chance to test both apps and both work just as advertised. For the AIM app, for example, the delay between sending a message and a notification popping up on our phone was usually under five seconds and sometimes almost instantaneous. Push, by the way, is enabled both for the free AIM app, which features ads, and the $2.99 paid version which is ad-free. One problem we noticed, though (and the same goes for the Associated Press news app with push), was that clicking on 'view' in a pop-up notification only open the app, but didn't take us to the actual message. We almost wonder if this is something Apple's API doesn't support, as this seems to be common among the push apps we have seen so far.

BeejiveIM is a bit pricey at $9.99, and the price might go up to $15.99 later, so if you really want this app, which supports, Windows Live, AOL, Yahoo, Google Talk, Facebook, MySpace, ICQ, and the Jabber protocol, not is probably the time to buy it. The one IM protocol this app misses support for Skype chats, though we are hoping for IM+ with support for push notifications (iTunes link to the free version) to be allowed into the store in the next few days.

Finally!

We are very excited to see the first new batch of push notifications in the App Store, though we would still like Apple to make a few changes to the way the iPhone handles these messages (including the ability to set a 'quiet time' during which notification are ignored). However, as long as Apple doesn't allow applications to run in the background, push notifications are the best alternatives and we are looking forward to seeing what developers will do with this new feature.

As is typical for Apple, the company is not exactly transparent when it comes to describing how the 'Genius' feature actually works. It looks as if Apple compares your music selection to that of other users and then builds its recommendations based on this. We assume that iTunes looks at data about play and skip counts, beats per minute (which is available for all songs in the iTunes store), ratings, and playlists.

Because these recommendations are at least partly based on the libraries of other iTunes users, iTunes periodically downloads updated recommendations. You can also force an update from the 'Store' menu.

One fact that surprised us was that Apple often returned playlists for songs that were clearly mislabeled, which has led us to speculate if Apple, during the first run of Genius, actually creates an acoustic fingerprint for every song.

According to Apple, all the uploaded information is anonymized.

Does it Work?

In our tests, the recommendations and playlists were often spot-on, but also a bit inconsistent. Sometimes we would get great recommendations based on songs from rather obscure bands, while we sometimes couldn't get any recommendations based on songs from more popular and contemporary artists. For classical music, the recommendation feature basically didn't work at all.

We also noticed that the recommendations tend to favor more popular mainstream artists, but that could easily be a function of the current user base.

Apple points out that the recommendation engine will get better over time, as more users start uploading their information. It would be nice, however, if Apple also gave users a chance to tweak settings for themselves or at least gave us more information about how these recommendations are calculated.

One minor annoyance when using the recommendations is that if you decide to build a Genius playlist based on a song that is already playing, iTunes starts the song over after creating the new playlist.

What about Last.fm and Pandora?

As Last.fm co-founder Marting Stiksel pointed out in an interview with Wired's Eliot Van Buskirk, the 'Genius' feature basically validates what other music recommendation services have been doing for a long time.

It's also important to point out that a lot of other music recommendation services have strong, built-in social networking functions. Apple, even though it now has information about the listening habits of a large chunk of its users, does nothing to connect these users. One neat function, for example, would be for iTunes to show playlists from other users that have a certain songs in it. For now, though, it doesn't seem as if Apple is interested in adding these social aspects to iTunes anytime soon.

Rediscovering Music

For now, when it works, Apple's recommendations are actually a very nice way of rediscovering a lot of music that had long been sitting in our jukebox but never saw the day of light. We also assume that the shopping recommendations in the sidebar will drive more traffic to Apple's music store, especially once the recommendations get a bit better and users get comfortable with trusting Apple's recommendations.