Earlier we mentioned how to explore the iTunes LP format and how easy it is to peek inside and check out all of the non-Flash, CSS-based awesomeness. But if you happen to be somewhat less geeky, it's pretty likely that your definition of "exploring" iTunes LP is much more focused on playing music, reading liner notes, and checking out custom graphics.

If all you really want to do is check out your growing library of iTunes LPs then there's an easy way to bring them into one single collection. We have covered using Smart Playlists to manage your Library on several occasions. It's also possible to create a Smart Playlist that will list just your iTunes LPs. Just create a new Smart Playlist and set the filter field to "Kind," the operator to "contains" and in the text field type "iTunes LP."

That's all there is to it, and I'm honestly kind of surprised Apple didn't include some form of visualization a la Cover Flow to make it easier to peruse your shiny, new digital LPs. If you've got any Smart Playlists or other iTunes 9-related tips, let us know in the comments -- we'd love to hear from you!

Update: proper attribution to Jay Robinson now added to the image -- a glitch in our CMS caused the error, for which we apologize. - ed.

Objective Decision released a free update to their oddly-named flagship product Contactizer. A powerful, Sync Services-savvy personal information manager (PIM) application, Contactizer 3.6 comes in Pro and Express flavors depending on your needs.

I used an earlier version of Contactizer last year and was impressed with its power, although I did run into issues with how it synced with iCal and Address Book. One of the best features from my viewpoint was the ability to track tasks throughout an entire project using the Project Manager mode (see screenshot above). Contactizer also did a great job of handling mail merges, and I found the way that it integrated email information into my contact list to be very helpful.

The update includes a Leopard-only Cover Flow mode that displays contacts as business cards, an improved sync system that works with multiple calendars, a quick entry panel for tasks, and a number of other user interface improvements.

Contactizer is a Universal Binary application which requires Mac OS X 10.4.8 or better. You can download a 30-day free trial, or purchase Contactizer Pro for $119 (Express is $59.90).

[via Macworld]

Continuing with yesterdays obsession with Cover Flow, here is something that you might not have known existed in Leopard. You can browse iCal events with Cover Flow right inside a finder window. All you have to do is open Spotlight up by clicking its icon in the top right corner of the screen (or pressing command + spacebar). Then type kind:ical into a new Spotlight search, and click "Show All." Your results will now be shown in a new Finder window.

Activate cover flow by going to View > Cover Flow (or press command + 4). When you find the event you want, you can double click its icon to open it in iCal.app.


[via Macworld]

Fluid, the site-specific browser we've featured before, has added a sweet new feature: Cover Flow for sites like Google, Digg, Flickr and more.

In case you haven't given it a shot yet, Fluid allows you to create mini-browsers that are specific to a site – such as GMail, for example – giving you an icon in the Dock and quick access to your most-used pages. Fluid's author, Todd Ditchendorf, has made a short video that – with an entertaining musical score – shows the usage of the new Cover Flow feature, as well as showing some basic tricks for making the most of Fluid. Fluid is free, so check it out and make your site-specific browsing experience that much cooler.

Feature: Cover Flow in the Finder.

How it works: Just like album Cover Flow in iTunes, Leopard brings the side-scrolling view to the Finder, allowing your "flip" through your files and see live previews (including paging through mutli-page documents and playing movies).

Who will use it: Everyone at one time or another. When I first heard of Cover Flow in the Finder, like Matt Neuburg, it seemed like pointless eye candy. But like him I'm beginning to think otherwise. Cover Flow makes quickly flipping through a bunch of files to look for something much easier. This becomes particularly important when you're looking through folders you're not that familiar with. So even if you're more inclined to keep the Finder in a conventional view, Cover Flow will still probably come in handy on occasion.

TUAW reader o!ivier has posted a mockup to his Flickr account of how he believes the iPhoto '08 Events UI should have been designed. Seeing it as a more natural evolution of what Apple is doing with Mac OS X and their apps (iTunes, Finder in Leopard, etc.), o!ivier believes Apple should have built in Cover Flow for browsing events instead of the new 'skimming' UI, where users run their mouse over resizable thumbnails to see all the photos contained in the event scroll by. Instead, this Cover Flow mockup proposes the idea of scrolling left and right through Events just like you scroll through albums in iTunes. Clicking an event produces thumbnails of all the images laid out in the area below, which can then be resized independently from the Cover Flow area.

I rarely prefer design mockups like this over what Apple produces, but I have to admit: I think Apple dropped the ball here. O!ivier's mockup looks far more useful, as you can browse through Events and view resizable thumbnails of all the photos they contain without leaving the Events UI. Don't get me wrong, skimming is cute, but Cover Flow + iPhoto looks like it would look just as slick but provide a far more useful working environment.

Who knows - Maybe Apple just wants to wait for users to get used to Cover Flow in Leopard's Finder. After all, they need to give us at least a few reasons to upgrade to iLife '09, right?

I'm not sure why eye candy gets such a bad reputation-- we all need a little beauty in our lives, and no UI designer should ever argue that a "cool!" factor is a bad thing to have, when you've already hit all the other bases. Cover Flow is a perfect example. When people made their wishlists before iTunes 7, I don't know anyone that said they wanted a visual way to browse their albums. But everyone loved the Cover Flow plugin, and now those designers are working for Apple.

So Jimmy G has an idea: why not add Cover Flow functionality into Safari? You could browse updated versions of your bookmarks just like you browse your albums in iTunes. I'm not sure I'd implement it exactly the way he has (click the pic above to see a bigger version), as if I'm browsing my web visually, I'd rather more real estate was given to the pages themselves. But it's an interesting idea.

And I think we could use a little more color in the web browsing experience-- the space between the browser tabs, if you will. If you're a Firefox for Windows user you really should try out the Tab Effect**; it lets you flip between tabs like a rotating cube. It's actually a little much to use all the time, but it's a cool idea, at least. And the PicLens plugin for Safari also puts a little oomph in your picture browsing-- it can create slideshows of Flickr pictures with just a click. You may think it's superfluous (and yes, if your app doesn't function already, it is) but we all need a little bit of eye candy now and again.

Thanks, Jimmy!

**Whoops. As commenter Rae notices, Tab Effect is Windows only, because it requires Directx 8. But it's still a cool effect.

And the exhaustive analysis of Apple's iPhone Guided Tour continues, this time with the third installment and photo gallery covering some of the interesting new features we found in the iPod app. This is of course one of the iPhone's key components, and Apple has really made some great improvements to the UI and experience. While we have already seen most of them demonstrated by Jobs and in the commercials, there were a few handy new tidbits revealed in this tour.

Cover Flow track selection: We've seen the wonders of Cover Flow, but I don't remember seeing that you can actually select an album and chose a track while still in the Cover Flow view. Previously, I thought the demos showed that you had to select the album and switch back to a full track list view; but not so here.

Theatrical Aspect vs Full Screen video: Looks like the iPhone doesn't default to playing widescreen movies in what Apple calls 'theatrical aspect' so you can see the whole thing; they're zoomed in to a full screen view. Double tap for full widescreen, double tap again to get out.

On screen movie controls: I think we've seen them before, but I couldn't find a screenshot, and even the Calamari ad has the user hit the Home button to get out of the movie; he doesn't actually interact with it.

Customizable iPod buttons: Here's one of the slick ways Apple has really improved on customizability, allowing users to specify which five buttons line the bottom of the iPod app. Listen to a lot of podcasts? Want a genre button instead of artists? You can swap out all the buttons for easy access to the parts of your library you use most. Brilliant.

Headset controls: I also don't remember much being said about the headset that comes with the iPhone. At first glance it looks like a simple, standard set of iPod headphones with a new microphone slapped on, but the mic has a surprisingly functional button. Of course, you can use it to answer and end calls, but when listening to music, you can double-click the button to advance tracks.

That's about all the new goodies we picked up in the iPod section of the video. Stay tuned for more in-depth analysis soon.

While Steve Jobs introduced ten major features coming in Mac OS X Leopard at last year's WWDC, the entire list of new features has finally been unveiled. We already knew about some of the enhancements coming in apps like Mail and the all-new Spaces and Time Machine, but Jobs today highlighted some significant new features such as an interesting new approach to the Desktop and a (finally!) updated Finder.

This isn't all that's coming in Leopard, however; not by a long shot. In fact, along with a redesigned Apple.com, the company has unveiled the full Leopard features site, elaborating a lot more on most (but likely not all) the new features we'll get to play with in October. The list this time around actually tops over 300+ new features - the most significant upgrade in Mac OS X's history. Included in the list are apps we haven't seen featured on stage, including iCal, Parental Controls, DVD Player, Automator and more.

There's a lot to look through here (and likely much more to discover that Apple hasn't detailed), so we're going to take some time to digest this all. As always, feel free to send us tips as we publish more info on new features as quickly as possible.

Here comes the community at Mac OS X Hints with yet another cool trick which, in this case, should help us waste just a little more time in iTunes 7.1.1. I specify that latest version because this hint concerns Cover Flow's new found ability to run in full-screen mode: as it turns out, you can command-tab between a full-screen video and Cover Flow. This is enabled by the apparent fact that that cmd-tab doesn't toggle Mac OS X's app switcher when in iTunes is full-screened; you have to hit Escape to get out of this environment for cmd-tab to get back to its normal duties. This is a slick, very eye candy feature that, in a way, I am surprised Apple didn't do at least a little bragging about with the latest iTunes update.