Quicksilver and iTunes

I just discovered a cool feature in [Quicksilver](http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/) on the Mac. It has iTunes integration.

In Quicksilver’s preferences, click on the iTunes pane. Make sure you’ve selected ‘Show Artwork’, ‘Monitor Recent Tracks’ and ‘Display Track Notifications’. Now, whenever the song changes you’ll get a popup showing you the name of the new song and the album artwork associated with it. Very cool.

Also, in Quicksilver’s Triggers pane, you can set up some keyboard shortcuts to control iTunes. I’ve got mine set up to map Command-Option-Space to pause/play, Command-Option-Right Arrow to ‘Play Next Track’, Command-Option-Left Arrow to ‘Play Previous Track’, and Command-Option-Up Arrow to display the current track. I also mapped Command-Option-Plus to increase the current song’s rating, and Command-Option-Minus to decrease the current song’s rating.

Little things like this make a huge difference to the usability of your computer. No more fumbling for the iTunes window when you want to pause the music or skip to the next song. I really, really wish I had something similar in Windows at work!