My New Favorite App

As amazingly great as this whole Rip-Mix-Burn age of digital music is, I've found that such greatness comes with a price:

I no longer have any idea what the cover art to most of my CDs looks like.

A small consequence, yes, but to me, an important one. I LIKED the cover art, y'see. The first thing I tended to do, when I bought a new album, was lie on my bed and check out the artwork and the liner notes while playing it on my stereo. Nowadays, this is how it goes: CD comes out of the bag (yes, I'm a capitalist caveman who still buys my music), out of the wrapper and that incredibly annoying sticker that a dozen years of technological advancement have somehow unable to erradicate, and into the computer. Then, its elegant design and packaging reduced to mere delivery materials, the thing goes under the bed or in a box or wherever I'm tossing the things at the moment. All the sweat and tears and imagination and toil that went into creating that artwork, and now it's nothing more than a used envelope.

Enter Clutter, a clever little application that automatically downloads and displays the cover art of whatever you happen to be listening to in iTunes, both on your OS X desktop and in the dock. Voila. My CDs have faces again.

Big smiles to Mena and Ben at Six Log for finding this one and Sprote Rrsch for doing it up.

Now I have to check out iCommune...