In November 2009, Apple launched a feature dubbed iTunes Preview, which essentially enabled people to see what music is available on iTunes from their Web browser without the need to fire up – or install – the desktop software program.

At the time, you weren’t able to actually listen to a sample of music tracks from your browser, but that changed earlier this year when Web-based audio previews were quietly added (paving the way for the imminent roll-out of iTunes.com).

This morning, Apple activated the iTunes Preview feature for iPhone / iPod Touch applications in addition.

For years, runners have been able to take advantage of Nike+, a nifty accessory that lets your iPod communicate with your shoes to turn it into a personal running coach of sorts. Soon, cyclists will have access to a tool that’s in the same vein as Nike+, but far more powerful. It’s called Pedal Brain, and it allows your iPhone or iPod Touch to receive and interpret data from a variety of exercise devices that use the ANT+ wireless protocol. ANT+ is used by cyclists (including many professionals) to accurately measure and analyze their performance over a ride, but until now there hasn’t been a way to connect these devices to your iPhone.

That’s where Pedal Brain comes in. The bootstrapped startup is making a small device called the Pedal Brain Synapse that plugs into your iPhone or iPod Touch and allows them to receive this data, which is then interpreted by an iPhone app. The application shows you how you’re performing in real-time (you’ll want to mount your iPhone in plain view) and can also use GPS to show the position of your team members.

iDFX Audio Enhancer is an add-on to iTunes that serves to, “re-encode your current MP3 and AAC files using a patent-pending method that repairs the damage and lost harmonics that occurred during the original encoding process”. Sounds like doublespeak to me for a $40 EQ and extrapolative guesswork. And the demo of iDFX sounds like just that. if you want good sounding audio, stop buying MP3s. And if you want smaller file sizes, start compressing with FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, or any number of lossless codecs.

You’re setting up for a party tonight. You’ve got food, girls, more food, and even Mike Chilludos coming! But what about music? No problem, just plug your laptop into some RadioShack computer speakers and hit shuffle, right?! For those of you who don’t want your party to be graced with a spontaneous rendition of “Yakety Sax”, Algoriddim Software has released djay 3. This DJ program integrates with your iTunes library, and automatically adds transitions and other cool DJ things to your mix.

The whole world was bullish on iTunes LPs when they were announced; I called it a black eye for the majors, whose CMX format has yet to be popularized. But the hype was curbed when it was discovered that there was a $10,000 fee associated with the service, putting it completely out of reach for less affluent artists and small labels who can’t afford that price for promotion.

Luckily for them, Apple was nice enough to make the format rather basic. It turns out anyone versed in a little HTML and Javascript can put together an LP that’s just as good as a “real” one.

Oh dear – it’s on now.

Either Palm’s making a stand — or they’ve stepped in it big time.

Eminem has a problem with Apple, and it has nothing to do with the company railroading Google with respect to the FCC. Anyhow, Eminem claims Apple sold 93 of his songs on the iTunes Store without the proper distribution rights, and so he wants a couple of dollars he feels he is owed. It comes out to around $2.5 million that Apple improperly made off Eminem.

It has come to my attention that the music industry now wants royalties for those 30-second clips of music you hear in iTunes. That, I think you’ll agree, is bullshit. Seeing as though we’re a solution-oriented blog here at CrunchGear, I want to offer a completely fool-proof way to save the music industry and put an end to the years and years of nonsense we’ve seen since Napster first was first released: let’s ban music. That’s right, let’s pass a law that says “the creation or performance of music, in any form, is hereby banned. Any violation of this law will be punishable by death.” Problem solved, let’s all play Hungry Hungry Hippos.

It wasn’t the LP albums or redesigned look that got me excited when Apple announced iTunes 9. Nope, it was the function called Home Sharing that touted the ability to share and copy media over a LAN easily. Sure, you could always drop all your music files into a centralized network share and rock out that way, but while that method works, it’s not elegant or easy for others to use.

The only problem is that Windows Home Server and the current version of iTunes 9 do not get along. It takes a little hacking to get the program installed right now, but hopefully the next release will install fine. Until then though, I got iTunes 9 to install on my WHS following some of the tips mentioned in this forum thread.

Warning: You will not be able to sync your iPod or iPhone directly to your WHS if you install iTunes 9 with this method because you have to remove the services needed for device control in order for it to install. But with Home Sharing, you can easily manage the content you want on another computer anyway. It will also cause a few pop-up error messages when your WHS starts up but it’s not like you restart your server everyday and, in my eyes, the benefits of Home Sharing outweighs the annoyance of the pop-ups.

Uh oh, sounds like there’s some bugs being introduced into the gilded cage that Mac users seem to enjoy so much. People using older versions of Safari are discovering that they can’t connect to the store. Turns out that the new version of iTunes is deeply attached to Safari. This is causing problems for users of older versions, and also for users that have pre-release versions of Snow Leopard.

Well this is a fine kettle of fish: Apple has added a secret folder to our file systems that essentially sucks any content inside into iTunes. The watched folders are:

~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Automatically Add to iTunes/ in OS X

C:\Users\Your Username\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Automatically Add to iTunes\ in Windows

If you drop an MP3 into there they get sucked into iTunes and disappear immediately, like a magic box. This would allow you to record your own music, for example, and add it to iTunes when you mix down and/or drag all your recently downloaded tunes straight into iTunes

Did Apple swerve us, or are we just a bunch of nincompoops? (I vote for the latter.) So, so many people were expecting to see The Beatles finally show up to iTunes, if not the event itself, yesterday. Nearly 24 hours later, you’re still unable to buy “Help!” from Steve Jobs’ little store. Huge deal, or should we all just move on with our lives? And is the band making a mistake in ignoring the largest music store on Planet Earth?

A small, California-based company by the name of Apple had an event today where it unveiled many new things. In case you were AFE (away from Earth) for the past few hours, here’s what you missed.

Way back in February, when iPhone OS 3.1 was but a distant “dream,” we posted 8 Little Things We Still Can’t Stand About the iPhone. More than half a year has passed and we can finally knock #7, “Arranging applications sucks something terrible,” off the list with the release of iPhone OS 3.1.

Looks like the never-ending “sync war” between Apple and Palm continues to rage on. According to numerous PreCentral forum contributors, iTunes 9 does NOT sync with their beloved Pres. What now, Palm?