Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

Xeni has an interview with Rob Lord (of NullSoft fame) to discuss Songbird (/.ed at the time of this posting, btw). This is a new "iTunes killah" media player built on top of XULRunner and VLC. XUL, why that means.... EXTENSION TIME!

BB: Apart from the ability to connect to lots of different sources, what will Songbird do differently?

RL: The opportunity to innovate is stymied by architecture. All of the popular media players out there have pretty much the same feature set on the desktop -- when you leave aside what's possible when you connect to the internet, they all do pretty much the same thing these days. Rip, mix, burn, play, organize playlists. But plug them in to the internet, and there's so much more they could be doing. The possibilities for networked services are totally untapped. For instance, [Winamp co-creator] Justin Frankel created a collaborative jamming service, and you can't do that inside any commercial media player now. You'll be able to do those kinds of things inside Songbird.