iConcertCal is a new app for the iPhone that lets you track where and when all your favorite musicians are performing. Using some of the new features in the APIs of iPhone OS 3.0, it reads all the artists in the iTunes library of your iPhone, uses the built in GPS to find your location and then displays results dependent upon how far you are willing to travel.

A while back we reviewed the non-iPhone version of iConcertCal which, acting as an iTunes visualizer, created an iCal calendar of the artists in your library while creating a separate calendar appearing when the visualizer is launched. This new app takes that technology and brings it to a new level.

After setting a location either through "use my location", or choosing from a number of pre-set cities, and setting how many miles should be searched, finding a concert is a snap and can be done a number of ways.

Choosing "My Shows" displays a day-by-day list of all matches found in your iTunes library. Choosing "All Shows" brings up a list of all concerts in your specified area, and tapping on "Venue" lists all music venues in your area along with how many shows are scheduled. Tapping on a venue, affords you a list of all of those concerts.

When you find something you like, you have the option of buying tickets, which takes you to the authorized ticket seller site, emailing the information, bringing up a map to get you to the hall or getting transferred to the iTunes store to buy some of the artist's music.

This alone is cool enough, but the best trick isn't immediately apparent. What happens if you have many songs on your computer that aren't on your iPhone? Or what happens if your largest iTunes library lives on another computer? They've got you covered.

By going to their site on the computer containing your largest library, and setting up an account, all artists on that computer will be indexed. Next go to the app and use the same settings. Automatically all the artists on the computer will be transferred to the iPhone app whether or not the artists are on the iPhone, and that information will be used by the iConcertCal app.

With over 60 gigs of music on my MacBook Pro and deciding to have my iPhone 3GS sync to my MacBook holding around 10 gigs of music, I authenticated my MacBook Pro and now the iConcertCal app shows me all the artists my the 60 gig library. Sweet!

Take a look at the gallery of screenshots and see if you can figure out which band I'm seeing four times this week from seat DD 6.

I'm normally not a huge fan of iTunes plugins– I was scarred on the whole idea of media player plugins back in my Windows days, but iConcertCal might just get me to re-evaluate that opinion. The free plugin scans the artists in your music library and presents you with a calendar of upcoming concerts in your city by those performers.

Unfortunately I haven't been able to get iConcertCal to work perfectly on my machine– the calendar only fills the bottom-left 2/3 of my iTunes window, the calendar over-flows the bounds of the visualizer area a bit, and there is something wrong with the mouse rollovers that causes me to have to mouse about an inch above the item I want to see information about. Your results may vary.

Technical note: Now I'm no programmer or expert on the intricacies of iTunes plugins, but it seems to me that having a plugin that essentially uses the visualizer as a browser is a bit of a hack.

[via Josh Spear]

OnTour is a Dashboard widget that scans your iTunes library and offers concert notifications when the artists you actually listen to are coming to a venue near you. The widget uses OnTour.net to collaborate all this information, and links are provided to buy tickets, as well as to the iTS in case you need to brush up on your choruses. To top things off, the OnTour.net site itself provides even more links to discographies and Google maps for directions. Nice.

[via Lifehacker]

I lost my lighter to airport security the other day. So I was resigned to being unprepared for the inevitable flame tribute to the bands at the Lyons Folks Festival tonight. That is, until I came across this post at Cult of Mac about the iScorch. I'll just hold up my iPod Video and let this video be my torch. There's also an iScorch for the Nano and the iPod Photo.