I LOVE . . . iTunes Smart Playlists

Brace yourselves . . . periodically I will have opinions on this blog. Today, pretty much just before and during dinner (as I lunged to the laptop between bites much to Laura's chagrin), I started playing with Smart Playlists in iTunes. Before today, I didn't know they even existed. But then, I was on my way to work this morning in the GTI (which I also LOVE . . . maybe another day I will verbosify that topic) and I learned something. On the podcast I was listening to ("The Apple Phone Show"), one of the commentators talked about how the 8 gigs on the iPhone isn't that bad of a limitation and explained why. He said he sets up a Smart Playlist in iTunes with certain conditions so he always has stuff to listen to that he hasn't heard in a while. Pulling down the File --> New Smart Playlist, I discovered fantastic features. Using pull-down boxes, you can set it up so you have a live-updated list that meets any of a zillion criteria. In order to set up a list of music I haven't heard in a while, I can set multiple conditions like "last played is not in the past 90 days", "genre is not Christmas", "artist is not Yanni", and so on. Once I've heard a song on the list, either at home or on my phone, it disappears and a new one that fits the criteria joins the list.
So yeah, everybody in cyberspace probably had this mastered already. But if I can bring this joy to just one soul, it's worth it.