Manage updates with the Download AppCNET Editors' review
For those connected to social media or their own Web site, displaying their song choices in real time may be difficult. Now Playing for Mac allows easier publishing of what a user is listening to in real time to the Web.
Now Playing is available as a free trial version; the full program requires a payment of $15.00. Download and installation completed quickly, and Now Playing for Mac's native installer identified the best place to place the application. As a plug-in for iTunes, the program required iTunes to be shut down before installation. The plug-in installed after restarting iTunes, which brought up a setup screen. There were no instructions, but anyone familiar with basic XML and HTML should not have any problem figuring the program out. Many options exist to display the currently playing track information to the Web. Users can set it up to work with Facebook and Twitter. If the user has the proper information and their own Web site, the program can be set up to automatically upload the information to a Web server for display. It also integrated well with iTunes and did not change playback or any of its other normal features.
For users who want to display the currently playing iTunes track to the web or social media, Now Playing for Mac performs its functions well and has a number of features for ease of uploading.
Editors' note: This is a review of the trial version of Now Playing for Mac 3.9.2.3.
Publisher's Description
From Brandon Fuller:
iTunes allow you to create plugins that can do various tasks for you. The Now Playing plugin monitors the song you are listening to and publishes the data in various ways: creates a XML file with information on that song. A file called now_playing.xml is created in your iTunes Plug-ins directory. The plugin also offers you the ability to FTP that file to a server of your choosing after it is updated. Create a ping with the song information. The idea is that you publish the XML up to your web server and then through some scripting magic, you can display your currently playing song or your recently played tracks. To make your web site more interactive, the plugin also retrieves some information for you to use.
What's new in this version:
- Fixed Facebook integration. Again. Facebook started doing something "smart" when we give them URLs to Amazon albums. It blows away all your custom text and uses text scraped from Amazon. This does not appear to happen with iTunes links. I use iTunes anyway. So I switched to iTunes links and they seem to be showing up more like they are intended, in most cases. In some cases, you continue to get an iTunes text scrape with it. The other choice would be to remove the link all together which... See all new features
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