Fresh AIR Apps

Finetune, this one has been around for quite a while now back to the pre-release days of AIR when it was called apollo.

If you have not come across Finetune before, it is an online music service where you ca discover new music, create your personal playlists and organise your music and albums using tags. It is similar in a few ways to Pandora for those that had access to it. It is seen as taking the social aspects of last.fm and mixing it with the discover features of Pandora. They also have a player that you can add to your social network page.

The desktop player now lets you interact with the features of the website within a very small desktop footprint. The cover flow album viewer is a really nice touch even if it does take you a few seconds to work out how to move to the next album without any guiding arrows. I don’t currently have a Finetune profile or account set up but that was no obstacle in getting the player to fire up some tunes.

So far I have been really impressed with the Finetune offering and after having it spit out some new and interesting tunes based upon my original artist, I’m going to sign up.

Design eye

Great looking app as mentioned the cover flow style album art at the top really give it some style and changes with a smooth transition. Buttons and typography are small yet clear and the large icons for search, playlist tags are very concise and clear.

Technical eye

Finetune’s media supply is powered by Flash Media Server so this really helps with taking a Flash player to other platforms like the Wii. This desktop version is built using the Flex framework.