[MrBS]

I did a quick search on macupdate for something like this and turned up blank. Seems like it would be simple if any of you cocoa developers want to make a quick easy helper.

Basically I'd like an app that would pop up a little floating window (above other windows but not grabbing focus) in the corner of my screen when an unrated song in iTunes reaches 10s before the end of the track. It should probably have the name of the song, and prominently feature 5 grayed out stars which you could select to fill like iTunes. It would fade away 5 seconds after it last gets input or 20 seconds into the next song.

If you want have a pref to pop it up for all songs, not just unrated ones, but being able to limit the behavior to unrated songs would be an important feature.

Are there any apps out there that fill this niche? Anyone want to pick it up as a quick project?

~BS

[cpac]

that does sound like a good idea to me too....

[MrBS]

I just have a really tough time rating music. If I listen to it passively and just enjoy it I forget to rate it; when I actively try to listen to something to rate an album that I'm not too familiar with I end up just jumping from song to song listening to a couple seconds which isn't that fun and I don't rate the songs too accurately.

An app like this would allow me to listen to the music passively while doing other stuff at my computer or walking around the apartment and, if it's convenient when the song and my reaction to it are still fresh in my head, I can rate it.

~BS

[holygoat]

A menu-bar version:
http://www.stolaf.edu/people/handley...nesrating.html

[Gee4orce]

Synergy does this.

I have f6 programmed to bring up the Synergy floater, which contains the track information including rating and album art. At any time I can hit F1 - F5 to give * to ***** ratings to the currently playing song. It's very quick and easy to use.

[mishap]

you can use Quicksilver to do this as well.

[MrBS]

All these things are missing the important part (I think)... They don't prompt when an unrated song is almost over. There are plenty of widgets and mini-apps that allow me to rate a song without opening the main itunes window... but that's not the issue.

The whole point of the proposed/requested app is that it would ask you for a rating when one wasn't there, near the end of the song. So you could just listen to your music as you continued your regular work, without having to concentrate on remembering to rate something at the end of each song. I also bet that the unobtrusive polling of this app would get you more accurate ratings than when you need to sit down specifically to rate the songs.

~BS

[SS3 GokouX]

That is a really great idea, as I have a lot of "new" music in my library that still needs to be rated (well, it was "new" like four months ago). I have Synergy but I use it mainly for the cool floater and to change tracks—never to rate music. There needs to be an app that pops up and says "Rate this unrated song which you've listened to like 30 times already!"

And I lack the patience to go one-by-one through my library and rate songs and not get distracted and work on something else.

This doesn't seem like it would be too hard to accomplish, since iTunes has so much AppleScriptability…

[lavar78]

Originally posted by MrBS:
All these things are missing the important part (I think)... They don't prompt when an unrated song is almost over. There are plenty of widgets and mini-apps that allow me to rate a song without opening the main itunes window... but that's not the issue.

The whole point of the proposed/requested app is that it would ask you for a rating when one wasn't there, near the end of the song. So you could just listen to your music as you continued your regular work, without having to concentrate on remembering to rate something at the end of each song. I also bet that the unobtrusive polling of this app would get you more accurate ratings than when you need to sit down specifically to rate the songs.

Am I the only one who thinks this sounds wrong? I think it makes more sense to alert you at the beginning that the song doesn't have a rating. Then you can actively listen to it and give it a good rating at the end. A recently-played-yet-unrated smart playlist might also be a good idea.

[threestain]

Have you tried Sizzling Keys? Does what you need and more and is great. IMHO at least! Plus its free:

www.yellowmug.com

[MrBS]

Originally posted by lavar78:
Am I the only one who thinks this sounds wrong? I think it makes more sense to alert you at the beginning that the song doesn't have a rating. Then you can actively listen to it and give it a good rating at the end. A recently-played-yet-unrated smart playlist might also be a good idea.

If I want to actively listen to it and remember to rate it I can pretty easily select the songs myself. Actually I have a full playlist full of them.

The point is that, at least for me, I get pretty bored and impatient sitting there waiting for the song to end when I'm just trying to rate it, so I end up skipping around a bunch and rating songs off a few seconds sample. I don't want to take 40 minutes to rate one album.

The other thing that happens is I just start listening to the music and enjoying it and then forget to rate it when the end of the track comes. Then I end up having to back track a few songs and try to remember what I thought about the song.

I personally don't think I "give it a good rating at the end" when I "actively listen to it".

~BS

[edit run-on-and-on-and-on...]

[MrBS]

Originally posted by threestain:
Have you tried Sizzling Keys? Does what you need and more and is great. IMHO at least! Plus its free:

www.yellowmug.com

Am I missing something here? Does it do more than offer hot keys for rating?

Most these suggestions seem to be missing the whole point: The app needs to prompt you near the end of an unrated song.

A floating rating window would be nice, but that's a secondary function. The main function is that it would unobtrusively tell you the song that you have almost finished listening to does not have a rating.

~BS

[sworthy]

Someone should make this.

Good idea

[JC Denton]

One workaround is to make a smart playlist to hold all your unrated songs, then have that playlist be the source for the Party Shuffe. Using the Party Shuffle is handy since you have a history of what has already played, plus adding stars to a previously played song doesn't immediately remove it from the Party Shuffle listing. I found this useful when I had a lot of unrated songs, since I could rank songs either with Synergy or using iTunes after the song ended.

[threestain]

Sizzling keys has a window that appears at the beginning of the song. I'm sure that it can be modified to do it at the end too...

[MrBS]

Again, the main point would be that it selectively appears based on the absence of a rating.